You think they’re peaceful, but your wrong on so many counts. They ran Rabwah like the Taleban, worse in fact, with people getting beatings for going to cinema and worse. In the early days, they had their opponents killed and in one case, when the murderer was executed by the state, he received a full “marty’rs funeral” with full prayers by their cult leader and honours etc.

They have a “heavenly graveyard” which is subscription only, and yet poor people who have paid up all their lives have had their coffins left on the border if there was a miniscule dispute.

You really should know a bit more about these people before you side with them so wholeheartedly. Again, I’m not saying persecute them (much of my family are in the Ahmadiyya….so work that out for yourself), but I have no respect for the movement on any grounds.

It’s purely a personality cult based on money-making. Indeed, many of Mirza’s “prophecies” were about dough….go figure…

Sid – Mirza’s name was not Ahmad. It was Ghulam Ahmad. (Servant of Ahmad). Thus Mirza Ghulam Ahmad.

He claimed to be a prophet.

He also said that those who don’t love and respect him are the progeny of whores.

He called his opponents bastards and bitches.

He insulted Jesus.

He supported the atrocities committed by the British in the Boer War.

Ahmadis have no spiritual breadth whatsoever, because apart from a few paid and trained murabbis who distort Qur’an and Hadith to justify their heretical beliefs, most of them don’t actually know what Mirza said and wrote.

And it seems, neither do you.

The Mirzais actually believe that only Ahmadis are true Muslims and that everybody else is not. They are not pacifists by the way, they support war and fight in them, they just have this weird belief that Mirza had the power to abrogate martial Jihad in the Qur’an, when in fact he didn’t.

I don’t support persecution of the Ahmadiyya (though why I feel like defending myself here before you’ve commented, I don’t know, but you do seem rather vociferous and not too interested in the truth from some of your engagements above) – I believe that we should have an open debate with these people everywhere possible, because what they actually are is a personality cult.

Open debate would lead many of the followers of Mirza, currently in the dark about his true writings and beliefs into the path of Islam and out of culthood. It would also expose the leadership as charlatans, frauds and money-grabbers.

I like this blog, so I sincerely hope I don’t get the crap flamed out of me.

None of this justifies violence but we as Muslims have the right to define our faith and resist those who seek to corrupt it.

The author said:
“they are principled dissidents against the growing Wahhabi-Salafist sway over Muslims in South Asia.”

Evidence to back up claim came later when we are told he knows about Asian Politics and need to trust him – right.

Poster – complains that the labelling is too generic and provides some sources.

Debate continues and author accepts breifly that labels are generic but then goes on to do much the same. Bit more debate.

Author who says he is secularist then says:
“will be the last off-topic post that I’ll allow on this thread. Anymore bullshit from you will be deleted.”

Right so suddenly secularist author who apparently advocates free-speech wants to be able to say what he wants and when someone replies back it is thus off topic as replies are not expected and they will be deleted so much for claims of secularist and freedom of speech sounds like dictatorship.

Journalism like this must be rewarded by a job at authors choice of right wing rag or even the Policy Exchange where we say what we like and screw the evidence.

Well done on finding such talent, nurturing it and then letting it go forth and tell people they have to put up with his off-topic but not their reply.

You started at the top saying this was because of Wahabi-Salafist influence and now your link says Islamist.

Are the Ahmadiyya a sufi sect?

Hundreds of protesters in Indonesia have set fire to a mosque belonging to the minority Muslim Ahmadiyya sect.

Police in the town of Sukabumi in western Java say nobody was injured but that many members of the Ahmadiyya community have fled the area.

The hardline Islamist demonstrators believe the Ahmadiyya practice to be a deviant form of Islam that should not be allowed in Indonesia.

A nearby religious school belonging to the group has also been vandalised.

Around 300 people torched the mosque just after midnight on Monday.

Many Ahmadiyya members have sought refuge with friends and relatives nearby.

“We heard the attackers chanting ‘burn, burn’ and ‘kill, kill’,” Zaki Firdaus, one of the sect’s members, told the Associated Press news agency. “It was horrifying.”

