Arif Ali/AFP/Getty ImagesThe power to salve? Bringing Sufism into the political fold will create radicals as often as it contains them.

Once certain ideas go mainstream,
it often takes a pretty big flop to disprove them. The United States was
supposed to be hailed as the liberator of Iraq, just as it was going to be easy
to turn Afghanistan into a democracy. Well now, according to commentators from
the BBC to the Economist
to the Boston
Globe, Sufism, being defined as Islam's moderate or mystical side, is
apparently just the thing we need to deal with violent Muslim extremists. Sufis
are the best allies to the West, these authors say; support them, and countries
as diverse as Pakistan and Somalia could turn around.

The Sufi theory has a lot of
variations, but at its core, it's pretty simple: Violent Muslim extremism,
rather than having material and political bases, is caused by certain
belligerent readings of Islam usually associated with Salafism, a movement that
attempts to resurrect the Islam of the prophet Mohammed's time, and Wahhabism,
a similarly conservative branch. If Muslims can be indoctrinated with another,
softer, interpretation of Islam, then the militants, insurgents, and guerrilla
fighters will melt away.

Well, these pundits have gotten
their wish. Pakistan just
announcedthe creation of a seven-member Sufi Advisory Council (SAC) that
is meant to combat the Taliban insurgency by spreading Sufi thoughts and
teachings. The SAC's predecessor was a Musharraf-era PR stunt called the
National Sufi Council that was headed by a rather feudal Punjabi politician --
the group did little more than print a few calendars and hold a musical gala in
Lahore. It is not yet clear whether the seven-member SAC, which met for the
first time June 9, will be independent of the country's Council of Islamic
Ideology, a body outlined in Pakistan's 1973 Constitution that advises whether
laws are consistent with sharia. But
if the SAC does become an official organ, it will add yet another layer of
religious governance to a country wracked by religious conflict.

The creation of the SAC is not good news. It signals an
increase in the politicization of Islam in Pakistan -- if a higher level is
even possible. Now, even the pietist and welfare-oriented groups that have traditionally
abstained from overindulging in government affairs will be tempted to become
mouthpieces for corrupt political actors. For evidence, look no further
than the SAC's new head, a former minister from the regime of ultra-Wahhabi
dictator Zia ul-Haq, whose promotion probably has nothing to do with mysticism
and more to do with the fact that he has called for Sufi Mohammed of Swat to be
tried on charges of mutiny. It is exactly the sort of politicization of
religion that has led to so many problems in Pakistan since independence in
1947.

The usual response by supporters of
the Sufi solution is that thanks to the extremists, Islam has already been
politicized, and therefore propagandist measures promoting Sufism are the only
way to fight back. But that's precisely the problem: Propaganda is inherently
discrediting. Besides, state-sponsored Sufism (which the SAC is) gets
everything backward: In an environment where demagogues are using religion to
conceal their true political and material ambitions, establishing another
official, preferred theological ideology won't roll back their influence. Minimizingthe
role of all religion in government would
be a better idea. Only then could people begin to speak about rights and
liberty.

The opposite is now happening in
Pakistan, fomenting an ongoing religious civil war. The SAC will undoubtedly
embolden extremists by giving them ideological motivation: They now have
evidence to provide young recruits and foot soldiers that the war
they are fighting is, in fact, about the integrity of Islam. Far from reducing
extremists' influence, the SAC is doing them a favor.

This is quite apparent in the types
of cases -- or rather, spats -- that the Sufi Advisory Council will now
adjudicate. Take for example a recent accusation by Syed Munawar Hassan, the
head of the fundamentalist organization Jamat-e-Islami, that Sufi Mohammed, the
man behind the recent imposition of sharia
law in Swat, is a little infidel. Substance is hardly at the heart
of this debate.

It's not that Sufism in and of
itself can't help. In the private sphere, it is welcome, laudable, and indeed
quite beautiful to behold. But the SAC did not spring out of an internal debate
among religious scholars in Pakistan. It came instead from American think tanks
-- like Rand and Heritage
Foundation-- intent on exploiting sectarian divisions in various
Muslim countries, because they insist on addressing the war on terror in
religious terms.

Interestingly enough, another early advocate of this
approach was none other than Benazir Bhutto. Despite having a Shiite heritage,
she became a member of a
traditionally Sufi -- and Sunni -- Pakistani organization called Minhaj
ul-Quran (check outthis YouTube video of her
meeting with Minhaj leaders, in which she doesn't have enough cash on her to
cover the fees). I believe that her reasons for joining Minhaj were part of a
larger plan -- laid out in her book, Reconciliation:
Islam, Democracy, and the West -- to use religious forces to her political
advantage. After all, that impulse is precisely
what led Bhutto to give the stamp of approval to the Taliban in the mid-1990s
-- and led her father to declare Islam the state religion of Pakistan in 1973.
Today is no different. As Ayesha Siddiqa, a leading Pakistani commentator, has
presciently noted, beginning a faith war between Sufi and Salafi in
Pakistan would simply drive more youth toward fundamentalism.

In short, after years of bemoaning
official Saudi sponsorship of Wahhabism, and condemning official Iranian
sponsorship of milleniarian Islam, we are now being asked to celebrate a state-sponsored brand of Islam in Pakistan. We are asked to believe this is
different from those other cases solely because it's a version of the
religion that looks benign.But not only is this unprincipled -- it is going
to backfire, leaving Sufism discredited and more religious resentment among the
numerous peaceful Salafis in the world.