If one focuses only on Libya, a country with a long and rich history of Sufism, one can easily detect how Sufis and their property have frequently been the target of violence and mayhem, committed primarily by Salafists, Al Qaeda-related Islamist groups, and Islamic State (IS) sympathizers; Sufis have been assaulted, kidnapped, and killed, and their holy places looted and demolished. Human Rights Watch has recorded numerous such crimes, with most attacks taking place in the period since the Arab Spring of 2011: For example, in October 2011, there was destruction of Al Masry shrine in Tripoli; in November 2011 there was an attack on Girgaresh cemetery in Tripoli where tombstones were destroyed, and another on Sidi Nasr shrine, also in Tripoli; in January 2012, serious damage was done to Sidi Obeid cemetery and Sidi Obeid’s tomb in Benghazi; in July 2012, an explosive was detonated at the Sahaba mosque in Derna; in August 2012, an attack was launched against the mosque of Sidi Abdussalam Al Asmar in Zliten, which included the destruction of seven-hundred-year-old texts; in the same month, the shrine of Sidi Ahmad Zarroug was destroyed in Misrata; in the same month also, there was an attack on Sidi Sha’ab mosque in Tripoli where parts of it and the tombstones inside it were destroyed; in the same month again, extensive damage was inflicted on Othman Pasha mosque in Tripoli where thirty graves were desecrated and its library was looted and then smashed; in October 2017, destruction was wreaked on Sidi Abu Ghrara mosque in Tripoli; and in November 2017, fire was set to Zawiyat Ashsheikha Radiya (mosque) in Tripoli, causing massive damage. More recently, in December 2017, the grave of Al Mahdi Bin Muhammad Bin Ali Assunussi, son of the founder of the Sanussi movement and father of the late King Idris of Libya, was desecrated in Kufra. In addition, there have been reports in Libya stating that in August 2017 alone, tens of Sufis were kidnapped in Benghazi; their fate is still unknown.
Most of the above-mentioned attacks on Sufis have occurred in the western part of Libya where Islamist militias tend to be strong and where the virtually powerless Government of National Accord (GNA) is embarrassingly dependent on those militias for its security and stability. This partly explains why the GNA has not lifted a finger to protect Sufi individuals or shrines. The militia that is perceived as the most likely culprit in the commission of some of the crimes mentioned above is the Tripoli-based Special Deterrence Force (SDF), led by Abdurraouf Kara. There are, however, other Islamist militias which could also be involved: Bu Sleem Battalion- led by Ighnaiwa Al Kikkli- and the National Guard- which is made up of four militias belonging to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and is overall led by Abdul Hakeem Bilhaj, although the individual militias themselves have been led by people such as Khalid Ashshireef and Sami Assa’idi. Salafists in Benghazi are the ones most likely to be responsible for the attack on Sufis in that city, while in Derna, the most likely culprit is the Al Qaeda affiliate called Derna Mujahideen Shura Council.
Many people wonder why Muslim terrorists target other Muslims. After all, they argue, the terrorists’ main enemy is the non-Muslim world, especially the West and Israel. Muslim apologists in particular have been in the habit of claiming that Islam is a peaceful religion, and they try to explain away Islamic terrorism by asserting that it is the foreign policies of some Western countries and of Israel which are mainly responsible for Islamic terrorism; to support their allegations, they often point to conflicts such as the Iraq War or the Arab-Israeli dispute. As stated in one of my previous articles entitled “Is Islamism more dangerous than Nazism and Communism?” vicious terrorism, mindless violence, and a blatant lack of respect for human rights are all inextricably intertwined with totalitarianism; in other words, a totalitarian ideology by definition aims to own people, their lives, their liberties, their reasoning powers, and their ethics. By numbing people’s brains and terrifying their hearts, a totalitarian ideology often succeeds in making potentially good people commit the most horrific crimes. One can see that both in religions and in totalitarian secular ideologies, such as Nazism, Communism, and Pan-Arabism. Yet, owing to the fact that both Judaism and Christianity have been considerably tamed in the last number of centuries- mainly through the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment- Islam remains today the only Abrahamic religion that is wildly destructive. Naturally, not all Muslims support acts of terrorism, let alone perpetrate them, but the potential for wreaking unbelievable havoc in the name of Islam remains immense.
The Arab Spring uprisings, as well as other recent events in the region of the Middle East and North Africa, have demonstrated beyond any serious doubt that many Muslims are in fact in favour of violent, intolerant Islamist movements or organizations, be they the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafists, the Jihadists, Al Qaeda, or the Islamic State group. Although those movements are often antagonistic to one another, they all share common denominators, amongst which is extreme intolerance of the private sphere of thought, reflection, activities, and worship. The totalitarian mentality of such movements and organizations has a visceral dislike, nay hatred, of anyone or anything that is unwilling to surrender their will to them in the kind of pathetic manifestation of total capitulation that they seem to seek and relish. For this reason, those movements do not only loathe the West and Israel, but they detest any Muslim who shows the slightest degree of independence of thought or behaviour. That is why they tend to refer to Muslims whom they are unable to brainwash or intimidate as kuffar, or infidels; in their eyes, secular Muslims and Sufis fall into this category. The much publicized excuse of the West and Israel being the source of Islamic terrorism is wildly exaggerated; even if the West and Israel were to disappear off the face of the earth this very minute, Islamic terrorism would not diminish, much less disappear, for it would soon find other enemies, even if that meant that it had to turn its attention inwards towards the Muslim populations of the world. Islamism is a destructive juggernaut whose fuel is hatred. All of these factors help explain why Islamists in general abhor the Sufis, for I know of no school of thought within Islam that is as amenable to reason, modernity, tolerance of non-Muslims, and women’s rights as Sufism. The historically strong influence of Sufism in Libya and its emphasis on private worship, rather than on taking over the state and its institutions, may well explain why in Libya’s democratic elections of 2014, Islamist parties won only 16% of the vote, while 84% of Libyans voted for secular parties, which was by far the worst showing for Islamist parties in the whole region of the Middle East and North Africa. The non-Sufi Islamist parties showed their true colours when they subsequently started a destructive civil war in Libya simply because they could not accept the fact that the vast majority of their own fellow countrymen and women did not want them, what with their intolerance, dogmatism, repression, greed, and lack of loyalty to Libya and its future, preferring instead to pledge their allegiance to insidious non-Libyan agendas. But, one may ask, who are the Sufis? What are they about?
(To be continued).