Observations of Nazim Kabbani and his murid disciples -

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Bodyguards are vital for the Shaykhs because they travel extensively and frequently stay in western countries where the population is hostile to ordinary Muslims, let alone to flamboyant ministers of conversion. Beyond the hostility of the ignorant, crowd control and event coordination are required because tens of thousands of people may crowd around merely to catch a glimpse of Shaykh Nazim (such as when he visits the Jakarta National Mosque).

This provides ample reason for the patronage of the guru silat, who, apart from being skilled in several different martial arts, may have received military training (perhaps national service). As the royal tarekat the Haqqani Sufi Order surrounds itself with the royal retinue, and includes bodyguards drawn from many different martial arts including silat, kung fu and aikido

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Reading the International Haqqani-Naqshbandi Sufi Tarekat Trawling the copious literature produced by the tarekat helps to make sense of some of the thinking, ideology, and practice underlying its offshoot, Seni Silat Haqq Melayu. Naqshbandi Sufi resources include books, music CD’s, videos (VCD and DVD), websites, and a downloadable resource of speeches and talks called “Sufi Cinema.”31 Haqqani websites offer “Islamic Internet shopping” for books, prayer beads, and instructional videos, and supply chat rooms and Internet dating for “Sufi singles.” Most of the books are produced from transcripts of the recorded speeches of Shaykh Nazim, others are written by his son-in-law, Shaykh Kabbani.

Only a few works of this extensive corpus are considered reliable reproductions and “authorized” for consumption by Pa’ Ariffin. Several of these works make sense of the ideas that Pa’ Ariffin imparts alongside his silat (martial artis training) training, so much so that sometimes the words I record directly from Pa’ Ariffin’s mouth appear verbatim in texts attributed to Shaykh Nazim. Like “Chinese whispers” (same as the American game of 'Telephone' -- Corboy)these words echo through the silat troupe with ever greater degrees of distortion.32

Four Naqshbandi books are significant here. The first concerns the impending approach of doomsday (Kabbani 2003a);

the second documents the establishment of the Naqshbandi Sufi tarekat in London (Kabbani 1995); and the third, [

i]Pure Hearts[/i] (Nazim 1998) offers an exceptionally clear summary of Sheikh Nazim’s social, economic and political beliefs.

The fourth book by Shaykh Kabbani (2003b) is a hefty tome tackling the history, beliefs and practices of the Naqshbandi Sufi Order as a whole. Pure Hearts (Nazim 1998) sets out the Haqqani view of modernity.

Early on, Nazim (1998: 34) slams democracy as a recent invention, created so that the Jews could rule Palestine. According to Maulana, the Sultan and monarchy were in the way of the Jews, as Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. Democracy led to the foundation of the parties of the “jackals,” “wolves,” “foxes,” “scorpions,” 31 32 [www.shaykhnazim.net].