This is a topic to discuss the sufi experiences of the PDF community.
I'm of a barelvi background but until recently never had a sufi guide. I'm new to this world and wondered if anyone else in this community is associated with a tariqah or has a Pir?
Please - this is not the place for religious discussion and if you want to issue fatwas please refrain. I just want to discuss people's personal journeys, explore the cultural and spiritual aspects, maybe share poetry, history, teachings etc.
Hope you dont mind, I understand we cannot debate on this but just wanted to share some facts for people to read and research upon.
For example a pir only means a shaykh or a teacher, so in our region or Turkey a pir is a Shaykh of a tariqah, in another words he is a Ustad or a teacher but he is supposed to be highly religous and non worldly person. People often find this alien but a modern word on YouTube and internet is Ustad, Shaykh, Imam and we all listen to them and follow them, so in another words theyre our pirs. In Arab nations they use the word Shaykh.
A Tariqah can also be labelled as alien but its similar to how we have different group names in the western world for small level Islamic movements, Facebook Twitter etc is full of them. Tariqah is just old historical style of system.
The same with brelvi, in reality no such group or sect exists, Ahmed Raza Khan himself was a sunni hanafi qadri, he didnt start any movement but only defended the old classical islam v the new modernist/reformist movements. When he wasn't even born 1860s our region had strong Sunni Hanafi Islam roots with strong sufi links, such as the Mughal Empire, Delhi Sultane, Bangal Sultana etc. The modern reformists attacked the old islam whilst he defended it but also criticised any unislamic practises, so when he wasnt even born the reformist v tradionalists war existed, he defended the tradionalists against the reformists modern agenda.
This is why our parents grandparents great grandparents and so on were all sunni hanafi sufis, they never heard of brelvis etc but ofcourse this doesnt mean they practised tasawuff, or spirituality. In reality a spiritual person is soft kind and full of zikr, he prays 5x salah, jummah etc. These days unfortunately everyone is after the dunya, money is everyone goal but this is the modern lifestyle.