"Sufis nowadays are under attack and called heretics," she said.
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Sufis may be Sunni or Shiite but most are Sunni.
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Some cloak their traditions in the mystical rites of the Sufis.
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Last November, 305 Sufis were murdered at a shrine in Egypt.
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But ISIS writ large isn't just going after Sufis in Egypt.
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It continues to attack Sufis around the world, especially in Pakistan.
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Over the centuries, travelling Sufis have always been among Islam's most powerful ambassadors.
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Sufis also hold shrines containing the tombs of holy men in particular reverence.
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His speeches went from denouncing Sufis to "kafirs", or non-believers, in general.
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By killing Sufis, the militants may be trying to undermine Mr. Sisi's authority.
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It was, Rahman said, an effort "to convert Sufis into Wahhabis through this terrorism".
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They say, 'If Sufis support this, we will be against them,' more or less.
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And in April 2011, suicide bombers killed 41 Sufis during a three-day festival.
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Sufis hold the world in awe, and manifest its magic in poetry, music, and dance.
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ISIS is not alone among jihadi groups in targeting other Muslim denominations, and especially Sufis.
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Friday's attack targeted a mosque frequented by Sufis, members of a mystic movement within Islam.
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The myths people have about Sufis are analogous to the myths people have about Muslims.
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Representatives of the center did not respond to requests for comment about the Sufis' allegations.
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The establishment failed to take the Sufis' side, preferring to blazon its respect for orthodox religion.
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By emptying the mind and filling it with prayer, Sufis seek to become one with God.
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But such rituals make Sufis an increasingly obvious target of Sunni militants who consider them heretics.
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Islamic State and other Sunni extremists like the Pakistani Taliban regard both Shiites and Sufis as heretics.
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According to Majzooban, a website linked to the Gonabadi Sufis, some protesters were shot by the police.
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They got access to Tunisian Sufis through a local producer Arora met at a party in Brooklyn.
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Egypt has about 15 million Sufis, and their shrines and saints appear in villages across the country.
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Five police and army sources said there was no recent specific threat against Sufis in Al Rawdah.
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They are Sufis, practitioners of a mystical form of Islam that was traditionally the majority in Sri Lanka.
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While few reliable estimates exist of the number of Sufis in America, Islam over all is rapidly growing.
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Beginning in 2004, Wahhabi-influenced youth from Kattankudy began attacking Sufis, who practice a mystical form of Islam.
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The Islamic State targets Sufis because it believes that only a fundamentalist form of Sunni Islam is valid.
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But targeting a Sufi mosque speaks to a larger trend of ISIS attacking Sufis for their religious beliefs.
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The most recent campaign of decontamination comes from the jihadists who would purge Pakistan of its Shias and Sufis.
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The worshippers in Bir al-Abed were Sufis, followers of a mystical sect that many Muslim extremists consider heretical.
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In February there were deadly clashes between the police and Sufis, who have long been harassed by the authorities.
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Sufis in Chad fear they will soon be outnumbered by them, says Thibaud Lesueur of the International Crisis Group.
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But she is also aware that Sufis are in a difficult position, both within Islam and within American culture.
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Sufis, he said, are monotheistic and, to them, the practice does not supplant or create an equal to God.
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"What we know is that there are sort of hatreds between the Sufis and jihadis," said the businessmen from Arish.
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By now, most people are aware of the Sunni and Shiite Muslim differences, if not of the Wahhabis or Sufis.
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The Sufis were alarmed and, Rahman said, passed on complaints to both local law enforcement and eventually national government offices.
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Looking out on soldiers guarding the Badhriyyah Jumah Mosque where he and other Sufis worship, Mr. Ameer shook his head.
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Other ISIS militants have also murdered Sufis around the world, including a February bombing of a Sufi shrine in Pakistan.
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Sufis, wrongly or rightly, also are widely believed by Egyptians to cooperate with Egyptian security forces, or at least tolerate them.
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An IS-affiliated group in Sinai has a record of persecuting Sufis, beheading a 100-year-old cleric late last year.
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Sufis call this practice zikr and see it as a way of connecting with God and elevating themselves through communal meditation.
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Although Kattankudy's Islamic organizations are horrified by Mr. Zaharan's militancy and have eschewed violence, most have campaigned for years against Sufis.
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In 2004, there was a grenade attack on a Sufi mosque and in 2006 several homes of Sufis were set afire.
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He began holding rallies, bellowing insults through loudspeakers that reverberated inside the Sufis' house of worship as they tried to pray.
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Experts say the amicable ties between Sufis and the Egyptian government may also be factor, giving the attack a political dimension.
