A Building's Spiritual Core

By Nevine El-Aref, "Dancing like a Mawlawi" - Al-Ahram Weekly - Cairo, Egypt
24 - 30 April 2008Issue No. 894, Special

Nevine El-Aref visits mediaeval Cairo's 17th-century Mawlawiya complex, newly opened following 10 years of restoration

Looking up at the awe inspiring Mawlawiya complex with its distinguished Ottoman architecture, and one cannot help wondering if restoring such a magnificent monument will bring back the Whirling Dervishes and their spellbinding performances in mediaeval Cairo? Perhaps it is not out of the question.

The Mawlawi complex with its museum, the monumental presence of the Sunqur Al-Saadi Madrasa (religious school), the Hassan Sadaqa Mausoleum and the Yeshbak Palace, is of great historical significance, not only because it witnessed the end of the Mawlawi Sect but also for its unique presence in Egypt as the only "Samaakhana", where the Mawlawi Dervishes performed their spectacular, trance-like rituals.

The museum is in a very popular area near the Citadel, between two narrow thoroughfares of Manah Al-Waqf Street and Al-Siyufiyah Street.

This is where a sect of the Mawlawi order lived in Cairo from 1607 until 1945, and was one of the last built during the period of the Mawlawi confraternity. Its interior space and design are intimately linked with the cosmological symbolism represented by the samaa (listening) dance.

As in other rare examples from this later period, the area assigned to the samaa function is circular. The circle according to the cosmological doctrines of the Islamic philosophers is the expressive synthesis of the cosmos.

Over time the samaa dance has also been defined as a mystic-symbolical interpretation of the movements of the cosmos, according to the speculative elaboration of Mustafa Yaaqub Dede and Mehmed Celebi Al-Ismail Rusuhi.

(...)

The Samaakhana, which forms part of the Mawlawi complex, has been restored and reopened through the combined efforts of professor of architecture Giuseppe Fanfoni and the Italian-Egyptian Centre for Professional Training in the Field of Restoration and Archaeology*.

The Prince Sunqur Al-Saadi Madrasa is another part of the complex. Al-Saadi lived during the reign of Sultan Al-Nasir Mohamed Ibn Qala'un, a period of particular wealth for Egypt, and is known to have built several monumental buildings. However he considered the construction of this madrasa outside Cairo's city walls as the most important architectural work of his life.

The magnificence of his palace presents architectural aspects similar to those of the Bashtak Palace in mediaeval Cairo, and is considered to be one of the most impressive Mamluk buildings in Cairo, even if it is reduced to ruins today.

(...)

The layout of the Samaakhana was geometrically developed in such a way that when one traces concentrically a circle whose diameter is equal to the radius of the Samaakhana, one visualises one of the two orbits made by the dervishes during the ritual performance.

The museum inside the complex exhibits photographs of the Mawlawis, as well as some documents. Some showcases set up in this area exhibit archaeological findings of the remains of the madrasa.

There are also two other showcases in the great iwan (vaulted room opening onto a covered court), one of which exhibits Rumi's book, the Mensnevi, donated to the Italian Centre by the Turkish Ministry of Culture during the ceremony held in the Samaakhana on 18 January 1998 to celebrate the completion of its restoration. The other shows a Mawlawi dress donated by the Istanbul Samaa Group during a samaa that took place on 30 June 1998.

Ali Taha, director of the fine arts restoration department in the Centre of Professional Training for Restoration (CPTR), told Al-Ahram Weekly that the Samaakhana was the last centre to remain active after the edict that closed the tikkiya (the dance hall) and the dissolution of the Dervishes' Turkish confraternities by Ataturk in 1925.

In 1945, the Mawlawi group in Cairo was dissolved and the whole complex was abandoned. The building was occupied by an NGO and used as a hospice and outpatients department, which led to its decay with various parts literally falling to pieces.

During the late 1970s Carla Bouri, the then head of the Italian Cultural Centre, expressed an interest in restoring the impressive complex and gave some attention to the site. In 1979, Fanfoni organised a Cantiere-Scuola (a training school) for the recovery of the Mawlawi architectural complex, which is still functioning.

The CPTR was then founded to carry out training activities for technicians and craftsmen who in 1984 began the restoration of the Samaakhana in collaboration with the La Sapienza University in Rome and various Egyptian universities.

(...)

To rescue the complex, Fanfoni invented a solution through the reintegration of the walls, made whole with slabs of reinforced concrete incorporated into the thickness of the wall and placed in the gaps left by the rotten wood.

Buttresses which had lost their foundation rested on it. After eliminating the salt encrustation, the walls were consolidated by injection of lime and filler with a composition similar to that of the original mortar. Against the rising damp a particular epoxy-resin was injected in holes passing through the whole thickness of walls just under the level of the Samaakhana's ground floor.
Leaked water was pumped out and all the wooden beams were cleaned and restored.

To return the dome to its original round shape, Fanfoni made three rings on the outside, each consisting of six steel parts connected together with suitable braces and resting on the wooden ribs by means of special sliding devices.

After impregnating the wood of the dome in order to recover some of its elasticity, work was carried out on the six braces of each ring, gradually tightening the reins of the dome by 20cm. This had the effect of raising the apex of the dome by 12cm.

The internal layers of the dome were firmly attached to the ribs by binding the wooden laths with bundles of wire mesh fixed in place with mortar similar to that of the original. The external texture of wooden laths was restored. The paintings were cleaned and restored to their original condition.

Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said all the restoration had been carried out according to the latest and most scientific methods. "Every effort was made to ensure that all original architectural features were retained," he said.

The beautiful restoration of the Samaakhana has kept its spirit intact. It is still peaceful and serene, even though a building that loses its residents loses part of its spiritual core.

*[ http://www.utlcairo.org/generale/organiz/chiedove_2.htm
http://www.utlcairo.org/progetti/progetti/formazioneprofess.html]

In the Fire of Your Love

By Emine Yildirim, "Kürşat Kızbaz’s ‘Rumi’ fit for TV rather than silver screen" - Today's Zaman - Istanbul, Turkey
Saturday, April 26, 2008

Without a doubt, the prose and philosophy of Mevlana Muhammed Jelaluddin Rumi has been influential in the lives of many.

Given that he was a 13th century spiritual figure whose legacy is still being continued by his family (the Çelebis) and his devout followers, perhaps one could go so far as to say that Rumi’s outreach is not very far from that of Buddha, Jesus, Moses and Mohammed.

If you think I’m exaggerating, I suggest that you visit the Web site of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which declared 2007 to be the Year of Mevlana as the sage of openness, tolerance and overwhelming power of universal love.

Plus, did you know that this Muslim mystic has been the best-selling poet in the United States in recent years, with over 250,000 copies sold of his masterpiece, “Mesnevi”?

But really, why Rumi? What is so special about this Sufi dervish besides the fact that he’s the one thing that all us Turks take pride in? Take for example the verses:

“Come, come again, whoever you are, come!
Heather, fire worshipper or idolatrous, come!
Come even if you broke your penitence a hundred times.
Ours is the portal of hope, come as you are.”

Or for example:

“Oh God, let all lovers be content.
Give them happy endings.
Let their lives be celebration.
Let their hearts dance in the fire of your love.”

Of course these are just a handful of teasers in the realm of Rumi’s beliefs of self-abandonment to a higher force, ecstatic flight into the infinite and, most importantly, tolerance hand in hand with unconditional love.

As for the latest installment of films depicting the life and teachings of Rumi, novice director Kürşat Kızbaz’s 80-minute documentary, titled “Mevlana Celaleddin-i Rumi: Aşkın Dansı” (The Dance of Love), was released in theaters across Turkey this week.

An incredibly conventional film that belongs more to the small screen than the cinema, “Mevlana Celaleddin-i Rumi: Aşkın Dansı” is nevertheless a decent exercise in promoting and explaining Rumi’s beliefs through extensive interviews with his descendants, international scholars, researchers, pilgrims and devotees, supported by voiceover readings of his poems and reconstructions of Rumi’s life in the 13th century.

(...)

Rumi’s love for Shams surpassed any self-consciousness that might have brought the fear of being misunderstood.

Reading Rumi’s poetry, you always imagine the two men to have Buddha-like smiles on their faces, ready to give you a huge bear hug should you run into them.

But of course, that’s just my imagination running wild after reading verses like:

“Only from the heart can you touch the sky”

and

“You were born with wings.
Why prefer to crawl through life?”

“Mevlana Celaleddin-i Rumi: Aşkın Dansı” is not the best film portraying the brilliance of Rumi and his internationally acclaimed philosophy; however, it is admirable in its intention to promote Rumi’s ideals in the current state of Turkish affairs, where a lack of tolerance is creating a large hole that is dividing the many communities of the country.

And for those who are interested in learning more, translator Coleman Barks’ bestselling “Essential Rumi” is a good place to start.

I believe it’s appropriate to finish with another Rumi quote, one that all can take to heart:

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing, there is a field.
I will meet you there.”

Askini Ver Bana

By Irfan Aligi, "Give me your love: the whirling dervishes of Mevlana Rumi" - Daily Times - Lahore, Pakistan
Friday, April 25, 2008

Karachi: Music from the flute is capable of moving hearts and can force minds to adopt a philosophy or creed ever strange to them.

The sufis around the world cannot separate themselves from the moving tones and whirling ecstatic dances of musical organs, largely because of the flute, said Nameera Ahmed while talking to Daily Times at the premiere of her documentary film “Give me your love: a journey into Mevlevi Music”.

“I choose to name my documentary Askini ver bana: mevlevi müzikine bir yolculuk, meaning ‘Give me your love: a journey into Mevlevi Music’. I was always curious to discover what dervishes do by putting themselves into an ecstatic whirlpool haal with every step, moved rhythmically under the influence of the flute,” explained Nameera.

The documentary explores the role of music, especially that of the reed flute, in the lives of contemporary spiritual followers of the thirteenth century Persian Sufi poet-mystic, Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi. Mevlevi Sufis are most popularly identified internationally as the “Whirling Dervishes”.

Rumi referred to the making and playing of the ney in his poetry as a metaphor for the training and subsequent transformation of the human spirit. The dervish claim that the melody of the flute resembles the sweetness of the voice of the Almighty, she explained.

The flute is made of reed that grows at the riverbank and when it is pulled out, sadness prevails; when it is played, hearts are moves, stated the director.

The informal screening of “Askini ver bana” was held at the house of former Pakistan Television news anchor, vocalist and author Sabuha Khan, and was organized under the flag of UTAQ, a society for the promotion of arts and culture.

The screening ceremony attracted prominent admirers of arts and culture, including Tasneem Hashmi, S. Nusrat Ali and Maj (retd) Inayat Sher Khan.

Khan said that Nameera’s film was an attempt to remove the doubts that Islam restricts music. According to Khan, Ahmed has produced “fabulous work” at a very young age. She claims that her work brings people of different religions and culture close to each other. The message of the whirling dervishes is of love, peace and tranquility.

The documentary was first selected for screening at ‘Sol e Luna DOCFEST’ in Palermo, Italy in July. It was selected at the Cinema Verite-Iran International Documentary Film Festival, Baku International Audio Visual festival of Young Authors, Sufism and the Performing Arts Programs, International Festival of Short Films on Culture.

It was selected for the Kara Film Festival in November that was postponed. However, it will be screened at the festival in June.

The 30-minute documentary is shot entirely in Turkish with English subtitles.

This poetic symbolism holds power for the Sufis, who reveal their connection to the ney. The players are all individuals actively engaged in the production, performance and perpetuation of the Mevlevi music tradition.

The film documents the story of a ney-maker, a young whirling dervish, a female student, a reed-flute enthusiast, a ney teacher, a spiritual teacher, a silversmith, who is a friend of the Mevlevis, and a senior ney player.

While maintaining a sense of timelessness, the artistic treatment of the film highlights everyday aspects of their experiences, working methods and processes and performances within a cultural context.

In the film, the Mevlevis present their own approaches and esoteric philosophies about music through interviews and discussions that draw upon sufi ideas on love and Muslim theological traditions.

The viewer gets a taste of their world, philosophy and beliefs, and their journey of love explored through the ‘Sema’ or ‘Audition’, while seeking to juxtapose the relationship between the sublime and the mundane.

Ahmed was born in Karachi. She completed her BA in graphic design from Bilkent University, Ankara. She then worked as a designer in Istanbul and on her return, she worked as a graphic designer and illustrator.

Later on, she went back to Turkey for her Masters degree in Visual Arts and Visual Communication design at the Sabanci University, Istanbul where she focused on documentary filmmaking.

Presently, she teaches filmmaking at the University of Karachi and writes for the Leonardo Reviews. She also directed “Reflections in the mirror,” this year.

Out of the Conflict

BBC News Africa, "Somali children freed from mosque" - BBC International - UK
Friday, April 25, 2008

Most of the Somali children captured during a raid on a mosque have now been released, the police say.

Amnesty International had called for the release of the 41 boys taken from the al-Hidaya mosque in the capital, Mogadishu. Ethiopian troops said they had detained the boys because they suspected they were being trained as insurgents.

About 80 people were killed this week during fierce fighting between Ethiopian troops and Islamist fighters. Among the dead were religious leaders from the Tabliq Sufi sect, which had stayed out of the conflict.

The UN emergency relief co-ordinator John Holmes has called for action against those involved in the attack.

Mr Holmes said there had been an increasing trend of indiscriminate use of force against civilians by all parties in the conflict in contravention of international humanitarian law.

(...)

The country has not had an effective national government since 1991.

[Picture: Witnesses said civilians were among the dead. Photo: BBC News]

The Divine Word

By Sarah Touahri, "Sufi culture festival aims to spread tolerance and peace" - Magharebia, USA
Friday, April 25, 2008

Rabat, Morocco: Across the centuries, Sufism has helped bridge the divide between East and West. As Moroccans show a growing interest in Sufism and its principles of tolerance and peace, organisers gave the April 17th-24th festival of Sufi culture in Fez the name "East West."

"[Sufi culture] allows us to discover and make Islam accessible as a civilisation project; and thus to sign up to a form of value-driven Islam which encourages civil and constructive attitudes and behaviour," festival chairman Faouzi Skali told Magharebia.

Because of globalisation, Skali added, cultures, identities, religions and spiritual concepts are returning to centre stage in a violent fashion known as the "clash of civilisations".

"Our world is currently searching for true wisdom, a universal spiritual way, a sort of true balance which could hold back this globalisation built on the elimination of certain cultures and ways of thinking to benefit others," he concluded.

Mustafa Chérif, an Algerian researcher who specialises in dialogue between cultures and civilisations, addressed the same issue at the festival's opening, saying that Sufism is capable of finding solutions by bringing harmony and recognising difference and diversity.

He believes that the only real spirituality is that linking man: the spirit of the East and the reason of the West.

While the interest shown by Moroccans in Sufi culture is not new, it has intensified in recent years in order to face the global rise of extremism, sociologist Jamal Bahrioui explained.

"This kind of event is aimed at attracting the greatest possible number of Moroccans to sign up to this culture, which leads human beings to reconciliation among themselves and society, and thus to spreading the culture of tolerance and peace," Bahrioui said, adding, "The youths are the most involved in this."

Indeed, there has been a high turnout of young people in Fes this week for the festival. Some are already familiar with the concept of Sufism, while others seek to satisfy their curiosity.

Student Sellam Mohamedine came from Oujda to the spiritual capital to join in some of the festival's programme of activities. "I came to meet thinkers and intellectuals to debate the importance of Sufism. I think that if we are to thwart the ills of the current age, including stress and extremism, we ought to turn to this culture," he said.

Among the festival's most popular features are the concerts given by Sufi troupes and groups from the various brotherhoods. It is more than entertainment, however; music is at the heart of of Sufism. As Moroccan singer Oumnia Abou Amal explained, the apotheosis of the Sufi mystical process is spiritual song showing moral responsibility and a great sensitivity.

"Sufi music is an expression of sacred song," Moroccan musicologist Abdelfettah Benmoussa tells Magharebia. "[It] corresponds to the spiritual state of one to whom celestial music – primordial and absolute sound – becomes audible: the divine word."

The festival of Sufi culture brought together a swathe of artists, researchers and intellectuals from several foreign countries. The programme also included discussions on Sufism and Dhikr (invocation) evenings led by brotherhoods from various countries and cultures.

[Picture: Members of Morocco's Qadiriya Boutchichiya confraternity perform at the Sufi cultural festival in Fez. Photo by Getty Images]

239th Urs of Hazrat Syed Miran Mauj Darya Bukhari

By Nasir Butt, "Hazrat Mauj Darya urs attracting thousands" - The Post - Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan
Friday, April 25, 2008

Lahore: The 239th three -day Urs celebrations of renowned Sufi saint and famous spiritual leader Hazrat Syed Miran Mauj Darya Bukhari which started on Wednesday in traditional way reached peak on Thursday.

