Sufism according to Google

Google's search database is, as always, interesting, and shows that the greatest interest in Sufism on the internet is at present found in the United States, Indonesia, and France. A second group of countries with a significant interest in Sufism is made up of India, Germany, Italy, the UK, and Russia. Then come (in descending order) Brazil, Spain, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Canada, Mexico, Israel, Sweden, Ukraine, Argentina, Kazakhstan, and Australia.

As ever, care must be exercised in interpreting these results. The country that actually comes out on top in search volume is Colombia, but this is because of Sufi, short for Sufinanciamiento, the Compañía Suramericana de Financiamiento (South American Finance Company), a member of the Bancolombia group. Also, it is probably not safe to conclude anything from the absence of other countries in the Islamic world, which may not show up for a variety of reasons.

It is also interesting to see what searches are associated with "Sufi." "Dervish" remains popular, as do whirling, Sufi music, and Sufi poetry. In France, people search a lot for Ibn Arabi, as they do in Morocco and Algeria among searches in French. In France there is also a lot of interest in J. M. G. Le Clézio, a Nobel prize winning novelist who is rumored to have converted to Islam and had expressed admiration for Sufism, and in Eric Geoffroy, a Sufi academic, writer, and teacher of Traditionalist origins. There are more searches for Geoffroy in France than for Sufism in Mexico. The only other persons to show up in associated searches are Gerhard Schweizer in Germany and Mirzakarim Norbekov in Russia. Schweizer is a writer whose book on Sufism, Der unbekannte Islam: Sufismus (The Unknown Islam: Sufism) has evoked interest. Norbekov is a healer who evidently uses Sufism in his back story.

Traditionalists: CounterPunch attacks Maryamiyya

Traditionalists: CounterPunch attacks Maryamiyya: An article on the Maryamiyya has just (November 2) been published in CounterPunch, arguing that ""Western... Sufism has increasingly gone in another direction, allying itself more and more with the agendas of Western establishments and the core interests of Empire in the Muslim world."

Western Sufism now shipping

Western Sufism: From the Abbasids to the New Age is now officially published and shipping from Amazon.com! Readers in the UK will still have to wait a month before it reaches Amazon.co.uk, I am afraid.