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Some Sri Lankan Sufis, who follow a mystical form of Islam that Wahhabis consider heretical, said they began to be persecuted.
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ISIS's affiliate in Sinai — which some experts believe carried out the strike — has targeted Sufis several times over the past year.
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Islamic State earlier this year posted a video of the beheading of two Sufis in northern Sinai, accusing them of practicing "sorcery".
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Sufis have an unorthodox approach that focuses more on esoteric aspects of religious life, and strive for direct, personal experiences with God.
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In a December 2016 issue of al-Nabaa, one of the group's religious leaders left little doubt that Sufis would be targeted.
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While the older terrorist group also holds Sufis to be heretics, Al Qaeda's official branches have been more restrained in its violence.
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Though Al Qaeda has also targeted Sufi sites, the Islamic State has set itself apart by calling for brutal attacks against Sufis.
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The religious objections of fundamentalists to the Sufi style of worship may not be the only factor behind the attacks on Sufis.
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Persecution intensified with the rise of Zahran, the suspected Easter bombings ringleader, whose followers attacked Sufis with swords in 2017, Ameer added.
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Sufis believe these mystics help them have a relationship with God, which is part of the reason they honor them in death.
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The town had a reputation for welcoming Sufis, and ISIS reportedly warned the locals to stop practicing Sufi rites, according to several locals.
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Still, although the group has threatened and killed individual Sufis, this would be its first high-profile assault on a mosque in Egypt.
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Because of its "progressivism," she said, friends back home told her that American Sufis were "fake worshippers" because of their non-traditional approach.
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Islamic militants, including the local affiliate of the Islamic State group, consider Sufis heretics because of their less literal interpretations of the faith.
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Dr. Witteveen had converted to Islam and was known among Sufis, adherents of a mystical branch of the religion, as Murshid Karimbakhsh Witteveen.
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Sufis praying at the tombs of saints — a practice core to the group — have also been attacked in India and the Middle East.
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The Sufis are more rhythmic with a more limited range; they don't work from a score, but their song builds in speed and intensity.
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"Our clerics across the board including Shias, Sufis, Salafis, Sunnis have consensus on this ... we want to educate women about their rights," he said.
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Likewise, every strand of religious commitment is represented here, from puritanical Salafis to mystic-minded Sufis to Muslims who rarely pray or visit mosques.
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The traders brought commerce and married local women; the Sufis came on pilgrimage to Adam's Peak, which they believe is marked by Adam's footprint.
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ISIS considers Sufis to be heretics, and in Syria and Iraq, they have destroyed Sufi shrines and bulldozed or dynamited the tombs of Sufi saints.
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They also issued a warning to other Sufis living in Egypt, saying they were "mushrikin" and that their "blood is filthy and permissible to shed."
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H.M. Ameer, a member of the Sufi community, said that he and other Sufis had repeatedly contacted the police to warn about Mr. Zaharan's extremism.
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While some Muslims view Sufis as quirky, even eccentric, some fundamentalists and extremists see Sufism as a threat, and its adherents as heretics or apostates.
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"They think the society is moving in the wrong direction and Sufis are aiding and abetting the authorities on this corrupt path," Mr. Knysh said.
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But ex-UN Creative Director Gabo Arora has created a more direct way for the curious to connect with Sufis: Worship with them in virtual reality.
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And paradoxically, Sufis are often shunned by conservative Islam — the sect is dismissed as a diluted version of the faith, prioritizing the esoteric over the orthodox.
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First, ISIS considers Sufis to be heretics, making the Sufi mosque a legitimate target in the eyes of ISIS, even though all worshippers probably weren't Sufi.
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First, ISIS considers Sufis to be heretics, making the Sufi mosque a legitimate target in the eyes of ISIS, even though all worshipers probably weren't Sufi.
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The Islamic State, a Sunni movement, has long considered Sufis, along with Shiite Muslims, apostates, and has a history of attacking their mosques in other countries.
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And in November 2017, the militants targeted another minority, Muslim Sufis, during prayers and killed at least 311 people, the deadliest sectarian bloodshed in Egypt's modern history.
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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.
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The entry of the Islamic State into Pakistan's crowded militant scene risks further attacks on Sufis because its ideology particularly includes punishment of minority sects and religions.
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ISIS itself has targeted Sufis around the world several times over the past year (in February 2017, a Sufi shrine in Pakistan was bombed by ISIS militants).
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By Rumi's time, there was no separate mode for earthly love poetry; the Sufis' metaphorical use of love had taken over the language of Persian poetry entirely.
