Divisive Issues

By Jay Tokasz, *Incident worries members of mosque* - Buffalo News - Buffalo, NY, USA
Thursday, September 2, 2010

Members of an Orleans County mosque suspect that growing anti- Muslim sentiment—stirred up by a raging debate over a planned Islamic Center in Manhattan — played a role in recent harassment, including a gunshot blast, outside their building in the Town of Carlton.

“I’m sure,” said Bilal Huzair, a member of the World Sufi Foundation Mosque on Fuller Road. “Everything that happens in the mass media fuels everything.”

Jacob Zimmerman also senses a connection between the heavily covered controversy in New York City and recent events in tiny Carlton, where the entire population of the town could fill a single Manhattan apartment building.

“The way that Islam has been portrayed by the media, a tone has been set,” said Zimmerman.
The presence of mosques and the building of new mosques have become divisive issues in several communities across the country in recent months, as well-organized opposition groups have popped up, often alongside “tea party” political activists, said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Incidents such as the one in Carlton are part of a disturbing uptick in examples of what the council and other Muslim groups call Islamophobia.

“It comes in an atmosphere of near hysteria regarding mosques and American Muslims, mainly generated by the manufactured controversy over the Islamic center in Manhattan,” said Hooper.

Congregants of the World Sufi Foundation Mosque also maintained that a more concerted response by law enforcement might help ward off future problems at the mosque, which has been a frequent target of vandals over the years.

“The bigger concern is, when this does come up again, can we rely on authorities to come help us?” asked Zimmerman.

Law enforcement has responded to complaints in the past, but “that response is never kind of up to par,” he added. “They seem to think it’s OK to write it off as young men being reckless.”

Members remained frustrated at how their complaints were handled Friday and Monday.
Friday, a passenger in Huzair’s car called police asking for help when two vehicles — recognized as the same ones that had been outside the mosque harassing members on earlier occasions — began aggressively tailgating, with high beams on, as Huzair drove toward Albion.

Huzair said he earlier had driven past a parked Orleans County Sheriff’s Office car, but deputies weren’t able to catch the tailgaters in the act.

Monday, a congregant went outside the mosque during nightly prayers to confront teenagers in two vehicles who were honking their horns and yelling obscenities. One of the teens also fired a shotgun, according to sheriff’s deputies.

One of the vehicles hit the member, David Bell, who suffered a cut to his thumb and a concussion, according to Huzair. Members later caught up with the two SUVs and were able to block them from leaving the area while they called authorities. Deputies didn’t show up until 40 minutes later, they said. Eventually, five male teenagers from Holley were charged with disrupting a religious service, a misdemeanor.

One of the teens, Mark Vendetti, 17, additionally was charged with criminal possession of a weapon in connection with the shotgun firing.

The Sheriff’s Office sent out a news release on the arrests at about 1 p. m. Tuesday.

But Huzair said he suspected the alleged crimes might have been ignored if the congregation hadn’t contacted some media outlets in Rochester early Tuesday morning.

“They took our complaint more seriously only after the fact that media was present,” said Huzair.

The arrests have since become a national story.

Sheriff Scott D. Hess did not respond to three messages left by The Buffalo News on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Orleans County District Attorney Joseph Cardone said Wednesday he was aware of the Muslim group’s concerns about the Sheriff’s Office’s response. The sheriff was in a better position to handle those questions, said Cardone, who didn’t know all of the details about when deputies were called and when they responded.

“I know that Sheriff Hess is taking this thing extremely seriously,” said the district attorney. “It could be that there was some delay.”

But only two deputies may have been on duty at night, said Cardone, and if they were in the southern part of the county at the time, it could have taken 30 to 40 minutes to get to the northern part.

The district attorney said his office is taking the case seriously and preparing to press further charges, including a likely vehicular assault charge.

“There’s orders of protection [in place],” he said. “We feel the situation is under control. We’ve spoken to some of the parents, and they’re appalled by what [their kids] did.”

A national Islamic lobby and civil rights group has called on authorities to consider hate crime charges in the case.

Hooper said the Council on American-Islamic Relations aimed to “make sure these types of incidences aren’t just swept under the rug and put in the category of youthful exuberance.”

Cardone labeled the actions of the teenagers “complete, stupid ignorance” that may have resulted from knowledge of Islam gleaned only from television coverage of issues such as the Manhattan mosque the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“Orleans County is a small agricultural county, a Christian community with kids that have grown up in that type of environment. These kids have grown up with not a lot of Muslims in their life,” he said. “It just comes from a lack of knowledge of the Muslim faith.”

The World Sufi Foundation Mosque was established in 1974 and counts several Americanborn converts to Islam as members. It is one of many small Sufi groups that set up in rural parts of the country and practice a more mystical form of Islam.

“They’re quite often made up of converts to Islam,” said Hooper. “They’ll find an out-of-the- way community because they want to live a quiet existence.” The World Sufi Foundation Mosque consists primarily of professionals, including doctors, professors and engineers, said Huzair.

It is known in Orleans County for sponsoring orphans from war-torn areas of the world and has worked with several churches in that endeavor.

But for years, the converted farmhouse has been commonly referred to among locals as “the cult house.” Its members insist they do nothing cultish and have nothing to hide from the public.

“There’s no big secret about it,” said Zimmerman. “We have a humble rural community here. We keep to ourselves and mind our own business.”

The mosque has been a target of vandals more frequently since Sept. 11, 2001, said Zimmerman. A few years ago, a separate group of teenagers was charged with setting a fence on fire — a case that Cardone’s office prosecuted.

But members said previous incidents were never as hostile as what occurred Friday and Monday. “There is some level of fear,” said Huzair. “However, there is a feeling that the police will do something this time.”

[Picture: Oak Orchard River, Lake Alice; Orleans County, NY. Photo: Wiki.]

A Conversation

By Google Books, *In Search of the Sacred: A Conversation With Seyyed Hossein Nasr on His Life and Thought* - Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Ramin Jahanbegloo / Greenwood Pub Group, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010

In this book, a series of interviews offers an accessible, revealing, human and intellectual biography of leading Islamic scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr.

