She said in today’s strife-torn society, oblivious to rising or plunging GDPs, happiness came as a premium. The overwhelming desire to possess is an indicator of a consumerist culture propelled by the unbridled growth of capitalist enterprise, she said, adding, neo-imperialism has fanned conflict everywhere, forcing people to take up violent means to seek redressal from injustice. People of different religious, racial and national affiliations view each other with suspicion, she added.
She said the current intellectual propensity was to debunk religion on the pretext that it had been a cause of bloodshed throughout history and served to divide, rather than unite people. “My personal opinion, as a student of comparative religion, is quite different since all religions of the world took birth with a noble intent,” she said, adding, it is only when they became pedantic and were increasingly institutionalised to sanctify political and economic designs considered repressive and hence abominable.
She said many Sufis were highly skeptical of such practices, charging them with not having any essential links with Islam. Sometimes, individuals described themselves as Sufis but not as Muslims, responding to the universality of ecstatic mystical experience and the particularity of Sufi routes to that experience, she added.
