Sufis Are Muslims, but to ISIS, Heretics
The suicide bomber who stepped inside the gold- domed shrine in southern Pakistan in February was wearing a vest packed with projectiles. When he hit the detonator, he killed more than 80 people.
To the world, they were Muslims. But to the Islamic State, which quickly claimed credit, they were something else: Mushrikin, an Arabic word meaning polytheists.
Because the worshipers at the shrine of the Sufi philosopher Lal Shahbaz Qalandar had prayed at the tomb of the revered saint, hard- liners saw their faith as an affront to Islam, which holds that there is a single, indivisible God.
Since at least 2016, Islamic State militants have targeted Sufis, who practice a mystical form of Islam that includes the veneration of saints, often at their tombs. The extremist group has razed the tombs of Sufi saints and dynamited their shrines. About a year ago, the Islamic State began carrying out mass executions of Sufi worshipers.
While no group has claimed responsibility for the November 24 killings of more than 300 people at a Sufi mosque in the Sinai Peninsula, Egyptian officials said the attackers were carrying the Islamic State flag.
After every such attack, observers are perplexed at how a group claiming to be Islamic could kill members of its own faith. But writings published by Islamic State and Qaeda branches, as well as the writings of hard-liners from the Salafi sect and the Wahhabi school, make clear these fundamentalists do not consider Sufis to be Muslims at all.
The act of praying to saints and worshiping at their tombs is an example of what extremists refer to as “shirk,” or polytheism, according to Brill’s Encyclopedia of Islam.
“Shirk literally means association. It is the act of associating God with other entities,” said Jacob Olidort, a scholar of Islam. “What they take the Sufis to task principally for is the intercession, the use of other media, to access God, rather than going directly.”
Alexander Knysh, the author of two studies of Sufism and a professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, agreed. “They believe Sufi shrines are the most egregious expression of that shirk,” he said. Sufis venerate mystics, who in their lifetime were seen as close to the divine. They bring gifts to their graves, like rose water or rose petals. Merchants heading on long voyages will come and make an offering, promising to make another if their venture is successful, Mr. Knysh said.
Sufis, he said, are monotheistic and, to them, the practice does not supplant God. But hard-liners instead see Sufis as “grave worshipers.”
The notion of who is and isn’t Muslim occupied numerous Qaeda theologians, long before the rise of the Islamic State. While the older terrorist group also holds Sufis to be heretics, when Qaeda fighters destroyed the tombs of Sufi saints in Timbuktu, the group’s emir in the region sent them a reprimand, warning that even though they were correct in principle, their actions could inflame Muslim sentiment against them.
One of the ways the Islamic State has departed from Al Qaeda has been its use of violence against Muslims they accuse of straying, including Shias and Sufis. In addition to the attack on the shrine in Pakistan in February, the Islamic State bombed a Sufi place of worship in Baluchistan in 2016, and has carried out assassinations of Sufi clerics.
The Islamic State’s own publication made clear as far back as 11 months ago that it considered Sufism to be one of the main “diseases” it aimed to treat in Egypt. Rawda, the district where the recent attack occurred, was mentioned as an area where it planned to “eradicate” Sufi beliefs.
In a question- and- answer with the Islamic State’s magazine Rumiyah, the emir of the group’s religious police in the area said: “Our main focus, however, is to wage war against the manifestations of shirk and bid’ah, including Sufism,” using the word bid’ah to describe heresy.
He goes on to say that “shirk has become very widespread” in the area, and outlines the main Sufi traditions in the region, calling it a “disaster.”
In the article, the Islamic State issued a warning to Sufis l iving in Egypt, saying they were “mushrikin” and that their “blood is filthy and permissible to shed.”