{"id":5593,"date":"2012-02-25T01:44:33","date_gmt":"2012-02-25T01:44:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=5593"},"modified":"2012-02-25T02:35:27","modified_gmt":"2012-02-25T02:35:27","slug":"darfur-question-and-wider-sufi-ripples","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=5593","title":{"rendered":"Darfur question… and wider Sufi ripples"},"content":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron — request for info, Darfur, Janjaweed, Sufis, Senegal and more ]<\/p>\n

.
\n\"\"<\/a>
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Dr John Esposito<\/strong> has a post up at HuffPo<\/a> disputing Ayan Hirsi Ali<\/strong>‘s recent Newsweek piece<\/a>, and one very small matter of phrasing raised a small cluster of questions for me \u2026<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

My Questions:<\/p>\n

Dr Esposito quotes Hirsi Ali as saying “What has often been described as a civil war is in practice the Sudanese government’s sustained persecution of religious minorities” and comments, “to say that Darfur is an example of the Muslim-Christian genocide is flat out wrong”.<\/p>\n

My questions are not about Ali’s “Global War on Christians” or “Muslim-Christian genocide” but about the range of Muslim theological interests<\/strong> at play in the Darfur conflict.<\/p>\n

Julie Flint<\/strong>, in Sudan, Darfur destroyed: ethnic cleansing by government and militia forces in Western Sudan<\/a>, writes that “Almost all Darfurians belong to the Tijaniya sect of Sufi Islam that extends from Senegal to Sudan.” <\/p>\n

And Robert Spencer<\/strong> writes<\/a> that “Salafists target Muslims they regard as insufficiently Islamic also in Darfur, where Arab Muslims attack non-Arab Muslims whose Islam is closer to the cultural version that prevailed in Somalia than to Wahhabi austerity.” <\/p>\n

So:<\/p>\n

Is Spencer right about that? And is it therefore arguable that in additional to nomadic vs sedentary and Arab vs black African issues, there’s a sectarian (intra-Muslim) component to the conflict?<\/p>\n

Further, is Darfur (inter alia<\/em>) a front we should be monitoring in terms of a global Salafi vs Sufi struggle?<\/p>\n

Who and what should I be following \/ reading?<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

All of which brings me to the wider issue of violence against Sufis (and for that matter, violent as well as peaceable Sufi responses) in (eg) Libya (Daveed GR<\/a> today), the Punjab (Raza Rumi<\/a>) and of course Senegal (see image of mosque in Touba<\/a> above)…<\/p>\n

All pointers welcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron — request for info, Darfur, Janjaweed, Sufis, Senegal and more ] . . Dr John Esposito has a post up at HuffPo disputing Ayan Hirsi Ali‘s recent Newsweek piece, and one very small matter of phrasing raised a small cluster of questions for me \u2026 * My Questions: Dr Esposito quotes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[329,526,499,688,714,1,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-charles-cameron","category-islamic-world","category-peace","category-sufi","category-uncategorized","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5593"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5628,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5593\/revisions\/5628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}