Seyyed Hossein Nasr, one of the world's leading experts on Islamic thought and spirituality, is university professor of Islamic Studies at The George Washington University.

The preeminent Sufi scholar in the United States, Nasr is the author of more than fifty other books, including "The Heart of Islam" and "Islam".

Born in Tehran, raised in the United States, and graduate of MIT and Harvard, Nasr is a well-known and highly respected intellectual figure in both the West and the Islamic world. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Jahanbegloo is Head of the Department for Contemporary Studies at the Cultural Research Bureau, Iran, and Assistant Professor at Aga Khan University's Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilizations, London.

Bibliographic Information:

Title
In Search of the Sacred: A Conversation With Seyyed Hossein Nasr on His Life and Thought
Authors
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Seyyed Nasr, Ramin Jahanbegloo
Publisher
Greenwood Pub Group, 2010
ISBN
0313383243, 9780313383243
Length
448 pages
Subjects
Islamic philosophy Muslim philosophers Religion / General Religion / Theology

All Beggars

By Hasan Masoor, *A hungry start to life for Pakistan's new flood victim* - Agence France-Presse - Paris, France
Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Thatta, Pakistan: Jannan Soorjo summoned the energy to give birth in the filthy Pakistan graveyard that has become her refuge from the floods -- but she cannot produce the milk to feed her sickly newborn.

The 26-year-old looks down helplessly at her crying son, who was brought rudely into the world early Tuesday morning in a makeshift relief camp set up in a historic Sufi burial site in the watery southern province of Sindh.

Wearing a tattered red traditional Sindhi dress with a thin scarf covering her head, a frail Jannan says she has not eaten enough to produce food for the baby -- named Juma after his grandfather.

"I haven't been able to breastfeed him since he was born. We have nothing else to feed him to stop him crying," says a weary Jannan, sitting on a dirty scarf laid out on the concrete ground in the 14th-century graveyard.

She fled her village close to the submerged town of Sujawal last week with her husband, their two young children -- a five-year-old daughter and a boy, three -- and her blind mother-in-law, along with their sparse belongings.

Her husband Ahmed Surjo, a farm labourer in the fertile rice and sugarcane fields of Sindh, says that with two cows, three goats and plenty of grain to eat at home, they felt relatively rich.
"Every man among the 100 families in the village had a job to do, had a home to live in and a family to head. Now we are all beggars," he says.

Clad in shalwar kameez and simple sandals, Ahmed said he has not been able to find work since arriving in the city of Thatta next to Makli, where thousands of families have come to find food and shelter from the floods.

"What shall we do? I can't beg," he says.

The UN's World Health Organisation estimates half a million flood-affected women are expected to give birth during the coming six months in Pakistan, and are at severe risk of malnourishment because of the scarce food supply.

"We must ensure the health and safety of all these women and their babies," said the UN's humanitarian coordinator in Pakistan, Martin Mogwanja. "This disaster has already affected 18 million people. We don?t want it to also affect half a million babies who are not born yet."

The UN says it has helped approximately 5,600 safe deliveries since the floods began but only a fifth of its six-million-dollar appeal for reproductive-health aid has been received so far.

The floods have so far claimed at least 147 lives in Sindh, officials say, mostly women and children who became ill because of the unhygienic living conditions or from water-borne bacteria.

"The risk factor vis-a-vis the spread of lethal disease increases when a large number of children are stuffed in the crowded atmosphere of the camps and we see no government action to provide them with adequate healthcare facilities," says former head of the Pakistan Medical Association, Shershah Syed.

Zahida Ali, 25, an oval-faced woman from Jannan's village wearing a purple shalwar suit and blue scarf, gave birth to her baby, Janoo, late Monday night.

"I am hungry, that's why he is hungry," she says, with desperation in her eyes. "I want to eat not to save my life but to keep my baby alive."

The Soul Of America

By Ramesh Thakur, *A fight for the soul of America* - Ottawa Citizen - Ottawa, Canada
Monday, August 30, 2010

To accept compromise on the construction of an Islamic centre in lower Manhattan would be to accept defeat of the American way of life and the triumph of bigotry

The wholly manufactured controversy over the so-called "Ground Zero mosque" is almost a perfect illustration of William Butler Yeats' lament that the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Reasons for the opposition include sacrilege being committed by locating a mosque on the hallowed ground where 3,000 Americans lost their lives in the terrorist attacks of 9/11; the raw anger that still rages in the hearts of Americans against the jihadists who carried out the attacks in the name of Islam; the alleged disrespect being hurled at Americans by radical and jihadist imams preparing to do a provocative victory dance at Ground Zero; and the need to respect the wishes of the relatives of the victims who died that day.

To begin with, the words at the centre of the controversy are inaccurate and misleading. Park51, as the project is officially called, is two blocks away from where the World Trade Center towers stood without even a clear line of sight to Ground Zero. The "hallowed ground" is in fact the premises of the Burlington Coat Factory that shut down and closed shop some time ago. And there are strip clubs within the two-block radius of the real Ground Zero.

Second, Park51 is not a mosque but an Islamic cultural centre that will include a fitness centre, swimming pool, basketball court, food court, performing arts centre, and a bookstore, as well as a prayer room. The board that approved the project, not the least because they were impressed by the plans to emphasize the tenets of mainstream, moderate Islam that emphatically rejects the jihadist narrative, is made up mainly of Christians and Jews. It will be a place for community celebration of the pluralism of the United States, a powerful symbol of religious freedom guaranteed by the Constitution.

Third, the head of the project is a poster imam for the anti-radical, anti-terrorist campaign for the hearts, minds and soul of Muslims. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has been sent on numerous overseas speaking tours by the State Department, under both the Bush and Obama administrations, to preach new-age style peace, dialogue and coexistence. He has participated in events with former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. He gave a moving eulogy at a Manhattan synagogue for Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter murdered by Islamic terrorists in Pakistan.

Finally, Imam Feisal is one of the leading public intellectuals of Sufism. Americans and Westerners would not confuse and conflate the different denominations of Christianity and brand all Protestants as actual or potential terrorists based on the acts of terrorism committed by a Catholic fringe in Northern Ireland or Orthodox Serbs in the Balkans. But they fall easily into the trap of viewing all Muslims as one frightening monolithic monster out to conquer or destroy everyone else.