It is just taht each creed has its extremists and that is something the world needs to acknowledge in order to address this problem. Your efforts to paint every other creed with excess apart from your own is dangerous rationale.

Thus after requesting numerous times tat you clarify commenst ansd your refusal I reminded you that your own creed has its extremists. Somethign you don’t like to hear let alone put into prose on your writings.

Usama Hassan who is part of QF wrote:

http://www.islamicawakening.com/viewarticle.php?articleID=4

“However,just as the CNN-generation moulded by bigoted Western media willswallow lies that demonise Muslims, some people moulded by bigoted Muslim magazines will swallow lies and pseudo-arguments that demonise “Wahhabis” as khawarij. One writer even goes as far as calling for takfir upon “Wahhabi ultras” whom he assumes are the “terrorists”, justifying this attitude with the strange evidence (from an Islamic viewpoint) of Christian practice with regard to David Koresh. Can we find no other people from whom to take a cue? Certainly no Sunni scholar has ever declared takfir on the basis of murder, even mass-murder, from which tawbah is possible. Who is closer to being a takfir-bandying khariji here?

Murad claims that all those who supported the “terroristic acts” (without distinguishing between the military installation in Washington and the civilian usurious installation in New York) were of the “Wahhabi persuasion.” Yet there were people celebrating the events of September 11th on one international sufi electronic mailing-list, whilst in contrast another contributor there attempted to justify the horrific nuclear holocaust perpetrated by the terrorist US government on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

As an aside, no “Sufi” has been able to provide a satisfactory definition of “Wahhabi”, a term which is sometimes used interchangeably with “Salafi” and sometimes as a wider brush to include all Salafi (in the sense of Ahl al-Hadith), Ikhwan and Deobandi reformist and revivalist movements. The fact remains that no Muslim calls themselves “Wahhabi”, a label employed as a term of abuse by many ignorant Sufis; and using it in this way is disrespectful to the Generosity of Al-Wahhab Himself, the Bestower of Endless Gifts.

Keller repeats the old claim that the “Wahhabi sect” has “not been around for more than two and a half centuries.” As the seasoned Wahhabi-bashers usually point out themselves, the movement of Shaykh Muhammad bin ‘Abdul Wahhab was a revival inspired by that of Ibn Taymiyyah (661-728 H). So perhaps the “Wahhabi sect” has been around for seven centuries? Or could it be that there have always been Muslims around who have maintained the purest worship of Allah, without invoking complicated arguments and fabricated ahadith to justify strange rituals and concepts borrowed from corrupted Eastern and Western religions?

Murad accuses the Taliban of shifting away from “traditional Islam” towards “Ibn Taymiyyah’s position”, as though one of the greatest Hanbali scholars, if not the greatest after Imam Ahmad himself, was not a “traditional Muslim”! This new-wave mantra of “traditional Islam, traditional Muslim” is belied by institutions and movements that pay lip-service to the Four Madhhabs, yet conspicuously exclude the Hanbali madhhab, with all its outstanding scholars, from their curriculum.

It is true that Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, in his talk at the Kensington Town Hall in October 2001, where the chair unjustly introduced him by putting bigoted words into his mouth, apologised for being “too harsh against his brothers” in his above-mentioned article, after being prompted by one of the salihun in a dream he had. No such apology is likely to be forthcoming from fanatical Sufis, however, for bigotry is a veil upon the heart which keeps people entrenched in sectarianism, a state of being which, in Qur’anic terms”

“Whilst the “Wahhabi ultras” helped, and in many cases spearheaded, the Bosnian Muslim forces’ astonishing victories whichswept across the country and sent the U.S. scurrying to finally halt the war with the Dayton accords,now that Muslim armies were actually gaining the upper hand, some sufi writers were busy in their jihad of mocking Wahhabi trouser-lines from the safety of their Oxbridge ivory towers. The same story is repeated in Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya and probably in future cases of Muslim peoples rising up against oppression. Whilst the Western Allies honour their war-dead over the last century, some of us continually insult the memory of the brave men and women who fell as shuhada’ by rubbishing the movements that motivated them.

