Andrew Bostom expands on his article [1] here, showing that the uncritical acceptance by Western analysts and media of Sufism as peaceful is just more intellectual dhimmitude. From the [2] American Thinker:

The Sufi branch of Islam has enjoyed spectacularly good press in the West. Hailed as peaceful mystics who believe jihad is a spiritual quest, nothing violent or unpleasant, Sufism has attracted favorable attention and converts from all sorts of Westerners, from new agers in Marin County, California, to East Coast intellectuals. But Sufis are not necessarily all peace-loving meditative seekers of the divine.

The formation of the “The Sufi Jihadi Squadrons of Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Gilani” in Iraq was recently announced at the jihadist website, “Jihad Unspun”. The Al-Gilani (d.1166) after whom they are named was in fact a Hanbali Sufi.

Sufi jihadists”(?)—a “Hanbali Sufi”(??)—haven’t we been lectured at great length about the singular evils of “Wahhabism” —rooted in the Hanbali school of Muslim jurisprudence, epitomized by Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328)—versus its Islamic “antithesis”, the ecumenical tradition of mystical Sufism???

Notwithstanding the musings of a Muslim journalist and neo-convert from Bolshevism to Sufi Islam (see his bizarre and treacly “profession of faith” here, and a clinical description of what this newly described syndrome represents), Sufism has been linked integrally to the Muslim institution of jihad war since the 11th century C.E.

Consistent with this nexus between Sufism and orthodox Islam, Sufis have supported (fervently) the corollary institution of dhimmitude, replete with all its oppressive and humiliating regulations for non-Muslims. It is also important to highlight, in contrast, the very flimsy theological foundation of the much ballyhooed Sufi notion of the so-called “greater” spiritual jihad. Even the Islamophilic scholar Reuven Firestone has acknowledged the dubious nature of the hadith ostensibly outlining this potential interpretation of jihad: [1]

Its source is not usually given, and it is in fact nowhere to be found in the canonical collections [of hadith]

Of course devout Muslims, and influential 20th century scholars of Islam like the Shi’ite leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (d. 1989), or the brilliant Sunni ideologue Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966), always recognized the marginal Islamic foundations of this putative Sufi construction in their seminal writings and lectures, and dismissed it outright. [2]

Read it all. Many important links and valuable source material in the original.