Sufism, preaching love and reconciliation as part of the homage to God, is the most pluralistic, tolerant and mystical incarnation of Islam. Because it is antithetical to Wahabism, its adherents have been attacked by terrorists in Pakistan. The Data Darbar in Lahore, where 45 people were killed and another 175 wounded in a double suicide attack this July, is the largest Sufi shrine in Pakistan's second-largest city. Sufis should be the ideal partners and natural allies in exorcising Islamist extremism.

The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and other parts of News Corp. -- the extensive Rupert Murdoch media empire -- have been at the forefront of stoking Islamophobia. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal made use of unspecified reports that the project was being funded by Saudi charities or Gulf princes who also fund Wahabi madrassas (Islamic religious schools). It turns out that the second-largest shareholder of News Corp. is a member of the Saudi royal family. So, by the twisted logic of guilt by association, since the rise of Islamophobia in the West fuels the rise of jihadist sentiment among any Muslims, would it be fair to conclude that the Saudi-bankrolled News Corp. is an unwitting tool in the hands of Islamic radicals and terrorists or an effective recruiting sergeant for Osama bin Laden?

As Frank Rich argued in the New York Times, another cost of the controversy is that it undermines the difficult U.S. effort to counter the Islamists' narrative that Washington is at war with Islam. The right-wing politicians and commentariat, he argued, are fatally compromising the efforts of their beloved Gen. David Petraeus to reverse the tide of defeat in Afghanistan.

"How do you win Muslim hearts and minds in Kandahar when you are calling Muslims every filthy name in the book in New York," he asked?

Of course the 9/11 terrorists were Muslims who attacked in the name of Islam. But should extremists in a minority be allowed to hijack and defile a whole religion? Did not the innocent victims and the heroic rescuers of 9/11 reflect America in all its glorious diversity, including Muslims among both groups?

The jihadists might well interpret the construction of the cultural centre as a twisted victory over a morally enfeebled America no longer capable of defending its faith, principles and freedoms. Granted also that Saudi Arabia forbids the construction of religious monuments of other faiths. This is no reason for the greatness and genius of America that so many of us outsiders admire to stoop to setting its moral compass by the ethical and philosophical standards of terrorists and fundamentalists.

The controversy is a fight over the soul of America itself. To accept compromise would be to accept defeat of the American way of life and the triumph of bigotry, Islamophobia and fear-mongering.

The controversy calls for leadership from the White House that has been sadly missing. Having issued what appeared to be a firm defence of the right of American Muslims to practise their faith and build houses of worship on private property in lower Manhattan according to the laws of the land and bylaws of the city, just like any other religious group in the country, President Barack Obama backtracked the very next day in what has become a distressingly familiar fence-sitting trait.

He thereby fluffed a wonderful opportunity to counter the Republican Party's pandering to the worst fears and prejudices by summoning Americans' better angels.

Ramesh Thakur, a non-practising Hindu, is a professor of political science at the University of Waterloo and adjunct professor at the Institute of Ethics, Governance and Law at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia.

Photo: Diane Bondareff, MCT

“Allah, Allah, Allah”

By Sara Elkamel, *Samaa International Festival for Sufi Music and Chanting* - Al-Masry Al-Youm - Cairo, Egypt

Sunday, August 29, 2010

In the graceful sixteenth-century Qubbat al-Ghouri (Al Ghoury Dome), located in the wholly authentic, utterly crowded Khan El Khalili district, musicians from 11 countries gathered to grace the ears and souls of the large audience with Sufi chants and music.

The Samaa International Festival for Sufi Music and Chanting brings together singers and musicians from all over the world. Each contributes their culture’s religious music to make dynamic, collaborative, and innovative compositions.

This annual spiritual enchantment is the brain child of Entisar Abdel-Fattah, head of the Qubat al-Ghouri and founder, in 2007, of Samaa troupe, which focuses on chants mostly from Sufi lyrics in praise of God and the Prophet Mohamed.

Samaa (“divine” in Arabic) describes the process of chanting and whirling to music in order to reach the height of spiritual ecstasy. Built on the inner, mystical dimension of Islam, Sufi music strives to derive spirituality from music.

The practice of Inshad (religious chants) is deeply rooted in Islamic culture. Some trace it back to Belal moazen al Rasoul (Belal Islam's first caller for prayer). In Egypt, it was first taught in kuttabs (traditional religious schools) and gained popularity through various Sufi sects. One of the most famous Munshidien is the prominent Sheikh Yassin al-Tohamy, whose divine voice fills the air during Sufi moulids and Islamic celebrations.

On the fourth night of the Samaa Festival, an eager audience applauded a group of musicians from India, Indonesia, Bosnia, Morocco, and Egypt.

The Indian group sat at the front of the stage, wearing colorful turbans. On either side of the stage sat the Moroccans, each dressed in a white galabya and a red tarbouche, and the Indonesians, who were wearing in brown tunics and black cotton hats. A step down from the crowded stage was the Egyptian group, each member wearing an identical traditional white abaya. Seated on the opposite side were the female singers from Bosnia, dressed in black tunics beaded in blue, pink, green, or yellow, and accompanied by a buoyant young man with a drum.

But on that ruthlessly humid night, there was also a sixth band at the Qubbat Al Ghouri; the audience. When the chairs were full, many were left standing, but they were far from passively looking on. Clapping away to the music’s beat, shouting out words of encouragement, and chatting excitedly, the crowd was loud and vibrant.

The group’s maestro proved to be another ball of energy throughout the show, despite his claims of an all-night rehearsal. “We have been practicing since 3AM, trying to figure out how we can combine the sounds of five different countries and unite them,” explained Abdel Fattah, founder of the festival.

Praising God and the Prophet Mohamed was the subject behind the Egyptian singers’ soothing vocals, which commenced the ceremony. But truly striking was the voice emanating from the Indian singers. Beating on a drum of his own, Abdel Fattah encouraged this captive group to increase their tempo, as the Moroccans beat on huge tambourines and the Bosnian women chanted softly into their microphones.

“Did you like that?” he asked, facing the crowd. “I am leading them according to the feel I am receiving from you.”

