Bektashi leader dies
Dede Reshat Bardhi
Halil Bárcena
On April 4 took place in Tirana the funeral ceremony of Hajji Dede Reshat Bardhi, spiritual leader of the Bektashi dervishes, who died at age 76 old, after a long illness. The Albanian capital is the world center Bektashi, order, fraternity, sorority (or whatever you call it) that counts, according to its sources, with about eight million followers, from Albania to the United States and Canada and Turkish Anatolia, where its founder is buried in northern Greece.
The Bektashism, which unites in a curious and fascinating mix of elements provinientes Twelver Shi'ism, as well as shamanism pre-Islamic Turkish and even the Eastern Orthodox Church, was created by the mystic of Persian origin Bektash Hajji Wali, who lived in the heart of Turkey, where such community has played an important role in the last two centuries, during the turbulent thirteenth century Islam.
After the law that banned all Sufi expression, delivered by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, coinciding with the birth of modern Turkey, the Bektashi community moved its address to Albania, in 1929, making Tirana the official center of the movement , but its spiritual center is in the Hacibektash village in central Anatolia of Turkey, where he is buried the founder of the order and where every year during the month of August, the festival celebrates an important Bektashi, the that attract thousands of followers worldwide provinientes and no shortage of music and dance performances, two crucial elements in the Bektashi spiritual life, a community in which women play a major role, unlike the vast majority of traditional Sufi orders.
Reshat Bardhi Dede, who was the Bektashi world leader since 1993, paid dearly for having lived in a country of blind obedience Stalinist, having spent a decade in the prisons of the Albanian communist leader Enver Hoxha, when it, the way Mao, launched a cultural revolution wild that swept away any manifestation of religious and spiritual, leaving the country in what is now a wasteland barely any references. However, nothing prevented from ostracism or jail, Dede Reshat Bardhi exercise its role as spiritual leader of a community accustomed to persecution because of their ancestry Shiite. Today, both in Albania and Turkey and other countries where he is seated, the Bektashism is a valuable pillar in defense of secularism, equality of women, interfaith dialogue and the cultivation of a rich spirituality and freedom, the without any religious dogma. And, no doubt, Dede Reshat Bardhi had much to do in this.
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