US: One of the oldest religious movements in Iraq has ordered its members to join the fight against Shia militias and the US-led coalition, writes Michael Jansen
In response to attacks by Shia militias and US forces on Sunni mosques and population centres, Iraq's leading mystical order is forming armed groups to defend religious sites and homes.
The shelling last Friday by a US tank of the mosque in the rebellious city of Ramadi, dedicated to the Sufi saint Abdel Qadir al-Gailani, founder of the Qadiri Sufi sect, prompted Sheikh Muhammad al-Qadiri to declare a holy war against US troops. He said that his order would join a new militia, the Battalions of Sheikh Abdel Qadir al-Gailani, and take part in the insurgency.
A second Sufi figure in the Sunni city of Falluja, twice besieged by US forces, Sheikh Ahmad al-Soffi, said: "We will not wait for the Mahdi army and the Badr brigade to enter our houses and kill us. We will fight the Americans and the Shias, who are against us."
Earlier in the week, Sheikh Abdel Rahim al-Qadiri, the guide of the order's Kirkuk branch, ordered his followers to discontinue daily prayer services, close down meeting halls and form a brigade to battle the Shia Badr corps of the pro-Iranian Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Mahdi army of the radical Muqtada al-Sadr. Sheikh Abdel Rahim disappeared several days before issuing this call in order to organise and lead the brigade.
The decision of Sufi religious leaders to arm their followers and join the insurgency amounts to a reversal of the postwar, non-interventionist policy adopted by the Qadiri order, the largest in Iraq. Instead of joining the resistance, the order's members sat in their mosques and centres, praying and chanting the names of God. They did not even defend the tombs of Sufi saints destroyed by their enemies, the militant Salafis, purists who follow the Saudi Wahhabi doctrine. Inaction resulted in a popular boycott of Qadiri celebrations and a dramatic fall in active membership of the order.
The shift from prayer to resistance by the Qadiris, who are rooted in the masses, could swell the resistance, which has been dominated by the Salafis, who have a narrow following. Iraqi Qadiris could also inspire brethren in Pakistan, India, Indonesia, the Caucasus and the Balkans and west and north Africa to join in the struggle, which many Arabs and Muslims see as a civilisational war against the West.
The well-organised Qadiris led 19th-century liberation wars against the French in Algeria and the Russians in Chechnya and Daghistan. An Iraqi Qadiri tribal leader, Dhari Khamis al-Dhari, was the hero of the Shia-led 1920 revolt against the British.
The Qadiri, or Qadiriyya, are one of the oldest Sufi tariqas (organisations). Their founder, Iranian-born Abdel Qadir al-Gailani (1077-1166), became the head of a school of Islamic law in Baghdad and a revered preacher. His tomb, located in the splendid Gailani mosque in central Baghdad, was until the recent civil strife a place of pilgrimage for both Sunnis and Shias. The Gailani family played an influential role in Iraqi politics during the 20th century.