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| Africa North |
| Salafists torch 3 Tunisia shrines |
| 2013-01-27 |
| [MAGHAREBIA] Tunisian salafists attacked three more Sufi shrines on Thursday (January 24th), Tunisie Numerique reported. The Sidi Ali Ben Salem mausoleum in the Gabes town of El Hamma was totally destroyed by fire. The Sidi Ahmed al-Ghout shrine in Douz was also burned and desecrated, while arsonists attempted to torch the Sidi Knaou mausoleum in Matmata. A day earlier, salafists in Sousse destroyed the Sidi Ahmed Ouerfelli mausoleum in Akouda. "The on-going attacks on mausoleums and zawiyas are part of a methodical plan aimed at destroying collective memory," a culture ministry statement said on Wednesday. According to the ministry, a new security unit will be created to protect historical and cultural sites. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #4 Trailing wife and lotp, I don't dispute what you say. I am sure that Sufis Saddka also makes it ways to the hard liners. But last I checked, they were not the ones running the madrassas that are turning out graduates whose education only qualifies them to be terrorist and chattel owners. From trailing wife's cite, "For the Islamists -- for hard-line fundamentalists like the Saudi Wahhabis and the Taliban -- the Sufis are deadly enemies, who draw on practices alien to the Quran. Where Islamists rise to power, Sufis are persecuted or driven underground; but where Sufis remain in the ascendant, it is the radical Islamist groups who must fight to survive." BTW, I liked my computer generated name "Glainter Scourge of the Sith2042". I almost didn't want to change it. |
| Posted by: Mike Ramsey 2013-01-27 18:30 |
| #3 al-Ghazali, perhaps the most influential Muslim writer after Muhammed, both shut the door of Sunni theology to reason and philosophy and - on the same grounds - integrated Sufism into orthodox Sunni thought. What ties them together is the assertion that Allah is pure will and purely transcendent. On that basis the Sufis created large brotherhoods, sometimes in areas marginal to Islam. Some of them ended up pretty syncretic with local traditions, as in Mali and elsewhere. Hence the modern Salafist attack on the tombs of Sufi saints in north Africa. But TW is right: overall, the Sufis were often the shock troops of militant Sunni Islam. Their core doctrine is that one can approach Allah only through direct experience ... anything else is idolatry. |
| Posted by: lotp 2013-01-27 16:47 |
| #2 Sufis are strong adherents to the principal of tolerance, peace and are against any form of violence. Some times and some places. But Sufis have historically been as mad for jihad as the rest; mysticism turns as easily outward as inward. See here, for an outline. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2013-01-27 15:38 |
| #1 Sufis are strong adherents to the principal of tolerance, peace and are against any form of violence. Of course their coreligionist brothers the Wahhabi and the Salafist are strong adherents to the principals of intolerance, jihad, and suicide kabooms so I can see the disconnect. It is ironic; what Islam needs is Mahatma Gandhi. |
| Posted by: Mike Ramsey 2013-01-27 11:03 |