Murad hopes for a “crisis among ‘moderate Wahhabis’… a mass exodus from Wahhabism.” On the contrary, we should hope for amass exodus from the numerous competing and divided versions of pseudo-Sufism on offer, to authentic forms of spirituality.”

You can see clearly illustrated here how you and your Sufi scholars tend to portray other Muslims to suit their own agenda both political and religous.

Thus are you any better than the extremists you claim you despise?

The problem is that Muslims are blaming each other and not addressing the issue which needs addressing.

I have cited evidence which is more than you’ve done with your use of a tar brush.

Do you deny the Sufi Muslim Council is in bed with the neocons or that QF also has a neocon advisor?

Al-Baana was a noted Sufi Thinker that is a fact.

Your entire approach is to blame everyone but the Sufi’s but Sufi Thinking and intermixing with politics has given birth to the extremism which has taken hold in the Muslim World. You’re in denial about that fact.

You should develop this into a book. Maybe you should put in something on how the effect of Oil on Arabs (“it makes them lazy”) was a Sufi-Neocon plot. It’ll sure to be big in asylums all over the Middle East.

Do you deny the backgrounds of extremists is based upon Sufi thought and that Al-Baana, Maudadi et al were from Sufi heritage and brought up with that thinking?

Clearly your plot like many Sufi’s who use allies with neocons to attack creeds they don’t like. It is Sufi’s who are actively engaged in politics and the interspersing of religion and politics to extremes.

Either put up your proof that the MB thought didn’t come out of Sufi Thinkers or stop falsely labelling other creeds you dislike.

The points are above either refute or stop your continual sidestepping.

A videotape screened by the [National Alliance for the Freedom of Faith and Religion (AKKBB)] on Monday showed Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) secretary-general Sobri Lubis urging followers to kill Ahmadiyah members.

“We will wage war against Ahmadiyah! Kill Ahmadiyah! Kill! Kill! Kill!” Sobri says to applause from those in attendance at his sermon.

“And if they say we are violating human rights, then I say damn human rights.”

Leaders of the FPI, the Islamic Ulema Forum (FUI) and the Indonesian Mujahidin Council (MMI) have denounced Ahmadiyah and criticized the government for allowing the sect to exist.

In response to the threats against Ahmadiyah followers, the alliance plans to sue the anti-Ahmadiyah groups for inciting violence and murder.

“This is not just a simple matter of public speech anymore, they have told their listeners to commit murder,” the alliance’s legal counsel, Asfinawati, said.

you lost the plot quite early on in this thread but it now looks like you’ve also completely lost your mind. Your last few comments are recycled arsewash that I have already refuted or have, like the attire of bin laden, given me much to giggle about on a dull grey morning.

Do consider this: Bin Laden and Al-Zawahri wear traditional Afghan clothing. So perhaps you’re next straw-clutching extrapolation will be to suggest that the Taliban must be sufis too! We have come to expect much from you.

Salafi/Wahabi people don’t dress like that and in fact most Muslims tend to wear either Arab or western attire.

Sufi’s adopt that dress and are well known for that worldwide.

So the prime movers in this ideology come from Sufi backgrounds, listen to known Sufi thinkers and adopt Sufi attire and you’re choosing to shift the label. Hmmmmmmmmm.

It is also interesting that movement such as the Muslim Brotherhood etc. whose influence extends across North Africa where yes – Sufi thought is dominant in places such as Algeria, Morrocco, Tunsia etc.

It is well known that Salafi’s don’t partake much in politics but yes Sufi’s do.

So much of this thougt has come from Sufi dominated areas and has been pushed by Sufi Thinkers looking to overthrow various Govts in North Afica. It was taken up by some Western Govts aganst the Soviets and has come back to haunt them.

