The Sorry State of Sufis Today
Instead of being fearless protectors of truth and being witnesses to justice, the Sufis of today are an embarrassment to their spiritual predecessors' unrelenting moral courage.
As it stands, there are very few voices of moral courage and integrity in the Muslim world today. Those who should be at the forefront of this effort, the so-called Sufis of today, with their turbans, fancy aqiq rings, thikr beads and diehard allegiance to their respective shuyukh, have resigned themselves to insular, selfish in-groups with little relevance to the realities of millions of Muslims. They signal to the world externally that they have beautifully transcended the ugliness of the times by grasping to something whole, something eternal, something everlasting. They do this while at the same time, they (or rather their leaders) serve at the behest of thieves and corrupt governments and rulers, and murids don’t hold their shuyukh accountable for doing that because “politics” are complicated and they must have their reasons since “they are friends of God and know better than us.”
The Sufis of today (with the exception of a rare few) claim to do this to protect the “stability” and “security” of the ummah in the name of fringe opinions from the medieval fiqh corpus that was itself designed to protect tyrants and the powers that be in the age of Muslim empires. But under the ubiquitous nation state system today, what is so stable and secure about Muslims being tortured, interned, terrified into silence? What is so normal about the ummah becoming passive soulless sheep that live under fear and have no livelihoods to their name, or a dignified existence for them and their children?
Before you mistake me for an anti-Sufi (I am not), there are beautiful and essential lessons to be learned from accompanying friends of God, and from silence, from solitude, from knowledge-seeking, from madih poetry, thikr and charity. These are all commendable and beautiful acts and it behooves more Muslims to unshackle themselves to Islam as dogma and to integrate more of the sufi corpus in their lives, as well as read more works of sages past such as Rumi, Ibn Arabi and Imam Ghazali.
But these things, taken alone, are not a substitute for being active, moral agents in our world today. It is not enough to work on the individual self and to remove egoism, jealousy and rancor from the heart. It is not enough to establish an insular community and a polished worldview that cares more about the words of dead men than the anguish of Muslims living in refugee camps or in the prisons of oppressive regimes. The Qur’anic edict, that “God does not change a condition of a people until they change themselves,” is often misread as a limitation to Muslims’ agency in the world: that as long as we are assiduous in purifying ourselves individually, then God will take care of the rest and then change our affairs.
But what does it really look like to purify oneself and increase one’s imaan? Is it simply to find a Shaykh and increase in one’s thikr? To try our best to be “good people”? For a while, yes, because ideally, having a true, verified Muhammadan inheritor, and doing thikr and tarbiya increases (and hopefully attains) one’s knowledge of God. And so, if one truly knows God, then one must know that there is nothing worthy of being worshiped but God alone. This is a radical act and is the ultimate Qur’anic lesson: when one truly worships God alone, then one will become subject to profound and radical consequences and it must lead to a palatable bearing on one’s actions. If one truly claims to know and love only God, then one must forgo all fear of mainstream opinions, of other people’s attacks, and general societal convention.
If one still fears negative backlash from others, from rulers, their families, their boss, and curtails the truth and speaking a just word in fear of worldly consequences, then one is not really a Sufi, and should distance from him/herself from claiming that mantle. Because what is Sufism if not the highest and best expression of Islamic values of justice, forbidding the evil and commanding the good for God’s sake alone? If there is still fear of others lurking in one’s heart preventing one from speaking the truth and standing up for the oppressed, then this is till an affront to the One God. It is a sign your worship is weak and tarnished. If one does not speak the just word, as did the Prophets of God, Muhammad, Musa and Issa, and is living a comfortable life in the status quo, then how can one seriously dare to claim ihsan, the highest plane of worshiping God as if one sees Him?
Unfortunately, the Sufis of today are a sorry excuse for following the footsteps of the Prophets and their spiritual ancestors’ historic commitment to fighting injustice and unsettling the status quo. Far from being docile dervishes, historic Sufis were the first to combat oppression, injustice and tyranny. They understood that the greatest act is to speak a truthful word in the face of a cruel tyrant. They did not even shy away from carrying weapons when they had to. Consider the lives of Salahuddin al-Ayyubi, Abdul Qadir al-Jaze’ri, Omar al-Mukhtar, Imam Shamil or Umar Futi Tal. They went down in history as fierce Muslim warriors and protectors of shar’ia. Why? Because they truly worshiped God alone and their actions showed that. Because they understood that the highest expression of worship, ihsan, means to forgo all comfort and all personal gain in this world in exchange for God’s pleasure and the world of the hereafter.
They did not say “oh well, this is God’s will” or “if God willed it to be different He would have made it so.” They truly lived the Qur’anic and Prophetic lessons of being active, moral agents in the world, even if it costs them their popularity or livelihoods.
Even if it cost them their life.
Let the Sufis of today remember this the next time they hold thikr gatherings in fancy, air-conditioned majalis with opulent chandeliers, with expensive bakhoor wafting through the hall and golden-framed portraits of butchers and tyrants hanging over their heads.