Dissension in the ranks: The 'Sufi'-'Wahhabi' debate

bibliographic database
Line

Periodical article

Title:	Dissension in the ranks: The 'Sufi'-'Wahhabi' debate
Authors:	Long, Wahbie Foster, Donald W.
Year:	2004
Periodical:	Journal for the Study of Religion
Volume:	17
Issue:	1
Pages:	67-93
Language:	English
Geographic term:	South Africa
Subjects:	Muslim brotherhoods Sufism Religion and Witchcraft Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Wahhabism
Abstract:	The Western Cape, South Africa, has played host to a flurry of controversies that has rocked its Muslim community. This paper deals with the most recent dispute, which should be considered from three interrelated perspectives, namely a clash between ideas, a struggle for social resources, and a race for legitimation. 41 letters and articles that appeared in four Cape newspapers in 2001 were discourse-analysed. Authors were split into two opposing camps, categories X and Y, depending on each letter-writer's explicit or implicit stance regarding the issue of contention: shrine veneration. Although the dominant category Y casts the debate in terms of the ideologically loaded 'Sufi'-'Wahhabi' couplet, it is demonstrated that the extra-discursive referents called into being by this construction are, at best, elusive. At its most radical, the authors problematize the taken-for-granted notion of a 'group', which implies that mainstream theories of intergroup relations need to be reworked. Bibliogr., sum. [Journal abstract]