Lampposts highlight the audience’s smiling faces, and the tall walls echoed their frantic claps. The wall’s arches and windows were reminiscent of an old Cairo, a Cairo where the cameras did not flash so much and mobile phones with obnoxious ring tones did not exist.

To the frenzied drumming of the young Bosnian, the Moroccan’s beating of the large tambourine, the soulful swaying of the Indians, and blissful Egyptian vocals, the Prophet Mohamed was praised and celebrated.

Chants of “Allah, Allah, Allah” echoed through the room, as the maestro’s movements became more and more rapid. The chants quickly became contagious, with members of the audience singing along and clapping.

Next, the Indian vocalists imposed a soft, piercing sound against the cluck of an oriental wooden instrument. The Bosnian women began to chant in absolute unison as their drummer tapped away excitedly. The Indonesians were then invited by the maestro to start a chant of their own and, their voices as smooth as honey, their contribution elicited a tear or two from the crowd. When the Egyptians jumped in, the audience burst into applause.

The festival continues until 4 September, also bringing Sufi music from Spain, Turkey, Sudan, and Syria.

Concerts start at 9:30 pm, at Qobbat Al Ghouri, located in 111 Al-Azhar St. Al-Ghouriya.

Photo: Sara Elkamel / AMAY

A Heart Needs A Home

By Tris McCall, *Song of the Day: 'A Heart Needs A Home,' Richard & Linda Thompson* - NJ.com/The Star Ledger - Jersey City, NJ, USA

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Linda Thompson's experience with Sufism was, by her own reckoning, not such a good one.

She moved to a commune in Maida Vale with Richard, then her husband, after making "Hokey Pokey," and she describes her experience there as grim and self-punishing.

For awhile, Richard's mullah told him not to play the guitar, so he didn't play the guitar.

Richard & Linda Thompson, British folk-rock royalty, disappeared for a few years in the mid-'70s.

Before they did, they sent this epistle. "A Heart Needs A Home" pointed straight toward the "Pour Down Like Silver" LP, Thompson's most explicit bout of Sufi songwriting.

"Home" caps "Hokey Pokey," a collection of songs that describe the world as a cold, forbidding, sin-soaked place. Richard Thompson turns to Allah in emptiness, and finds fulfillment there.

Odd, then, that he didn't sing it. He gave the song to Linda. Perhaps he identified with her so strongly back then that he felt no separation between his perspective and hers. Or maybe he was trying to convince her of something.

Since leaving the commune (and the marriage), she's occasionally suggested that her heart was never really in it; that she followed Richard to Maida Vale because she loved him, and she wore the headscarf because that's what was expected of her.

Do we believe her? She certainly does not look uncomfortable singing "A Heart Needs A Home." On the contrary: Linda Thompson is completely possessed, her eyes on the great beyond. Maybe she's singing about Richard, maybe she's singing about Allah. Maybe it doesn't matter.

The Sufis have a concept called wahdat-al-wujud: God is the only reality, and all that we perceive is a decipherable pattern emanating from Allah. Nothing exists that isn't a piece of the divine. Linda might have got it better than the mullah did. She might have got it better than Richard did.

This clip is quiet, I know. Listen carefully and you'll find it loud enough to turn you inside out.

"A Heart Needs A Home".

Contact With God

By Stefan Franzen, *Interview with the Pakistani Sufi Singer Faiz Ali Faiz "This Music Placates People"* - Qantara.de - Bonn, Germany
Wednesday, August 25, 2010

He is regarded as a successor to the great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan: Faiz Ali Faiz from Sharaqpur in Pakistan comes from a long line of qawwali musicians. He is the seventh generation of his family to practice the song form that aims to establish contact with God through ecstatic rapture. Stefan Franzen interviewed him

Faiz Ali Faiz, the music of the Sufi is practised across the entire Islamic world, from Senegal to Indonesia. How would you explain the special features of Pakistani Sufi music, qawwali, to a European?

Faiz Ali Faiz: Qawwali arose 700 years ago, when Muslim scholars and holy men came to the subcontinent. The music is performed by a vocal ensemble, accompanied by two harmoniums, rhythm instruments and in addition, we clap the rhythms while we sing. The texts exalt Sufi holy men and the Prophet.

The character of the music always depends considerably on the attitude and the emotions of the audience, as qawwali has both sacred and secular traits. It began life in the temples, but today it is also played in concert halls. But regardless of whether it is secular or divine, the message of qawwali is always love.

Sufis try to attain a state of ecstasy through music, a state of oneness with the highest power. How do they do this?

Faiz: During the song we use a constant rhythmic clapping and percussion instruments, we thereby create a cyclical structure and incessantly repeat sacred words and several verses from Sufi poetry. These sacred words are aimed directly at the listeners, who are invited to go into a trance together with us, the musicians.

The verses often express a yearning for a lover and the frustration at being separated from this person. How did this unusual tension between earthly and divine love come about?

Faiz: Sometimes the Sufis turn very directly to God, but sometimes they also employ a transliteration. In the end it is always Allah who is being addressed, either by name or between the lines. That also depends on the audience sitting in front of us: Although they may understand the music as addressing a beloved person, the original Sufi poetry texts are always directed at Allah.

The regions where qawwali is sung today are among the most dangerous in the world, places where fundamentalist tendencies are very strong. Can qawwali help to convey a peaceful image of Islam?

Faiz: Qawwali is absolutely the best way of propagating a peaceful coexistence between people, if it is given the space and opportunity to find complete expression in the midst of all these conflicts.

This music has the power to placate people.

When we make music or recite poetry, it goes straight to the heart of the people. Qawwali does not disseminate any sense of offence or threat at all.

You are often described as a successor to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the great qawwali singer who died in 1997. Do you feel honoured by this title or is your form of qawwali distinct from his, do you follow another method?

Faiz: When I started up my own qawwali group, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was without doubt our biggest influence. I was also tutored by a master who was a contemporary of his father.

How did your current project with the French musician Titi Robin come about?

Faiz: My record company Accords Croisés introduced me to Robin. We met in France, I listened to his music and immediately noticed its highly oriental flavour. I thought there was great potential there for a good co-project.

