NABLUS, West Bank — The classes in Sufism that Jamila Haroun al-Debai took more than a decade ago changed her life. As a member of the General Union of Palestinian Women, Debai used to attend every funeral and demonstration in Nablus, but today she devotes most of her time to Sufism, describing her devotion as “worth all the work she has done in the past.”
Debai leads a group of 40 women who gather every Monday at the Sheikh Muslim Zawiya, a Sufi religious school, in the heart of the old town in Nablus, to attend the hadra, a collective ritual performed by Sufi orders.