The Urs began in a traditional way with Dhamal on drum beats by the devotees and illuminated building of the shrine continue to attract thousands of the devotees in the provincial metropolis for the second day.

The official celebrations were commenced by the religious scholars while laying floral wreath after Asr prayers Wednesday and soon after the inauguration the excitement among the devotees touched its peak.

It may be mentioned here that although the official ceremony will be continued for three-days the activities and visit of devotees would remain a regular feature for over three weeks.

Besides the visit of people from all over the country and abroad as well to participate in the annual Urs celebrations, the special functions of Qawali's would also remain the main feature of the Urs celebrations.

Besides the arrangements for the distribution of charity food and special functions, the locals and shrine committee also made comprehensive arrangements not only to facilitate the devotees but also to provide a healthy environment to the shopkeepers so that they could also earn good business from this activity.

(...)

As per routine the devotees spend maximum time at the shrine while reciting holy book Quran and to pray to Allah Almighty for the more blessings to the departed soul of Sufi Saint. They also distributed charity food (Lunger) on their own on this occasion.

Jakadan Zaman Lafiya

By Professor Abdalla Uba Adamu, "The Khalifa In London: Sheikh Qaribullah As Ambassador For Peace" - Leadership Nigeria - Abuja, FCT, Nigeria
Wednesday, April 23, 2008

The British Government, through the British High Commission, Abuja, Nigeria, extended a special invitation to the leader of the Qadriyyah Sufi Movement in West Africa, Sheikh Qaribullah Nasir Kabara, of Kano State, Nigeria, to visit key religious institutions in the UK in the first week of March 2008 for dialogue on conflict resolution and peaceful engagement with Islamic institutions.

Professor Abdalla Uba Adamu, a cultural anthropologist with special interest in the Anthropology of Islamic Groups accompanied the Khalifa’s team.

He made a film of the trip called The Khalifa in London – Jakadan Zaman Lafiya [Ambassador for Peace] which was screened on Friday 18th April 2008 on the eve of the Qadriyya Sufi Movement’s Maukibi for 2008. This is his report of the trip.

Engagement with Islam has become the new template for understanding Muslim peoples and creating a new world order in which peace, mutual respect and understanding of each others’ perspectives has become necessary to make the world a better, secure and more peaceful place.

Consequently it has become increasingly clear that the only way to achieve a successful engagement based on mutual respect is through dialogue on common grounds.

It is based on this that the British High Commission, Abuja, Nigeria, extended a special invitation to Sheikh Qaribullah Nasir Kabara, the Khalifa of the Qadriyya Sufi Movement in West Africa, to visit the United Kingdom and interact with various Muslim and Christian institutions with the view of exchanging ideas concerning the role of young Muslims in maintaining peace on the planet.

What makes the invitation to the Khalifa more appealing was the fact of his being a mesmeric node of a vast network of Qadriyyah Sufi adherents throughout Western and Northern Africa – most of whom are young men and women who will increasingly play a significant role in the balance of peace in the future.

Khalifa Sheikh Qaribullah Nasir Kabara is the leader of the Qadriyyah Sufi Movement in Nigeria and the entire West African region. He ascended to the Khalifa in 1996 after the death of his father, Sheikh Muhammad Nasir Kabara.

With adherents stretching from Chad basin to the Senegambia, the Qadriyyah Tariqa is the most focused concentration of Sufi adherents in post-colonial Africa. Under the leadership of Khalifa Sheikh Qaribullah, the Qadriyyah has become more globalised, while retaining its local roots, using media technologies to spread the message of peace and conflict resolution through mutual dialog – for instance through a well-developed website.

Thus the invitation for the Khalifa to visit key strategic institutions in the UK as part of larger strategy of show of respect for the Khalifa and his approach to peaceful co-existence amongst people of differing faiths is significant in its wider implications for mutual respect for all religions. The visit to the United Kingdom took place between 2nd to 6th March, 2008.

The first institution visited was the School for Oriental and African Studies where the Khalifa and his team were met by Prof. Graham Furniss and Prof. Phillip Jaggar – both Hausa scholars and who could speak the Hausa language very fluently. Indeed during the discourse on manuscript preservation, Prof. Graham Furniss impressed the Khalifa’s team by recited, off hand, and word-for-word, a famous poem by the late Sheikh Nasir Kabara, Yaro Ka San Akwai (Child, You Know There Is).

As I said earlier, the main objective of the visit to SOAS is to explore ways of preserving Arabic manuscripts and how Darul Qadriyyah could help in this process. The sharing of the old manuscripts of the Nasir Kabara Diwan (volume) is one of the successful outcomes of the interactions.

The next visit was to the offices of the Union of Muslim Organisations in the UK and Eire, where the Khalifa exchanged views with officials about the significance of bringing differing Muslim groups together under the same umbrella for peaceful dialogue with other clusters of believers.

This visit highlights how the various Muslim groups in Nigeria – Qadriyyah, Tijaniyya, Izala, Shi’a could form an internal network of advocacy for peace among the various adherents of Islam, not only in Nigeria, but also in the West African sub-region; at the same time such internal network could also form a basis for networking with non-Muslim organizations for further dialogue. The outcome of the visit to the UMO was to highlight the power of unions in religious dialogue.

Another significant site visited was the Houses of Parliament in London where the Khalifa and his entourage were given exclusive tours of the Houses of the Lords and the Houses of Commons.

Indeed, the Khalifa and two of his team were given an exclusive chance to watch the Prime Minister’s Question Time during which the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, showed his oratory and skills in constructive dialogue with the opposition Members of Parliament.

Later, the team had a chance to meet with John Robertson, Labour MP who had earlier in 2007 visited Kano and paid courtesy calls to the two Khalifas of the Sufi movements in Nigeria – Sheikh Qaribullah for Qadriyyah, and Sheikh Isyaka Rabi’u for Tijaniyya.

John Robertson remembered his visit which was conducted on the basis of the British All Party Parliamentary Group on Nigeria for which John Robertson was the Chairman, and the recommendations of the report of the Group on how best to move Nigeria forward is through engagement in dialogue.

Although I have lived in London for some years – and during its most colorful years of the Punk era in the 1980s – I have never had the opportunity to visit the Houses of Parliament until this visit. The Khalifa’s team were given a special tour of the Houses of Parliament and its two chambers – House of the Lords and House of Commons and at the end of the tour, the Khalifa and two of his team were given a special concession to watch the Prime Minister’s Question Time. The rest of us watched it from the restaurant of the Houses of Parliament on TV!

The Khalifa was profoundly affected by the sheer transparency he witnessed during the Question Time. As he told us, apparently a contract for the production of new Police uniforms in the UK had been awarded, and a member of Parliament was commenting that he once saw the Prime Minister shaking hands with the person given the contract – what’s the explanation!

The Prime Minister gave an answer that was quite accepted by everyone. In Nigeria such a situation would not probably have arisen, for leaders are used to giving contracts to their cronies without a care about public accountability.

After the Parliamentary visit, then a lunch meeting took place at the excellent Indian Redfort Restaurant in London, and highlights another significant point on the role of dialogue in combating terror.

The lunch was hosted by Arthur Snell, the Head of Counter-Terrorism Division of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Again during this business lunch frank issues were discussed about the role of religious leaders in peaceful dialogue. Interestingly enough, the dialogue between the Khalifa and Arthur Snell was conducted entirely in Arabic.

No one would have been given the opportunity of going to London without visiting the BBC – and the Khalifa’s team were no exception. At the BBC headquarters at Bush House in London, the team was met with courtesy and utter respect and promptly taken to the Hausa Section where the Khalifa recorded a live interview on his visit with Suleiman Ibrahim Katsina.

Almost immediately after the interview, calls started coming in from as far away places as Malaysia and Saudi Arabia welcoming the Khalifa to London and congratulating him for his advocacy for dialogue, not violence , as a means of bringing peace on the planet.

On the final day of the visits, which was Friday 7th March, 2008, the Khalifa was hosted at the London Central Mosque by the Imam, who paid a courtesy call to the Khalifa after the Friday prayers and they exchanged perspectives on Da’awah work and the need to keep emphasising unity among the Ummah.

A finale to the day was a special Zikr session held in the honor of the Khalifa at two central London mosques which stopped 3.30 a.m – and only because the Khalifa had a plane to catch back to Nigeria the following day.

The visit – facilitated in part by The Bridge Builders – was tremendously successful in providing an ecology of Islamic groups most have never seen before.

Full of frank discussions about the role of Islam in maintaining world peace, and specifically the role of Tariqa movements in advocating peace, the manner and intellectualism with which the Khalifa conducted himself – in both English and Arabic – impressed me as a bystander about his emerging role as Ambassador for Peace – Jakadan Zaman Lafiya.

A film of the journey – significant for the insight it provides into how religious groups send messages about peace to the world has been made. It is called The Khalifa in London – Ambassador for Peace.

It is the first full-length documentary by Visually Ethnographic Productions – a documentary film unit with special focus on cultural anthropology of northern Nigeria.

An audio of the Qasidas – Poems – recited for the Khalifa in the two London mosques is also available. All from the Qadriyyah Movement Headquarters in Kano, Nigeria.

Interestingly, one of the Qasidas was sung in a hip-hop style form in English by Rakim Fetuga of the UK Islamic Da’awah rap and hip-hop group, Mecca2Medina and who had previously performed at the British Council in Kano, Nigeria.

[Picture: Shaykh Qaribullahi Nasiru Kabara. Photo: Darul Qadiriyyah. Read the Shaykh biography and visit the Tariqa's website http://darulqadiriyyah.org/mb/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15&Itemid=27]

A Way to Serve Islam

Staff Reporter, "‘Bureaucrats hurdle to peace in region’" - The Post - Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan
Thursday, April 24, 2008

Islamabad: Sarwar Chishty, Khadim [Descendent / Guardian of the shrine] Astana Alia Khwaja Gharib Nawaz said that intelligence agencies and bureaucracies were the main hurdle to the India-Pakistan peace process.

He also said state machinery in both the countries must end its negative role in the larger interest of peace and stability in the region.

Addressing a press conference on Tuesday at a local hotel, he urged both the states to relax their visa policies and advised to open more consulate offices in both the countries.

People-to-people contact can be a major source of strength to the peace process, he said.

He pledged to facilitate travel for pilgrims who intended visiting Khwaja Gharib Nawaz's shrine. He said the main purpose of his visit was promotion of Sufism.

"Sufism is a way to serve Islam with a better approach. The world has welcomed the values of Sufism which is universal in approach and application. South Asian people are well aware of Sufism but we should promote it throughout the world," he said.

[Picture from http://khwajagharibnawaz.com/khwajagharibnawaz.htm]

The Ability To Cross All Barriers

By APP, "Rafi Peer Theatre launches international mystic music festival" - The International Post - Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan
Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Rafi Peer Theatre Workshop (RPTW) in collaboration with Telenor Pakistan has announced launch of the annual International Mystic Music Sufi Festival (IMMSF) 2008 with its main part to be based in Multan, the city of saints and shrines.

The festival will take place in Multan from April 24 to 27 at the Old Stadium while the debut was held on April 21 at the National Institute of Folk and Traditional Heritage (LokVirsa) Islamabad.

From April 25 to 27, the performances will be presented in Lahore at the Peeru's Cafe. In Karachi, the festival will conclude on April 30, at the Beach View Barden.

The festival brings to Pakistan a rich variety of Sufi music, both foreign and local. The featured groups will hail from Iran, Egypt, Algeria, Afghanistan, Morocco, Spain, France, Syria, India, the US, and Pakistan.

The idea for the touring festival is based on sufism's message of peace and unity and the fact that, in today's world of increasing division and disparity, the message of Sufi music should be heard throughout the world.

Sufi music has the ability to cross all geographical, national, religious, and language barriers, and should thus be used as an instrument of spiritual renewal that, in today's world in increasing division and disparity, the message of Sufi music should be heard throughout the world.

The idea for the festival was conceived in 2004, when Rafi Peer Theatre Workshop noticed the dearth of platforms available for the highly learned Sufi musicians of the subcontinent and elsewhere.

Sufi musicians had been left to find their way in the highly commercialized and complex music industry.

[Visit the Rafi Peer Theatre Worksop's website: http://www.peerfestivals.com/]

The Universal Concept of Mysticism

By Schezee Zaidi, "PAL books highlight literary contributions" - The International News - Islamabad, Pakistan
April, Wednesday 23, 2008

Islamabad: Highlighting the regional literary contributions upholding the mystical concepts, freedom of expression, and socio-cultural tone, Pakistan Academy of Letters [PAL] has launched three more books of the series of ‘Pakistani Adab Ke Memar’ titled ‘Hazrat Sacchal Sarmast: Life and Works’ by Dr Abdul Jabbar Jonajo, ‘Saeen Ahmed Ali: Life and Woks’ by Dr Zahoor Ahmed Awan and ‘Farigh Bukhari: Life and Woks’ by Tariq Hashmi.

Briefing the media about the recent publications, Iftikhar Arif, Chairman PAL said that the book on Sacchal Sarmast marks the universal concept of mysticism of the great Saint.

He said that Sacchal Sarmast (Mian Abdul Wahab), the great mystic of Sindh, is the leading Sufi poet of distinction who composed verses on philosophy and Sufism.

He is known as second Mansoor ul Hajjaj because of his poetry and philosophy. Sacche Dino, Sachoo (the truthful) and Sacchal Sarmast were all names given to Mian Abdul Wahab Farooqi because of the radical Sufi pursuits with which he challenged the rigid mindset of the clergy of his times.

Also called ‘shair-e-haft zaban’ (poet in seven languages) as he composed poetical pieces in Arabic, Sindhi, Seraiki, Punjabi, Urdu, Persian and Balochi, that is replete with Divine Love. He said that Sacchal Sarmast is considered to be one of the great Sufi poets of the subcontinent.

About the author, Iftikhar Arif said that Dr Abdul Jabbar Jonejo is a prominent scholar, researcher and critic and he has done a wonderful job by producing an exclusive document on the life and work of Sacchal Sarmast.

The other book on Saeen Ahmed Ali is written by Dr Zahoor Ahmed Awan, a researcher, poet and critic.

While appreciating Dr Zahoor Ahmed Awan’s work on Saeen Ahmed Ali, Iftikhar Arif commented that this book is a worthy contribution not only in Urdu literature but it also gives us an opportunity to understand the socio-cultural history and tone of Hindko literature.

The third book is on the life and work of Farigh Bukhari, a major Pakistani writer, scholar, journalist and critic. This commentary is written by Tariq Hashmi.

Iftikhar Arif said that Farigh Bukhari as a leader of progressive writer movement, he has struggle hard for his whole life for the right to express. Farigh Bukhari has seven collections of poetry to his credit and also a number of articles and books on Pashto literature.

[Picture: Writers House at PAL. Photo from http://www.academy.gov.pk/history.php]

Evenings of Dhikr

[From the French language press]:

La troisième journée des concerts de la 2-ème édition du festival de Fès de la culture soufie(17-23 avril), qui se tient sous le Haut patronage de SM le Roi Mohammed VI, a été marquée, samedi soir, par les prestations artistiques de la star française Abd Al Malik et du grand chanteur du répertoire arabe traditionnel, le Syrien Nihad Najjar.

Par MAP, "Festival de Fès de la culture soufie: des voix africaine et orientale" - Menara, Maroc - dimanche, avril 20, 2008

The third day of concerts on 2nd edition of the Fez Festival of Sufi Culture (17-23 April), which is being held under the patronage of His Majesty King Mohammed VI, was marked Saturday night by the brilliant performances of the French star Abd Al Malik and the singer of traditional Arabic repertoire, the Syrian Nihad Najjar.

On the menu of this event, which is part of the activities marking the 1,200 anniversary of the founding of Fez, are scheduled discussions on Sufism, along with evenings of Dhikr (invocations) from Brotherhoods from different countries and cultures, music concerts and arts meetings.

The following lectures are also scheduled: "Sufism and Development of Civilization: 1,200 years of Spiritual Quests through the History of Morocco"; "Chivalry Values and International Relations"; " Women and Spirituality"; " Spirituality and Business "; " Spirituality and the Environment "; "The Road to Self-knowledge in the East and in the West "; " Sufism and East-West dialogue" and "Desire for Islam: the Sufi travel of Isabelle Eberhardt. "

Death at the Hidaya Mosque

By Alisha Ryu, "Mogadishu Residents Express Outrage After Ethiopian Troops Attack Mosque" - Voice of America - USA
Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Residents in the Somali capital Mogadishu are expressing outrage and anger against Ethiopian troops in the capital, whom they say massacred at least 10 people, including a senior religious leader, inside a mosque on Sunday.

