William Dalrymple: Wahhabi Radicals Are Determined to Destroy a Gentler, Kinder Islam
THE OBSERVER: Rahman Baba, "the Nightingale of Peshawar," was an 18th-century poet and mystic, a sort of North West Frontier version of Julian of Norwich.

He withdrew from the world and promised his followers that if they also loosened their ties with the world, they could purge their souls of worries and move towards direct experience of God. Rituals and fasting were for the pious, said the saint. What was important was to understand that divinity can best be reached through the gateway of the human heart - that we all have paradise within us, if we know where to look.

For centuries, Rahman Baba's shrine at the foot of the Khyber Pass has been a place where musicians and poets have gathered, and his Sufi verses in the Pukhtun language made him the national poet of the Pathans. As a young journalist covering the Soviet-mujahideen conflict I used to visit the shrine to watch Afghan refugee musicians sing their songs to their saint by the light of the moon.

Then, about 10 years ago, a Saudi-funded Wahhabi madrasa was built at the end of the track leading to the shrine. Soon its students took it on themselves to halt what they saw as unIslamic practices. On my last visit, I talked about the situation with the shrine keeper, Tila Mohammed. He described how young Islamists now came and complained that his shrine was a centre of idolatry and superstition: "My family have been singing here for generations," said Tila. "But now these Arab madrasa students come here and create trouble.

"They tell us that what we do is wrong. They ask people who are singing to stop. Sometimes arguments break out - even fist fights. This used to be a place where people came to get peace of mind. Now when they come here they just encounter more problems, so gradually have stopped coming."

"Before the Afghan war, there was nothing like this. But then the Saudis came, with their propaganda, to stop us visiting the saints, and to stop us preaching 'ishq [love]. Now this trouble happens more and more frequently."

Behind the violence lies a long theological conflict that has divided the Islamic world for centuries. Rahman Baba believed passionately in the importance of music, poetry and dancing as a path for reaching God, as a way of opening the gates of Paradise. But this use of poetry and music in ritual is one of the many aspects of Sufi practice that has attracted the wrath of modern Islamists. For although there is nothing in the Qur'an that bans music, Islamic tradition has always associated music with dancing girls and immorality, and there is a long tradition of clerical opposition. >>> William Dalrymple* | Sunday, March 8, 2009

*William Dalrymple 's Last Mughal won the Duff Cooper Prize and the Crossword Indian Book of the Year prize.

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New Dark Age Alert! The Global Force Behind Mumbai’s Agony Is In Our Midst
THE SPECTATOR: Stephen Schwartz and Irfan Al-Alawi say that LET — the Army of the Righteous — is a worldwide Islamist organisation which is well-established in Britain. The Mumbai atrocities are further proof that the march of Islamic extremism is the central fact of our time

The usual suspects are declaring that the ‘cause’ of the Mumbai bombings was Kashmir or some other local grievance. But what happened in Mumbai was no more a local event than the 7 July 2005 attacks in London or the assault in Madrid on 11 March 2004. Pakistani propaganda about its claims in Kashmir is almost entirely phony rhetoric intended to justify the predatory instincts of the Pakistani army and intelligence bureaucrats. Pakistan insists that Kashmiri Muslims are oppressed by India, but in fact Indian Muslims live better than Pakistani Muslims and have demonstrated a better capacity for true Islamic thinking.

The attacks on Mumbai are part of a global problem, which is why a passive Western policy toward the crisis is not acceptable. It may appear comforting to bien-pensant representatives of the ‘progressive’ elite. But in reality it represents an attitude of suicidal and irresponsible disengagement from confrontation with a continuing threat. In Mumbai, as in London, Madrid and New York, but also in the Islamic cities of Iraq, Istanbul and Jakarta, and in places like Peshawar and Quetta in Pakistan, a wide network of Muslim fundamentalists continue their global offensive.

The common enemies of all civilised humanity in the ongoing conflict include Saudi Wahhabism and Pakistani jihadism, the latter inspired by a fundamentalist variant of Islam called Deobandism. What Western appeasers must remember is that Pakistan, like Saudi Arabia before it, is two-faced, professing to oppose terrorism while powerful factions in its leadership espouse it. >>> Stephen Schwarz | December 3, 2008

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