Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84Plough Quarterly • Spring 2016 15 of the legal scholars. Emphasizing God’s compassion above all and finding it behind every letter of the Quran, Sufism always sought beauty in religion and acknowledged the truth in other forms of faith, expressly adopting the Christian commandment to love one’s enemies. In this way, Sufism infused Islamic societies with values, stories, and sounds that literalistic forms of devotion could never have supplied. As a lived Islam, Sufism did not negate legal Islam but rather broadened it, rendering its everyday form gentler, more ambivalent, more porous, more tolerant, and especially – through music, dance and poetry – more open to sensual experience. Very little of this has survived. Wherever the Islamists gained a foothold, starting in nineteenth-century Arabia and continuing up to their recent seizure of power in Mali, they have begun by banning Sufi holy days, prohibiting the mystical writings, destroying the graves of the saints, and cutting off the long hair of the Sufi leaders (or simply killing them). And it hasn’t been just the Islamists. The reformers and religious modernizers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries also viewed the traditions and customs of popular Islam as backward and antiquated. Given their failure to appreciate Sufi literature, it fell to Western scholars such as the Orientalist Annemarie Schimmel, winner of the 1995 Peace Prize, to edit Sufi manuscripts and save them from destruction. Even today, only a handful of Muslim intellectuals engage with the riches found in their own tradition. The historic city centers all over the Islamic world – damaged, neglected, strewn with rubbish, and filled with ruined monuments – symbolically represent the decline of the Islamic spirit. So does the largest shopping mall in the world, built in Mecca right next to the Kaaba. You have to see the photos to believe it: the Kaaba, the holiest place in Islam, this plain yet magnificent edifice, is literally overshadowed by Gucci and Apple. Perhaps we should have paid less attention to the Islam of our grand theorists, and more to the Islam of our grandmothers. To be sure, in some countries historic buildings and mosques are being restored, but this has happened only after Western art historians or westernized Muslims like me recognized the value of the tradition. Unfor- tunately we arrived at the scene a century too late, when the buildings had already crumbled, the architectural techniques had been forgotten, and the books had been erased from memory. Yet we believed that at least there would be time for thorough study of these things. Instead, I now feel much like an archaeologist in a war zone, hastily and unme- thodically gathering up relics so that later generations will at least be able to view them in museums. Certainly Muslim countries are still producing outstanding works of art, as is evident at biennales, film festivals, and here at the Frankfurt Book Fair. But this culture has precious little to do with Islam. There is no longer an Islamic culture, at least none of quality. What we now find flying around us and falling on our heads is the wreckage of a massive intellectual implosion. Is there any hope? There is hope until the last breath – this is what Father Paolo Dall’Oglio, founder of Mar Musa, teaches us. Hope is the central motif in his writings. The day after Father Jacques, Dall’Oglio’s pupil and deputy, was abducted, the Muslims of Qaryatain flooded into the church unasked in order to pray for him. That must surely