According to eyewitness reports, the victims inside al-Hidaya Mosque in Mogadishu's Huriwa district were killed by Ethiopian troops on the second day of intense fighting, which left more than 80 people dead in the war-ravaged capital.

The witnesses allege that Ethiopian troops stormed the mosque on Sunday, shooting and killing Sheik Said Yahya, the mosque's most senior religious leader. Eyewitnesses say several others were also shot and killed, and a handful had their throats slit, after the Ethiopians accused them of supporting and training Islamist insurgents.

(...)

Ethiopia denies its troops have committed atrocities. The Somali government says military operations are conducted in self-defense, noting that Islamist-led insurgents often cause numerous civilian casualties by launching attacks at Ethiopian and government troops in heavily-populated areas.

Sources in Mogadishu say the Hidaya mosque, one of the largest in Mogadishu, may have been targeted by the Ethiopians because it had long served as a base for different Islamic groups, including al-Ittihad al-Islami, a militant Somali group the United States has labeled as a terror organization.

But the sources say in recent years, the Hidaya Mosque has been a place of worship for adherents of a mystical branch of Sunni Islam called Sufism.

Most Somalis belong to the Sufi order, which has no ties to the ultra-fundamentalist Wahhabi movement embraced by members of al-Ittihad and its successor, the Shabab.

(...)

[Picture: Somalians prepare body of man killed in clashes in Mogadishu, 21 Apr 2008. Photo: AFP]

Adab Is the Unspoken Transmission of the Teacher

By David Ian Miller, "A Bay Area woman is drawn to Sufism and whirling like a dervish" - San Francisco Chronicle - CA, USA
Monday, April 21, 2008

Many religious and spiritual traditions incorporate dance as a pathway to the divine. Native American tribes of the Great Plains celebrate the cycle of birth and death during the Sun Dance.

Some Jews dance to commemorate the end of the year's round of Torah readings. Even the Gods dance -- Hindu deities are often pictured dancing in joy, and voodoo gods arrive in person during ritual dances to become one with the celebrants.

Among the most intriguing of the world's sacred dances are those of the Whirling Dervishes, who spin around themselves and each other in a religious ceremony that dates to the 13th century. Whirling Dervishes are members of the Mevlevi Order of Sufis, founded by the followers of the poet Rumi.

The word dervish means "doorway," a reference to the belief that dervishes act as conduits, opening the way for the power of God to enter their bodies and pass into the earth.

Shakina Reinhertz, 62, author of "Women Called to the Path of Rumi," has been studying and teaching the whirling practice, also known as "turning," for 30 years. She will be demonstrating the ritual with a group of dancers on April 25 at Dominican University in San Rafael as part of a weekend-long Sufi Symposium that is open to the public.

I spoke with her last week about what led her to the Sufi path, why Whirling Dervishes whirl and whether they get dizzy when they dance.

When did you first learn about Whirling Dervishes?
I was in college at the University of Arkansas in the 1960s, and my dance teacher showed us a little bit of the practice. That made a deep impression on me, but it was pretty far removed from my reality at that point. The first time I actually encountered a Whirling Dervish was at Dominican College in 1981, where they had the first sema (whirling dervish ceremony) in the Bay Area, and I was just completely taken with it. By then there was no doubt that I wanted to do that practice.

What captivated you?

There was a profound sense of sacredness and devotion unlike anything I had seen before. I remember that I was particularly struck at the end when the music stopped and the dervishes turned in silence. All you could hear was the sound of their rustling skirts.

What happens when you are turning? I've read that the goal is to have a kind of out-of-body experience as a way of becoming one with the divine. Is that what it's like for you?
It's really a form of moving meditation. When we turn together, as we're completing each circular motion, we are all saying "Allah" in our hearts silently. So it's a kind of group prayer. And we're tuning in to the people around us ... If there's any goal, it's just opening up to what comes through you. Over time, God willing, it becomes no longer you doing the turning but rather something is turning you. So it's not an act of will but a practice of surrender.

(...)

I have to ask, don't you get incredibly dizzy when you are turning?
No, not really. The dizziness, if it happens, occurs when you first start learning. But after you've been trained that generally goes away.

Some Whirling Dervishes "perform" in a public setting where people pay for tickets. How do you feel about that?
I'm in favor of it. In about 1925, when they were modernizing Turkey, they closed all of the tekkes (Sufi schools). At that point performing the dervish ceremony was made illegal, and Sufi traditions went underground.

It took quite a long time, until 1956, before the dervishes persuaded the government that the heritage of Rumi was an important asset and a tourist attraction -- people come from all over to see his mausoleum -- and so it should be shared. After that they created a public ceremony that people paid to observe. I think that's helped to keep the tradition alive.

Our order does charge for performances, but basically all of the money goes for renting the hall and paying the musicians. It's not a profit-making enterprise.

Your order, the Mevlevis, was founded by Rumi in the 13th century. What are some of its main teachings?
Primary in the Mevlevi path is sohbet, spiritual discussion, and adab, the way of beautiful manners.

These are the two transmissions that the teacher brings to the student. Sohbet can be very formal in the manner of a lecture to a gathering of students or it can be in the moment, in the form of a question posed to the teacher by the student.

Adab is the unspoken transmission of the teacher. It is what draws us to become followers of the teacher, and it is the way the teacher illustrates for us the embodiment of the inner teachings.

In the outer world, it is the practice of whirling that identifies us as Mevlevis.
And finally it is the Mathnawi, the poetry of Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi that continues to speak to our hearts, even now 800 years after his passing.

(...)

Teachers are important in the Sufi tradition. Who was yours, and how did you meet?
My teacher is Sheikh Jelaludin Loras, the head of the Mevlevi Order here in America. I met him when he came to teach at a Sufi household where I was staying in San Rafael. I studied with him for 15 years while he lived in the Bay Area. He's now based in Hawaii, but I see him whenever I can.

My other teacher is a woman named Taj Inayat, a person who has deeply steeped herself in Sufism; it is a very intimate relationship where I go and talk with her about my concerns. We sit in meditation, and she gives me practices. Basically, I go to get spiritually tuned.

Tuned to what?
To my heart, I guess. I think Sufism -- all of the flavors of Sufism would agree that this is the path of the heart. We are listening to that voice that comes from within, and we are learning to follow our inner guidance while at the same time following the teachings of the Order and being part of the community.

Most but not all Sufis consider themselves Muslims. What about you?
The way I would answer that is to look at the language. The root of the word Islam in Arabic is Ya Salaam, which means peace. And the word Islam itself means "to make or cause peace." Therefore, a Muslim is a peacemaker.

That's an unusual point of view, I know, but it's what I truly believe a Muslim to be. And based on that definition, yes, that's how I see myself and, God willing, what I am becoming.
I am just a student of this path, someone who tries to follow with the sincerity of my heart what I believe God asks of me, yet I am still a chickpea that needs more cooking.

(...)

The International Sufism Symposium takes place on Friday through Sunday, April 25-27, at the Four Points Sheraton Hotel in San Rafael. A demonstration of the Whirling Dervish "Wedding Night" ceremony will occur on Friday, April 25, at Dominican University's Angelico Hall. Admission is $30. Information: (415) 472-6959 or http://www.sufismsymposium.org/

[Picture: Shakina Reinhertz. Photo by Hadi Reinhertz]

Notes Of Peace

By Anjana Rajan, " Notes of peace" - The Hindu - Chennai, India
Sunday, April 20, 2008

Across man-made borders, three singers from Pakistan bring messages of a higher truth

T.S. Eliot may have had his metaphysical reasons for calling April the cruellest month, but for Delhi’s April, the epithet is far more obviously deserved — the month when winter can be certified as over, and the sun regains its tyranny.

Hardly the best time to hold an open-air festival of music. But when the Bhakti Utsav, organised by the Government of NCT and Seher, spread its balm over the city’s green Nehru Park, even the sun decided to relent.

As it played hide and seek with the clouds, the city got momentary relief from the heat, even as the singers of the Bhakti Utsav offered release for the soul.
Epitomising the power of music to heal wounds new and old was the contingent from Pakistan.

Akhtar Sharif Hussain, Shafi Mohammad Faqir and Javed Bashir, who each led a musical troupe at the festival, are at different points on the age spectrum. Practising varying genres of music, they have much in common.

Not least among their similarities is the abiding belief that the Sufi concept of brotherhood and tolerance is the need of the hour, and music a prime vehicle to take it forward.

But these ideas get repeated as consistently as the violence across the world that never seems to abate. Those who agree, agree. Those who don’t, continue the spiral of hatred. Does the concept need repetition?

Sufi poetry set to music is one of the best expressions to popularise this idea. Akhtar Hussain, who with his brother Akhtar Sharif Sabir belongs to the Chishti Sufi brotherhood and traces his lineage back to Khwaja Barakat Ali, adheres to the traditional Doaba style of qawwali singing.

Drawing eager crowds in Pakistan and other countries, he does not feel the need to change his music to suit modern tastes, though he has nothing against those who do.

Trained under his father Ustad Mohammad Sharif Khan and later under Ustads Bakshi and Salamat, he shares the tradition with the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

“I can’t put into words the way our compositions are appreciated at gatherings across the world. Last June we were in Paris and they asked us to sing authentic qawwali. We sang in Urdu, Persian, Punjabi, Braj.”

Javed Bashir, who sings both classical and popular, differs in his approach. Adapting one’s music is essential today, he feels.

“Because 90 per cent of the people don’t want to sit down and hear bhakti sangeet. Rock music (and Pop) on the other hand is something everyone listens to. Lots of people today haven’t even heard of the writings of Bulle Shah and other Sufi poets. So I think it’s very important to do this fusion. If Rabbi Shergill had sat down and sung with just his harmonium, perhaps not as many people would have listened to him.”

Bashir, who is also part of the popular Mekaal Hasan Band, feels ultimately the lyrics are important.

Shafi Mohammad Faqir, who belongs to the Manganhaar tradition of singers from the Thar desert, points out that all classical music stems from folk anyway.

“The mother of music is folk,” he says, his quiet voice belying his singing power. There is no denying the rousing popularity of the Manganhaar singers. The Manganhaars are the same as the Rajasthani Manganiyar community, and Shafi has relations on both sides of the border, performing intermittently with his Indian Manganiyar counterparts.

“It is the artistes and sportspersons, the fankaar, who are the real ambassadors of a country,” says Shafi. “Lata Mangeshkar has as many fans in Pakistan as in India. It is the same with Shoaib Akhtar.”

Shafi, who runs the Alap Academy of Music, extends his precepts of brotherhood to the technique of music. “Music is no one’s virasat (family inheritance),” he says. Youngsters from within and outside his community are trained in Manganiyar singing at Alap.

While these musicians have travelled the world with their notes of peace, India holds a special charm. “This is my 14th trip to India,” says Bashir, who has worked with A.R. Rahman and recently sang the soundtrack of “Khuda Ke Liye”. “I love the audience here,” he adds.

(...)

[Picture: Qawwali Singer Akhtar Hussain]

I Think That's a Good Thing

By Janaki Viswanathan, "'My raag and sur are my ice cream'"
Friday, April 18, 2008

Raahat Fateh Ali Khan will be the Sufi mentor on an NDTV Imagine reality show

Your name is always connected to your paternal uncle, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Has that worked for you?
I think whatever I am, wherever I am is because of the Almighty. (Laughs) I've worked hard to get here too. But I haven't got that far yet.

There is more inter-exchange of Indo-Pak film and music today. Was it ever difficult for you?
I've been travelling to India since 1995. My struggle period was between 1996 and 2000. I sang for Paap in 2003, that brought me into the limelight.

What's the difference between the audiences here in India and back home?
It's pretty much the same. There are many people who prefer rock and pop.. few like ghazals and Sufi music. India has a larger audience obviously because it's a bigger country.

Isn't Sufi music being overused?
I think that's a good thing.

(...)

To Bring Sufi Into the Forefront

By Pallavi Jassi, "Sufi sublime" - Express India - Delhi, India
Sunday, April 20, 2008

Rahat Fateh Ali Khan’s dream is to bring Sufi music to the mainstream

When Sufi singer Rahat Fateh Ali Khan got together with the Canadian producer and guitarist Michael Brook at UK’s Royal Festival Hall in October last year, to pay tribute to his uncle Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, little did he know that he would soon find himself inviting Brook to visit and perform in India.

As talks go on for a joint performance of Khan with Brook in November this year, the Sufi maestro continues to shift gears between Bollywood playback, a private album and his new role in a reality show.

“Sufism is the truth and it is the truth I stand for. I want the youngsters to bring out the honesty of Sufism through their voice,” says Khan, who will soon become a mentor for six contestants on a reality show Junoon to be aired on NDTV Imagine starting June.

“It’s the only individual platform that Sufi music has been given till date so I decided to be part of it,” smiles Khan, who, in any case, was looking for opportunities to bring Sufi into the forefront.
Khan surfaced in the Bollywood circuit in 2004 with his playback singing for the movie Paap. Four years and many songs later, including those in Namastey London and Om Shanti Om, the singer has his plate full.

Khan has 4-5 releases this year and is singing for an array of music directors including Sajid-Wajid in Main Aur Mrs Khanna starring Salman Khan and Kareena Kapoor, Sachin Gupta for an untitled film starring Rahul Khanna, Irrfan Khan and Soha Ali Khan and Vishal Bhardwaj amongst others.

“When music directors think of a song for me, the Sufi tone is inevitable and I’m comfortable with that,” says Khan, who is also readying to start work on his private album.

“I am hoping that Javed Akhtar pens the lyrics for my next album and apart from that I’m looking forward to playing in a concert together with Michael Brook by the year-end in Dubai and Mumbai,” informs Khan.

Two Halves of a Grain of Mung They Are

By William Dalrymple, "The Valley Where Worlds Met And Fused" - Tehelka Magazine - New Delhi, India
Vol 5, Issue 16, Dated April 26, 2008

The syncreticism on display at a recent exhibition of Kashmiri art in New York shows the way to peace

In November 1989, as a young journalist newly arrived in India, I was sent to Kashmir to cover a spate of violent protests in Srinagar.

The protests turned out to be the beginning of the ill-fated uprising against Indian rule that is still smouldering 18 years later and which has now left thousands dead, radicalised an entire region, and brought two nuclear powers to the brink of war.

So long has the conflict dragged on that many people now associate Kashmir with violence, strife and terrorism rather than the traditions of high culture, artistic brilliance, and religious syncretism with which the region was traditionally connected.

It is therefore timely and imaginative of the Asia Society in New York to mount an exhibition and to publish a superb catalogue of scholarly essays edited by Pratapaditya Pal, which reminds one of the larger currents at work in Kashmiri history.

The Arts of Kashmir was a superb piece of museum craft — a beautifully realised display of the intellectual and artistic brilliance that long distinguished the valley.

(...)

In the Islamic rooms of the show, there are no more Gods or Goddesses; they’re filled with intricate but almost entirely non-figurative calligraphy, carpets, textiles and ceramics.

But initial impressions of a clear break are false. The first Muslim ruler of Kashmir was not a conqueror but a Ladhaki Buddhist King named Rinchana (r1320-3) who converted to Islam, starting the slow process of the Islamisation of the valley.

When the Mughals conquered the valley in 1589, there began a flow of Kashmiri intellectuals from the valley to the imperial court.

Several Kashmiri artists such as the calligrapher Muhammad Husayn Kashmiri, known as Golden Pen, became celebrities in the entourage of Akbar. An image of the calligrapher, seated on a carpet and wearing a shawl as he teaches his young pupil, is among the most beautiful miniatures on display.

It was under Akbar’s greatgrandson Dara Shikoh that Kashmiri traditions of syncretism came to have the greatest influence on the court. Dara had imbibed the heterodoxy of the Kashmiri Sufis from Mullah Shah Badakshani who had retired to the Pari Mahal, not far from Srinagar.

In 1638 he instructed the young prince in the essential unity of the Islamic and Hindu mystical paths and it was at Pari Mahal that Dara wrote his great treatise on Sufism, The Compass of Truth:

“Though art in the Ka’ba at Mecca
as well as in the temple of Somnath

Though art in the monastery
as well as in the tavern

Thou art at the same time the light and the moth
The wine and the cup
The sage and the fool
The rose and the nightingale.”

It was partly as a result of time spent with the sages of Kashmir that Dara had the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads translated into Persian as The Mysteries of Mysteries, and wrote a comparative study of Hinduism and Islam, The Mingling of Two Oceans, which emphasised the compatibility of the two faiths and the common source of their divine revelations.

He also wrote of the visions he received from Hindu deities, and how Vasistha had appeared to him: “He was very kind to me and patted me on the back. He told Lord Ram that I was his brother because we were both seekers after truth.

He asked Lord Ram to embrace me which he did in an exuberance of love. He then gave some food [prasad] to Lord Ram, which I also took, and ate.”