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Some Kattankudy Sufis link the advent of Wahhabism to the 1990 opening of the Saudi-financed Center for Islamic Guidance, which boasts a mosque, school, and library.
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In March, Islamic State's branch in the Sinai posted a video of its religious police forcing a group of Sufis to renounce their beliefs under threat of death.
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" The interview, in English, identifies Rawda, the district where Friday's attack occurred, as one of three areas where Sufis live in Sinai that the group intended to "eradicate.
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ISIS propaganda has repeatedly made threats against Sufis, who number around 15 million in Egypt, and has previously singled out Al-Rawdah, birthplace of an important Sufi cleric.
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Some consider Sufis to be apostate, because saints were not part of the original practice of Islam at the time of the Prophet Muhammad, who died in 632.
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Sufis have traditionally infused their devotion with poetry and music, and reached for love as a metaphor to describe the human longing for a relationship with the divine.
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At the same time, Egypt also has a sizeable jihadist threat in the Sinai region, where an offshoot of Islamic State massacres Christians and Sufis (a minority Muslim sect).
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In the name of orthodoxy, extremists in Pakistan, the original "Islamic" state, have viciously hounded not only Christians and Hindus but also Shia Muslims, Ahmadis and allegedly unorthodox Sufis.
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And Sufis have been present in the New World for many centuries, pre-dating Christopher Columbus, according to Julianne Hazen, a professor at Niagara University who studies American Sufism.
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Many Muslims in the region are Sufis, who wear colourful clothes, practise a mystical kind of Islam, and tend to see the full-face veil as drab and unAfrican.
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By contrast leading Sufis, a more inclusive Sunni school that most Algerians belong to, have kept a low profile since the ouster of Bouteflika, their most high-profile member.
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Sufis, who follow a mystical form of Islam that has been practised in South Asia for centuries, have been regularly attacked by hardline Sunni Muslim militants in the past.
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Local sources said some of the worshippers were Sufis, whom groups such as Islamic State consider targets because they revere saints and shrines, which for Islamists is tantamount to idolatry.
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The video was taken in late winter, according to Expressen TV, and shows the rubble of what once was the Uwais al-Qarni shrine, important to both Sufis and Shia Muslims.
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While some terrorists do identify as Salafi, Islamic sects that are ideologically opposed to Salafism — Naqshbandi Sufis and Shiites, among others — have engaged in violent jihad in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.
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The mystical belief has become a part of the national culture, creating a resonance with "the majority of people, even if they are not Sufis", said Bin Hamel, the Sufi sheikh.
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From the left, it's critiqued as an expression of class privilege, which cares little for economic justice so long as black lesbian Sufis are represented in the latest Netflix superhero show.
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Once we had a wrap on the Sufi chanting, it was time for the shape-note singers and the Sufis to join voices in a semi-improvised performance billed as a fusion.
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After the Sufis in Kattankudy handed out packets of rice to the poor, an action that Mr. Zaharan regarded as trying to buy hungry converts, he grabbed a sword and charged the crowd.
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Salafist brigades under Mr. Hifter have demolished shrines and lodges belonging to Sufis, practitioners of a Muslim mysticism that ultraconservatives consider heresy, including another one leveled last month in the city of Surt.
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Sufis cluster into tarikas, or spiritual orders, that are headed by a grand sheikh who may live in Cairo, but are led day to day by a local sheikh who could live in Queens.
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One of the ways the Islamic State has departed from Al Qaeda and its official affiliates has been its willingness to use unbridled violence against Muslims they accuse of straying, including Shias and Sufis.
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By 2017, Mr. Zaharan and his followers were targeting a Sufi sect in Kattankudy, accusing its members of being infidels, even though Sufis are fellow Muslims who practice a mystical form of the faith.
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Sufis, who follow a mystical form of Islam that has been practiced in Pakistan for centuries, have been attacked by hardline Sunni Muslim militants in the past but there was no immediate claim of responsibility.
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Arabiya news channel and some local sources said some of the worshippers were Sufis, whom groups such as Islamic State consider targets because they revere saints and shrines, which for Islamists is tantamount to idolatry.
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" In the fifth issue of Rumiyah, an ISIS publication, a leader for ISIS in Sinai said he wanted his group to "wage war" against Sufis and others because of their "sorcery, soothsaying, and grave-worship.
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On Thursday, Sufis in Kattankudy received a warning from the Sri Lankan criminal investigation department that their holy places might be targeted on Friday by militants associated with Mr. Zaharan who are still on the run.
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He braves his own translations, and situates Rumi in the broader context of his time and place: a moment of vast creative productivity in the medieval Islamic world, where Sufis were pushing the boundaries of orthodoxy.
