ABSTRACT
The state’s new religious war propaganda considerably enhanced the situation of many Sufis in Iraq and laid the foundation of the regime’s official revival of Sufism a decade later. Chapter 5 describes how religious Sufi scholars and shaykhs stepped out from the shadows of their previous marginalization into the spotlight of the religious war propaganda and gained leading positions in the regime’s newly founded institutes. From 1985 onward, the regime commenced its own program of higher religious education for imams and preachers and in this way offered new career opportunities for many sharīʿa-minded and Salafi-tinged Sufi scholars, particularly from western Iraq. At the same time, the financial partnership of the Baʿth regime and Saudi Arabia during the Iran–Iraq War led to a temporary unrestrained influx of Wahhabi literature into Iraq and prompted some of these loyal Sufi scholars to engage in a surprising attempt to merge Sufism with Salafi ideas. This should be understood as a defensive attempt to establish a modern reformed Sufism against the widespread anti-Sufi polemics, for instance, by Wahhabis.
