Sufism fits into Iraq's religious mosaic

It was as if the head men at the Sufi temple, or takiya, were expecting us. Perhaps a higher power had told them they would have visitors Thursday evening.

Newsday photographer Moises Saman and I walked up to the front gate of the shrine (by name, Al Takiya Al Qadriya Al Kasnazaniya) and a man wordlessly guided us to a side door, up some concrete stairs to a wide, carpeted room where men sat cross-legged around the sides talking.

We took off our shoes and came to meet Ali Abu Tiba, the representative for Sheikh Mohammed Abdel Karim Al Kasnazan, whose strand of Sufi Islam is rooted in this temple. He seemed distinctly unsurprised by our unannounced visit. In deliberate, aristocratic Spanish from studying literature in Madrid, Abu Tiba explained to the Spanish-speaking Saman what we were about to see.

"Soccer players need exercise and training so that they can play good soccer," Abu Tiba said, his black eyebrows meeting in the centre to form a V over his kindly face. "The heart also needs exercise so that it can love religion. These ceremonies are exercises for the heart, to be closer to God."

A mystical closeness to God is a driving idea behind Sufism, a centuries-old movement within Islam.

We had come to this quiet, middle-class Baghdad neighbourhood to see a Sufi ceremony, with its whirling dervishes and acts of self-mutilation that seem to cause no lasting injury or pain to the celebrants. We wanted to understand how Sufism fits into the religious mosaic that is Iraq, where the minority Sunnis have controlled the majority Shiites for decades in a power relationship that exudes resentment and the potential for future bloodshed.

Sitting quietly on one side is Sufism, which is often persecuted in other Muslim countries but enjoys freedom in Iraq, partly, some whisper, because of the Sufis' reciprocal support for the government. Whatever the political realities, this is a group of people who twice a week disappear into a religious trance for a few minutes, escaping the shadow of conflict falling over their country.

Some Sufi orders are charismatic, using trances and self-mutilation, and others are more restrained, expressing themselves through poetry and music.

As we finished a fine dinner of chicken, beans, rice and flat bread, drums began beating.

With Abu Tiba needed for his ceremonial role, Sami Abdel Latif, in a double-breasted blazer and tie, took over translation duties in a confident flow of English whose every fourth phrase I could understand.

In a tiled courtyard, about 300 men, women and children had gathered. The men and some of the boys formed concentric squares. In the innermost square, seven men beat a rhythm on the animal hides of round, wooden drums. Opposite and next to them were the dervishes, holy men who had not cut their hair since their first communing with God.

Swaying their heads gently and calling out "Oh, God" in time with the drumming, the worshippers began the buildup to what for many would become a trance, an entry into a state of closeness with God. As the rhythm picked up, the Sufis moved their heads faster.

In the centre, the dervishes swirled their heads and long manes at great speed. Now and then one would shout or moan, or lose control completely, writhing on the floor or pointing aggressively at nothing in particular. By now the noise was great.

It must be hell for the neighbours, I thought, glancing around at the nearby homes.

When the dancing was over, it was time for the supernatural display, said Latif.

"Like what?" I asked.

"Like the snack," he said. "They catch the snack with their hands and put it in their teeth."

That didn't sound too dreadful until it turned out that he was talking snakes, not Snickers.

"They do it to give proof of their devotion to God to others and to persuade them to become a Muslim," Latif said.

On this evening, though, signs of God's existence were to involve sharp blades and points. One man had me unwrap a razor blade, with which he slashed his tongue a few times – unmiraculously, it bled – before eating the blade, and another seven or so more.

Other men and boys put skewers through their cheeks and tongues and sharp sticks through their chests and jaws. One man gobbled a fluorescent bulb.

If not exactly the entertainment I would have chosen to aid the digestive process, the strength of Sufi belief in the ceremony was powerful, generous and beneficent. The Sufis' unhesitating hospitality to strangers – American journalists are not always so welcome in countries that are about to be attacked soon by the United States – was testimony to the words of reconciliation and universalism everyone there seemed to offer.

At a time of looming war, there was hope only for peace and a moment or two away from politics, that transient, earthly concern.

"This is a place where there are no (political) parties, no news," Latif said, I think. "If you ask someone what the news is he says, what news? Here there is only God."

And he pointed his finger at the night sky above Baghdad and smiled in the hope that everyone could understand what really matters in life.

© Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service