KARACHI: Though Pakistan has courted “Sufi Islam” since its inception, efforts to appropriate schools following the more mystical strains of the faith by the state could prove “risky” due to the numerous competing Islamic narratives that exist in today’s Pakistan, said UK-based Pakistani scholar Dr Farzana Shaikh in her talk here on Thursday.

She was delivering a lecture on ‘Recasting the politics of Sufism in Pakistan’ at the Alliance Francaise Karachi. An associate fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, the scholar gave a thorough description of how the Pakistani state has dealt with Sufi strains of Islam, from its initial ambivalence to later co-option.

Dr Shaikh said that since 9/11, the international community had made efforts to restore the “pluralistic traditions of Pakistan”, especially Sufism and particularly the “Sunni Muslim Barelvi tradition” in the hope that this country would emerge as the “West’s natural ally” in the Muslim world.

In 2002, she said, there was a “radical reorientation” that led to a severance of ties “with protégés” such as the Afghan Taliban, while the concept of ‘Enlightened Moderation’ was championed by then military ruler Pervez Musharraf as “a true picture of Islam”. The appropriation of Sufi Islam was key to this project.

This was largely dismissed both internally and externally as a “gimmick” by a military regime to gain legitimacy, but the effort was endorsed by the PPP government elected in 2008, in a bid to cast Sufi-influenced Islam as the “right” version of the faith. In fact, the scholar said that such efforts could be traced back to the evolution and inception of the state.

Discussing the Muslim Modernists’ unease with populist Sufi Islam, Dr Shaikh, who dubbed Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Allama Iqbal and Mohammad Ali Jinnah as Pakistan’s “three patron saints”, said the Modernists considered Sufism “an aberration” and held it in contempt. The Peeri-Mureedi system was particularly disliked. Sir Syed focused on a “Sharia-centric Sufism” to bring the mystical dimension of Islam in line with the Modernist reading of the faith. She said the educationist thought rationalism and ijtehad would help create a new Indo-Muslim worldview and felt some aspects of Sufism, such as the concept of wahdatul wujood, was too close to Vedantic thought and pantheism.

She observed that “many of these currents resurfaced in Iqbal’s thoughts”; but even while the Allama viewed populist Islam with scepticism, “he refrained from totally condemning it”. Mr Jinnah, on the other hand, “made no secret of his impatience for pirs and scorn for ulema”, though the Quaid’s objections were not theological but political, she said. Sufi pirs, especially in Punjab, put up a “daunting challenge” to the Muslim League and later, Mr Jinnah had “no choice but to accede to their demands”. The League faced similar challenges in Sindh.

Dr Shaikh said this experience caused Mr Jinnah to make room for a more Islamic narrative of the state and accommodation of Sufi leaders, yet the tension between the Modernists and the spiritual leaders did not abate completely. Even while this was the case, Pakistan’s early leaders chose to accommodate the Sufis, whereas Sufism was “repressed” in secular Turkey as well as Saudi Arabia, the academic added.

Yet during the Ayub Khan era, Dr Shaikh said the Sufis were recast as “modern” and “agents of development”, while the military ruler used these divines as a bulwark against his critics amongst the ulema. It was at this time that Sufi shrines were brought under bureaucratic control. With the advent of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s rule, a break was made with “Iqbalian Modernism” as the PPP founder made Lal Shahbaz Qalandar’s shrine in Sehwan “the centre of political spirituality”.

Ziaul Haq’s military dictatorship saw “a more doctrinaire” approach to faith by the state as well as the development of “a Sunni Muslim bourgeoisie”. But even the military strongman did not make a clean break from Sufism, instead choosing to mould mysticism as per the needs of his Islamisation project.

According to the scholar during the ‘decade of democracy’ in the 1990s, both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif “revived the state’s relationship with Sufis” yet the “political and religious landscape of Pakistan was now more complex”. A “new generation of radicalised clergy had emerged, as had sectarian groups”, hence Sufi Islam had tough competition in the battle of narratives. The sectarian groups in particular sought to impose “right Islam” and to cleanse the faith of “ignorant” versions.

She termed Nawaz Sharif’s attachment to the Tableeghi Jamaat a “neo-Sufi” endeavour, adding that the Jamaat’s message “resonated with the Punjabi urban classes”. She said Tahirul Qadri’s Minhajul Quran movement was also significant as it focused on Sufi devotion and rejected violence. This movement was projected as being indigenous to Pakistan as well as staying true to Islamic tradition.

Dr Shaikh observed that it was “too early” to say which way the PML-N would take the “state’s experiment with Sufism” during its third stint in power, though N-League leaders such as Shahbaz Sharif, Ishaq Dar and the prime minister himself still continued to very publicly express their devotion to the Data Darbar shrine in Lahore.

Published in Dawn March 13th, 2015

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