What you say is very true. Many Pirs and their children live in a life of luxury on the donation of their murids. I also find it hard to believe some of the things attributed to Saints, for example the famous Baheshti Darwaza at Pakpattan Sharif. Hazard Nizamuddin Aulia is reputed to have said that anyone who passes thru this gate will go to heaven. Dont think Allah is so unjust that cold blooded killers can have their sins washed away just by traversing the gate.
My love for the Sufis is not because of miracles attributed to them or that visiting their tomb will facilitate achieving my hearts desire. I firmly believe that no departed souls can influence events in this world. IMO most the stories are exaggerated and romanticized with the passage of time.
According to best my knowledge, all the famous Sufi Saints such Abdul Qadir Gilani, Junaid Baghdadi, Data Gunj Bakhsh, Bahauddin Zakaria, Bab Farid, Khawaja sahib of Ajmer & Nizamuddin Aulia & Syed Ali Hamadani of Kashmir were exemplary human beings. Kashmir was mainly Hindu & Budhist country as late as the 13th century. To this day you have Kashmiri Muslim names in common with the Hindus such Butt/Bhatt, Dar (Dhar), Kitchlu, Mantoo, Wattoo etc.
Some would argue that conversions in Punjab took place thru coercion; however, even the most bigoted Hindu scholars will agree that conversions in the Kashmir were because of the Sufis and benevolent kings such as Bud Shah (Sultan Ghiyasuddin Zainul Abideen 1423-1474).
It takes an extra person to convince another person to leave the religion of their forefathers and become Muslim. Kashmir, Sindh & Punjab became predominantly Muslim was because of these exalted persons. Thus my admiration and fondness for the Sufis.
You would like to read about this guy : Sikandar Butshikan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sultan Sikandar and Malik Saif-ud-Din working out the motivational inputs of Mir Mohammad Hamadani waged a cruel crusade against the Hindus to realise their conversion to Islam. It was a sheer holocaust for the Hindus. Declared and projected as Kafirs at war, they were massacred and smothered out mercilessly. Their cultural achievements dotting the length and breadth of Kashmir were put to a ruthless and wholesale ravage and destruction. Sultan Sikandar committed unpardonable crimes, brutal and horrendous, against Hindus, shaming the cruellest of the cruel. Hindus were held out three options, either to get converted to Islam or flee their land of genesis or face perishment. As an outcome of this brutal government decree, thousands of Hindus buckled under pressure and accepted Islam, thousands fled the land and thousands accepted death as an alternative to conversion.