Sufism in Saudi?

This topic deserves far more seriousness and time than I am going to give it here and now, but the question of where Sufism is and was in Saudi is an important one. Let me offer these cursory half-"baked" reflections.

The one Imam in Saudi Arabia I have had one-on-one visits with (for about six weeks during Arabic lessons) did not like Rumi, one of the central figures in Sufism, at all. When I asked him why he said "Rumi thinks God is in everything." He did not go on to say "there is no God but God," but he was definitely heading in this direction. But am I turning him into a charicature by stopping here? How do we contextualize what he said, do it in an intelligent manner, take it seriously, and go beyond the cliche's?

First of all we need to bring in the Wahabi sect (see Wikipedia on this if needed), a conservative version of Islam connected to, and in many ways stemming from, the two-century old religious establishment of the same name. The sect gets its name from its founder: a man named Ibn Wahab who teamed up with the House of Saud in the 18th century to found a partnership that eventually became the country. In the past, the Wahabis are said to be responsible for doing less admirable things, like destroying "idoloatrous" shrines to various Islamic saints and manifestations of popular religion, some of which did and does stem from Shi-ism, that other major Iranian religious export. Today the Wahabis are supposedly in control of Saudi education.

I must stress again that this needs to be explored further than I am doing now. The only thing I am offering is a small, tiny even, bit of insight into this society today and where the Sufis are in it. So then, what I think we can say is this: the anti-Sufism we hear, and imagine we might hear, about in Saudi is there and is alive. We can also speculate that it is part of Saudi's top madrasas or "seminaries." Why? The guy I witnessed air these views graduated from Medina university, one of the most importnat schools in the country and trainer of its religious establishment. He works for this state supported religious establishment now. And as they say, the acorn never falls far from the tree.

But what do we do about this? Does this mean Sufism does not and cannot exist here? Is this a question we should even be asking?

The only hope, I envision is in reminding ouselves of the geopolitical nexus Saudi sits in with respect to India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. These places are soooo close to Saudi and the Gulf and gives it millions of workers. A third of the 20 million people in Saudi are foreign workers from south Asia. Many of them are semi-permanent residents here and in the Gulf. Another intersting tidbit is that India and what I will call "greater-Persia" are also the places where Sufism survived and thrived the most heartily in centuries past. These areas produced schools of Sufi thought and learning that survive right up to the present day and which kept the teaching alive throughout the "middle east." Why should this not be the case even now? Without doing any real research on this other than observing what I see in the small but possibly representative speck of this country's social world, I'd say the Sufi mindset could still be lurking and limping along here, but also confident of who and what it is, and that it is. How do I know? Because you, by reading this, and I, by writing it, are "brining it," even though neither one us might be "Asian."


M XYZ