In the end, Dara Shikoh’s Kashmir-influenced speculations proved too radical for even the Muslim élite of Mughal Delhi. By the mid-twentieth century, the last traces of the old pluralism had been replaced by a savage polarisation.

During the resulting conflict, Kashmir’s architectural and archaeological heritage has been neglected and, in some cases, severely damaged. The ASI personnel that were supposed to look after antiquities fled the valley and Pari Mahal is, like several other monuments, in a state of collapse.

But the most tragic effect of the conflict has been the flight from the valley of most of the learned Kashmiri Pundits who, in 1947, made up around 15 percent of the valley’s population. The valley is now almost entirely mono-religious for the first time in its history.

Today the conflict may appear as insolvable as ever. Yet in the plural currents of tolerance and syncretism so clearly exemplified in this exhibition lies a route map for the only possible solution.

In the words of Deen Darvish, a 19th century Kashmiri Sufi:

“The Hindu says, ‘I am superior’
The Musalman says ‘I’

Two halves of a grain of mung they are
Which, then, is greater than the other?

Don’t quarrel over who is superior
And who is not

The one is a devotee of Ram, the other of Rahman

Deen Darvish says, the two unite in one ocean
There is only one Lord of all
The Hindu and the Musalman are one.”

[Picture: Colophon page of Gulistan of Sadi 1581
Copied by Muhammad Husayn Kashmiri
Portraits of the calligrapher and self by Manohar (flourished late 16th–early 17th century)
Opaque watercolor and gold on paper
H. 12.8 x W. 8.5 in. Royal Asiatic Society
Photo from the exhibition The Arts Of Kashmir - Asia Society, New York, NY
Photo: Asia Society http://www.asiasociety.org/arts/kashmir/islam03.htm]

No Visas for Qawwali Masters

By Mark Stryker, "University Musical Society cancels Friday’s concert of Qawwali music of Pakistan" - Detroit Free Press - Detroit, MI, USA
Wednesday, April 16, 2008

The University Musical Society in Ann Arbor has canceled Friday’s concert by Mehr and Sher Ali performing the Qawwali music of Pakistan

Five members of the nine-member group, including Sher Ali, were detained in Islamabad, Pakistan by the U.S. Embassy, which would not validate their visas, according to a UMS spokesperson.

UMS leaders, who have not be told why the musicians were detained, have contacted the Michigan office of Senator Carl Levin for help in resolving the problem but as of Wednesday afternoon no on there had learned more details either.

Other presenters across the country have made similar requests in recent days for help through their own congressional offices, but no one has received any information, said UMS public relations manager Jim Leija.

The producer of the tour, World Music Institute of New York, has likewise received no indication of the status of the detained musicians.

Qawwali music is the devotional music of Sufism, its roots stretching back to the 10th Century, and Mehr and Sher are recognized as masters of the vocal qualities and the mystical texts at the heart of the form.

Leija said that while the musicians who have arrived in the U.S. could have performed, the results would not meet the artistic expectations of UMS audiences.

[Read about Mehr & Sher Ali at the World Music Institute Website http://www.worldmusicinstitute.org/event.php?id=466]

To Rise Above the Personal

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, "Will Yousaf Raza Gilani change Pakistan?" - Middle East Times - Cairo, Egypt
Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Perhaps the most notable aspect of Yousaf Raza Gilani's conduct upon his ascension as Pakistan's new prime minister has been his lack of apparent vitriol toward President Pervez Musharraf.

Gilani languished in prison for five years under Musharraf's rule, charged with making illegal government appointments during his term as the speaker of parliament.

Gilani has told Pakistan's English-language daily Dawn that the charges were "concocted" and "fabricated" in an effort to make him abandon the Pakistan Peoples Party, which was at the time led by Benazir Bhutto.

Yet thus far Gilani has not taken the confrontational approach toward Musharraf that many observers anticipated, and that some Pakistanis transparently hoped for.

Husain Haqqani, an associate professor of international relations at Boston University whom Gilani recently appointed as ambassador-at-large, told this writer: "So far, the two have interacted quite positively, notwithstanding Gilani's own suffering at Musharraf's hands.

Quite clearly Gilani is able to rise above the personal to make things work for the country."

Though Gilani, 55, was born in Karachi, his family hails from Punjab. In Punjab, the Gilanis are prominent landowners and recognized spiritual leaders descended from the Sufi saint of Multan, Moosa Pak Shaheed.

Haqqani explained that Gilani's spiritual upbringing has influenced his political views, in that Sufism makes him "very clear in his vision of tolerance and pluralism as Islamic virtues."

(...)

Gilani was Pakistan's minister of tourism from March 1989 to January 1990, and its minister of housing and works from January to August 1990.

He was also elected to parliament in 1990 and 1993, serving as speaker of the national assembly from 1993 to 1996. Benazir Bhutto personally selected him for this latter position; though some of her advisers were concerned about Gilani's young age, she was impressed by what one Pakistani newspaper described as his "high-stake human management skills."

(...)

Though Gilani has been known primarily as a domestic politician, Western countries are keenly interested in his anti-terrorism policies due to Pakistan's increasing centrality in the global war on terror.

Gilani has told Pakistan's national assembly with respect to the rise of militancy: "Unfortunately, some people have adopted violence as the way of expressing their opinion…. We are ready to talk to all those people who give up their weapons and adopt the path of peace." He has proposed both political and economic reforms in tribal areas.

(...)

The Demanding Path of Transformation

PRLog/Lifedreams Communication, "Patience Leads to Perfect Peace Espouses Sharon Marcus in her Newest Book The Sufi Experience"- PRLog Org - Bucuresti, Romania

Monday, April 14, 2008

“People keep asking why there is no peace in the world for us individually, personally, let alone collectively or nationally;” begins Sharon Marcus in this excerpt from her book, The Sufi Experience.

Says Marcus, “Even some who are walking the path to God, the demanding path of transformation, also struggle with that question years after dedicating themselves to the purifying practices this life implies.”

The Sufi Experience, Marcus’s sixth book, shares principles of the Sufi path along with some personal anecdotes of Marcus’s experience meeting her master, M. R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen.

Marcus identifies the inner contemplation and mystical traditions of her Sufi path as common property to all the major religions, while their goal and destination lie outside them, beyond.

In her five previous books, whether fiction, nonfiction or poetry, Marcus’ passionate devotion to the precepts of Sufism simmers beneath the lyrical writing and explodes commandingly to the surface in her commentaries.

Understanding the experiential nature of that mystical journey to the heart of Islam, seen through the lens of her spiritual master M. R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, becomes the structure of this new work, The Sufi Experience.

A combination of lucid commentary and cheerful anecdote fills the book, especially in the extended chapter “Journey East,” an account of her travels to Dubai, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a critical self-examination to light up the way.

(...)

Sharon Marcus
The Sufi Experience
The Sufi Press http://www.sufipress.com
ISBN 9780973753455
$28.95

Urgently Needed: Love, Peace and Brotherhood

Staff Report, "Speakers pay tribute to Hindko mystic poet" - Daily Times - Lahore, Pakistan
Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Peshawar: A seminar held in Peshawar on Sunday paid tribute to the great Hindko mystic poet Sain Ahmad Ali, and called for the setting up of a chair at the University of Peshawar to carry out in-depth research on his work.

The event was organised by the literary, cultural and social welfare organisation, the Gandhara Hindko Board (GHB), at the newly established Gandhara Auditorium to mark the 71st death anniversary of the death of the Sufi poet.

Riaz Ahmad, the great grandson of a freedom fighter from the Walled City of Peshawar, and a revolutionary poet, Meher Mitho, were chief guests on the occasion; while Hindko writer, poet, and researcher Sabir Hussain Imdad presided over the function, which was attended by a considerable number of people.

Literati and devotees expressed reverence for the great 19th century mystic. The speakers hailed his poetry as an asset to humanity, saying Sain preached a message of love, peace and brotherhood, something urgently needed in this troubling age.

The speakers spoke about the life and work of the Sufi, whose poetic compositions ran into thousands; only a fraction of those have survived through oral traditions.

“Sufi poets such as Rehman Baba, Bule Shah, Shah Abdul Lateef Bhitai and Sain Ahmad Ali all laid stress on love and peace. Their teachings need to be preached and spread for a better world,” said Sabir Hussain Imdad, one of the speakers, in his detailed paper that he presented on the occasion.

The participants in their speeches called for the printing of more of Sain’s work. They praised the GHB, which has compensated for the neglect shown to the great poetry of the saint in the past by publishing three books: ‘Sain Ahmad Ali’, by Professor Dr Zahoor Ahmad Awan; ‘Peer Sain’ by Muhammad Zaiuddin; and ‘Kulliyaat-e-Sain’ by Muhammad Ismail Awan.

They urged the government to help recover and publish the rest of the work of the Hindko mystic.

Gandhara Hindko Board Secretary Muhammad Ziauddin asked the government to give Sain Ahmad Ali’s work due attention as his poetry was in Hindko, the second most common language of the NWFP [North-West Frontier Province] and one in need of official support and patronage.

He announced that the GHB would soon publish an international edition of Sain Ahmad’s work. “The book will be in four languages - Hindko, Pashto, Urdu and English,” he added, saying Sultan Fareedi had carried out the translation into Pashto and Urdu.

Through a resolution, the seminar demanded that the government officially celebrate Sain Ahmad Ali Day, construct a befitting tomb for the Sufi poet outside Kohati Gate, and implement the City District Government’s decision of renaming Gubahar Chowk as Sain Ahmad Ali Chowk.

Later, 15 poets paid poetic tribute to the illustrious mystic of the Hindko language, who has a considerable following in the vast area of Potohar as well as in the NWFP.

Singers Ahmad Nadeem Awan and Saeed Paris rendered verses from Sain’s work, delighting the audience.

Sain Ahmad Ali was born in the Walled City of Peshawar in 1842 AD. His harfis (poetic verses) are recited with respect.

The Sufi poet died in Peshawar on April 13, 1937 at age 95 and was laid to rest outside Kohati Gate. His last resting place has been rebuilt thrice by devotees without any help from the government.

[Read more about the Hindko language at Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindko_language]

[Go to the Official Web Portal of the Government of Pakistan's North-West Province]

[Picture: the Mazar of Sain Ahmad Ali. Photo from the Official Website of the Gandhara Hindko Board http://www.hindko.pk/index.html]

The Sufi Doctrine of Union

NAT/GM, "Iran honors Attar Neyshabouri" - Press TV - Tehran, Iran
Saturday, April 12, 2008

Iran commemorates the national day of Faridoddin Attar Neyshabouri, a prominent Persian poet, theoretician of mysticism and hagiographer.

Iranian cultural officials will are holding a conference today in the city of Neyshabour, located in the northeastern province of Khorasan Razavi to honor the Persian poet.

Born in 1119, Abu Hamid Mohammad Neyshabouri was the son of a successful chemist and received an excellent education in various fields, including pharmacy. His achievements in the profession of pharmacy brought him the title of “Attar”, literally meaning The Pharmacist.

Eventually, he abandoned his pharmaceutical business and traveled widely, visiting Kufa, Mecca, Damascus, Turkistan and India. He met with Sufi leaders of the time and returned to Neyshabour to promote and expound Sufi ideas.

Under the influence of Sufism he started composing poems and teaching literature and his mystic theories. He also composed stories from historical chronicles, collections of anecdotes and all types of literary forms.

Attar died at the age of 70 in 1189 during the Mongolian invasion of Neyshabour. There is a well-known story regarding his death suggesting: “Attar was taken prisoner by a Mongol during the invasion of Neyshabur.

Someone soon came and tried to ransom him with a thousand pieces of silver. Attar advised the Mongol not to sell him for that price. The Mongol, thinking to gain an even greater sum of money, refused the silver.

Later, another person came, this time offering only a sack of straw to free him. Attar then told the Mongol to sell him, for that was all he was worth. Outraged at being made a fool, the Mongol cut off Attar's head.”

Attar's most celebrated work is Manteq-ul-Tteir (The Conference of the Birds), a poem consisting of 4,600 couplets. The poem uses allegory to illustrate the Sufi doctrine of union between the human and the divine.

His other important writings include Tazkerat-ol-Olia (Biographies of the Saints), a prose work about the early Sufis.

Elahi-Nameh (Book of Divinity), Asrar-Nameh (Book of Mysteries), Mosibat-Nameh (Book of Suffering), Bolbol-Nameh (Book of Nightingales), Javaher-Nameh (Book of Jewels) and Khosrow-Nameh (Book of Kings) are among the numerous books he wrote in verse and prose.

[Picture: Attar's Mausoleum in Neyshabour, Iran]

Accomodating VIP Guests

Staff Report, "New accommodation planned for Mevlana’s VIP guests" - Today's Zaman - Istanbul, Turkey
Saturday, April 12, 2008

Konya: Prominent guests visiting the Mevlana Museum will be hosted at a new venue planned for the central Anatolian city of Konya, home to the museum and the grave of 13th century Sufi saint Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi.

The offices of Konya's Karatay Municipality have been relocated, and the 7,000-square-meter plot and buildings the municipality formerly occupied, the Karatay Houses, have been handed over to the Mevlana Museum.

The Konya Provincial Culture Directorate and Mevlana Museum Directorate are planning to establish a cultural center on the site, which will feature deluxe accommodation in the form of the Çelebi Evi (house).

The Mevlana Museum, which draws more than 1.5 million visitors each year, currently has no facility for hosting VIP guests.

Museum Director Yusuf Benli said the area behind the museum building and the Karatay Houses will become part of the museum, adding that statesmen and distinguished foreign guests will be offered accommodation there.

Benli also emphasized the particular importance of such facilities during the Şeb-i Arus (Reunion with God) festivities, commemorating Mevlana's death, often attended by the president, prime minister, state ministers and other VIP guests. He added that the project also includes tourism-related activities.

Venues representing Turkish and Konya culture are also planned, including a typical "Konya house," to which entrance will be by appointment only, adding that this will also function as accommodation for tourists.

He added: "We will establish a familiarization center for Konya and its districts where we will make use of digital images and audio to depict many historical, cultural and natural beauties of the city.

"Visitors will simply have to visit some of these places after they see them there."

Also planned are a Konya Museum restoration and conservation laboratory, exhibition halls and a center where traditional Konya handicrafts will be displayed.

One of the region's most-visited sites, the Mevlana Museum hopes to spearhead efforts to reinvigorate local tourism.

[Picture: Britain's Prince Charles visiting the Mevlana Museum]

Not an Ordinary Sufi Saint

By A. Srivathsan, "Three sites and one story" - The Hindu - Chennai, India
Sunday, April 13, 2008

What geography separates, history connects. North of central India, Sasaram, Jaunpur and Gwalior are connected by the story of one soldier who almost became a great emperor.

Sasaram is at its organic best. The main road and bus stand are like a sugar lump that attracts fleas and ants.

The town spreads, swarms and wraps around the lines of movement. But all the hectic activities are only one row deep. Behind the road front, people trickle into smaller roads and disappear into the distant skyline of tiled houses.

The remaining few sit on the main road and wait for the packed trucks to carry them home. But Sasaram about 500 years ago must have been lot more cared for and lot more important.

(...)

North of Sasaram, on the great Grand Trunk Road, which Sher Shah developed later, is the crowded small town of Jaunpur.

(...)

South of Agra is Gwalior. The imposing fort built by the Tomar kings in the 15th century stands tall on a mountain top.

Below the fort, as you cross the lanes and turn past the main road is a large open space. The dense buildings that encircle it exaggerate the openness.

The space is unusually active for a monument site. It is filled with people playing, old men in serious discussions, ecstatic singing and incense burning in front of the tomb and many homeless people sleeping on the tombstones.

In the centre of the garden is a Sufi monument, dedicated to Sheik Muhamad, that is unusually rich and elaborate. Sufis normally eschew ostentatious display of wealth, but this one is special.

The tomb is Mughal in style with a large dome in the centre and chatris around. The verandah that surrounds is adorned with well-carved jallis. The octagonal chatris at the corner, the square chatris in the middle and the chajjas running all around belongs to the classic hybrid style of Akbar’s period.

Sheik Muhamad Ghauth was not an ordinary Sufi saint. He belonged to the order initiated by Shah Abdullah Shattari and had a great appeal and a large following.

For reasons that are not well known, Sher Shah did not favour him. May be, for the orthodox Sher Shah, the popularity of Ghauth was either irritating or unacceptable. Whatever the reason, Sher Shah’s oppression made him uncomfortable and he moved to Gujarat.

Ghauth returned to Delhi after the political climate changed and died there. He was buried in the tomb built by his special disciple Miyan Tansen in the 16th century.

Ghauth mentored Tansen and was responsible for Tansen’s conversion to Islam. Next to the grand monument of Ghauth is an unassuming marble pavilion that shelters Tansen’s small tomb.

