Sufism is a very significant facet of Islam, purely because of the number of practising Sufis. In Egypt there are 6 million and more than half of the population of Pakistan are Sufis. The retired Dutch diplomat Nicolaas Biegman views the mystics of Islam as the forgotten opposition to intolerant fundamentalism. He has recently published a book of photographs about Sufis in the Middle East and the Balkans.
 
Traditionally dressed men - sometimes also women – are depicted making music, dancing themselves into ecstasy, piercing their flesh with pins in almost trance-like concentration and drinking tea or having a communal meal afterwards. Looking at Biegman's photographs, one feels like an intruder watching intimate events not meant for outsiders' eyes. But the former Dutch ambassador insists it was easy to make contact with the various Sufi groups in Egypt, Syria and the Balkans and that there were no objections to him taking pictures.
 
Struck
Nicolaas Biegman, who studied Arabic and Islam in Leiden university, had his first encounter with the Sufis in the 1960s, when he worked at the Dutch embassy in Cairo. "I turned a corner in the old city of Cairo and suddenly found myself in the middle of a group of dancing Sufis. Their friendliness and the beauty of their music struck me from that first moment."

Personal relationship
Sufism is Islam’s mystic tradition. Just like mystics in other religions, they emphasise the personal relationship between the individual believer and God. The Sufi regards God as his beloved and tries, by means of various rituals, to make this love mutual and to get closer to Him. The most important ritual is the dhikr, a concentrated repetition of one or more of the names of God. In addition to this, Sufi groups also use various forms of music and dance to achieve their goal. In some cases, they achieve a trance-like state during their rituals.
 
Biegman does not consider himself a Muslim or adherent to any form of organised religion, but he became fascinated by the rituals of the Sufis. "The music is great. For me it is like a concert or a play that makes you forget everything around you. The way these people practise their religion appeals to me. If you want to worship God, this seems to me the right way to do it."
 
Since serving as ambassador to Egypt, Biegman has published numerous books about Sufism. With his books, he hopes to draw attention to a tolerant and peaceful side of Islam that remains underexposed in the West. "The representation of Islam in Western media is dominated by a small segment of fundamentalist troublemakers."
 
Tolerant Islam
The mystics, he says, are the radical opposite of these fundamentalists. "Muslim fundamentalists advocate a literal reading of religious texts. They claim an exclusive monopoly on the truth and the right to impose that truth on others, even with violent means. The Sufis, on the other hand, practise tolerance. They believe that the ways towards God are many and that each person has his own way to seek closeness to God. That is a private matter between him and his creator, which no other human being has the right to interfere with."
 
Conversion
That this tolerance also includes Jews, Christians and followers of other faiths, Nicolaas Biegman can attest from his own experience: "In all those years I have never felt unwelcome because I am not a Muslim. No Sufi has ever tried to convert me to Islam."
 
In a world obsessed by the violent aspects of Islam, the Muslim mystics are easily overlooked. But according to Biegman the Sufis shouldn't be underestimated: "A country like Egypt counts six million Sufi followers. And in Pakistan more than half of the population is Sufi. With such large numbers the Sufis are also a significant political factor."