Thus the overriding evidence is that this is if anythign extremeism in Sufism and it has a historical background which I won’t go into but if you keep trying to mislead then I won’t have much choice.

http://www.thewahhabimyth.com

“Do ‘Wahhabis’ Support Suicide Bombings?
“…So what we hold is that those people who perform these suicide (bombings) have wrongfully committed suicide, and that this necessitates entry into the Hellfire, and Allah’s refuge is sought; and that this person is not a shahid (martyr)…”

- Shaykh Muhammad Bin Saalih al-’Uthaymeen, Saudi Arabia”

Note: Was one of the leading scholars of Saudi Arabia.

“The late Shaykh Abdul-Aziz Bin Baz, the former Mufti (verdict giver) of Saudi Arabia, made the following comment about acts of terrorism: “From that which is known to anyone who has the slightest bit of common sense, is that hijacking airplanes and kidnapping children and the like are extremely great crimes, the world over. Their evil effects are far and wide, as is the great harm and inconvenience caused to the innocent; the total effect of which none can comprehend except Allah.

Likewise, from that which is known is that these crimes are not specific to any particular country over and above another country, nor any specific group over and above another group; rather, it encompasses the whole world.

There is no doubt about the effect of these crimes; so it is obligatory upon the governments and those responsible from amongst the scholars and others to afford these issues great concern, and to exert themselves as much as possible in ending this evil.”

In specific reference to the Egyptian Qutbist group which eventually saw some of its members become associated with al-Qaeda, Shaykh Abdul-Aziz Bin Baz was asked, “What is the verdict concerning Jamaa’atul-Jihaad (The Jihad Party of Egypt) and co-operation with them?”

He answered, “…They are not to be co-operated with, nor are they to be given salutations (salaam). Rather, they are to be cut off from, and the people are to be warned against their evil, since they are a tribulation and are harmful to the Muslims, and they are the brothers of the Devil.”

In his book al-Irhaab (Terrorism), Shaykh Zayd al-Madkhali spoke about the iniquity of those who spread corruption in the earth: “And certainly, I say without doubt, that these kinds of people, May Allah guide them, divert people from the path of truth in the way they act towards people. And no one is safe from their evil in their lands, except those who are a part of their party of which destroys, and does not build, corrupts much, and does not rectify.”"

So the major scholars of this creed have stated quite openly that Govts are not to co-operate with Islamist oragnisations. Further they have told Muslims not to even give greetings to these people.

This Sid proves that your wide ranging linking is simply incorrect and that mere lip service isn’t being paid as these are statements which are pushing govts and individuals to act against extremism. Bin Baz also heavily criticsed the Saudi Govt for interest based banking so lip service huh!

A quick item on what they say about some of the nutters who promoted this extremism:

“”Sayyid Qutb had no knowledge of the fundamental or subsidiary matters of Islam.”

- Shaykh Muhammad Naasir ad-Deen al-Albaanee”

“Hasan al-Banna (1906-1949) was a Sufi thinker and political activist, and the founder of al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun (The Muslim Brotherhood).

Hasan Al-Banna himself narrates that he used to visit the graves and shrines on a weekly basis at which greater acts of polytheism were being performed. In his book Muthakkiraatud-Da’wah, Al-Banna disclosed his fascination with Sufism, how he would accompany the Hasafiya Sufi order and how he would spend long periods of time at the shrines in Diminhoor.

Note: Hasan al-Banna, Abu Alaa Maududi, Sayyid Qutb and all of their followers are clearly not “Wahhabis”.

Hasan al-Banna, Muthakkiraatud-Da’wah, pp. 24-30″

As I told you yesterday Maududi came from a Sufi Background. Omar Bakri came from a Sufi background in Syria. Al-Banna was a Sufi thinker. These people have promoted the ideology of extremism. So exactly which background has their thought come from?

If you reference the State Dept website on there you’ll see clear statements that Wahabi’s are puritanical and orthodox in faith calling for purity in religion – it isn’t about political ideology which is what is going on in extremist circles. Note it is Sufi’s who promote a political ideology even historically and today.

