JOHN STANMEYER—VII

HOLY QUEST: Early morning at the Nizamuddin shrine in New Delhi, where Sufis pray to find their way in this life and the path to the next

What you must understand is this," said Amin, stroking his long, straggly beard. "Sufism is not Islamic. It is jadoo: magic tricks. It is superstition. It has nothing to do with real Islam."

Amin ul-Karim and I were standing outside a kebab restaurant among the medieval lanes of Nizamuddin, my favorite part of New Delhi. Clouds of charcoal smoke wafted into the air, and the scent of grilling meat floated out over streets bustling with pilgrims, madrasah students, sellers of rose petals, little boys playing cricket and beggars seeking alms.

To one side lay the destination to which the crowds of pilgrims were heading: a warren of alleys and bazaars leading toward the shrine of India's most revered Sufi saint, Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya. Nizamuddin was a 14th century Muslim mystic who withdrew from the world and preached a message of prayer, love and the unity of all things. He promised his followers that if they loosened their ties with the world, they could purge their souls of worries and directly experience God. Rituals and fasting were for the pious, said the saint, but love was everywhere and was much the surest route to the divine.

Yet only a short distance from the shrine towered a very different Islamic institution, one that embodied a quite different face of Islam. The merkaz is a modern, gray, concrete structure seven stories tall that houses the world headquarters of an austere Islamic movement called Tablighism, to which Amin belongs. The Tablighis advocate a return to the basic fundamentals of the Koran, and greatly dislike the mystical Islam of Sufism, which they believe encourages such un-Koranic practices as idolatry, music, dancing and the veneration of dead saints. This was certainly the view of Amin, who, when I met him, had been busy trying to persuade passing pilgrims to turn away from their destination. "I invite these people who come to Nizamuddin to return to the true path of the Koran," he said. "Do not pray to a corpse, I tell them. Go to the mosque, not a grave. Superstition leads to jahannam—hell. True Islam leads to jannah—paradise."

"What sort of paradise?" I asked.

"It is beyond all human imagination," said Amin. "But there will be couches to lie on in the shade, and rivers of milk and honey and, cool, clear springwater."

"What about the Sufi idea that God can also be found in the human heart?" I asked.

"Paradise within us?" said Amin, raising his eyebrows. "No, no, this is emotional talk—a dream only. There is nothing in the Koran about paradise within the body. It is outside. To get there you must follow the commands of the Almighty. Then when you die, insh'allah, that will be where your journey ends."

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