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And Goethe found confirmation of his religious bent in his study of Islam, and especially in the mystical variety of it practiced by the Sufis, which to his mind had something in common with Protestantism in any case.
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Even people who have never seen the inside of a mosque or the Sufis who want to become one with the universe wouldn't think twice before treating a woman as something between a pest and a pet goat.
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Like its counterparts in several other Muslim-majority countries, Egypt's government supports the Sufis because it sees them as members of a moderate, manageable faction who are unlikely to engage in political activity, because their priorities are oriented inwardly.
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Nearly 300 years before Rumi, the Sufi saint Mansur al-Hallaj declared, "I am the truth," an utterance that Sufis understand to this day as the recognition that there is a bit of the divine in all of us.
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In the United States and many other places, self-identified Sufis can be Muslims who are very orthodox in their beliefs and observances, or people who are not Muslim at all but are attracted by Sufi music, dance or meditation.
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There were no immediate claims of responsibility, but the worshipers were Sufis, whose mystical form of Islam is considered heretical by Sunni extremists, and the Egyptian military has been battling an affiliate of the Islamic State in the Sinai for years.
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In between mesmerizing recordings of the ritual vocals, dancing, and music, Zikr broadcasts the vital stories of Sufis like Mohammed, or Wajdi Moamari, who chose the religion at the age of seven and is now the matriarch of her own Sufi music troupe.
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No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but in the past year a local affiliate of the Islamic State has killed a number of Sufis in the area and singled out the district where the attack took place as a potential target.
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"(The zawiya) is an important place because it is an ancient place - Sufism is more about tradition than worship," said Ali - whose name has been changed to protect his identity - on WhatsApp, adding that he is "not Sufi and not against Sufis".
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But the voluminous writings published by Islamic State and Qaeda media branches, as well as the writings of hard-liners from the Salafi sect and the Wahhabi school, make clear that these fundamentalists do not consider Sufis to be Muslims at all.
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But the collapse of Raqqa and Mosul has precipitated a sharp shift in the Islamic State's tactics in Sinai, with a greater emphasis on attacks against soft targets, like Coptic Christians and Sufis, in a bid to undermine Mr. Sisi by sowing sectarian hatred in Egyptian society.
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Often caricatured as kumbaya hippies, Sufis seek divine love and connection, but their practices encompass strict worldly rules and commitments: long services, dawn and night prayers, rigorous meditation and frequent fasting — in addition to the common Islamic practices of five daily prayers, the hajj pilgrimage and abstention from alcohol.
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"Oprah has also said she reads from "Bowl of Saki," a daily digest email featuring teachings of the Sufis, which she described to the magazine as "a Middle-Eastern sect that believes all paths lead to God and that all religions are one, pointing to the same north star.
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He has given a platform to respected religious scholars who took a quietist approach, including a number of prominent Sufis like Ali al-Jifri, Aref Ali Nayed, Hamza Yusuf and Abdallah bin Bayyah, the renowned Mauritanian Sufi scholar who now chairs an Emirati council that oversees religious rulings.
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In Carla's breathless, winding prose, we are drawn into a bizarre parallel world of mirroring, love, enmity, and admiration, wherein the characters bridge the threshold between the fictive and the real, between the historical and the speculative; all seeming to dance around one another as if Sufis in Sema.
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In the January edition of an IS online magazine, a figure purporting to be a high level official in the Sinai affiliate of the group vowed to target Sufis, accusing them of idolatry and heretical "innovation" in religion and warning that the group will "not permit (their) presence" in Sinai or Egypt.
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Dangerous preaching Sri Lankan Sufis said that hostility against them has increased in recent years, a change they blame on the influence of extremist ideology imported from the Gulf and reinforced by money which has poured in from overseas to fund radical mosques and schools, dozens of which have sprung up around the country.
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The Amazon blurb for the book probably has the best, most concise explanation of the book, which captures one aspect of the search for identity among America's Muslim communities: A Muslim punk house in Buffalo, New York, inhabited by burqa-wearing riot girls, mohawked Sufis, straightedge Sunnis, Shi'a skinheads, Indonesian skaters, Sudanese rude boys, gay Muslims, drunk Muslims, and feminists.
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" Now founder of a company called Wisdom Tribe, which aims to incorporate ancient wisdom into today's corporate culture, Lehman came to Orthodox Judaism—as Jacob, back then—in a serious way ten years or so ago, after he'd "danced with the Hari Krishas [ sic], breathed pranayama with the yogis, blissed out with the Sufis, and fired up incense with the Daoists.
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