We put our commonalities to the test in a half-hour session, I recited a few verses and he played an accompaniment. Then we took it to the stage with my qawwali group and the audience loved us. That encouraged us to turn it into a large-scale project.

Have you altered traditional ways of playing in your cooperation with Robin?

Faiz: Titi Robin wrote the music and as it turned out, I didn't have to change much in my traditional style to integrate myself into the pieces. There are a few passages in the compositions in which I have tried to integrate slight changes, modifications. They are semi-classical passages that always remain in qawwali style.

Five years ago you were involved in another transcultural programme, the qawwali flamenco project, and you've also sung with American gospel musicians. Is qawwali a music that harmonises well with other cultures?

Faiz: The spiritual musicians who devised qawwali 700 years ago established a style that is very receptive and accessible to other genres. We can integrate semi-classical music from northern India, the Tumri, sing Sufi poetry known as Kafi, and also love poetry known as Ghazal into qawwali. That's why qawwali is, more than other styles from the subcontinent, well suited to play a major role in a world music context.

And as my experience working together with international musicians has shown, language becomes secondary to the creative process. I don't speak the same language as the flamenco musicians, and I also don't speak the same language as Thierry Robin.

But through music we get along just fine.

Picture: "Unusual tension between earthly and divine love": Faiz Ali Faiz and company at Millennium Park, Chicago, USA.

“Desire Machines”

By Muhammad Anis, *Sufism and rise of spirituality* - The Jakarta Post - Jakarta, Indonesia
Tuesday, August 24, 2010

The term urban sufism became popular after Julia Day Howell (2003) used it in an anthropological study of the spiritual movement, which blossomed in urban areas in Indonesia, especially the zikir (religious chant) groups and the like.

Indeed, spiritualism never dies. Not only because it is inherited from one generation to another in a community that still holds this tradition, but also because it appears in the center of culture that is actually heading fast in a completely different direction. It unexpectedly pops up here and there, amid urban modern materialism.

Prosperity, technological advances, the ease in organizing everyday life and increasing competition have created pressure that is sometimes intolerable.

Instant and fast-paced lifestyles, including consumption of food that is unhealthy, lacking time to maintain togetherness with family and friends and ecological damage are precisely the results of modern people who are alienated from themselves.

It was described nicely by Albert Camus, who called it a phenomenon of absurdity in the portrait of modern society, where people feel alienated in this nature. It is mentioned in the legend of Sisyphus, who was punished by gods to push a stone up a mountain, but each time it almost reached the top, the rock rolled down again.

As a result, Sisyphus was only involved in a lifetime of work in vain. Sisyphus’ punishment is a metaphor for modern life, where people spend their time in a futile cycle of activity, which herds them into self-imbalance.

As a result, some of them choose a shortcut to get out of that pressure through deviant ways, such as by consuming drugs and liquor. They can also commit suicide.

However, not rarely, some choose the path of spirituality, including establishing or joining a new spiritual community and religion. This is termed by John Naisbitt as a symptom of high-tech high-touch.

According to him, the rise of spirituality is an inevitable symptom in a community that has experienced the process of modernization as a reaction to an increasingly secular life.

Komaruddin Hidayat explains that there are at least four viewpoints as to why sufism grows in big cities. First, sufism is demanded by the urban community as a means to find the meaning of life. Second, sufism becomes a means of intellectual struggle and enlightenment. Third, sufism can also be a means of psychological therapy. Fourth, sufism follows the trends and development of religious discourse.

Of course, this phenomenon of urban spirituality is exciting. But, on the other hand it can be of concern as well. Sufism and spirituality are considered mere escapism.

Therefore, it is not surprising that the corrupt official is also active in spiritual activities, even capable of sobbing. This is actually dangerous, because they assume that by acting like this their sins can be cleaned, so they continue being corrupt.

Once again, their goal in participating in spiritual activities is not to improve, but rather merely to reassure themselves.

Another concern relates to the existence of these spiritual classes in the metropolis community that is strongly influenced by post-modernity. This is because post-modernism is often regarded as a culture that contains paradoxes and self-contradictions, which can lead to the paradox of spirituality itself.

On the one hand, the spirituality discourse can be the goalkeeper for “the sanctity of soul” in a community full of turmoil of boundless passion disposal.

But, on the other hand, spirituality can also be of concern as people can be trapped in the mechanism of “desire machines” of post-modern society as it is not impossible that the proliferation of this spiritual community is not more than a mere commercialization and capitalization of spirituality.

Still, all this certainly needs further study.

The writer is a doctoral candidate in Islamic Political Thought, Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, Jakarta.

Pervasive And Universal

By IBNA Editor, *Battling against hypocrisy and pretense was Hafez ideal* - Iran Book News Agency - Tehran, Iran
Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Hafez, from the viewpoint of Lewisohn:

Iranian mysticism and Sufism expert, Leonard Lewisohn recognizes Hafiz as a poet who has battled hypocrisy and pretense.

According to his belief, none of the poets of the past and today in Persian or European countries have been able to reflect Hafez poetries' features as professional as him.

Leonard Lewisohn said: "None of the poets has fought against hypocrisy and pretense as Hafiz did. These features are what in fact make the political and social dimensions of Hafiz personality".

He considered Hafiz as the poet who was affected by all the previous poets, and explained: "It is impossible to find even a line of Hafiz poetry which does not remind us, the precious point views of Khaghani, Attar, Sanae’i, and neither Rumi, nor it does reflect an image of Khajooy-e- Kermani and Salman Savoji in it."

Calling Hafiz as a pervasive and universal poet, Lewisohn specified: "In Persian literature we have the tradition of similar writing, scholarism and replying, all of which are employed in his lyrics in a best way."

He continued: "After him, there were a lot of poets who tried to answer Hafiz lyrics, but none of the great poets, like Sa’eb Tabrizi or Bidel Dehlavi, could reflect the rhymes and imaginative pictures of Hafiz in their poems, as professional as Hafiz could."

The Sufism expert reminded: "Among the modern vanguard poets no poet was able to compete with Hafiz. Even in other Persian language countries like Afghanistan and Tadzhikistan.

