Two new articles on Western Sufism, and one of relevance

Two new chapters on Western Sufism, and one of relevance to it, have just been published in a new book, Esoteric Transfers and Constructions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, ed. Mark Sedgwick and Francesco Piraino (New York: Palgrave, 2021). They are:

• "The Sufi Shaykh and His Patients: Merging Islam, Psychoanalysis, and Western Esotericism" by Francesco Piraino, pp. 195-217.

The Sufi shaykh in question is Gabriele Mandel, in Italy, who combines Islam, psychoanalysis, and Western Esotericism.

• "Sufism and the Enneagram" by Mark Sedgwick, pp. 219-246.

Covers the complicated relationship between the Enneagram from Gurdjieff to the Naqshbandiyya.

• "Heretical Orthodoxy: Eastern and Western Esotericism in Thomas Moore Johnson’s 'Platonism'" by Vadim Putzu, pp. 273-296.

Not strictly speaking about Sufism, but important, as Thomas Moore Johnson was the publisher of some of the important articles about Sufism by C. H. A. Bjerregaard, and was also connected in other ways.

See https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030617875 for full details.  

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Two chapters usefully summarize unpublished PhD dissertations: Sorgenfrei on the the Mevlevi Order of America from his “American Dervish: Making Mevlevism in the United States of America” (University of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).

Sufism as Art in Berlin

For all those interested in the New York Sufis once led by Muzaffer Ozak, a lecture-performance at the ACUD macht NEU art collective in Berlin, March 31, 2018, at 7:30pm, "Al-Isnad or Chains we can believe in."

The lecture-performance is by Slavs and Tatars, who have previously held exhibitions and lectures around the world inspired especially by one episode in this story, the "Sufi mosque" with lights by the leading modern artist of the time, Dan Flavin. Although this artistic episode is emphasised, Slavs and Tatars are also good on the "back story."

ACUD macht NEU is at Veteranenstraße 21, Berlin 10119. Read more here.

The Sanctuary of Sufism Reoriented

In Western Sufism, I left Sufism Reoriented, the American group descended from Inayat Khan that shifted to Meher Baba and left the Western Sufi milieu, running a preschool in California. A new article by Amos Barshad in Fader reports that it has also built a large “sanctuary” (pictured) in Saranap, California, designed to withstand Californian earthquakes and last 700 years until the expected return of Meher Baba. This project is said to have cost around $35 million, most of it donated by David Overton, a long-term member of Sufism Reoriented who grew rich from his worldwide chain of Cheesecake Factory restaurants. The Sanctuary sounds a bit like a survivalist project, with two thirds of its space under ground. Curious.

My thanks to C for drawing my attention to this article.

The Alami Tariqa of Waterport, New York

A new book by Julianne Hazen, Sufism in America: The Alami Tariqa of Waterport, New York (London: Lexington, 2017) examines a little known American tariqa, the Alamiyya, which, as the title indicates, is based in Waterport, a small settlement on the southern shore of Lake Ontario, some 50 miles from the Niagara Falls. The Alamiyya is of Balkan origin (in the Khalwati-Hayati tariqa), was established in America in the late 1970s, and now has a following that is mostly American, about equally Caucasian and African American.

The book is based on a 2011 PhD dissertation defended at SOAS, and consists of five chapters, with an introduction and a conclusion. The first chapter places the tariqa in its American Sufi, Islamic, and religious contexts. The second chapter traces the tariqa from the Balkans to New York. The third chapter looks at why people join the tariqa. The fourth chapter looks at acculturation, arguing that while the tariqa has accommodated America in many ways, it still strives to follow the Sharia. The fifth chapter looks at the spiritual path that the murids follows.

For those who cannot wait for the book, the original PhD dissertation is available online.

Rumi in the New Yorker

Rumi is the topic of an article in The New Yorker by Rozina Ali, "The Erasure of Islam from the Poetry of Rumi" (January 5, 2017). The author interviews both Omid Safi, who correctly places today's interest in Rumi in the context of nineteenth-century interest in Oriental poetry, and Coleman Barks, today's most important translator of Rumi. A good piece.

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.

New York Sufis profiled in New York Times

The New York Times has just published a long article on the New York Sufi scene, Adela Suliman, “Sufi Sect of Islam Draws ‘Spiritual Vagabonds’ in New York,” New York Times September 23, 2016. The article focuses on the Nur Ashki Jerrahis, but also mentions some other orders, though it gives little space to the larger ethnically-based orders. The article is interesting because it gives a somewhat higher profile to what has previously been fairly low-profile. It also avoids focusing excessively on the angle that is hinted at by the article's URL, which ends "new-york-converts.html."

The article is generally accurate, and only makes one serious error, in stating that Sufism "has been cloaked in secrecy for most of its existence, having been forced underground by Ottoman rulers in the 13th century" and in citing one New York Sufi without comment as saying that Sufism "has never been embraced by mainstream Islam.” Since Osman I did not die until 1326, there were in fact no Ottomans in the 13th century, and when the Ottoman empire did come into being, it generally promoted Sufism, as did the Mamlukes and others. Sufism has, mostly, been embraced by mainstream Islam, then, and has never been cloaked in secrecy, though certain aspects of Sufism have been handled with discretion.

My thanks to Ivan Timonin for drawing my attention to this article.