Word: sufis
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Dates: during 2002-2002
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...powerful motivator. Until the clerics made common cause against America, the six hard-line party leaders were rivals. They stormed each other's mosques and split hairs over ideological disputes dating back to Islam's early days. Their differences were stark: some worship at the tombs of local Sufi saints; others dismiss that practice as blasphemy. Most of the parties want their women veiled from head to toe, although more liberal groups argue that it ought to be the woman's choice. The personalities of the parties' leaders have also clashed. Qazi Hussain Ahmed from the Jamaat-e-Islami...
...India's deviation from secularism has not diluted the faith Kashmiris have in it. Their moderate Sufi-based culture and value system is still the predominant ethic despite their persecution. One of the more startling findings of the Nielsen poll was that more than 95% of the valley's Muslims found the ethnic cleansing that drove Kashmiri Hindus out in the '90s repugnant; they wanted to see this authentic Kashmiri Hindu community resettled. This is a view with serious political implications, since a return of the Hindu population means renewal of a plural society. Of course, plenty of Kashmiri Muslims...
...Rumi himself were somehow zapped, robes and all, into the present day and given a look at the vast spiritual Starbucks where he is the most popular flavor of the moment, what would he make of it all? Very likely he would echo what Kabir Helminski, a practicing Sufi and another popular contemporary Rumi translator, has said about attempts to siphon off the insights of Rumi and other Sufi sages without addressing their Islamic context: "We cannot steal the fire. We must enter...
...refusing to participate in elections has achieved precious little, say many former militants. They also complain that what was once an indigenous freedom struggle has been usurped by Pakistani militants whose pan-Islamic ideals and fundamentalism are at odds with this fight for self-rule and with the moderate Sufi Islam of the Valley. The foreigners, Indian intelligence sources claim, number half of the 2,500 militants in the area...
...Despite periodic vandalism, theft and iconoclasm, Bamiyan's Buddhas survived for nearly 18 centuries. Genghis Khan did not touch them?he was quite tolerant of other religions. The Shia Muslim Hazara who live in the valley protected them, and adherents of Sufi Islam, a mystical sect with a wide following in Afghanistan, see echoes of Buddhism in their own practices. But last March, Taliban commanders flew in by helicopter. A public meeting was called, and the main speaker, then-Defense Minister Obaidullah Akhund?who reportedly surrendered to the new government last week and was set free?read a decree...