Hello, Salieu, actually there is a refutation of the Yusuf Hijazi article, the link to which I put
up on my blog.  It is actually a google cache of an article which is no longer available online.
One thing which the refutation notes, which caught my attention was the use of non-Muslim sources,
and the use of outdated beliefs which non-Muslims had about "sufis".

It seems to me that the article against "sufism" uses, in some cases, dubious sources, in an
tempt to show how "deviant" and "evil" "sufism" is, without making a distinction between the
so-called sufis, who seem to think that Islam need not be a precondition for acceptance in to that
order, and the, I'm not sure how to call it "legit Sufis", I guess you could say, who are engaged
in the remembrance of Allah, the promotion of Islam, and who follow Islam's precepts as best they
can.

As I said before, while I'll admit that there may be some groups out there who have an "all
religions are OK" approach, and who see "sufim" as a sect removed from Islam, that is not the case
with * all * sufi turuq.  And I don't think it's fair for the author of this article to just paint
so-called "sufis" with the same broad brush of "shirk" "bida" Kufr", etc, especially when many of
his sources came from non-Muslim orientalists.

There is a lot of "everyone else is kufr except our sect, and we're the saved sect, and this
is why, and everyone else is deviant" stuff out there, and truthfully, I find it harsh, and I
don't like it.  And it exudes arrogance and ignorance on many of these types of people's parts
because they want to, first of all, discard the last one thousand or so years of Islamic history
and scholarship, and to secondly, see that they know more than the scholars that came beofre them,
even though these people may not have studied as much or learned as much, and thirdly, they want
to twist and take out of context the words of certain scholars to fit their own agendas.

Real Islam is not a black and white thing.  Even in matters of fiqh, not only do you have
halal and haram, on the opposite ends of the spectrum, you also have mukruh, or disliked, mubah,
which pretty much means neutral, and then you have Sunnah or Mustahab, which means recommended.
So you can just put things in either the "halal or haram" categories.  There is a whole spectrum
going from Halal which means allowed to Recommended, to Neutral, to Disliked to prohibited or
forbidden.

Just as in Prayer, you have Fard or wajib which is obligatory, then you have the Sunnah, then
you have Mubah acts in Prayer, then you have Makruh acts of prayer, and then you have Haram acts.

Islam itself is a very complex thing, which encompasses iman, as we know as faith, Islam, of
course, which is submission to the will of Allah, and the Ihssan, which encompasses spirituality.

Anyway, I'm going to stop now before I completely go off topic.  But what I'd just wanted to
say is that you have a lot of harsh stuff out there, and I question the knowledge of the people
who write such things.

Anyway, just some thoughts.  But anyway.  As I said, if "sufism" isn't up your alley, and I mean
the legitimate tasawwuf, then fine, but it is a recognized science within traditional Islam, the
anti-tasawwuf crowd notwithstanding.

Ginny

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