Folk Islamic Saints/Pīrs (Pt. 2)
Dr. Warren Larson delivered a lecture on Saints (Pirs) Folk Islam during a CIU course. Here, Larson presents the different names of Saints (Pirs) within the Islamic Traditions, pre-Islamic roots of Saints, shrines, rituals surrounding Saints, their duties, their authority, and how Christians should understand this.
Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Dr. Warren Larson Lecture: Dr. Warren Larson Lecture: Islamic Saints/Pīrs (Pt. 2)
Excuse me. Lecture 26, saints and peers continued, building right off the, last lecture, the last discussion about Mohammed, and how appears, these people, you know, follow in the train of Mohammed. In other words, it’s quite amazing. The peer names vary. In other words, they have different names for peers.
Africa, generally called Marabou, which is a French name. In, in Arabic, it’s the word is wali, which we’ve looked at before, or auliya, which is plural, friend of God, but there are other terms too that are used, They used them in my context, sometimes calling them murshid, which is the word for guide. We had one fellow that they who was actually a believer that they called him Murshid. His father actually had been a peer so they, joked with him a little bit. Sometimes they called him Bir Saib or they called him.
Another word is Shafi, which is, intercessor or actually healer, sheikh, and appears we know as holy man, but there are other terms too like, sometimes baba, not baba. I live here in the South, as I’ve mentioned, and the word baba is quite a common name in South Carolina. This is not baba, but it’s baba, which is generally understood to be old man, or another term might be shah Hazrat, and, and by the way, Shah, you know, Shiites, they often use this word Shah. Hazrat, shawafa, I’ve noticed from Morocco, they could call a female saint shawafa, meaning that she is supposed to be into healing. Well, we’ve looked at the pre Islamic roots that Arabs clung to, old attitudes, and, you know, you can even see that when Mohammed died on June 10th, 632, when he died, they said that well, no, no.
It’s impossible. Most people, they couldn’t believe it. You see, he’d already gotten to that place. They said, Well, no, no. He can’t die.
He can’t die. He did die. He died in 632. Finally, an older man, Abu Bakr, who was the caliph, the first one after Mohammed, He had a little more sense, controlled himself, and he stood up in the mosque. He said, oh people, I want to let you know, Mohammed is dead, but as for God, he does not die.
And so he held the community together. It was sort of nip and tuck for a while because people were, besides themselves, with the emotion of him dying, he died suddenly and that has implications for the Quran too because he had made no preparations, as far as I can figure out, for, you know, getting the Quran together or arranging it and stuff like that, but he died suddenly and then after that, 20, 30 years down the road, then they started to collect the pieces and, so the Quran finally came into being. Well, look at the peer places. What is a peer place? It’s a place that you can recognize if you’re looking for it.
You can be driving down the road. I can just see in my mind so many peer places in Pakistan. I wasn’t always so aware of them as I should have been, but you can be driving down the road and, if you dare take your eyes off the road for a minute or second, not a minute surely, because there is a lot of danger, but you can see shrines, all kinds of them. And, what is, the shrine? Well, you’ll see a flag there and maybe bits and pieces of flags.
There’s a tree there that, supposedly they’ll say that the disciples say that the peer himself planted the staff and there’s a well there and the water is curative. You can see these, sometimes larger shrines, sometimes smaller, insignificant ones that you wouldn’t really see and sometimes they’re, really you can’t see them at all, but but people know the spot. And Pakistani Muslims celebrate the peer’s death as heavenly birthday. In other words, that’s the Urs, just like they do celebrate the birthday and the birthday of Muhammad. This, I remind you, grew to just in the years that I was there in Pakistan, grew way out of proportion.
In the early years, it wasn’t very significant at all. But then when I left in 1992, it had grown exponentially. In other words, it just grew amazingly and I think that kind of a thing shows you that, Muhammad’s veneration is growing and incidentally, it’s one of the few things that brings Muslims together. In other words, they have lots to fight about. Sunni, Shia, Sufi, and all that kind of stuff.
But on this they agree. Mohammed Loved the prophet day. So, that’s a unifying a unifying feature. Now here’s a few few examples. I’ll give you one of them of living saints of Gulra Sharif.
Sharif is always the term that’s used, at least in my experience, with a a shrine. This is close to, right outside the capital city, Islamabad, a famous peer, and, he claims to be a direct descendant of, saint Abdul Qadir Jalani, who died in Baghdad in 10/11/66. So this is quite a this is quite a an amazing place, really. 600 acres, 160 people staff work there. And, during the 3 day Urs when this, you know, the big celebration, which a 100000 people will show up, all of them eat and there is a lot of celebration, a lot of, I guess, camaraderie, you know, at these peer places.
These guys are peer brothers, you know, and there’s a lot of peer pressure if you get the joke. So and then another one is Pierre Pergardo. When I was over there, he was also a very, very powerful Pierre and political power. And in 1977, you know, the prime minister, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who was the father of Baynazir, and Butto himself was executed by the army, general in the army, he decided that he would arrest you know, some of his opposition, so he arrested people and included arresting the peer, but he quickly released him because the peer’s followers demanded it, and I’m telling you these peers are powerful. Well, what do you have to do to be a peer?
