The One About The Sunnis, The Shias and The Sufis

Hello all,

today we had someone over from Pakistan. He had come here with his wife to perform umrah at Makkah and Medina. He was here for just a short while. The conversation steered towards the Sunnis, the Shias, the Sufis and Mystical Islam.

How did it all start? It all started when we asked our guest where his wife was, and he said that his wife was asked by her "sheikh" that she should not distract her pilgrimage by leaving either Makkah or Medina. She she went directly to the aiport, since she was not allowed to go anywhere else. What is this "sheikh" and how could he prevent her from coming to Jeddah?

Our guest started off by saying that she is a part of a group called "Silsila" in Pakistan. These are groups where people meet once a week and have a discussion on Islamic topics, and have a question-answer session. It is not like the religious lectures where people are usually criticized and judged by the lecturer. The Silsila group stress mostly on Love and Tolerance. This was for the first I was hearing something like this. Almost always, I hear of meetings and lectures by apparently learned scholars who do a good job of making the people feel guilty and strum fear into their hearts to start doing Islamic things to avoid hell fire. They spend too much time criticizing and judging others, making people feel guilty, making them fearful of the afterlife, and reminding them again and again of the hellfire that awaits them! It was with surprise when our guest said that Silsila are a growing group of people in Pakistan, who are moving away from the more rigid style of teaching into the kind of teaching which is based on Love and Tolerance.

I did not know what to say. Or guest continued to talk about how God wants for us to connect to him through our souls, and not through our strict intrepretations of the Quran. While he was talking, I realized that our guest was into the Sufism branch of Islam. Sufism are those group of Muslim who believe that God is basically love and that we can connect to God through spiritual devotion of prayers, music and love. I admired his boldness to share all this with us.

I asked him if this particular belief was deviated from the main branch of Sunni and Shias, and he said that it has not deviated, but rather is more closer to Sunni. He said that he did not understand how he could see five people in Medina praying in five different ways. He was put off by the different intrepretations by different people. He felt that prayer was something that should be common in all different schools of thoughts in Islam, but here he was seeing five different ways. Someone in the room said that the differences are minor, and that ticked our guest off. He started talking about how radically different Sunnis are from Shias. I myself got a better idea. I thought the Shias were only different on a few accounts, but it turned out, they are following a completely different religion; with a different creed and a different Quran and a different prayer!

He got me really interested into Sufism, and I plan on checking it out on the internet to see what it is that is drawing people to Sufism in Pakistan. Our guest said that his life has changed dramtically four years ago when he met his Sufi saint. He came across as a very open minded person, as a caring and intelligent person. Surely, his belief in this particular branch of Islam changed him.

I am now going on the net to do more research on this Silsila group. Our guest promised me to show the group when I am in Pakistan next. However, in his words, he said "Silsila works in mysterious ways, and are bit secretive about their group."

Here are websites for further reading: (The first one is the best)
http://www.geocities.com/pak_history/sufi.html
http://www.alwaiz-arts.com/sufism.html
http://www.sabiree.com/introduction.htm

Till then, take care friends,

Mansur