“The Salafi movement or Salafist movement or Salafism is an ultra-conservative reform branch or movement within Sunni Islam that developed in Arabia in the first half of the 18th century. It advocated a return to the traditions of the "forefathers'" (the salaf). The Salafist doctrine is centered around the concept of looking back to a prior historical period in an effort to understand how the contemporary world should be ordered....
The movement is often divided into three categories: the largest group are the purists (or quietists), who avoid politics; the second largest group are the activists, who get involved in politics; the smallest group are jihadists, who form a tiny minority. The majority of the world's Salafis are from Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
The Salafi movement is often described as synonymous with Wahhabism, but Salafists consider the term "Wahhabi" derogatory. Salafism has become associated with literalist, strict and puritanical approaches to Islam – and, particularly in the West, with the Salafi Jihadis who espouse violent jihad against those they deem to be enemies of Islam as a legitimate expression of Islam.
Salafi jihadism or jihadist-Salafism is a transnational religious-political ideology based on a belief in "physical" jihadism and the Salafi movement of returning to what adherents believe to be true Sunni Islam... The most famous jihadist-Salafist attack is the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States by al-Qaeda.
In several places and times jihadis have taken control over an area and ruled it as an Islamic state, such as in the case of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan or ISIL in Syria and Iraq. The ISIS, is thought to have used for its model a manifesto entitled "The Management of Savagery", which emphasizes the need to create areas of "savagery", i.e. lawlessness, in enemy territory. Once the enemy was too exhausted and weakened from the lawlessness (particularly terrorism) to continue to try and govern, the nucleus of a new caliphate could be established in their absence. The author of "The Management of Savagery", emphasized not so much winning the sympathy of the local Muslims but extreme violence, writing that: "One who previously engaged in jihad knows that it is naught but violence, crudeness, terrorism, frightening [others] and massacring -- I am talking about jihad and fighting, not about Islam and one should not confuse them." (Social-media posts from ISIS territory "suggest that individual executions happen more or less continually, and mass executions every few weeks", according to journalist Graeme Wood.
Salafism is sponsored globally by Saudi Arabia and this ideology is used to justify the violent acts of Jihadi Salafi groups that include Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram, and the Al-Shabaab. In addition, Saudi Arabia prints textbooks for schools and universities to teach Salafism as well as recruit international students... to help spread Salafism in their local communities.
Some other Islamic groups, particularly some Sufis, have also complained about extremism among some Salafi... Sufism is associated with the use of prayer, music, dance and the teachings of Sufi masters—who may serve as an intermediary between God and humans—to achieve a spiritual sense of the meaning of God.
While there are Muslims who believe that Salafism and Sufism "overlap", the "standard" Salafi response to Sufism has been called "polemical". According to various observers, Salafists have been "usually ... unrelentingly hostile to devotional Sufi practices", arguing that Sufism is "irreconcilable with true Islam", and one of the elements "corrupting" modern day Islam. Relations between the two movements have been described as one with "battle lines drawn", or a "rift" found in "practically every Muslim country", and in "the Muslim diasporic communities of the West" as well.
Islamopedia.org states that Salafi groups have been "accused of perpetrating the destruction and burning of a number of Sufi mosques and shrines" as of 2011, a "reflection of the resurgence of the long suppressed animosity" between the two groups. The Grand Mufti of Al Azhar Ali Gomaa, himself an adherent of Sufism, criticized this trend as unacceptable.
In the United States, Sufi leader Muhammad Hisham Kabbani is well known for his vocal criticism of Wahhabism. Kabbani, who moved to the United States in 1990 as an emissary of his teacher, Shaykh Muhammad Nazim Al-Haqqani, the grand shaykh of the Naqshbandi order, has described Wahhabism as being "like an octopus" because 'Its tentacles are reaching everywhere.' According to Kabbani, when he arrived in the US from Lebanon in 1990 he was shocked to hear Wahhabi doctrines being preached at Friday sermons.
'I asked myself: Is Wahhabism active in America? So I started my research. Whichever mosque I went to, it was Wahhabi, Wahhabi, Wahhabi, Wahhabi.' In 1999, during a forum organised by the US Department of State, Kabbani charged that '80 per cent' of the mosques in the US were run by extremists.
Muhammad Hisham Kabbani (born 1945) is a Lebanese-American Sufi Muslim. Kabbani has counseled and advised Muslim leaders to build community resilience against violent extremism. His criticism of extremism has stirred controversy among some American Muslims. In 2012 the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre named him one of the top 500 most influential Muslims. His notable students include Muhammad Ali, Shaykh Nurjan Mirahmadi, former Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Hedieh Mirahmadi. In the April 2016 issue of Dabiq Magazine, The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant declared him a murtadd (or apostate).” ~ Wikipedia
Photos ~ President Reagan meeting with Afghan Mujahideen leaders in the Oval Office in 1983
~ Praying Muhjahideen in Kunar Province, Afghanistan (1987)
~ Cheikh Hisham Kabbani, (Sufi critic of extremism)
https://www.facebook.com/pg/HishamKabbani/about/?ref=page_internal
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