Afghanistan: Sufi leaders add 'dignity' to elections --- Why are Afghanistan's most prominent mystics returning to the political arena? --- Historically, Sufism has always been intertwined with Afghan politics. The story of a Sufi dervish placing a wreath of wheat on the head of Ahmad Shah Durrani, the founder of modern Afghanistan, at a Sufi shrine in Kandahar in 1747 is told to confirm the Durrani king's legitimacy. Zahir Shah, the last monarch of Afghanistan (r. 1933-73), was proclaimed king after Hazrat Nur al-Mashayekh placed the ceremonial turban on his head. --- The importance of the role of mystic leaders fluctuated. But even at their lowest moments of political significance, their perceived power, if not de facto importance, has preserved Sufi leaders' place in Afghan politics. -- To understand this influence, one must understand that like most of South and Central Asia, in Afghanistan too, Islam took root primarily through the mystical dimension of the religion. -- The Islam of Afghanistan, therefore, has traditionally been Sufi Islam, particularly the understanding of the religion that is offered by the Qadiriyyah and Naqshbandiyyah Sufi orders. --- Both Sufi leaders became the harshest critics of the Taliban movement as the religious students swept the country off of former mujahideen commanders and took Kabul in 1996. Paradoxically, a number of the former commanders and followers of both mystic leaders eventually joined the Taliban. -- At the Bonn Conference of December 2001, where an interim Afghan government was formed to replace the Taliban, Gailani and Mojaddidi were represented. But, like the Pakistanis, the Americans too, downplayed their significance in the Afghan society. -- Despite the recent universal rise to prominence of radical Islam and against all the money and sophisticated propaganda machinery that they utilise to exploit the weaknesses of Muslim states and disenchantment of Muslim masses, a majority of Afghans continue to see Islam through traditional Sufi lenses. --- The Americans and the international community have spent billions of dollars in Afghanistan in the past 12 years to fight extremism. But, they never understood that by investing - politically and financially - in promoting the mystical dimension of Islam, Afghan society would have had a more effective means to sideline extremism. A nation with hundreds of years of Sufi tradition engraved in its popular - as well as high - culture could easily return to its spiritual origins and it would have cost Washington and NATO capitals far less in treasure and lives.--- Karzai also lost the support of his longtime ally, Hazarat Sibghatullah Mojaddidi, when the former refused to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) with the US after a Loya Jirga (Grand Assembly) unanimously voted in favour of concluding the agreement. -- Given the three-decade-long systematic reduction of the role of Sufi leaders, and in an election where vision, ideology and principles come secondary to money and the buying and selling of votes, the names Gailani and Mojaddidi may not fetch great numbers of ballots, but they continue to carry weight in an indefinable way. -- Perhaps those names add a certain dignity, respectability and trust that protracted conflict and foreign interference has erased from Afghan politics. Perhaps, unlike westerners, those two Afghan politicians have realised that Sufism is the age-old anchor on which society relies when all else becomes dubious and complicated. - More, Helena Malikyar, Aljazeera, at: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/03/afghanistan-sufi-leaders-add-dig-20143256634750809.html