[Picture: Sheik Muhammad Gauth’s tomb at Gwalior. Photo: A. Srivathsan]

"The Cry of the Reed": Central to the Play is Faith

By Iris Fanger, "THEATER REVIEW: Religion, relationships have a place in ‘The Cry of the Reed’" - The Patriot Ledger - Quincy, MA, USA
Friday, April 11, 2008

Boston: Turkish-American playwright Sinan Unel’s drama about the Middle-Eastern conflict, ``The Cry of the Reed,'' is as complex and confusing as the events of the Iraqi War, but in its mirroring of reality it is impossible to forget.

Despite some speechifying and overwriting, the play has been served by a fine production, directed by Daniel Goldstein who has gathered an excellent cast led by the distinguished, Turkish-born actress, Cigdem Onat.

The plot follows two stories, the first about a pair of journalists, the Canadian, Philip (Darren Pettie), and the Turkish-American woman, Sevgi (Lisa Birnbaum), who are kidnapped by Muslim extremists.

The scenes of Philip and Sevgi’s captivity are played out at stage right while we follow the second story opposite, where Sevgi’s American lover has come for help to her mother, Ayla, a Sufi leader.

Eugene Lee’s masterful stage design of ruined doors that open for entrances and exits enhances the rough action of the play.

Ayla is a follower of the 13th century mystic poet, Jalal al-Din Rumi, who preached the practice of love. The brutality of certain scenes, in contrast to the conversations in Ayla’s home, are framed by whirling dervishes, who believe they connect into the universe by their mystical spinning.

The Sufi religion, one aspect of Islam, is based on tolerance and a oneness with God. In contrast, the terrorists of Unel’s play are men who care nothing for life, nor for the lives of those they consider infidels, i.e. non-Muslims. They excuse their excesses, including beheading of the captured men and women, as acts in defense of their religion.

Central to the play is faith and how it is claimed as exclusive property by the various religions that divide the human race.

Ayla has come to faith after a heart-rending loss, leaving behind her life and marriage for the peace she has found in Rumi’s teachings. Sevgi and Josh are atheists, relying on their own desires to steer them. Philip is part-Jewish, which makes his capture especially dangerous.

One additional plot strand is the estrangement of mother and daughter. Sevgi and Ayla have not communicated for more than 10 years when the play begins.

(...)

The ending brings neither safety nor resolution, not unlike the dilemma we as a nation face by our presence in the Middle East.

Unel has worked too much from the headlines. However, by the second act climax of his play, one could not help but be engrossed by his vision.

THE CRY OF THE REED at the Stanford Calderwood Pavillion , Boston Center for the Arts, presented by The Huntington Theatre Company; through May 3. Tickets $15-$55. 617-266-0800 or http://www.huntingtontheatre.org/index.aspx

[Picture: From left, Sevgi (Lisa Birnbaum) and Philip (Darren Pettie) bid their time under the watchful eye of an Iraqi insurgent (Rafi Silver) who watches their every move in the Huntington Theatre Company's World Premiere production of "The Cry of the Reed" by Sinan Ünel. Photo by T. Charles Erickson]

The Symbol of Love

By Deb Miller, "CU's Rumi Society invites public to ‘Evening of Tranquility, Love and Culture'" - Ithaca Journal, Ithaca, NY, USA
Friday, April 11, 2008

The Cornell Rumi Society has organized “An Evening of Tranquility, Love and Culture: Living Rumi” at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 15 [today] in the Memorial Room of Willard Straight Hall, Cornell University.

The event will include live Whirling Dervish performances along with a short live Turkish Sufi Music Concert.

The performances will be followed by the short lecture “The Symbol of Love for All Times: Mawlana Jalal ad-din Rumi.”

Ithaca residents who visited the land of Rumi, Konya in Turkey, will be talking about their experiences. There will be an audiovisual presentation about Rumi's philosophy and Konya, Turkey.

Samples of Turkish appetizers with recipes from the land of Rumi will served to the guests at the end of the event.

The Strongest Weapon

By Amanda Hamedany, "CULTURE: Martyrs and Scholars Meet in the Middle" - IPS News - Rome, Italy
Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Washington D.C., USA: In an age when suicide bombings and religious and ethnic riots comprise the bulk of the evening news, it seems as though compassion and compromise are more elusive than ever.

Buddha said that there are three poisons in this world: greed, anger, and ignorance. These poisons have the capacity to destroy individuals -- and societies -- unless they are checked by justice (the cure for greed), compassion (the cure for anger), and knowledge (the cure for ignorance).

Knowledge is perhaps the strongest -- and most difficult to wield -- weapon in the modern age. However, as vicious stereotypes increasingly replace truths and individuals are more likely to fear than to learn from others, it is the one of which society is in most need.

On Tuesday, the Muslim call to prayer could be heard from within the sanctuary of the Washington Hebrew Congregation in Washington, DC. Inside, men in kipahs and women in hijab sat with their families learning about interfaith dialogue.

The means of their education was a play entitled "Noor" by Ambassador Akbar Ahmed, the Ibn Khaldun chair of Islamic Studies at American University, former high commissioner of Pakistan, and one of the world's foremost teachers of interfaith dialogue.

In Arabic, noor means light. In Islam, it is one of the 99 names for Allah. In Ahmed's play, it is the name of an 18-year-old college girl abducted from the bazaar in Anytown, Middle East.

In the aftermath of Noor's disappearance, we meet her three brothers: Abdullah, a Sufi mystic who believes that prayer will bring Noor home; Ali, a modernist and a lawyer who believes that the surest way to bring Noor home safely is to go through the authorities; and Daoud, a disenchanted doctor who sees no way to bring Noor home except through violence.

These three brothers represent the three different, at times overlapping, at other times conflicting, branches of modern Islam. In the face of the encroaching West, each brother clings to his beliefs in hopes that it will deliver him.

(...)

Abdullah, the eldest brother, finds solace in his Sufi faith. He believes that, although the occupation of his state shows the negative side of the West, there are good people in the United States and Europe.

He believes that everyone can find hope and comfort in prayer.

"This is an amazing story that deals with the very real conflict that I have seen throughout the Middle East," says Frankie Martin, who recently spent a couple of months traveling through the Muslim world with Professor Ahmed. "Everyone feels the crisis, but everyone feels it in a different way. This humanises the struggle being experienced in the Muslim world."

(...)

Even though there are countless individuals across the Middle East who feel helpless and angry like Daoud, hopeless and disillusioned like Ali, and confused and anxious like Abdullah, this presentation of "Noor" is a step towards combating the poisons.

At the discussion panel immediately following the play, numerous notables from different religious communities -- Muslim, Jewish, and Christian -- sat in a semi-circle on stage to discuss the future of inter-faith dialogue.

"The Prophet Mohammad once said that the ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr," said Rabbi M. Bruce Lustig as he opened the discussion. "We have seen that tonight."

Indeed, the ink of the scholar has planted the seed of knowledge -- the strongest weapon against the poisons that threaten to ravage the modern world.

[Picture from the Book: al-AsmA'ul-HusnA The 99 Beautiful Names of Allah by M.R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, The Fellowship Press, Philadelphia, PA]

A Country of Sufi Type Islam

By Afzalur Rahman Khan, "A tendency to be criticized" - Weekly Blitz - Dhaka, Bangladesh
Thursday, April 10, 2008

Bangladesh Election Commission in a recent move are trying to incorporate some electoral rule where the contesting candidates shall be bared from starting election campaign after offering prayers in various holy shrines of saints, which has been in practice for past several decades.

It may be mentioned here that, Bangladesh, being a country of Sufi type Islam, has placed holy shrines and spiritual leaders in extremely important positions in personal and national lives.

But, for some years, a number of radical Islamists forces, including some communist, leftists and atheists are constantly conspiring to move the nation to different direction and convert the moderate Sufi Muslims in to extremist and militant Muslims with the ulterior motive of giving Bangladesh a bad name of radical nation.

(...)

Later a number of bombs were exploded in such holy places, one of which was also exploded at the Holy Shrine of Shahjalal, a famous Muslim saint in the Eastern part of the country.

British High Commissioner Anwar Chowdhury also fell victim of such attack and narrowly escaped dangerous plot of assassination.

Since such attack, various intelligence agencies are trying to identify the culprits behind such attack on a Bangladeshi born foreign envoy, who is not only working hard in further strengthening the existing relations between Dhaka and London, but also seen as a symbol of pride for the entire nation.

(...)

From the recent moves of the Election Commission in stopping people from seeking divine blessings from the Saints and Shrines before running in any election, evidently proves that, such elements inside the EC are no better than those militants of JMB or radical Islamist groups.

(...)

[Picture: "Nakshi Kantha", a traditional stitched quilt of Bengal. Photographer: Toufiq Parag. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh ]

Words of Gratitude

By Mohamed El Hebeishy (words and pictures), "In pictures: Sudan's whirling dervishes"- BBC, UK/Sudan
Wednesday, April 9, 2008

The weekly dervish ceremony near the capital, Khartoum, is considered one of Sudan's main tourist attractions, explains BBC News website reader Mohamed El Hebeishy.

Sufism is associated with both Sunni & Shia Islam. Those who practice it are called Sufis, or Dervishes.

Every Friday dervishes gather an hour before sunset around some of the big mosques in Khartoum and Omdurman. A circle is formed and the ritual begins.

The ceremony starts with the Madeeh - chanting words of gratitude to the Prophet Mohammed. The audience interacts with the chanters, dancing to the rhythms of the percussion instruments.

Then comes the Zikr, in which the dervishes repeat the word 'Allah' many times.

The dervishes start whirling around inside the circle. With the music, the fragrance of burning frankincense, the endless repetition of religious chants, and the dizziness, they go into a state of trance.

According to ancient belief, Sufism is about the purification of the soul in pursuit of inner peace.
The whirling dance came from the Mevlevi Order in Turkey, and is just one of the physical methods used to try to reach religious ecstasy.

While the more well known Mevlevi dervishes wear white robes, Sudanese dervishes are often dressed in green and red.

(...)

The Sufi order known as Tariqa, Qadiriyyah is one of the most widespread in Sudan & north Africa. It was established by Abdul Qadir Jilani (1077-1166 AD), a native of the Iranian province of Gilan.

This mausoleum in Omdurman belongs to one of 19th century Qadiriyyah leaders, Hamad Al Nil.

(...)

[Click the title of the article to see all the eight pictures and read all the words]

A Source of Peace

By Melanie M. Sidwell, "Sufi master to visit Longmont Muslim and speak in Denver" - Longmont Times-Call - Longmont, CO, USA
Friday, April 11, 2008

Series promotes interfaith dialogue: Sufi Master speaks in Denver

A Sufi master, Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani of the Naqshbandi Order, will speak in Denver this weekend during a free interfaith event about how religion is a source of peace, not conflict.

Kabbani is the keynote speaker during this weekend’s Abrahamic Initiative, an interfaith program sponsored by St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral in Denver with support from The Denver Foundation and Iliff School of Theology, said Greg Movisian, chairman of the steering committee.

(...)

Movisian, who helped to coordinate the Abrahamic Initiative, called Kabbani “a powerful and articulate speaker on this topic of peace from the Sufi tradition.”

“We’ve been focusing (recently) on the relationship between religion and violence and religion and peace,” Movisian said. “It’s just a very basic question: Does religion foster violence or peace? Does it do both? And under what conditions and circumstances?”

The initiative, which began in 2001, promotes interfaith dialogue.

Past topics include women in Islam, Iraq, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and the problem of evil and violence in holy texts such as the Bible, Torah and Quran.

“We’re not going to solve the Middle East crisis,” Movisian said, “but people in Denver are talking with each other about caring and understanding each other rather than seeing each other as the enemy.”

[Picture: Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani of Fenton, Mich., addresses a crowd while visiting the Islamic Center of Yuba City, Calif., in 2006. Photo: Chris Kaufman/Appeal-Democrat file]

Tested In Sufism

By Erwida Maulia, "Govt wants lecturers to proctor nat'l exams" - The Jakarta Post - Jakarta, Indonesia
Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Jakarta: The government is recruiting university lecturers to proctor national exams for elementary, junior and senior high school students.

The lecturers will join so-called "independent watchdog teams" at the provincial and regency/municipal levels. They will be responsible for preventing the kind of large-scale cheating that has dogged the exams for years.

To finance the establishment and activities of the teams, the government has allocated Rp 57.9 billion (US$6.3 million) out of a total Rp 572.85 billion set aside for the national exam program.

"We're now calculating the number of teams and staff members needed for the entire nation; and we've started recruiting some lecturers," chairman of the National Education Standards Agency, Djemari Mardapi, said here Tuesday.

Djemari said the independent watchdog teams only existed at the provincial level last year, while this year teams would be available at the regency/municipal level.

Team members will oversee the exams, including supervising the photocopying of exam papers, storing the papers and distributing them to schools. They will also be responsible for managing the answer sheets.

The National Education Ministry hopes to have rectors of state universities coordinate each team at the provincial level, with lecturers from state and private universities as members of the teams at all three levels.

(...)

Students in the languages program will be tested in Indonesian literature, foreign languages and anthropology; and students in the Islamic program will have additional tests on Koran exegesis, science of hadith and Sufism.

National exams are used to determine the eligibility of final year students to pass on to the next level of education. They have over the years been fiercely criticized by the public.

Former Jakarta State University rector Winarno Surachman told The Jakarta Post last week that students' exam scores could not represent their actual competency.

Education expert Soedijarto said the exam was an "unfair system" as it was applied to all students in the country regardless of the disparities in the quality of education they had enjoyed.

[Picture of the Medan's Masjid Raya (The Great Mosque) from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia

Map of Indonesia from: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/id.html]

Sufi Poetry Transforms the Reader

[From the French language press]:

Du 17 au 24 avril 2008, Fès abritera la 2ème édition du Festival de la culture soufie.

Par Ilham Khalifi, "Faouzi Skali : «Remettre au goût du jour la culture soufie»" - Aujourd'hui Le Maroc - Casablanca, Maroc - vendredi, 4 avril 2008

Fez will host the 2nd edition of the Fez Festival of Sufi Culture, from the 17th to the 24th of April.

The article is an interview to the President of the Festival, Mr. Faouzi Skali, on the place of Sufism in today's society, its role in our globalised world, its much needed spiritual dimension.

This second edition of the Fez Festival of Sufi Culture coincides with the celebration of twelve centuries of the foundation of Fez.

"The site of the event, the Madrasa Bouânania, the Batha Museum… they assert our cultural and historical heritage" Mr. Skali said.

"The choice of the theme "East-West" will create a link with diversity. This is a way to banish this caricature image that is given of Islam" he said.

"We are a culture, a religion of sharing, tolerance, love, mutual help… For this new edition we call new artists, thinkers, scientists, from other continents, other cultural backgrounds" said Mr. Skali.

"The Festival is a tribute to the human being, a tribute to the wisdom that is at the heart of the Islamic civilization" he added.

About the role of the classical Sufi poetry, Mr. Faouzi Skali said: "Sufi poetry transforms those who read it in depth. It is a symbolic form of the human spiritual adventure.

Like all the great works of humanity, this way of thinking is just as vital in today's world than it was in the thirteenth century".

[Visit the Fez Festival's website here: http://www.par-chemins.org/]

The Step Away from Oneself

By Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, "Nature of love is union, nature of ego is separation" - India Post - Union City, CA, USA
Wednesday, April 9, 2008

I want union with Him and He wants separation;
Thus I leave what I want so that His wish can come true.
- al-Ghazzali

The spiritual path begins when the heart is awakened to His eternal pres-ence. The Beloved looks into the heart of His lover and in that instant the lover knows the secret of divine union, that the lover and Beloved are one.

The glance of the Beloved carries the consciousness of His eternal presence. The Sufis call this glance the moment of tawba, the turning of the heart. The inner awareness of His presence turns the heart away from the world and back to God.

He calls us back to Him with a momentary glimpse of His face. This glimpse is love's most potent poison that begins our dying to the world, our journey back to God, for "How can I look at the world around me, how can I see it, if it hides the face of my Lover?" (Tweedie).

The inner awareness of union awakens us to the pain of separation.

When the heart knows that in its innermost essence it is united with God, we are confronted with our own isolation, with the knowledge that we are separate from God. It is only because we have been given a glimpse of union, had a sip of this divine wine, that we are made conscious of separation. Without the knowledge of union, how could we know that we are separate?

Without having experienced the bliss of His presence, how could we know the agony of our own isolation? The pain of longing is born from the glance of God. From the beginning of the path, the opposing states of separation and union are engraved into the heart and psyche of the spiritual wayfarer. The consciousness of union becomes the pain of separation that reminds us of our real Home.

The heart's remembrance of its Beloved is kept awake by the fire of longing. We long for Him whom we love, and the greater the love, the greater the pain of longing. Love and sadness become the substance of our inner existence.

