Rachel Aspden: My journey to the heart of Islam | World news | T. In the ancient cemetery of the desert town of Tarim, in south Yemen, a crowd of young women shrouded in black nylon are kneeling around a red clay gravestone. "Bismillahi r-rahmani r-rahim," they mutter, hands cupped in supplication, shuffling under the midday sun. "Al hamdu lillahi rabbi l-alamin. " They are reciting Qur'anic prayers for the soul of a saint and scholar who, 600 years ago, used to conduct miraculous conversations with the dead from the minaret of the mud-built town mosque.
The chanting is led by a birdlike old lady lost in her black robes: a "hababa", holy woman, who traces her ancestry back to the Prophet Muhammad. Behind the hababa, the girls stumble over the unfamiliar Arabic and begin to fidget. They surreptitiously check mobiles for a rare bar of reception or pull Polo mints from Warehouse bags hidden under their robes. Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the world, and one of the most conservative. "Men! "This is Rachel, our guest," says Asma.
I am amazed. On Faith: Guest Voices: Sufism as Youth Culture in Morocco. South Asia | Can Sufi Islam counter the Taleban? Some believe that Pakistan's mystic, non-violent Islam can be used as a defence against extremism (Photos: Kamil Dayan Khan) It's one o'clock in the morning and the night is pounding with hypnotic rhythms, the air thick with the smoke of incense, laced with dope. I'm squeezed into a corner of the upper courtyard at the shrine of Baba Shah Jamal in Lahore, famous for its Thursday night drumming sessions. It's packed with young men, smoking, swaying to the music, and working themselves into a state of ecstasy.
This isn't how most Westerners imagine Pakistan, which has a reputation as a hotspot for Islamist extremism. Devotional singing But this popular form of Sufi Islam is far more widespread than the Taleban's version. Inside the Sufi drumming session at the shrine of Baba Shah Jamal Now some in the West have begun asking whether Pakistan's Sufism could be mobilised to counter militant Islamist ideology and influence. Lahore would be the place to start: it's a city rich in Sufi tradition.