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Two chapters usefully summarize unpublished PhD dissertations: Sorgenfrei on the the Mevlevi Order of America from his “American Dervish: Making Mevlevism in the United States of America” (University of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

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Sufism

One of the more unusual Western Sufis of the 1970s was Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (1924-2014, pictured), a Hassidic rabbi who became close to the successor of Sam Lewis (1896-1971), Moineddin Jablonski (1942-2001), and was initiated into the Sufi Order by Pir Vilayat Khan (1928-2004). "Reb Zalman" was more rabbi than Sufi, but he was a very universalist rabbi, and during the height of the New Age he taught much the same population in California as did the Western Sufis of the time.

A new book on Reb Zalman has just been published by Gregory Blann: When Oceans Merge: The Contemporary Sufi and Hasidic Teachings of Pir Vilayat Khan and Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (Rhineback, NY: Adam Kadmon, 2019).

Blann is not a professional historian, but rather a Western Sufi, a follower of Shaykh Nur/Lex Hixon (1941-95) and his Turkish shaykh, Muzaffer Ozak (1916-85). He became a Halveti shaykh, and wrote two very useful books on Muzaffer Ozak, Lifting the Boundaries: Muzaffer Efendi and the Transmission of Sufism to the West (2005) and The Garden of Mystic Love: Sufism and the Turkish Tradition (2005). Before following Hixon and Muzaffer, he followed Vilayat Khan, and his new book brings comparable light to bear on another stage of the history of Western Sufism that he observed.

Blann's book is divided into two sections, one on Vilayat Khan (in which Reb Zalman makes some appearances) and one on Reb Zalman. These are followed by some appendices, one containing "Kabbalistic meditations" by Vilayat Khan and one containing wazifas by Reb Zalman.

A useful complement to Blann's When Oceans Merge is Reb Zalman's own autobiography, My Life in Jewish Renewal: A Memoir (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012).

My thanks to BH for drawing When Oceans Merge to my attention.

SOI in Pakistan

Just found: an article on the Sufi Order International in Pakistan (and Dubai). Alix Philippon describes the SOI in Europe from the perspective of a summer camp in the Swiss Alps, and then discusses its Lahore branch and one of that branch's leaders, Ayeda Naqvi, showing how the SOI resolved her spiritual search, as it does the searches of other cosmopolitan Pakistanis who dislike what they see as "general intolerance and the aggressive declarations of all those groups that think they have the monopoly of religious truth."

The article, "De l’occidentalisation du soufisme à la réislamisation du New Age? Sufi Order International et la globalisation du religieux" (Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée 135, July 2014) is available online at http://remmm.revues.org/8487.