Referring to the theosophic aspect of Hafiz poems, he specified: "The theosophic aspect of Hafiz lyrics are admirable. In fact, the gnostic concepts of Quran, Bible, and Sufis’ texts and epistles are deeply and stylistically, expressed in his poems."

In relation to Hafiz position among Europeans, Lewisohn stated: "In the 19th century, Hafiz obtained a special place in Germany, when Goethe translated Hafiz Divan in 1813. The German scholar has composed his West-Eastern Divan in adulation of Hafiz; and dedicated to him Goethe calls himself “Hafiz's apprentice”."

He then talked about Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American philosopher, lecturer and essayist, as the one who has introduced Hafiz in America, through translating more than 400 lines of Hafiz verses and explained: "Emerson was really fond of Saa'di and resembled his words with those of the Bible and other holy texts. He is the father of American literature, and one of the most famous essayists who has written several essays in admiration of Hafiz, in which he pointed out to Hafiz school freedom."

The Sufi literature expert pointed out to the book “Hafiz; the master of Persian poem”, written by Parvin LowLowei, and said: "This book was published about 5 years ago. It introduced all the translators of Hafiz verses since 250 years ago up to now. For example there are 35 translators, who have rendered Hafiz Divan first lyric. This figures show the high special position of Hafiz in the west and western literature."

He added:"Despite such a background, Hafizology is not as popular in the west as it deserves, because his language is too difficult to be understood easily, and is full of complicated allegories and allusions."

The Persian literature expert talked about publishing the first volume “Mollana Roomi” journal and continued: "2 months ago, the magazine's debut was celebrated in the presence of representatives from Afghanistan, Tadzhikistan, Turkey and the Cultural Adviser of Iran."

Lewisohn finally added: "This is the first time that an English journal is published on an Iranian poet. Of’ course, efforts have been made for the journal, to be both completely academic and attractive, in order to encourage the young readers to read it."

The Virtues Of Poverty

By WB News Desk, *Missing works of Turkish sufi Haci Bektas Veli found in British museum* - World Bulletin - Istanbul, Turkey
Monday, August 23, 2010

Haci Bektasi Veli's Fatiha Commentary, which was one of his missing works, was found in the British Museum Library.

In addition to this valuable commentary, there was another work of Haci Bektasi Veli named Forty Hadith Commentary missing as well.

Assistant Professor Nurgul Ozcan prepared the book for publication.

The book Forty Hadith Commentary is an excellent door to develop an understanding of Haci Bektasi Veli's Sufi world. Throughout history writing a translation or commentary on "forty hadith" has continued on as an important tradition of Turkish scholars and poets.

Important names like Ali Sir Nevâî, Fuzûlî, Nev'î, Nabi, Âsik Celebi, Sadreddin Konevi, and İbrahim Hakki Bursevi have written highly valuable works on this subject. Among these valuable works in Turkish literature is Haci Bektasi Veli's Forty Hadith Commentary.

Prepared for publication for the first time by Nurgul Ozcan, the book was released by Fatih University Publication.

The story behind the book's publication sounds a lot like a detective novel, Cihan news agency said. The story dates back to the years when Assistant Professor Huseyin Ozcan, who is a lecturer at Fatih University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, was still a student in college.

During the course of his college education, Ozcan began researching the Fatiha Commentary with the encouragement of his professor Abdurrahman Guzel. He went to England in 2008 and searched for this book in every library he visited. While reviewing the manuscripts in the British Museum Library he came across a copy of the commentary and another work named Makalat.

In addition to the Fatiha commentary, Ozcan found another missing work of Haci Bektasi Veli named Firty Hadith Commentary. In the first section of the book, Nurgul Ozcan provides information on the life and works of Haci Bektasi Veli.

Noting that the works of Haci Bektasi Veli need to be studied in order to understand him Ozcan said "The works of Haci Bektasi Veli which consists of Sufistic conversations between the mürsit (mentor) and his disciples (murid), which there are broad examples of in the Sufi tradition, are the main sources that directly reflect his ideas."

Ozcan explains that scholars and poets write commentaries on forty hadith for the purposes of obtaining the Prophet's intercession, to find peace in the world, to be remembered with blessings, to find salvation in the hear after, to go to heaven, and to be free of troubles.

According to Ozcan, Turks have shown the most interest in translations on forty hadith.

The second part of the book is on the forty hadith tradition in Turkish literature and works that have been written in this area. There is also a review of hadith included in other works written by Haci Bektasi Veli.

Haci Bektasi Veli's commentary on forty hadith was written approximately in the 14th century. The commentary, which consists of 19 pages and is written in naskh calligraphy with vowel markings, includes forty hadith that explains the concept of poverty as a dervish.

The main topics of Haci Bektasi Veli's Forty Hadith is the importance of the concept of poverty, the virtues of poverty, the rewards of helping those who are poor and the punishments for those who despise the poor.

At the end of the book, there is an original and Turkish translation of the Forty Hadith.

Certo A Lui Torniamo

[From the Italian language press]:

L'addio a Gabriele Mandel, intellettuale sufi e artista. La preghiera nella moschea di via Padova. Esperto d'arte islamica, celebri le sue incisioni e ceramiche. Era nato a Bologna nel 1924.

Redazione Online, *L'addio a Gabriele Mandel, intellettuale sufi e artista* - Corriere della Sera - Milano, Italy - venerdì 2 luglio 2010
-- Marina Montanaro, Thursday, August 26, 2010

Farewell to Gabriele Mandel, Sufi intellectual and artist. The prayer in the mosque in Via Padova. Expert in Islamic art, celebrated his engravings and ceramics. He was born in Bologna in 1924.

Milan: The Sufi intellectual Gabriele Mandel died on July 1st in Milan after a long illness.

He was the head of the Italian branch of the Jerrahi-Halveti Brotherhood, one of the most widespread in Turkey. A Farewell Prayer was held by his dervishes in the Sufi Mosque of via Padova, in Milan, on Friday afternoon.

A multifaceted intellectual, university lecturer, writer, painter, psychologist, archaeologist and violinist, Professor Gabriele Mandel was born of Turkish-Afghan descent in Bologna, Italy.

