New book on eight North American orders

Eight Sufi orders in North America are discussed in a new collection, Varieties of American Sufism: Islam, Sufi Orders, and Authority in a Time of Transition, ed. Elliott Bazzano and Marcia Hermansen (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2020). The book starts with a good introduction by Hermansen.

Of the eight orders, only two are discussed in my Western Sufism: the Sufi Order of Inayat Khan (chapter by Geneviève Mercier-Dalphond) and the Mevlevi Order of America (chapter by Simon Sorgenfrei). The other six are not discussed, as they were established less than fifty years ago.

In terms of new research, the two most valuable chapters are by Bazzano on the Shadhiliyya of the Palestinian shaykh Muhammad Sa‘id al-Jamal (1935-2015), and by Rasul Miller on the Tijaniyya among Black American Muslims in New York City. Nothing significant has been published by anyone on either of these before. The Tijaniyya chapter is especially interesting for what it shows about gender.

Two chapters usefully summarize unpublished PhD dissertations: Sorgenfrei on the the Mevlevi Order of America from his “American Dervish: Making Mevlevism in the United States of America” (University of Gothenburg, 2013) and Melinda Krokus on the Ansari Qadiri Rifa‘i Tariqa from her “The Poetic Body: Love and Knowledge in a Transnational Sufi Order, the Qadiri Rifa'i Tariqa” (Boston University, 2014). 

Three chapters provide accessible summaries of important recently published work: William Rory Dickson on the Golden Sufi Center (from his Living Sufism in North America, 2015), Merin Shobhana Xavier on the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship (from her Sacred Spaces and Transnational Networks in American Sufism, 2018), and Julianne Hazen on the Alami Tariqa (from her Sufism in America, 2017).

The Inayatiyya in Austria

A new article explores the Inayatiyya (formerly: the Sufi Order) in Austria and, especially, its innovative approach to gender. The article is Sara Kuehn and Lukas Pokorny, “On Inayati Female Visions in Austria: Female Leadership in the Western Sufi Tradition,” Religion in Austria 4 (2019), 53–114, available https://www.academia.edu/38435835.

The article focuses on the teachings and activities of Murshida Zumurrud Butta, who was initiated by Pīr Vilayat Inayat Khan, and has been active in Vienna since the mid 1990s. Butta is also a chirāg, and Universal Worship is celebrated. The article also covers the activities of Lisa Malin, the head of the Sufi Healing Order in Austria, also initiated by Pīr Vilayat.

The focus, however, is on what Kuehn and Pokorny call Butta’s “gender-inclusive, or what might be called feminist, hermeneutics” (71). These are explored at length. They have also had an impact on practice. Part of the central prayer of the Inayatiyya asks:

Allow us to recognize Thee in all Thy holy names and forms:
as Rama, as Krishna, as Shiva, as Buddha,
Let us know Thee as Abraham, as Solomon, as Zarathustra,
as Moses, as Jesus, as Muḥammad, 

and in many other names and forms known and unknown to the world

In Vienna, this is now:

Allow us to recognize Thee in all Thy holy names and forms:

as Sītā, Rama, Rādhāand Krishna, as Pārvatī, Shiva, Tara and Buddha,

Let us know Thee as Sarah, Hagar and Abraham, as Deborah, Solomon, Anahita and Zarathustra,

as Asiya, Aaron, Miriam and Moses, as Mary, Jesus, Khadīja and Muḥammad,

and in many other names and forms known and unknown to the world (74)

A rich and very interesting article.

New light on Inayat Khan’s time in Moscow

New light is shed on Inayat Khan’s year in Moscow (1913-14) by Oleg Yarosh, in “Universal Sufism and the Cultic Milieu in Russia at Turn of the xx Century,” Mondi 1, no. 1 (2019), pp. 101-20. Yarosh, who is head of Oriental Philosophy at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, uses not only Inayat Khan’s memoirs but also Russian sources that other researchers have not used.

Inayat Khan’s most important Russian host, it seems, was Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866-1949, pictured), a celebrated poet who had spent much of his life abroad and whose salon was one of the most fashionable in Moscow. He was a follower of Anna Mintslova (1865-1910), a Russian disciple of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), and was also interested in Sufism, which few Russians then were—Sufism was too closely associated with Russia’s Muslims, who were not highly regarded by the elite, says Yarosh. Notes on Sufism are to be found in Ivanov’s archive, and he wrote poems referring to Rumi and Hafez. One of his last poems, written in exile after the Russian Revolution, was “Певец у Суфитов” (Sufi Singer), which hails both Rumi and Hafez, who are linked to the “witness” of Plato.

Ivanov’s understanding of Sufism, then, seems to have something in common with the literary Western Sufism of Goethe and of the later nineteenth century, not especially with that of Inayat Khan. But even if Ivanov did not learn his Sufism from Inayat Khan, a pre-existing interest in Sufism may have been what led him to introduce Inayat Khan into Russian society, and it was evidently through him that Inayat Khan met other celebrities such as the composer and pianist Alexander Scriabin (1871-1915), a friend of Ivanov—celebrities who, one gathers from Yarosh, may not have been quite as taken by Inayat Khan as his memoirs suggest.

Before he met Ivanov, Inayat Khan’s point of arrival in Moscow was a fashionable night-club called “Maxim,” run by an unusual African-American entrepreneur, Frederick Bruce Thomas (1872-1928: see Vladimir Alexandrov, The Black Russian, 2013). A Russian Theosophist, Eugenia Spasskaya, noted in her memoirs that when other Theosophists heard of “a Hindu, Inayat Khan” in this “tavern hell,” they tried to “buy out the naïve teacher,” but that Inayat Khan preferred to stay at Maxim for a while.

A note on the Gathas

In Western Sufism, I noted that the word "Gatha," used by Inayat Khan to designate one set of the "papers" used to transmit the teachings of his Esoteric School, was of Sanskrit origin. What I missed was that the word is also used by Zoroastrians to denote the hymns of Zarathustra/Zoroaster. Inayat Khan enjoyed such hidden references, which in this case also fitted with his Universalism.