Lahore crying

stuartfreedman — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 14:14:51 +0000

So, for the second time in a few days I find myself writing about Pakistani militant attacks designed to destabilse religious harmony. On Thursday night, at least 42 people were killed and hundreds wounded when two suicide bombers attacked a the famous Data Ganj Baksh Sufi shrine in Lahore. The Lahore commissioner, Khusro Pervaiz, blamed the attack on a “conspiracy in which locals are being used” – a euphemism often used to point the finger at neighbouring India. A dangerous remark that even if true does nothing to answer the charge that Pakistan is actually at war with itself. The so-called Pakistani Taleban funded by Wahabi and other conservative sects (the same groups conveniently used by the Pakistani army in the 1990s to attack Indian troops in Kashmir) are the likely culprits for this and the recent attack on the Ahmadiyya community. Despite what fanatics in both Pakistan and the West would have us believe, the dominant tradition within Pakistani society is a tolerant, peaceful Sufistic based Islam. Wherever I have travelled within the Islamic world it is the presence of Sufis that has reassured me and added to my knowledge of religion. Sufism – a mystical, internalised form of Islamic worship that centres on love and prayer and charity seems to spring up to defend Islam when repression threatens. I have met many Sufis – often practising in secret – and my admiration of their practice is matched only by my hope that this will be the last outrage against all people who seek only to practice their religion peacefully as they see fit.

I’ve never worked in the Data Ganj Baksh shrine but here are some other images linked by ‘Sufism’ from my archive:

India - Delhi - Worshippers (both Hindu and Muslim) pray and make offerings over the tomb of Hazrat Nizamuddin Awlia, a famous Sufi of the Chisti Order

India - Delhi - Musicians play and sing Qawwali (Sufi devotional songs) at the Hazrat Nizamuddin Awlia Shrine

Somaliland - Hargeisa - Men perform Zikr (recitation of the name of Allah - a key Sufi practise) in secret at a house in Hargeisa, the capital of the Self Declared Independent country of Somaliland.

Albania - Tirana - A Bektashi Dervish elder in the Order's mosque. in Tirana Albania. The Bektashi's, an order of Sufi's were persecuted along with all other religions under the Communist regime

UK - London - A portrait of a young man in the Peckham Mosque who has converted to Islam in the Sufi tradition

» Tirana

Lahore crying