04.26.09
Sufis: the biggest bums in spiritual history
This blog has been consistently critical of Karen Armstrong, and absolutely scathing on Sufism.
Now the two connect, and I may need James to restrain me from foaming at the mouth, no… I can handle it.
Armstrong dishes out some cliches on the subject. Don’t believe any of it.
Sufis almost always get a good press, but it is a terra incognita in which many are lost. Propagandists like Armstrong should suffer the same penalty as the victims conned by the come ons of such.
I truly resent such asshole idiots talking up sufism since it is such people who misled me into the sufi theives den many years ago.
To be sure, the majoritarian Sufi phenomenon is no doubt benign, in Islamic countries, and elsewhere in the superficial forms promoted by its pious and ignorant adherents. Sufism in that form is a slight variant of Islam itself.
But real sufism is a ferocious and very equivocal phenomenon. With violent occultists and self-styled devils who are on the prowl to invultuate their victims. Their contempt is enough to justify mass murder, I have heard such talk with my own ears, and from the ‘real’ sufis, who peddle baraka and steal it back, knowledgeable monstrosities. They must be chuckling at the slide into slaughter in Iraq, courtesy of the Americans.
Gurdjieff, a destable exemplar, at least was honest enough to call himself a devil.
I won’t continue. Sufism is religious shit at this point, the most stinking kind. Don’t believe these promoters, least of all an ignoramus like Armstrong. Five minutes with real sufis and she would a whimpering idiot, carried out in a straight jacket.
Karen Armstrong discusses Sufism
Sufism is a marvelous form of Islam and would do anybody good anywhere. I came across it very early in my career as a religious historian and was especially drawn to its pluralism. Sufis have an outstanding tradition of appreciation of other faiths and have therefore an important contribution to make at the present moment in world history when, even though the peoples of the world are drawn more closely together than ever before ( electronically, economically and politically) they are so dangerously polarized.
It is quite common for a Sufi poet to cry aloud in ecstasy that he is neither a Jew, a Christian or a Muslim but is at home in a synagogue, mosque, temple or church because once one has had a glimpse of the divine one has left all these man-made distinctions behind. I love this quotation from the thirteenth century Sufi philosopher Ibn Arabi: “Do not praise your own faith exclusively, so that you disbelieve all the rest. If you do this, you will miss much good ~ nay, you will miss the whole truth of the matter. God the omniscient and omnipresent cannot be confined to any one creed for he says “Wheresoever ye turn, there is the face of Allah.” Everybody praises what he knows. His god is his own creature and in praising it, he praises himself, which he would not do if he were just. His dislike is based on ignorance.”
The Gurdjieff Con » /sufis-the-biggest-bums-in-spiritual-history/ said,
August 10, 2010 at 1:32 pm
[...] I wasn’t sure if this post was still online, it is: http://darwiniana.com/2009/04/26/sufis-the-biggest-bums-in-spiritual-history/ [...]
Darwiniana » “The biggest bums in spiritual history’??? said,
October 10, 2011 at 1:18 pm
[...] I will be accused of bias against sufis. I deny the charge. True, the archives show clearly that I called the sufis the ‘biggest bums in spiritual history’. I don’t remember what I said here, and won’t bother to reread it, but since it has been googled for all time, it is too late for a denial/retraction. So let it stand. There is some possibility the charge could be taken as a compliment. So, it is your move. Sufis: The biggest bums in spiritual history [...]