Commander of the Republic for his merits in the field of culture and art, he was awarded the "Plaque of Gold" and "Golden Ambrogino" by the City of Milan. As a painter, engraver and ceramist Shaykh Gabriele Mandel has exhibited in numerous museums and public institutions worldwide.

He published nearly two hundred books about psychology, art and world religions, many of which about Sufism, setting a standard for the vocabulary of Sufism in the Italian language.

Shaykh Gabriele Mandel also edited the complete Mathnawi (in six volumes, ed. Bompiani) translated by his wife, Nûr Carla Cerati Mandel, and translated the Qur'an into Italian. His Qur'an [Il Corano, ed. UTET, 2006] is an outstanding translation (with extensive commentary) and the only edition of the Qur'an in Italian with the Arabic parallel text. It is available both as an illustrated edition and as a paperback.

The Qur'an translation is dedicated to the memory of Gabriele Mandel's own Shaykh, Si Hamza Boubakeur (d. 1995), Dean of the Islamic University and Imam of the Grande Mosquée (Great Mosque) of Paris, France.

A fatherly figure for all Italian sufis, Shaykh Gabriele Mandel was a great pacemaker with a strong and gentle presence in the media, and has been the guide of a very popular italian musician, singer and songwriter, Franco Battiato.

The funeral was privately held on Friday morning and his body rests in Milan, in the cemetery of Bruzzano.

***

The Editors of Sufi News and Sufism World Report offer their condolences and express their heartfelt sympathy to the family and to the dervishes of Prof. Dr. Shaykh Gabriele Mandel Khan.

إِنَّا لِلَّهِ وَإِنَّا إِلَيْهِ رَاجِعُونَ

Certo, siamo di Dio e, certo, a Lui torniamo. [Surely we belong to God and to Him we shall surely return.]
Qur'an 2:156.

***

Il Corano, Introduzione di Khaled Fouad Allam, traduzione e apparati critici di Gabriele Mandel. Testo a fronte. Edizioni UTET.

Mathnawi. Il poema del misticismo universale. Edizioni Bompiani.

Picture: Shaykh Prof. Dr. Gabriele Mandel. Photo: Olycom.

In Our Daily Lives

By Candra Malik, *Sufism Whirls Into Hearts of Indonesian Muslims* - Jakarta Globe - Jakarta, Indonesia

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Muhammad Revaldi, a professional photographer, was in his 20s when he realized that his spiritual needs were not being fulfilled by the regular sermons delivered by the clerics at his mosque.

“[Mosque preachers] are quick to point fingers at injustice and wrongdoings by people of different faiths,” said Revaldi, now 33. “I frequently heard them call people of different faiths apostates or infidels, [and] that we, the Muslims, must bring them back to the Islamic way of life by any means,” he said.

This kind of preaching by narrow-minded religious leaders, Revaldi said, is why violence carried out in the name of Islam is widespread.

Troubled and searching for peace of mind, he went from mosque to mosque, mostly in Jakarta and neighboring cities, listening to different imams and preachers to see if any of them could answer his questions regarding faith. “I also engaged in discussions with Islamic teachers and friends about my restlessness in living the Islamic way,” he said. At one point he decided to stop looking and just practice his religion as he was always told, following its dos and don’ts.

But in 1999, a chance invitation to meet a visiting spiritual leader from the United States became a turning point in Revaldi’s life. Without no expectations he dropped by the home of a Muslim scholar in Cawang, East Jakarta. There he met Mawlana Shaykh Hisham Kabbani, one of the world’s most revered Sufis.

Sufism is a path of Islam that is heavily tied to mysticism, humility and asceticism, and can involve practices such as singing, meditation and ecstatic dancing in its adherents’ quest to become closer to God.

The form of worship, often described as the internalization of Islam, began in South Asia roughly 1,000 years ago. It has since spread around the world, adopted by those attracted to its moderate teachings and message of acceptance and tolerance for people of different faiths.

After speaking with Kabbani, Revaldi was convinced. He took an oath and became a member of the Naqshbandi-Haqqani Sufi order, one of many orders around the world. “I held the Shaykh’s hand when I was told to recite the syahadat [Muslim declaration of belief in Allah as the one true God]. That’s all it took,” he said.

“Since then I have furthered my study of Islam and devoted myself as a Sufi.” “[Kabbani] said he never refused anyone who came to him to study Islam,” Revaldi said. “He was of the belief that there was always divine intervention in any meeting between people. I could feel something was about to change after our meeting. I believed what he said and I was able to make sense out of it.”

He was especially drawn to Sufism’s tolerance and respect for other beliefs. “We are not told to spread the teachings, but we are obliged to practice them in our daily lives. Respecting nature and people regardless of what they believe in are just among the teachings,” he said.

Revaldi is just one of hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Indonesia who have joined the Sufi order, which was established and opened to the public here in 2000.

In an interview with the Jakarta Globe during a visit to Jakarta in July, Kabbani said he began his activities in Indonesia in 1997 with only a handful of people. Over the course of a decade, the order has opened branches in five major cities in the country.

Kabbani was born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1945 to parents who devoted themselves to being dervishes, another name for followers of Sufism. After graduating from the American University of Beirut’s School of Chemistry, Kabbani continued his studies at the University of Leuven in Belgium, earning a medical degree. He also attended Al-Azhar University in Damascus, Syria, to study Islamic law.

Currently living in Fenton, Michigan, with his wife and four children, Kabbani regularly travels around the United States and the world to deliver lectures on Islam. He has also taught classes on the subject at the University of Chicago, Columbia University in New York and McGill and Concordia universities in Canada.

“Wherever I go, I spread the Sufi teachings about the brotherhood of mankind, about belief in God, values that are present in all religions and spiritual paths. I direct my efforts to bring the diverse spectrum of religions and spiritual paths into harmony,” he said.

In short, he said, such harmony can only be achieved through love and compassion for one another. “But everything must come from the individual. If there is no love and compassion inside, how can we expect people to spread it to others?”

Sufi teachings are not only spiritual lessons learned through discussion and prayer, but they also seek to place the body and mind in harmony through physical movement such as dance. In the Naqshbandi-Haqqani order, the signature teaching device is the use of the dance of the whirling dervish. The dance was first introduced by Jalaludin Rumi, a legendary Persian Sufi and poet who lived from 1207 to 1273.

