Sufism And Spiritual Hashish Culture In Pakistan

Pakistan’s ‘unorthodox’ muslims: Sufis are inheritors of a tradition that predates Islam in South Asia. Spread across Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, cultural activity has been one of the most affected aspect of life.

The Sufis aim to be ‘in the world, but not of it’. Anti-mullahs, anti-establishments, anti-intellectual Sufi prefers to call themselves ‘we friends’, they have no-hierarchy, no-organization instead they search for direct communication with God through poetry, music and dance.

Over the years, the procession has hypnotic drum-beat of dhol and dancing mystics and dervishes. It has developed a reputation as a drey, hash-smoking and perversion.

It is widely known that hashish and bhang are consumed openly during the rituals. All done under the eye of police, who respects certain cultural norms.  Physical or emotional intoxication goes well with the idea of drowning in music, and recalling the relation between spiritual ecstasy and intoxication in Sufi culture and poetry.

With regard to the culture of smoking hashish in Sufi shrines, Noman ul-Haq, professor of social sciences at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, says that while intoxicants like hashish have always featured in the rituals in some way, it has always been “a hush-hush affair”. Social anthropologist Lukas Werth recalls one of the adherents claiming that “charas  is a bus driver to God”. In this sense, Lukas suggests, the intoxicant is seen as a “method to open the mind for the divine”.

The popularity of shrine culture in our society is strangely responsible for the rise of Islamic orthodoxy that threatens its very existence.

The Sufi saints who have propelled cult followings were reformers, radical poets and social critics who traveled to zones, for example, the Punjab through Persia, frequently by walking. Their message was basically one of harmony, love, liberality, and of contemplation dedicated to dissect the divine inside the limits of human experience.

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