In the words of 'Attar:
The pain of love became the medicine for every heart,
The difficulty could never be solved without love

Union and separation, love and longing, sweetness and despair, the polarities of the mystical path leave us bewildered and confused. Why are we left here behind the veils of separation when we know that separation is an illusion? Why are we caught in the prison of duality when our heart knows the deeper truth that 'everything is one'?

The more we meditate and pray, the more we remember Him Whom our heart loves, the more alienated we feel in a world that appears to have forgotten Him.

Somewhere we know what it is like to be loved beyond measure, and here we are left in a world where love is too often equated with demands and co-dependency. The eternal question of "Why are we here?" has an added poignancy when we have felt the infinite nearness of our real Home.

He Whom we love has abandoned us and only the pain of separation reminds us that somewhere He is 'closer to us than our very neck vein.' We carry the pain of remembrance in honor of our love, yet only too often we feel betrayed.

How can such a Beloved desert us? How can such a Beauty veil Her face? Doubts bombard us as the mind tries to convince us of the stupidity of our quest: to look for what you cannot find... to long for an invisible Beloved who has only brought you pain...

In many ways consciousness crucifies us on our search. The subtleties of torture with which the mind can torment are known to most travelers on the path of love. Underlying these difficulties is the fact that while the nature of love is to draw us to union, the nature of the ego is separation.

Love comes from the heart, the innermost core of our being which is our connection to the Absolute. Love is "the essence of the divine essence" and so dynamically pulls us towards oneness. But the ego is born out of separation.

The ego's existence is defined by being different: "I am different from you." The path towards union with God takes us away from the ego with its sense of separate existence and individual identity. This is why the Sufi says that the first step towards God is the step away from oneself.

The ego and the mind belong to a dimension of separation and duality. The ego exists through its sense of individuality and separation; the mind only functions through duality: through comparison and differentiation.

Love calls us to come away from ourselves and enter the state of oneness where only the Beloved exists.

[Picture from: http://www.goldensufi.org/articles.html]

A Space for Non-traditional Voices

By Bettye Miller, "Indian Scholar to Discuss Myths of Islam" - UC Riverside - CA, USA
Monday, April 7, 2008

Riverside, California – Asghar Ali Engineer, an Islamic scholar and activist from Mumbai, India, will discuss “Myths About Islam” in a public lecture on Friday, April 18 at UC Riverside

Engineer will spend the week of April 14 at UCR, where he will meet with students, faculty and community activists.

He will conduct a faculty-student workshop, “Teaching about Islam: Issues and Challenges,” on Thursday, April 17. The workshop and lecture are free and open to the public.

Engineer also will conduct an interfaith dialogue, “Learning about Islam,” organized by the Inland Communities Chapter of the Fellowship of Reconciliation [for details of all events, see below].

Trained as a civil engineer, Engineer currently heads the Institute of Islamic Studies and Centre for Study of Society and Secularism in Mumbai. The center is a research institute and think tank that promotes interfaith dialogue and harmony in India.

He is the founding chairman of the Asian Muslim Action Network, an 18-year-old organization that brings together individuals, groups and associations of Muslims in Asia who subscribe to a progressive approach to Islam.

He has won national awards in India for promoting interfaith activities, including the Communal Harmony Award from the government of India.

In 2004 he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award (widely considered the “alternative Nobel Prize”) by the Swedish Parliament for promoting the values of religious and communal co-existence, tolerance and mutual understanding in South Asia.

“Dr. Engineer is unique not only in the breadth of his expertise, but also in bridging the divide between scholarship and activism,” said Farah Godrej, assistant professor of political science who is coordinating Engineer’s visit to UCR.

“Moreover, as a member of the minority Bohra Muslim community, Dr. Engineer can shed light on the ways in which alternative or marginal voices – other than the ‘mainstream’ Sunni or Shia strains of thought – can be heard within Islam.”

Engineer’s scholarship on Dawoodi Bohra and Sufi Muslims suggests that a deeper understanding of Islamic thought must include a space for non-traditional voices, Godrej said.

The selection of an Indian Muslim scholar to speak with students and faculty also seeks to shed light on the uniqueness of South Asian Islam, and on the ways in which Islam has evolved in its growth beyond the Arab world, Godrej said.

Engineer has written more than 40 books and many journal articles on topics related to Islam, such as the role of women, Islamic liberation theology, and Islam and modernity.

Among his books are “The Origin and Development of Islam,” “Islam and Its Relevance to Our Age,” “The Islamic State,” “Rights of Women in Islam,” “Sufism and Communal Harmony” and “Islam in South and South East Asia.”

His papers include “Developing Theology of Peace in Islam” and “The Concept of Compassion in Islam.” He also has lectured at numerous universities in the United States, Canada, Europe, South and Southeast Asia, and Australia.

The Islamic scholar’s visit is sponsored by the UCR Department of Political Science, Department of Religious Studies, Office of the Dean of the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Public Policy Initiative and the Mellon Grant Speaker Series on “Gandhi and his Legacy”

[Visit the Institute of Islamic Studies and Centre for Study of Society and Secularism in Mumbai, India http://ecumene.org/IIS/csss.htm]

[Visit Professor Farah Godrej at UCR, Department of Political Science http://www.politicalscience.ucr.edu/people/faculty/godrej/index.html]

Details:
Asghar Ali Engineer, an Islamic scholar and activist from Mumbai, India, will discuss “Myths About Islam” in a public lecture on Friday, April 18, at 4:15 p.m. in Bourns Hall B118 at UC Riverside.

He will conduct a faculty-student workshop, “Teaching about Islam: Issues and Challenges,” on Thursday, April 17, at 2:15 p.m. in Humanities and Social Sciences 2212. The workshop and lecture are free and open to the public. Parking costs $6.

Engineer also will conduct an interfaith dialogue, “Learning about Islam,” organized by the Inland Communities Chapter of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, at 6 p.m. Wednesday, April 16, at the Downtown Library Auditorium, 3581 Mission Inn Ave.

For information contact the chapter at 951-682-5364 or redwoodgirl@sbcglobal.net

Touching Hearts

Staff Report, "Of comebacks and causes" - The Times of India - India
Thursday, April 10, 2008

Delhi: The last time Chitrangada Singh was in town, she was helping out hubby Jyoti Randhawa at a golf camp for kids.

This time, she came for an art do that was organised in support of underprivileged children. Kiran Modi* and Timothy Bruce hosted this art do, and many from the art frat participated in the exhibition.

The evening was livened up by some live sufi music that everyone found very soulful.

Another feature of the do that touched everyone’s hearts was a song that a bunch of underprivileged children presented.

[Chitrangada Singh is an Indian film actress who is best known for starring in the critically acclaimed 2003 film Hazaaron Khwaishen Aisi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazaaron_Khwaishen_Aisi

The movie's title is taken from the couplet of Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirza_Ghalib]

* http://tinyurl.com/5ucbcq

Wells, Faqirs and Shrines

By Manzoor Qadir, "Roaming Around Lahore Takias no more: Lahore robbed of its tradition" - The Post - Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan
Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Lahore: Long, long ago, a tourist visiting Lahore saw sprawling, green and blossoming gardens all around the city and exclaimed, "Lahore is the city of gardens".

It appears that he had somehow failed to visit Lahore's Takias (rest houses). Had he cared to observe the kaleidoscopic range of Takias in Lahore, he would have declared otherwise.

(...)

In the good old days, Takias had great importance. All the doors of the city were closed just after the evening as a rule. Those travelers, who arrived at night could not enter city. So they use to stay in these Takias at night, where Takia attendants used to serve them well. The gates of the city were opened when the dawn broke.

Then these travelers entered the city. Besides, a new comer with no relative in the city used to stay in these Takias free of cost.

The duration of the stay at these rest houses was not limited as the person could stay here as long as he wished though he had to prove that he harbored no ill intentions. It is roughly estimated that Lahore had over one hundred Takias, most of which were named after the resident Faqirs as well as Sufi shrines.

During day time, elders and youth of adjacent areas used to pass their free moments or leisure in these Takias. Every Takia had a well of cold water, a Shrine or living Sufi, arena, a mosque, a bathroom and a sufficient place to take rest or to play indoor games were the main features of Takia.

Here people took baths and enjoyed Chausar (a game played with shells), chess and playing cards sitting on rugs. Thus these Takias were like clubs. These Takias served as community centres too because marriages, funerals and functions were held here. Punchayits were held for deciding minor disputes.

Every Takia had an arena for exercise where people use to take exercise and learn the art of wrestling. In modern terminology, these Takias were health clubs. The people here also loved to drink Sardai (a traditional drink of Lahorites that is made with milk, almonds and some seeds).

Gradually, time changed and Takias too were affected by the change. In no time, Bhang addicts and other types of dubious characters occupied these Takias. Elite of the city gave up sitting in these Takias and Takias visitors were not regarded as good persons. It did not happen to just one or two Takias but the majority of the Takias got afflicted.

(...)

However, a few old people still cherish the memory of these Takias when they had some significance and were considered the best place for the out door activities not only for the young people but also for the elderly people.

Talking to The Post, Muhammad Umar recalled that the senior citizens of the city and its adjacent localities used to hold special Qawali functions at the shrines of Takias and this practice still continues at some Takias.

He said that the Takias were the best choice for the locals to accommodate the guests and to serve them during community functions.

Takia was also a point where the locals gathered for offering prayers, Fateha for the departed souls, exercise, indoor games and Qawwali but alas, the city had been deprived of this institution too like other cherished tradition, he regretted.

Takias loss has robbed the city of its much-prized possession, he ended.

The Beautiful One

By Ahmet Kurucan, "‘The Garden of Truth’ by Seyyed Hossein Nasr" - Today's Zaman - Istanbul, Turkey/New Jersey, USA
Monday, April 7, 2008

I had previously heard him talk about various subjects on a number of different occasions, but this time it was different. "I will surely continue with my scholarly studies, but I will no longer be open to offers about writing books on this or that subject.

"I don't think I will work on another book. This is my last book," he said as he was promoting "The Garden of Truth." His is the first name or one of the first names that come to mind in relation to Islamic scholars living in the Western world or in connection with Islam in general or Sufism in particular.

Think about the seriousness with which academic work is conducted in the West, particularly in social science. He has gradually climbed all these academic steps to attain this position.

Almost all of his works are translated into Turkish, even before they are put into Persian. Yes, we are talking about Seyyed Hossein Nasr and will review his book, "The Garden of Truth." The subheading of the book elaborates on its subject: "The Vision and Promise of Sufism, Islam's Mystical Tradition."

What is the meaning of being human? Who are we? Why are we here? These are the questions that have intrigued people since the beginning of mankind. Answers have been sought and according to them, lifestyles have been developed.

In plain language, Nasr tells us, "Everybody should ask this question to themselves." His entire book revolves around this centuries-long question and Nasr, together with readers, seeks an answer to it. Sometimes, he gives us encyclopedic information; at times, he holds the hands of his readers and takes them on a journey into long past corridors of time.

Time and again, he leads readers to the depths of the heart or ushers them into the domain of reason. The most striking fact is that whether you are guided by the heart or by reason, these journeys always take place in a state of sobriety, free from intoxication.

This is a short journey, but it is sufficient to disrupt our mental and intellectual patterns. In this respect, it is considerably exhausting. And eventually, this journey comes to an end at the point that one decides "to become someone or to become no one."

Actually, what makes this journey exhausting is that we tend to stray from the intrinsic line, i.e., the road which is created by God and delineated by divine books and prophets, he says, stressing the fact that truth does not change from one individual to another or from an era to another.

He explains that he voices this unchanging truth using the Sufism's language in the book. This also explains, though a bit indirectly, why the book is titled "Garden of Truth."

In his book, Nasr provides an explanation for why almost all distinguished people who created everlasting works of calligraphy, painting, music or other fine arts or literature in the Islamic world all emerged among Sufis.

He describes Sufis as the people who feel the manifestation of God's attribute of "Cemil" (the Beautiful One) deep in their minds, hearts, bodies and consciences. This manifestation is reflected first in thought and then in art.

Nasr suggests that those who do not think in a positive way, those who do not show the reflection of God's name of the Beautiful One or of the Face of God (Cemal) or who do not see everything in the micro to macro cosmos from the perspective of "what they denote" not from the perspective of "what they seem to be," as Bediuzzaman puts it, cannot produce such works.

"The degree of this manifestation is directly proportional to the level of the person's interest in Sufism and how s/he has progressed based on this interest, the ranks or states s/he has achieved," he notes.

The book has four parts and six chapters. The first chapter focuses on the meaning of being human and the questions of who we are and what we are doing here, as we have already stated.

Part two starts with the second chapter, which is titled "Truth." It consists of four chapters. The second chapter explains how knowledge illuminates and delivers us from the bondage of ignorance. The third chapter is titled "Love and Beauty," and discusses the liberating, calming, attractive, consuming and other qualities of love, beauty and peace with emphasis on their human and divine aspects. The fourth chapter is titled "Goodness and Human Action," and focuses on the human ability to conform to divine will and norms. Finally, the fifth chapter shows us how to reach the garden of truth. As you might guess, this is explained with the help of a number of Sufi terms.

Part three shows us how to access the center, i.e., Sufism, and gives an account of the progress Sufism has made over time and what it can offer us. Nasr makes comparisons between past and contemporary Sufi understanding and practices in the Islamic and Western worlds.

Part four actually consists of two appendices that aim to give a short summary of the history of Sufism to the uninitiated. These appendices contain good, concise information about Sufis, from the first to the contemporary. They are particularly useful in that they present all this information in neatly organized categories.

No doubt this book will be a leading reference for those who take an interest in mysticism and Sufism. Despite his insistence on not writing another book, we can hope that this prolific writer will change his mind and publish more in the future.

"The Garden of Truth -- The Vision and Promise of Sufism, Islam's Mystical Tradition" by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, HarperOne, hardcover, 256 pp, 11.84 pounds in hardcover, ISBN: 978-0060797225

The Values It Says It Upholds.

Yemen Times/Neue Zürcher Zeitung-Qantara.de, "Learning from the Enemy" - Translated from the German by Michael Lawton- Sana'a, Yemen/Zürich, Switzerland
Issue: (1144), Volume 18 , From 7 April 2008 to 9 April 2008

Geert Wilder's film "Fitna"
A calculated political provocation: politicians from both the Arab world and the EU have already protested against Wilders' anti-Koran film

For months, the information had been circulating that the Dutch right-wing populist politician, Geert Wilders, had made a film denouncing the Koran for its allegedly fascist character. Now the film has been made available on the internet – and, says Angela Schader, it largely tells us things we've read before.

Geert Wilders's "Fitna" was surrounded by mystery and argument until the last minute. No public broadcaster was prepared to show it; the website which was to have hosted it was suspended by its provider on March 22nd; a British internet portal copied the way "Fitna" was presented, and then declared the whole thing to be an April joke.

Last Thursday, the film was available for viewing briefly on www.liveleak.com, before the site's operators took it off after they received threats. But the video is already being distributed from other websites.

Wilders restrains himself from carrying out provocations which could be seen by Muslims as open sacrilege. At the start and at the end of the film, he shows the cartoon of Mohammed with a bomb in his turban (ticking dangerously in this version). The cartoon has recently been reprinted frequently following death threats against the cartoonist. And when at the start of the final section a hand begins to rip out a page of the Koran, the screen is blacked out – and we are told that the sound we can hear is merely that of a page being torn out of the telephone book.

Minor manipulations
This manipulative way of dealing with the Koran is more subtle than obviously destructive gestures. Of course the same old suras are quoted in connection with jihad and intolerance – whereby, in two cases, it is instructive to compare the quotations with the original.

In verse 60 of the eighth Sura, which calls for mobilisation against the unbelievers in order "to cause them to fear", the Arabic word is "turhibuna."In the context of the period in which the Koran was written, the translation given above would be quite adequate, but Wilders uses an English translation which blows the whole thing up so that it reads, "to strike terror – to strike terror into the hearts (of the enemy)."

Verse 56 of the fourth Sura paints an unedifying picture of the tortures which await unbelievers in hell: "See, We will burn in fire those who deny Our signs. As often as their skin is cooked, We will give them another skin, so that they will taste the punishment." In Wilders' version, the words "we" and "our" are given without capital letters, so that, when the quotation from the Koran is shown on screen directly following pictures of charred and lacerated terror victims, the words cease to those of God, but are put in the mouth of the Muslims.

Is this just an insignificant detail? Not if one knows the warning given by God to the Prophet: "It is for you to preach, and for Us to draw up the reckoning." (Sura 13, verse 40; there are similar formulation in Sura 3, verse 20 and Sura 64, verse 12).

By making these points, it is not intended to hide the aggressive potential which readers who are more used to the New Testament will identify in the Koran. But where just five verses are made to stand for the spirit of the entire text – as is the case with Wilders' film – then nuances begin to matter.

