Varieties of American Sufism: Islam, Sufi Orders, and Authority in a Time of Transition

304 Pages·2020·1.617 MB·English

by  Elliott Bazzano (editor), Marcia Hermansen (editor)

Varieties of American Sufism

Varieties of American Sufism
Islam, Sufi Orders, and
Authority in a Time of Transition
Edited by
ELLIOTT BAZZANO
and
MARCIA HERMANSEN
Cover art by Michael Green (michaelgreenarts.com)
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2020 State University of New York
All rights reserved
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For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bazzano, Elliott, 1983– editor. | Hermansen, Marcia K., 1951– editor.
Title: Varieties of American Sufism : Islam, Sufi orders, and authority in a
time of transition / Elliott Bazzano and Marcia Hermansen, editors.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2020] | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019017374 | ISBN 9781438477916 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781438477923 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Sufism—United States. | Islam—United States. | Islamic sects—
United States.
Classification: LCC BP188.8.U6 V37 2020 | DDC 297.40973—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019017374
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction ix
Marcia Hermansen
1 The Message in Our Time: Changing Faces and Identities
of the Inayati Order in America 1
Geneviève Mercier-Dalphond
2 The Golden Sufi Center: A Non-Islamic Branch of the
Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya 27
William Rory Dickson
3 The Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship: Diverse Identities
and Negotiated Spaces 55
Merin Shobhana Xavier
4 A Shadhiliyya Sufi Order in America: Traditional Islam
Meets American Hippies 85
Elliott Bazzano
5 The Mevlevi Order of America 121
Simon Sorgenfrei
6 From the Balkans to America: The Alami Tariqa in
Upstate New York 151
Julianne Hazen
vi Contents
7 “There is an ‘I’ deeper than me”: The Ansari Qadiri Rifa‘i
Tariqa and Transcendence in America 175
Melinda Krokus
8 When the Divine Flood Reached New York: The Tijani
Sufi Order among Black American Muslims in
New York City 209
Rasul Miller
Contributors 237
Index 241
Acknowledgments
Merin Shobhana Xavier’s chapter 3 is based on Sacred Spaces and Trans-
national Networks: Bawa Muhaiyaddeen and Contemporary Shrine Cultures
(2018). Thank you to Bloomsbury Press for permission to republish some
of this material.
Julianne Hazen’s chapter 6 draws on material from her monograph
Sufism in America: The Alami Tariqa of Waterport, New York. London:
Lexington Books, 2017.
vii
Cover Art by Michael Green
The cover artist, Michael Green, is known for his work on The Illumi-
nated Rumi and The Illustrated Prayer. Samples of his art may be viewed
and ordered at https://www.michaelgreenarts.com. His explanation of the
cover image, chosen to represent American Sufism, follows:
The art on the cover of this book illuminates a teaching given by His
holiness Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, one of the Sufi masters visited in the
following pages.
Within every human breast shine two hearts, one hid within
the other. The outer heart points downward, and loves chosen
things of form in the world—our family and friends, our lands
and possessions. The inner heart is a secret heart, and it gazes
upward with facxe-to-face seeing into the sacred presence of the
Great Mystery. The light of singularity abounds in fuill gladness,
like coming upon light in thick darkness, like receiving treasure
in poverty, and existence is delivered from all limitations.
May we open, may we flower,
may we know our deep desire,
May we walk this world with eyes wide open,
Walk this world with hearts on fire.
BLESSED BE
viii
Introduction
Marcia Hermansen
This volume brings together detailed ethnographic and historical work on
diverse Sufi orders operating in the United States. While it is generally
observed that the Indian mystic Inayat Khan introduced Sufism to the
United States in 1910,1 it was not until the late 1960s and early 1970s that
we find larger numbers of Americans participating in movements related
to Sufism, together with growing public awareness of the phenomenon.
The themes of “what is a Sufi?” and “what is the relationship of
Sufism to ‘orthodox’ or ‘mainstream’ Islam?” are ones that vex this study
and are often debated among American Sufis themselves, taking on new
dimensions with an upsurge in Islamic revival on a global scale beginning
in the 1970s. As American popular culture and the popular imagination
is always changing and evolving, both in its self-understanding and in
its view of Islam, Muslims, and Muslim-majority countries, the realities
and the images of Sufism encountered by Americans have likewise not
remained static. Participants in the movements studied here are therefore
situated in and view themselves against a diverse and contested background
of both the Islamic and the Sufi.
The appeal and significance of the chapters gathered here is that
many of them provide for the first time detailed reports on certain Sufi
orders by scholars who have carried out in-depth participant observation
of the movements involved. Such studies are able to provide us with rel-
evant examples of the current and ongoing challenges facing small and
somewhat exotic religious groups in diverse American contexts. Rather
than focusing exclusively on leaders, histories, and texts, many chapters
ix