Jakarta (ANTARA News) – An International Festival for Mystical Music will be organized at Taman Ismail Marzuki, here on July 17-21, 2011.

The festival will be participated in by representatives from Turkey, Morocco, Pakistan, Iran, Egypt and Indonesia as host, Prof. Dr. H. Nasaruddin Umar MA, the religious affairs ministry`s Islamic guidance director general, said here on Wednesday.

Nasaruddin said the festival is expected to help revive Islamic

arts and promote Islamic mystical (sufi) music.

Sufi music includes dances and songs expressing the diverse ways one can approach God, he said.

The Prophet Muhammad also loved sports and music, and Indonesia`s “wali songo” (nine Javanese saints) spread Islam in the country using traditional music, he said.

Music is part of human beings` needs, and the festival will be made a momentum to revive Islamic arts, he said.

The festival will be open to the public free of charge and is to be organized every year or once every two years.

Sufism or tasawwuf is defined by its adherents as the inner, mystical dimension of Islam. A practitioner of this tradition is generally known as a ?ufi or Dervish.

Classical Sufi scholars have defined Sufism as “a science whose objective is the reparation of the heart and turning it away from everything but God.”

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