But it does not seem that Wilders is interested in making distinctions in his approach to religious material, otherwise he would have not have spoken in an interview for the "Spectator" magazine of "Afghan or Sufi or Pakistani law."

There never has been a Sufi justice system, and it is somewhat ironic that Wilders brings Sufism – the most open version of Islam, which is entirely directed towards the spiritual dimension – into connection with his much-criticised Sharia.

It's also amusing when he says in the same interview: "It would be good if there could be a new Koran, as there is a New Testament" – as if the rabbis, dissatisfied with the hard line of their holy book, had sat together and magicked the Christian Saviour out of a hat.

One-eyed
In the same way, "Fitna" – the Arabic word has a relatively wide range of meanings, ranging from "discord", and "dissension", via "civil war", to "conjuring" or "seduction" – cannot be seen as a serious attempt to deal with Islam, either on the religious or the social level.

The film, which claims to argue in favour of enlightened Western attitudes, in fact takes its cue fairly precisely from the propaganda works of the Islamists; the only difference is that it uses the familiar anti-Muslim polemic.

None of the old polemical images are missing here – there's the hate preacher and his fanaticised public; there are the video images of terror attacks, the beheading of a Western hostage or the shooting of an Afghan woman; there's the poisonous polemic against the Jews; there's a postcard montage featuring a collection of mosque buildings with the caption "Greetings from the Netherlands."

Context and differentiation are missing
What is missing (and what was not to be expected from Wilders) is contextualisation and differentiation. There is no mention of the fact that the majority of Muslim immigrants in Europe, whose increasing numbers are underlined with threatening statistics, take a position which is far distant from the kind of understanding of the their religion which is presented here.

(...)

A film which mixes together the nastiest excesses of Muslim fundamentalism and extremism cannot stand for "Islam" as a whole, as the film itself suggests it does. It deals with a phenomenon which, as every informed reader knows by now, is of relatively recent origin and is primarily fed by political and social grievances: a deep frustration which is turned disastrously into a fatally bigoted and reactionary way of reading the religious texts.

It goes of course without saying that this extremism has to be fought with all available effort. Whether all available means should be used: that is a debate which, if it were held seriously and with integrity, would be one way in which the West could demonstrate the values it says it upholds.

A Sufi Belongs to the Sect of God

By Farida Khanam, "A Mystic Faith Soaked In Universal Love" - The Times of India - India
Monday, April 7, 2008

Sufism is the form which mysticism has taken in Islam. The term Sufism embraces the philosophy and practices in Islam which aims at direct communion between God and man. The Islamic values of love, peace and kindness, embodied in the Prophet of Islam were embraced by Sufis. They devoted their lives to spreading these virtues all around the world.

The original intention of Sufism was to deliver man from slavery to worldly passions by destroying the power of the flesh and uniting souls to God by spiritual ties. The Sufi movement's origins lie in asceticism. In one sense self-denial was a reaction to the worldliness of some of the faithful who were absorbed in the pursuit of worldly goals.

Sufis felt the need to help the poor and the helpless. During the reign of the Abbasids a rich minority enjoyed all the comforts of life, while the majority lived as poor peasants and labourers. Sufis reiterated that God was all-loving and all-merciful; that God wants people to love one another, be merciful and compassionate. They raised such questions as how we are justified in expecting love and compassion from God, while we have nothing to offer to our fellow- men but hate and ill will.

Sufis spread the message of harmony, brother-hood, peace and friendship. The Sufis hold that despairing of love and mercy is a greater fault than committing sin.

For, as we learn from traditions, everything in life is mortal, except for God and good deeds. All worldly things are characterised by impermanence. Good deeds alone can bring us salvation.

The Qur'an says: "Do not despair of My mercy. God turns to those who repent and surrender themselves to Him" (39:53).

Shaykh Nizamuddin Awliya devoted his life in saving mankind from sin and suffering. He believed that, in the eyes of God, no deed was of greater significance than freeing fellow human beings from their misery and helping the helpless.

Once someone asked Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti what was the highest form of religious devotion in the eyes of God. He replied: "Develop river-like generosity, sun-like bounty and earth-like hospitality".

Love is most important. Sufis conceive God as the beloved and man as the lover. According to Ibn Arabi, no religion ranks higher than the religion of love. Love is the source and the essence of all creeds. Therefore, a Sufi thinks that all the evil thoughts which breed dislike, hatred and religious division and prejudice must be replaced by love.

When he has come to his last stage of enlightenment, his self is annihilated in the complete sense. This is the stage when he comes closer to God, and naturally he becomes a servant to God's people.

He rises above vested interests, above all biases and predilections. A realised Sufi has no other interest but his love of God and world brotherhood.

Love of God is a process that purifies the human personality. That is, the soul comes to realise itself, in the sense that the latent natural potential of the soul is ultimately awakened and, in the words of the Qur'an, it becomes the 'serene' or 'pure soul'.

A heart filled with God's love will necessarily be filled with the love of other human beings, all the creatures of God. As Bayazid Bistami says: "A Sufi belongs to the sect of God".

The writer is a reader in the Islamic Studies department of Jamia Millia Islamia.

Turkey's Version of Islam

By Avni Dogru MBA, "Turkey: Ruling a nation through fear" - Today's Zaman - New York/Istanbul, Turkey
Saturday, April 5, 2008

The recent bid by Turkey's chief prosecutor to have the Constitutional Court shut down the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) is the latest manifestation of Turkey's extremist secular elite's fear of losing control over the republic.

It was a shock for many and the majority of Turks viewed it as a step backward in Turkey's democratization process and an embarrassment to the country's image. However, it actually is more of a milestone along the way to a mature, exemplary democracy.

A relatively young democracy, Turkey has come a long way through tumultuous times since its birth in 1923.

(...)


Today, Turkish democracy is at a very different point than even a decade ago and a military coup is no longer likely. The governing party, the AK Party, has done much to put the military under civilian control with the undeniable support of the EU. However, the judicial system continues to be manipulated by Turkey's elite, who pose as secularists, but represent the protectionist and autocratic ideologies of the 1930s.

They have become very uncomfortable with the AK Party's attempts to remove the headscarf ban at universities, as well as the party's support of the first civil constitution project. Since the current constitution was prepared by five generals after a coup in 1980, a civil constitution is a necessary step forward for Turkish democracy.

It is of note that Turkey adapted its secularism from the French "laïcité" in 1937. Unlike Anglo-Saxon secularism at play throughout America and most of Europe, which promotes freedom of thought and religion, laïcité is associated with obstructed religious freedom.

In February 2004, the French parliament banned religious symbols such as the Islamic headscarf, the Christian cross and the Jewish skullcap in public secondary schools. This law created a major social rift in France and was considered an audacious leadership move by many in secular countries around the world.

In Turkey's case, although it is not banned by the Constitution, the Constitutional Court relied on only a lower court's ruling after a coup in 1997 to enforce a ban on women wearing headscarves in universities.

To be sure, Turkey implemented a ban far more radical than the French. In France, it is still possible to wear headscarves at universities and private secondary schools, yet these basic rights were taken away from Turkish women without any checks and balances.

What many people don't know is that Turkey's version of Islam is not a threat to secularism in Turkey, as it is strongly tempered by the social integration of Muhammed Jelaluddin Rumi's philosophy of tolerance and Sufism.

This non-exclusionary leaning on the part of Turks makes for a healthier practice of the religion throughout the country compared with the rest of the world.

No matter what is shown as the reason to shut down the AK Party, the deeper political motives are quite different and hidden. Turkish society has been going through major social changes in the last decade, causing tension between Turkey's marginal elite, who see themselves above everyone and prefer the status quo and autocracy, and the rest of the Turkish citizens, who want more freedom and rights. Globalization and an open society threaten the 1930s protectionist policies.

(...)

In the past, the motto of "saving secularism" as an excuse to hoard power has always worked. But, if there was a real threat to secularism in Turkey, the results of a comparative study done by the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV), a leading Turkish think tank, in 1999 and late 2006 would show it.

The study shows that from 1999 to 2006, the percentage of Turkish citizens who would favor a Shariah-based religious regime dropped from 21 percent to 9 percent. In the same period, the percentage of women wearing a headscarf decreased by 9 percent even though this choice of dress became more visible in larger cities due to migration.

All democracies go through a maturation stage and face similar challenges.

(...)

[Map from: US Department of State, Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3432.htm#political]

Actions Speak Louder than Words

By Yousuf Bhuvad, "Naqsbandia Foundation for Islamic education celebrates Mawlid un Nabi Conference" - NFIE - Chandler, AZ, USA
Monday, April 7, 2008



The Naqsbandia Foundation for Islamic Education [NFIE] celebrated the 5th annual Mawlid-un-Nabi Conference of the Chandler Community Center in Chandler, Arizona on March 29th, 2008.

A large number of the diversified Muslim community in the Phoenix metropolitan area attended this spiritual event.

The program started with the Quranic Recitation by Imam Didmar Faja who is the Imam of the Albanian American Islamic Center. Mohammed Bilal Siddiqui recited Hamd and Naat in the praises for Allah and his beloved prophet (PBUH).

The children from the Arizona Cultural Academy presented the choir reciting verses and poetry in the praise of Allah and his prophet (SAWS). Imam Muaz Redzic, Imam Islamic Center North East Valley introduced the theme of the Mawlid. The theme this year was the love for the prophet(PBUH).

The guest Naat reciter, Al-Haj Noor Mohammad Jarral, was one of the highlights of the Mawlid. He won the hearts of the audience by his Naat and Hamd creating a spiritual experience and serenity never seen before.

Dr. Ahmed Mirza, the secretary of NFIE, talked about the mission of the Naqsbandia Foundation for the Islamic education and how it has grown in the past few years.

The keynote speaker Shaykh Sayyed Muhammad bin Yahya Al-Hussayni Al-Ninowy, once again touched the hearts by his eloquent talk on the subject matter of love for the prophet Mohammed (SAWS).

The key message is that if we truly love the prophet (PBUH), we need to show it by our actions and not by words as actions speak louder than words.

Shaykh Sayyed Mohammed also conducted a questions and answers session with the audience covering Islamic Shariah and Fiqah.

Noor Mohammed Jarral, recited few Naats followed by Salat-o-Salaam and prayers by the Shaykh. The program ended with thanks and gratitude by Arif Kazmi for all the volunteers who helped make the event successful.

[Visit the NFIE website: http://www.nfie.com/]

Urs of Khawaja Ghulam Fareed

Associated Press of Pakistan - The Post - Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan
Friday, April 4, 2008

Rajanpur: The 107th Urs of renowned Sufi poet and saint Hazrat Khawaja Ghulam Fareed will begin at Kot Mothan Sharif from Saturday, April the12th.

Auqaf department, district government, Khawaja Fareed World Council, Khawaja Fareed Foundation, Sadiqia Foundation, Khawaja Fareed Adbi-o-Saqafti Sangat, and PPP cultural wing have finalized their programmes to celebrate the Urs in a befitting manner.

Sajjada Nasheen Khawaja Moinuddin Mehboob Koreja chaired a meeting on Thursday to finalise the programmes and also formed organising committees to oversee arrangements for Urs ceremonies.

Mahafil-e-Sama, Mahafil-e-Qirat, Naat Khawani, seminars will be held during the three-day ceremonies.

[Stamp from:

http://www.pakpost.gov.pk/philately/stamps2001/khawaja_farid.html (with bio of Khawaja Fareed);

Picture of his Shrine from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khwaja_Ghulam_Farid]

A Thesis on Dream Interpretation in Sufism

By Barbara Black, "Iranian studies launched with a minor" - Concordia Journal - Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Thursday, April 3, 2008

Concordia is developing a program in Iranian studies, starting with an undergraduate minor that is listed in the 2008-09 undergraduate calendar.

Its organizers intend that this initiative, which is unique in Canada, will grow into a full-fledged major program.

Professors Richard Foltz and Lynda Clarke want to establish Concordia as the premier centre for Iranian studies in Canada, making use of Montreal as a crossroads of Iranian immigration for the benefit of the community at large.

Although the minor is based in the Department of Religion, it is interdisciplinary, including anthropology, political science, gender studies, history and film. Students can choose from a wide range of courses.

Besides Islamists Lynda Clarke and Richard Foltz, the core faculty comprises linguist Mark Hale, sociologist Homa Hoodfar and Peter Rist, an expert on Iranian film. Also associated are classicist Annette Teffeteller and political scientist James Devine, a specialist in contemporary Iranian and Gulf politics.

(...)

Foltz, who has a PhD from Harvard, has just published a book called Iran creuset de religion (Iran, The Crucible of Religion), published by Laval University Press. In this and a previous book, Religions of the Silk Road (St. Martin’s Press, 1999), he traces the emergence, development and transmission of the world’s major religious traditions.

Clarke said Concordia’s Iranian studies initiative was inspired by the success of Centre for Canadian Irish Studies, which has used local community support and a stream of visiting speakers, scholars and organized events to build a highly visible interdisciplinary centre.

(...)

The Concordia program will draw on the expertise of specialists in the Persian language, ancient Iranian languages, mythology and art. The organizers hope to raise sufficient funds to add specialists in Persian literature, history, art and architecture.

In the Department of Religion alone, Umberto Cicchetti, Eliza Tasbihi, Khadijeh Zolghadr and Linda Darwish are doing doctorates in Iranian studies with an emphasis on religion. Many other graduate students with Iranian interest are at work as well.

Tasbihi has just finished an MA on Iranian Islamic theosophy, and is presently working on Rumi, the highly popular 13th-century Sufi “poet of love.”

Cicchetti, a native-born Quebecer with no Iranian background, is doing a thesis on dream interpretation in Sufism. In fact, he is in Iran now.

He is one of many students the Department of Religion has helped to travel to Iran to study Persian and otherwise further his studies, the latest being a student in the School of Cinema, who is writing a thesis on Iranian film.

[Picture: This bronze statue from Luristan, in western Iran, dates from the 12th to the eighth century BCE. Photo: Courtesy of Bardi Saadi-Nejad]

The Struggle of Our Time

By Jane Lampman, "Muslim reformer's 'heresy': The Islamic state is a dead end" -The Christian Science Monitor - Boston, MA, USA
Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Abdullahi Ahmed an-Naim has seen what can happen to an Islamic reformer: His mentor was executed in 1985 in Sudan; he himself had to flee the country.

Still, the self-described "Muslim heretic" has no trouble traveling the Islamic world spreading his controversial message:
There is no such thing as an Islamic state.

A secular state and human rights are essential for all societies so that Muslims and others can practice their faith freely, he tells his co-religionists.

"My motivation is in fact about being an honest, true-to-myself Muslim, rather than someone complying with state dictates," says Mr. Naim, a professor of law at Emory University in Atlanta since 1999. "I need the state to be neutral about religious doctrine so that I can be the Muslim I choose to be."

So committed is this scholar to opening the door to free debate within his faith that he helped organize the first "Muslim Heretics Conference" in Atlanta over the weekend. Some 75 Muslims, engaged in various reform projects, gathered to discuss issues related to sharia (Islamic law), democracy, and women's rights – and how to cope with dissent and its consequences.

"We celebrate heresy simply to promote innovative thinking," he says. "Every orthodoxy was at one time a heresy."

Naim's personal project involves what he calls "negotiating the future of sharia." As Islamic societies struggle to define themselves in a globalized world and some talk of creating Islamic states to codify sharia, he says the state and religion must be kept separate.

But religion should still have its place in political life, allowing Muslims to express principles of sharia as they see fit. He believes this is truly Islamic, and that articulating the reasons why will help ordinary Muslims not be taken in by political slogans.

"I know for a fact that Abdullahi has a following among young Muslims in places like Malaysia and Indonesia," says John Esposito, head of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. "These people are often marginalized in their societies, but over time, these positions can become mainstream."

Naim's view is not just a theory picked up in the United States, but the result of painful personal experience. "

As a Muslim from Sudan whose people have suffered tremendously from confusion over this issue, my mission is to clarify it so other Muslim societies don't go down the same road to come to the same dead end," he says in a phone interview.

He has watched Sudan's institutions virtually collapse under fundamentalist Islamic rule and seen the disillusionment firsthand.

While a law student at the University of Khartoum in 1967, Naim heard a talk by a Sufi Muslim thinker, Mahmoud Mohamed Taha. "That lecture turned my life around," he says, and he joined Taha's Islamic reform movement.

But when Sudanese strongman Jaafar al-Nimeiri was about to introduce sharia by decree in 1983, he jailed Taha, Naim, and others for 18 months. Taha was put on trial and executed.

The essence of the Sufi's message had been that certain verses in the Koran represented the universal, eternal message of Islam, while others were relevant to a particular historical context and no longer viable.