The Muslim Brotherhood from which Aymaan Al-Zawahri is part of is actually founded by and its ideology pushed by yes Sufi Thinkers and Activists who advocated the violent overthrow of Govts. As we know this movement was founded in Egypt which yes is a well known Sufi country and where Sufism is widely practised even today.

The problem with extremism as I have said to you before is the mixing of political thought with things like communism/marxism which advocate violent overthrow of Govt and this is them mixed with Islam.

Sadly for you in the case of much of this thought the prime movers are from Sufi backgrounds and are Sufi thinkers.

I really didn’t want to bring this but hey you keep going on with your labels but here’s an interesting point:

“Osama bin Laden comes from a Yemeni family which is based in Hadramout, a coastal section of Yemen that is well known for being a base of a particular sect of Islam called Sufism. Sufism could be briefly summarized as being the antithesis of “Wahhabism”. Bin Laden himself is not concerned with differentiating between matters of creed, and some of his statements indicate that he still acknowledges certain Sufi practices. He also embraced the Taliban as his close friends and protectors, and it is well known that the great majority of this group belong to Deobandism, a Sufi movement.

However, a differentiation is made between demonstrating that Bin Laadin acknowledges certain Sufi practices, and claiming that he is an outright Sufi. Rather, Bin Laadin has shown that he is not concerned with the same matters of belief and worship that a Salafi would concern himself with, because the sect he belongs to (Qutbism) does not distinguish between matters of belief, so long as people adhere to their “movement.” ”

Wow! Bin Laden’s family heritage is yes Sufi and he doesn’t care about creed and they say still has some Sufi practises.

I strongly suggest you read the book and also additional evidence available in the West at places like the State Dept which advises US Govt. Then you’ll see why I keep telling you that the labels you apply are grossly unfair and very misleading to people here some of whom probably don’t understand them.

I’ve spoken to many Muslim people, Sufi’s, Brailwee, Salafi, Deobandi and from this it becomes apparent that things are not as straight forward as the media makes out.

At times you can be quite nasty towards creeds you don’t like and blame them for everything. This makes you as bad as the Islamists. It isn’t a correct way to do things. Fine I accept you don’t like Salafi’s or Wahabi’s or even some other creeds but to continually blame them for everything without citing correct sources is in fact falsehood.

If you actually looked att he news last year then even your Sufi Brethren were stated to be fighting in Iraq so where did their funding come from?

Your distorted attempt to link issues disqualifies you from being an authority in this area. Your whataboutery in continually defining people you don’t like with creeds you don’t like is not only falsehood but actually misleading people here and quite possibly elsewhere. It is now a common and quite disgusting trend by Sufi’s to link creeds they don’t like with terror to garner favour that in itself is digusting communal politic playing of the worst order and exposes them for what they are. This approach isn’t the way to defeat extremism and you should be ashamed of yourself for doing this.

All I’ve simply asked is that you qualify statements where you list creeds to say who exactly you mean but you are continuallu using your tar brush to label people and the fact is that PP shouldn’t allow that because it is unfair on people. PP is no place for personal agendas but for proper debate the fact that you accepted above that the creeds you listed above are quite diverse like your own and then a few posts later you back to labelling entire creeds to disgusting.

If this is the way that PP intends to go then it isn’t worth its position.

For people to govern what someone believes or doesn’t believe is way out of line. I reckon the biggest culprits are the Wahabis of this movement.

In the end, it all ends up at one verse of the Quran, which I’m quoting below.

[Quran - 6:159] As for those who divide their religion and break up into sects, thou hast no part in them in the least: their affair is with Allah: He will in the end tell them the truth of all that they did.

Muslims or non-Muslims. We have no authority over what someone chooses to believe, religiously. The culture and people are trying too hard to control something that is not their choice. Freedom is contagious.

I will focus on Islamist demonstrations in two Indonesian cities, Yogyakarta and Solo, especially that organized by Forum Ukhuwah Islamiyah (FUI), an ad hoc institution of Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI), which frequently used as pressure group against common issues they consider as destructing Muslim interests. FUI’s demonstrations are usually attended by most groups of Islamist movements.

In other words, the FUI is a salafi organisation.