May 15, 2005 Sufi Jihad? By Andrew G. Bostom
The Sufi branch of Islam has enjoyed spectacularly good press in the West. Hailed as peaceful mystics who believe jihad is a spiritual quest, nothing violent or unpleasant, Sufism has attracted favorable attention and converts from all sorts of Westerners, from new agers in Marin County, California, to East Coast intellectuals. But Sufis are not necessarily all peace—loving meditative seekers of the divine.
The formation of the 'The Sufi Jihadi Squadrons of Shaykh 'Abd al—Qadir al—Gilani' in Iraq was recently announced�at the� jihadist website, 'Jihad Unspun'. The Al—Gilani (d.1166) after whom they are named was in fact a Hanbali Sufi.
Sufi jihadists'(?)—a 'Hanbali Sufi'(??)—haven't we been lectured at great length about the singular evils of 'Wahhabism'� —rooted in the Hanbali school of Muslim jurisprudence, epitomized by Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328)—versus its Islamic 'antithesis',� the ecumenical tradition of mystical Sufism???����
Notwithstanding the musings of a Muslim journalist and neo—convert from Bolshevism to Sufi Islam (see his bizarre and treacly 'profession of faith' here,�and a clinical description of what this newly described syndrome represents),� Sufism has been linked integrally to the Muslim institution of jihad war since the 11th century C.E.
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