"Specifically [he argued] for equality for women, freedom of religion, and equality for non-Muslims," Naim says. After fleeing the country, he translated Taha's work, "The Second Message of Islam," into English.

Naim later became director of Africa Watch, monitoring human rights on the continent, and in 1995 began teaching at Emory. He's written books on human rights and sponsored social-change projects promoting human rights in local communities in Yemen, Tanzania, and Southeast Asia.

A new book just released in English, "Islam and the Secular State," represents the culmination of his life's work, he says.

Islam teaches that every Muslim stands before God and is responsible for making his own moral choices in observing sharia. The Koran does not prescribe a form of government, but speaks only of the community of Muslims. The book argues that there has never been an Islamic state.

"You will not find any reference to an Islamic state or to state enforcement of sharia before the mid-20th century – it's a post-colonial discourse based on a European-style state," he explains.

While Iran, for instance, claims to be a republic, implying popular sovereignty, a council of clerics is supposed to ensure that it is Islamic. But that council is made up of fallible humans as political as everyone else, he argues.

"How is it that 30 years after the revolution they cannot trust the Muslim citizens to make the choice as to who is likely to be faithful to Islamic values and to represent them?"

Further, Iran and Saudi Arabia both claim to be Islamic states, but to each other they are heresies, he adds. So what does Islamic mean? To call a state Islamic is to attempt to silence political or theological dissent, he says.

"Most Muslims have an intuitive feeling about this but can't articulate it, so when confronted by Islamists who say this is the will of God, they are defenseless," Naim says. "My hope is that with this book, we give people confidence to respond that "this is not Islam, it is your view of Islam."

For some time, Naim has been visiting countries across the Muslim world from Nigeria to Indonesia, testing his ideas in public gatherings, which may range from 25 to 800 people. Before he set out, early manuscripts of his book were translated into Indonesian, Bengali, French, Persian, Russian, Swahili, Turkish, and Urdu and uploaded onto a website.

Only once has he felt physically threatened – after a talk in northern Nigeria – although people have tried to shout him down. "I try to persuade gently, to give examples from Muslim history that people understand, and that helps," he says.

One huge challenge is the negative connotation in the Muslim world of "secularism," often seen as being antireligion.

Yet Radwan Masmoudi, director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy in Washington, believes Naim's goal of separating political and religious institutions is what a majority of Muslims want. Gallup's recent global poll showed "that 80 to 90 percent of Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia want democracy," he says, but similar majorities also want sharia to be a source, or the only source, of law in their countries.

"This is the struggle of our time, coming up with a modern interpretation of sharia that is true to Islamic principles but also to democratic values," he adds.

[Picture from Professor Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im Website at Emory: http://people.law.emory.edu/~aannaim/. Photo: Prof. Rosalind Hackett]

[Link to the Official UN Declaration of Human Rights Home Page: http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/index.htm]

The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi

By Cary McMullen, "Ms. Tippett, Meet Mr. Peabody" - The Ledger - Lakeland, FL, USA
Wednesday, April 2, 2008

It was announced today that Speaking of Faith, the excellent radio program from American Public Media, has been named a winner of the Peabody, the most prestigious award in electronic media.

The show features interviews with a wide range of personalities, all on the subject of, well, faith.

The award was given for a particular 2007 program, "The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi," about the 13th century Islamic mystic and poet, whose work is undergoing a revival right now.

You can hear archives of the show at its Web site, www.speakingoffaith.org.

An Angel’s Wing Tied to a Donkey’s Tail

By Azam Nizamuddin, Esq., "The Heart of Tolerance: The Prophetic Paradigm Towards Inter-Religious Dialogue" - TAM The American Muslim - Bridgeton, MO, USA
Tuesday, April 1, 2008

The dramatic rise of religion in public discourse recently has given the global community pause to reflect on what role religion will play in modernity.

As communities continue to compete in the new process of globalization, communication, cooperation, and conflict will inevitably increase. As governments across the globe divert billions of dollars into areas of security, terrorism and war, little effort and money is being used to explore the possibility of peace and reconciliation.

The recent Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq demonstrates that notions of peace and stability are as difficult to maintain as they were in 1941.

However, the last twenty years have witnessed the rise of religion and the use of religious symbols and rhetoric in various political discourses as well as in regional conflict. The adherents of religion view this recent phenomenon as a harbinger of divine will, a propitious sign from the Al-Mighty. Critics, however view this development with alarm and concern.

With the rise of extreme nationalism as well as religious assertiveness demonstrated by the Christian Coalition in America, to Hizbut Tehreer in Europe, the Likud Party in the 80s in Israel and of course the Hindutva movement in India, religious ideology, religious rhetoric, and religious identity continue to play major roles within local communities and globally.

(...)

While policy makers and states will continue to utilize religious ideology and symbolism to aggrandize their political agendas, those of us who have been involved in inter-religious dialogue must create new strategies to further develop dialogue and cooperation.

(...)

Each one of us must look to our own faith tradition to develop new strategies for formulating a public discourse on religion. For people of various religious traditions, there must be a framework where all can feel comfortable discussing each other’s faith experiences. Clearly, issues such as sectarian differences, eschatology, the transmigration of the soul, legal justice, and social structures, are simply too palpably close to home to simply ignore or broom under the carpet.

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For Muslims, these concerns will inevitably involve the interpretation and use of sacred texts. From the Islamic perspective, this means the Quran and Hadith or the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad. Inevitably, this involves the recognition and realization that human beings consist of not only matter, but also of a spiritual dimension which must be properly developed in order to promote a civilized, tolerant, and peaceful worldview.

If we ignore the spiritual and beautiful aspect of our creation, then we risk losing the importance of civility within ourselves and the beauty of others.

From the Islamic perspective, God created human beings in his own image. After a brief period in the Divine presence or paradise, human beings were separated from God. The Quran says that human beings were created in a very high and pure state, but that then they were reduced to the low, animal-like state. Having fallen from the state of the best stature, human beings cannot regain the former state save through the Grace of God.

Even though human beings were separated from the Divine presence, they still possess the Divine qualities which separates them from the animals. Some thinkers have referred to this as the spirit, the intellect or even the heart, the seat of the knowledge of God.

The aim of Islamic theology and law is to remind human beings who they really are, which means that they are awakened from their dream which they refer to as their ordinary life, confining the soul to the prison of the ego.

Jalaluddin Rumi, the Muslim jurist and poet reminds us of this reality in an interesting metaphor:

Man’s situation is like this: an angel’s wing was brought and tied to a donkey’s tail so that the donkey perchance might also become an angel, thanks to the radiance of the angel’s company.

For Rumi, beauty is an essential component of religion and faith. When aesthetic value has little or no place in religious observance and practice, then the ugliness of religion fills the void.

Unfortunately, this leads human beings to forget the high rank to which they are assigned. They forget their spiritual dimension which allows them to be close to God. They forget that being close to God means being God’s friend or khalilullah, the name given to Abraham, the spiritual source for many monotheistic traditions.

Since the late 1990’s, the poet Jalaluddin Rumi became the most read poet in the United States. Much of his writings were made available to large American audiences by well constructed and easy to read translations of Rumi’s poetry by able scholars. Indeed, the Pakistani pop group Janoon even referenced Rumi as inspiration for much of its sufi sounds with tolerance and love themes.

Despite the popularity of Rumi in the West, however, what is often overlooked is that the belief, writings, and doctrines of Rumi stem from his focus on emulating the character and personality of the Prophet Muhammad.

It wasn’t that Rumi found themes of tolerance, love, compassion because he was removed from Islamic orthodoxy or practice. To the contrary, these themes, that people outside of Islam so admire and identify about Rumi (love, tolerance, and compassion), stem directly from Rumi’s attempts to incorporate the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad into his own life and teachings.

For example, several well known Prophetic traditions state:
Sahih Muslim - Book 47, Number 47.1.8: Yahya related to me from Malik that he had heard that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, “I was sent to perfect good character.”

Sahih Muslim - Book 47, Number 47.1.7: Yahya related to me from Malik that Yahya ibn Said said that he heard Said ibn al-Musayyab say, “Shall I tell you what is better than much prayer and sadaqa?” They said, “Yes.” He said, “Mending discord. And beware of hatred - it strips you (of your deen).”

Sahih Muslim - Book 47, Number 47.4.16: Yahya related to me from Malik from Ata ibn Abi Muslim that Abdullah al-Khurasani said, “The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, ‘Shake hands and rancor will disappear. Give presents to each other and love each other and enmity will disappear.’ ”

The above-referenced traditions form the foundation of Islamic ethics and character development, also known as akhlaq. In Islam, the prophetic voice is not limited to the Seventh century life of the Prophet Muhammad. Prior to Muhammad, there were many prophets who established norms of behavior and practice.

For example, the life of the Prophet Abraham offers a rich example for our purposes this evening. By focusing on the character of Abraham, we can all appreciate the many fascinating aspects of his life. Worth particular attention for our purposes is the story of Abraham challenging his father’s idolatry. (See Surah Sha` ra, 26:69-92 ; and Surah Maryam, 19:41-50).

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Islam’s Vision of Love
One of the other elements within Islamic thought that is readily seen in the works of the luminaries such as Jalaluddin Rumi and even Abu-Hamid al-Ghazali is the concept of love.

Today, the modern secular culture (what we term today as pop culture) is imbued solely with the concept of romantic love. Now, romantic love is to be distinguished from spiritual love.

In terms of literature, romantic love stems from those passionate stories of the troubadours which made their way from Southern European culture toward the end of the French enlightenment period, reflected in such Romantic works as Flaubert’s Madame Bovary.

Here we have a case of love which is forbidden both socially but also morally. The concept here betrays the very sense of loyalty to a spouse or of a contractual obligation. In fact, the very basis of romantic love is derived from a context of something which is unacceptable by its very nature and therefore disloyal.

To the contrary, the notion of love found in the essence of man’s relationship to God is one based on loyalty. It is love that is unconditional. The idea of love has its basis in the Quran, for God loves those that are pious and kind.

Chapter 3 - Imran
[31] - Say, (O Muhammad, to mankind): If ye love Allah, follow me; Allah will love you and forgive you your sins. Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

[76] - Nay, but (the chosen of Allah is) he who fulfilleth his pledge and wardeth off (evil); for lo! Allah loveth those who ward off (evil).

[103] - And hold fast, all together, by the rope which Allah (stretches out for you), and be not divided among yourselves; and remember with gratitude Allah’s favour on you; for ye were enemies and He joined your hearts in love, so that by His Grace, ye became brethren; and ye were on the brink of the pit of Fire, and He saved you from it. Thus doth Allah make His Signs clear to you: That ye may be guided.

[148] - So Allah gave them the reward of the world and the good reward of the Hereafter. Allah loveth those whose deeds are good.

Chapter 5 - Maida
5:42 - “. . . But if thou judgest, judge between them with equity. Lo! Allah loveth the equitable.

5:54 - O you who believe! whoever from among you turns back from his religion, then Allah will bring a people, He shall love them and they shall love Him

5:93 . . . So be mindful of your duty to Allah and do good works; and again; be mindful of your duty, and believe; and once again: be mindful of your duty, and do right. Allah loveth the good.

In fact, the notion of brotherly love led to the notion of spiritual chivalry which was a very important component of Sufi orders in the classical Islamic period and which to a great degree exists today in the Muslim world.

Al-Ghazali says, the love of God is the highest of all topics and is the final aim. Human perfection resides in this, that the love of God should conquer a man’s heart and posses it wholly, and even if it does not possess it wholly it should predominate in the heart over other things. Love signifies the passing away of the individual self; it is an uncontrollable rapture, a God-sent grace which must be sought by ardent prayer and aspiration.

So how does one love God? From the spiritual perspective, loving God is not like loving through the other five senses such as seeing beauty with eyes or hearing something beautiful with the ears, but rather it is a sixth sense implanted in the heart which animals do not possess, through which we become aware of spiritual beauty and excellence.

Such love is directed not towards any outward form, but toward the inner character. However, love of God can only arise for those who have knowledge of God’s existence and who are aware of Him. Hence, knowledge of God is a prerequisite of love of God.

Love for God is also important for the here after. Al-Ghazali says, He who supposes that it is possible to enjoy happiness in the next world apart from the love of God is in error.

The enjoyment of God is happiness. But if he had no delight in God before, he will not delight in Him then, and if his joy in God was but slight before it will be but slight then. In brief, our future happiness will be in strict proportion to the degree in which we have loved God here.

Rabia – Love of God
She stated: “Oh God, if I worship you in fear of Hell, burn me in Hell; and if I worship you in hope of paradise exclude me from paradise; but if I worship you for your own sake then do not withhold your everlasting beauty.”

Recently, I was privileged to have the opportunity to visit Konya, the home of Rumi. Therefore, I think it is only fitting that I conclude with the words of Mevlana (“master” as he is often called.

Rumi offers us a beautiful poem which inspires the human spirit toward a filial relationship. He states:

Through love all this bitter will be sweet;
Through love all that is copper will be gold;
Through love all dregs will be turn to purest wine;
Through love all pain will turn to medicine;
Through love the dead will all become alive;
Through love the king will turn into a slave;

You know the value of every article of merchandise,
but if you do not know the value of your own soul,
it’s all foolishness.

You have come to know the fortunate and the inauspicious stars,
but you don’t know whether you yourself are fortunate or unlucky.

This, then is the essence of all sciences—that you should know who you will be when the Day of Judgment arrives.

Thus, by incorporating the concept of friend as beautifully exemplified in the character of the Prophets Muhammad and Abraham and the importance of love in the literature of Islamic tradition, we can continue on this journey toward meaningful inter-religious cooperation.

The Sufi Sense of Time

By Fred Kirshnit, "A Contemporary Tradition" - New York Sun - New York, NY, USA
Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Although the traditional and the contemporary are often at odds in today's classical music world, Robert Spano will offer a compromise when he brings his Atlanta Symphony Orchestra to Carnegie Hall on Saturday evening: a tradition of presenting the contemporary.

The work in question is the New York premiere of the Here and Now by Christopher Theofanidis.

Mr. Theofanidis teaches at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore and was recently composer of the year for the Pittsburgh Symphony.

Commissioned by Mr. Spano himself, the Here and Now is a song cycle for chorus and orchestra based on the poetry of the 13th-century Sufi sage Jelaluddin Rumi.

While the work is an unusual composition, it is not surprising that the Atlanta Symphony is its vehicle; the symphony has been a leader in the introduction of contemporary works.

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As for Mr. Theofanidis, the composer has said that this music reminds him of "Walt Whitman in the now." It does indeed reflect the Sufi sense of time, what cosmological scholar Dr. Arife Ellen Hammerle explains as "the intersection between the universe and the human being in a timeless dimension of space."

The 13 inventive songs range from a cappella chorus at the cycle's opening, to chorus and orchestra, to an epigrammatic soloist, and finally to one Technicolor duet.

In the fourth song, "All day and night, music," the chorus erupts into a multifaceted pealing of campanilian voices, individual bells tolling in the rarefied air.

Throughout the choral writing, there is clarity of line that allows for complex constructions to sound layered but not soupy. Mr. Theofanidis is especially adept at separating voices intelligently.

Song no. 7, "The one who pours is wilder than we," is a jazzy interlude. No. 9, "Drumsound rises," is reminiscent of ancient music — or, at least, reflects modern man's fantasy of how music must have sounded in the days of Christ.

The soloist is a baritone, and, for this concert, Mr. Spano has enlisted the services of one of the fastest rising stars in the operatic firmament, Nathan Gunn. Mr. Gunn's numbers serve as philosophical signposts for an otherwise decidedly non-euclidian journey.

Mr. Theofanidis resists the temptation to go Middle Eastern until the penultimate song, "The urgency of love," for soprano, tenor, chorus, and orchestra.

For this New York premiere, Mr. Spano will employ Hila Plitmann and Richard Clement, both of whom appear on his CD of the work.

[Picture: Whirling Dervish. Ebru Art by Dr. Mehmet Refii Kileci, http://www.kileci.net/. Photo: Sufi News]

"Sufism and Zaouias" at Ouezzane, Morocco

[From the French language press]:

La Zaouia Ouezzanya organise, du 28 mars au 6 avril à Ouezzane, le Moussem annuel de Moulay Abdallah Chérif, sous la devise "Invocation et pensée".

Le Matin, Maroc - lundi 31 mars 2008 - par MAP

The Zaouia Ouezzanya organizes, from March 28 to April 6 at Ouezzane, the annual Moussem [religious festival] of Moulay Abdallah Chérif, under the motto "Invocation and thought".

The Moussem was initiated under the High Patronage of His Majesty King Mohammed VI.

A series of spiritual, cultural and socio-economic activities are on the program.

A seminar entitled "Sufism and Zaouias" will be led by Academics and Theologians who will speak about "The Reality of Sufism" and "Zaouias: Past and Present".