By Kazy Javed

Date:09-04-06

Source: The News

I was utterly dejected when I alighted from the train that took me to Delhi from Amritsar last week. The railway platform was disgustingly dirty. It seemed that it had never been swept and there was no one even to keep stray dogs away. Things were not different outside the railway station.

"Oh, this is Delhi, which has been capital of Hindustan for many centuries!" I said to Dr. Akhtar Hussain who was a sort of the leader of the Pakistani delegation that had gone to Delhi to participate in the International Conference on Sufism organised by the Foundation of Saarc Writers and Literature. He smiled his approval.

Thankfully, the rest of Delhi was totally different from the railway station and its surrounding area. New Delhi, especially, is a graceful megacity dotted with countless leafy trees and dozens of historical monuments.

Madam Ajeet Cour, the vice-chairperson of the Foundation of Saarc Writers and Literature and the moving spirit behind the Conference, may have many personality traits of sufies but she is not known for any unusual interest in Sufism. She is, however, widely respected and admired for her long-standing interesting promoting peace, stability and cultural interaction in our South Asian region. The conference was part of her efforts to discover new avenues of regional understanding and to provide opportunities of dialogue to writers and intellectuals of the region.

The Delhi conference was attended by more than one hundred scholars of Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, India, Iran, Italy, Pakistan, Turkey, the United States and Uzbekistan.

The Pakistani delegation comprised of Dr. Akhtar Hussain Akhtar, Dr. Shahzad Qaiser, Ehsan Akbar, Ahmad Saeed Hamdani, Sibtul Hasan Zaigham, Bushra Ijaz, Afzal Tauseef, Hamid Mir, Dr. Khawaja Muhammad Saeed and Dr. Nusrat Batool.

The participants believed that today's world needs the values of tolerance, enlightenment, humanism and universal love that were cherished by the South Asian sufies of various schools. These values provide an effective antidote to the religious militancy and unsparing fundamentalism that have become a real danger to civilization.

Sufism can certainly go a long way in teaching us tolerance and enlightenment. But we should also keep in mind that there are two forms of Sufism: oneis based on the metaphysics of Wahdat-ul-wajood, while the other is derived from the philosophy of Wahdat-ul-shahood. These two types are diametrically opposed to each other in their socio-political and cultural implications.

The first type, which is usually referred to as wajoodi Sufism, teaches tolerance and universal brotherhood. This is because its metaphysics is that there is unity and oneness in all that exists. The differences and divisions among human beings, ideas and all that exists are illusory. They come into being only when we look at things and matters from a limited and biased perspective and fail to see their true reality.

If all differences are illusory, then it clearly means that mutual differences of human beings, creeds and cultures are also superficial. They are insignificant in the ultimate sense. We should sympathise with those who take these differences seriously and not detest them.

The philosophy of Wahdat-ul-Shahood, on the other hand, insists on differences and accords primacy to them. This philosophy developed as a reaction to the socio-political and intellectual trends that flowered as consequence of the popularity of Wahdat-ul-wajood in medieval India. The ideas that later on took the form of the philosophy of Wahdat-ul-shahdood were first presented by Sheikh Sharf-ud-Din Yahya Moneri of Bihar in the 13th century. His ideas have reached us through his book 'Maqtoobat-i-Sadi', a collection of his letters written to his disciple Qazi Shams-ud-Din who lived in Bhagalpur. These letters carry a rudimentary form of the concepts which were later developed by Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi and Allama Muhammad Iqbal.

The internal division of Sufism is very important for all those who are now looking for a sufi solution to the contemporary turmoil. This is because while one type of Sufism teaches respect for pluralism and unity in diversity, the other insists on keeping distances among various faith groups. The participants of the Delhi conference must have been aware of this, but they did not allude to it.

The following is an extract from the text of the declaration issued by the Conference:
The conference realised that it is only on the spiritual edifice that unity of mankind could by insured. There is need to strengthen the spirituality of each and every great tradition of the world and also open its spiritual windows to all the civilizations of the world.

The conference also understood the need of remaining conscious of traditional principles in the wave of profanity. However, the conference highlighted the need of solving the problems of the contemporary man in the light of principles of truth and reality.

We all know that Sufis were messengers of love and hope and they live for the poor and downtrodden people... We demand to include the teachings of all these lovers of humanity in the syllabus books of at least all the South Asian countries from primary school onwards to herald a better world.

We condemn the recent attacks at the religious sites in Vanarsi and also in Iraq and other places. We are also against all forms of terrorism.

We also demand that Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and all nations should facilitate the people for attending the Urs (anniversaries) of Sufis like Khawaja Mooenudin Chishti, Nizamuddin Awlia, Hazrat Data Ali Hajwari, Baba Farid Gangj Shakar, Baba Nanak, Warris Shah, Bulleh Shah, Shah Hussain, Hazrat Sultan Balkhi, Khawaja Ghulam Farid and others.