Central Asian Sufism and Contemporary Pakhtun: A Study of the Chishtiyya in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Abstract

This paper explores the changes witnessed by Chishtiyya Sufi silsila (literally, chain, of initiation, order) in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the twentieth-twenty first centuries. It aims at ascertaining current methods, doctrines and the changing trends in the order. To examine and identify different perspectives in contemporary Chishtiyya Sufism, a twentieth century Chishtiyya Sufi, Muhammad Ubaidullah Khan Durrani, whose life span covers the period immediately before the Taliban phenomenon, is undertaken as case study. To provide comparative analyses, some of the current major Sufi personalities of the province are also studied. The paper follows method based on personal interviews and examination of present day Sufi literature. Rahman, the first to coin the term ‘neo-Sufism’, had advocated the reformation and absorption of Sufism by the orthodoxy.4 Central Asian linkages and the cultural and political significance of Central Asian Sufism vis-à-vis what has been termed as neo-Sufism, in the province is examined in order to identify any possible conflict or contradictions between them.