Sufism or sectarianism?

Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan - OP-ED: Sufism or sectarianism? —Ayeda Naqvi

Thanks to my friend Ali Abbas Inayatullah, i got some absolutely gobsmacking information. Apparently this Sufi teacher appeared in a lecture in Pakistan and said the most amazing stuff. This was reported by Ayeda Naqvi. I would have left it there but Ali did a great job in collating all the debates and discussions around it. A response to her article was written by a gentleman called as Atif Khan. Mr. Khan is a lecturer, has studied in Harvard and has worked as an investment banker in London and NY. Pretty impressive cv, no? unfortunately, Mr. Khan should have stuck to economics rather religion. But it was quite interesting, Mr. Khan did a brilliant job in talking about everything except for the issues that Ms. Naqvi raised. Others have noticed this and have expressed similar opinions here and here and here , ending with Ali's very pointed letter here. All in all, the speaker seems to have some very dubious origins, and the support of Mr. Khan was also surprising and very disappointing.

I belong to a mailing list where you can join in and have wonderful discussions about this lovely, mystical world of sufism. I have personal reasons to be very grateful to a sufi saint, Hazrat Khawaja Moinuddin Hasan Chisty of Ajmer, India (but the details are for a later post). In all my debates and discussions, I have yet to hear such bigoted thoughts attributed to sufism and while i am shocked and think this is condemnable, what makes me happy is to see the global range of offended opinions
who have equally told this bigoted chap to take off. May his followers understand get rid of him. What was more sad was that an institution such as LUMS hosted the event in the first place. This is not good at all for the image of LUMS (personal disclosure, one of my friends works there).