In other words, what’s the proof? Well, a peer must be able to claim a connection, a sinsela. In other words, he must have the blood of Muhammad in his veins. He’s gotta be a relative. In other words, he’s gotta be able to trace the line right up to Muhammad, directly to him.
Here’s a story, I hope it fits here, of a saint in Egypt. A Coptic woman conceived through Saint Saeta, Zainab’s Baraka, in other words, this saint. She went to a Muslim saint, really, and had a baby, you know, that’s often the case. They go because they can’t conceive. Later, when she baptized the baby, get the point now she’s a Christian, so, she had gone to a Muslim saint.
Through that blessing, she has a baby, but she went back on her word and baptized the the infant. What happened? The little baby becomes wooden, refuses to eat, and was only healed when she went back to the saint and later the woman became a Muslim. You see, baptizing that little one as a Christian was a breach of contract. That’s part of the problem because they do go to saints, they cross over, you know, Muslims, Christian, and, but, it’s a dangerous thing to do.
Peer duties. Now what does a duty what does a peer have to do? What are his duties? Well, in the case of this one act that I mentioned before, other than the, great mass of people, a 100000 people showing up, what does he do? Well, he meets people, on a daily basis all through the year.
10 to 12 people show up every day. There is singing, and these are called qawalis. Now they’re singing about Muhammad. They’re not singing about God. There is no singing in the mosque in Islam.
It’s forbidden, but they’re singing in the shrine and the songs are about Mohammed. Mohammed did this, Saint Mohammed did that. And, if you were to go there and if you could look in on it, the women would be sitting at a distance, at a veranda, you know, some distance from the men. Men would be up close, but the women have to keep their distance, you know, custom demands it. Food is served in this shrine, whether it’s a beautiful one or a simple one, but there’s always a green cover there, usually a green green cover over the tomb because after all, green is the color of Islam, some garlands and some copies of the Quran.
So look at you’ve got, you know, the mixing of, you know, the Quran is there and the various things that give this credibility are all done. What power does the peer have? Does he or she, usually a he, have any power? Well, the value, the main value here is baraka, that the peer is supposed to have blessing and, it’s a little bit different than we think of blessing. There is this awesome presence.
In other words, power sort of radiates, it is believed, from the shrine, and some would claim that the saint can do 20 times like raising the dead, healing the sick, and others would say no, well, you can’t do that much, but, you know, we’ll receive some help from the spirit. It’s true, that they do have political and socioeconomic influence. So, yeah, you really can’t do anything on your own so you try to get some help through this peer, you know, his influence, government, getting a job, and something like that. And then there is this blessing and intercessions type of thing. What authority do they have?
Well, there is, sometimes great claims made, but not always the same result, in other words, but there is some authority and, as previously mentioned, these relationships, it’s almost like, you know, fellowship, you could call it, but if you belong to the same peer, then there is quite a bit of feeling of, you know, we’re in the same thing. And the shrine is a place of emotion. It’s a place of meeting. It’s, you’ve got this relationship with a peer, but then you have relationship with one another. So I think, felt needs are met.
And, in Egypt, just getting away from Pakistan for a minute, the sheikh knows, is supposed to know, what the disciple, you know, really needs, and, you’re supposed to have this gift, you know, just like uneducated people go to the doctor and they think, Well, now why do I have to tell the doctor what my problem is? He should know or she should know. And so you have that, you have that or 2 among the saint, if the peers are supposed to know what this this person needs because of the joining of the spirits and, peers have visions and so on. So in Egypt, apparently, there is quite a bit of, you know, shouting back and forth, things like that, oh, beloved one, and some weeping and crying and so on, and quite a bit of activity. What are we supposed to think about this?
What are we supposed to think about? How are we supposed to evaluate this? Is the saint, a fake or a really, is there anything to it? And I think it is hard to to decide whether or not, there is much help. I think there’s a lot of deception.
There’s a lot of false hopes, a lot of, emptiness because, you know, really, who else can help but God and everything else? Satan is a liar, a deceiver and, so there is really no permanent help from the peers, but certainly a lot of of bondage. I am aware of, seeing pictures and, I don’t know if this this, of course, is not quite a correct diagram because, obviously, you’ve got a cross there. So this is not the this is not a Muslim saint or shrine. It looks like a Christian shrine, but let’s keep in mind that sometimes they cross back and forth, but I’ve seen pictures of people who chained themselves to a shrine for days days days, for instance, somebody who has great need, but, then finally, let it go because, the miracle didn’t occur.
So let’s try to understand the heart hunger of people who really are searching like Jesus said, you know, he looks at the crowd and they’re like sheep and they’re harassed. Never was this more true than the folk Muslims because God is not there then Jesus is the one that they need.