“The dance contains within it a spiritual concept. It is an intuitive method to guide each individual, opening his mind to meet his Creator,” Kabbani said.

He likened the movement of the body during the dance to electrons spinning around the earth.

“The whirling dance moves counterclockwise. It is like returning to nature to be reborn as a lover,” he said.

The spinning dance, according to Kabbani, is part of the sema , a ceremony designed to induce religious ecstasy so one can listen to the sound of the universe. In 2007 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization declared Rumi’s creation as one of the world’s cultural heritages.

It takes about four months of strictly regimented daily practice before a Sufi can skillfully perform the dance. “Of course, it gave us headaches at first. That’s the ego that must be defeated. By remembering that we spin solely to glorify our Creator, and bear that in mind, then it comes naturally — no headache,” said Syahdan Hutabarat, a member of the Rabbani Sufi Institute in Cinere, Depok.

The institute operates under the auspices of the Naqshbandi-Haqqani order. “Two times a week we dance it in the middle of a dhikr [prayer] gathering,” said Syahdan, who joined the order three years ago. Now a lawyer at the Aqwa Mulya Partnership in South Jakarta, Syahdan said that before he joined the order he was “such a bully who liked to settle problems with muscle and swear words.”

“I left all that behind and now I can see everything with a clear head and eyes,” he said, laughing.

Iman Suyoto, an analyst programmer, joined the Sufi order in Jakarta before moving to Australia in 2002 to be a lecturer at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

“I was fascinated by the description of Islam by [Kabbani] in his book ‘Angels Unveiled.’ It somehow moved me to join and become a dervish,” he said.

His study and practice of Sufism also aided in his musical compositions, Iman said. He has since released an album, titled “Vision,” which is a blend of jazz and classical music. “My music is best for meditation.” Iman said that before he joined the Sufi order, he found the Islamic guidance he received at school, in the mosque and from his family to be frightening because it was filled with threats and punishments if one did not follow the rules. Embracing Sufism is “a decision I will never regret,” said Iman, still an active dervish in Melbourne.

Revaldi is still active in the religion. During the day he looks like any other young Jakartan in jeans and a T-shirt, but he trades them for a long robe and turban when he attends Sufi gatherings.

He said his religion had remained largely a personal matter that never spilled over into his professional life. “I have clients to serve and they know me only as a photographer. I never try to persuade them to follow what I believe,” Revaldi said.

“What you believe is your right as an individual. Religion is a private matter.”

Picture: Sufi whirling dervishes taking part in a sema ceremony in Indonesia as a means of getting closer to God. Photo: JG/Candra Malik.

Here Is Honey

By Jesse Kornbluth, *The Essential Rumi translated by Coleman Barks* - Head Butler - New York, NY, USA
Thursday, August 19, 2010

The greatest Muslim poet was born in what is now Afghanistan, back when Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists lived peacefully together.

His funeral lasted 40 days, and he was mourned by Christians, Jews, Muslims, Persians and Greeks. Okay, Rumi was born in 1207 and died in 1273. That turns out to have been a turbulent era --- but there’s not a word about discord in his poems.

And there’s no record of any criticism coming his way because he was a Sufi and a scholar of the Koran. Indeed, at his funeral, Christians proclaimed, “He was our Jesus!” while Jews cried, “He was our Moses!” Both were right. Rumi belongs to everyone.

And always will. It makes perfect sense that this 13th century Muslim is now said to be the best-selling poet in 21st century America. The ultimate reason, of course, is the poetry itself. But first, let’s set the poetry into the life….. His father was rich, a Sufi mystic and theologian. There's a famous story of Rumi, at 12, traveling with his father. A great poet saw the father walking ahead and Rumi hurrying to keep up. "Here comes a sea followed by an ocean," he said.

Rumi studied, became a noted scholar. Then, when he was 37, he met Shams of Tabriz, a thorny personality. But Shams was God-intoxicated; nothing else mattered. And so their meeting was catalytic. As Rumi said: “What I had thought of before as God I met today in a human being.”

He dropped everything to be with Shams. Then Shams disappeared. Later, he reappeared --- only to be murdered, probably by Rumi’s jealous son. But by then Rumi was also God-obsessed, and he understood: Between lovers, there can be no separation:

Why should I seek?
I am the same as he.
His essence speaks through me.
I have been looking for myself.

Rumi produced 70,000 verses --- but he never actually wrote a poem. Pressed by a friend to record his thoughts, he pulled out some lines he'd scribbled. “More!” begged Husameddin Celebi. Rumi's response: “Celebi, if you consent to write for me, I will recite." And Rumi began to dictate.

It was quite the process, with Rumi sometimes calling out poems as he danced. As Celebi would write: "He never took a pen in his hand while composing. Wherever he happened to be, whether in the school, at the hot springs, in the baths or in the vineyards, I would write down what he recited. Often I could barely keep up with his pace, sometimes, night and day for several days. At other times he would not compose for months, and once for two years there was nothing. At the completion of each book I would read it back to him, so that he could correct what had been written."

As a poet, Rumi was as clear as he was deep. His story-poems are riddles you can solve. His poems are little telegrams, straight from his heart to yours. Whatever it cost him to write is hidden. His point is:

Here is honey. Taste. Eat.

And is there ever nourishment in his work! Consider:

No matter how fast you run,
your shadow more than keeps up.
Sometimes it's in front.
Only full, overhead sun diminishes your shadow.
But that shadow has been serving you!
What hurts you, blesses you.
Darkness is your candle.
Your boundaries are your quest.

Don't mistake straightforward speech for simplicity; Rumi is as brain-busting as Zen. For example:

Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?

Which reminds me of a story Rumi tells: A friend sends a prayer rug to a man in prison. What the man wanted, however, was a key or file --- he wanted to break out. Still, he began to sit on the rug and pray. Eventually he noticed an odd pattern in the rug. He meditated on it --- and realized it was a diagram of the lock that held him in his cell. Escape came easily after that.....

Escape comes more easily after you read these poems. You may well find yourself, like Rumi, saying:

Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that.
And I intend to end up there.

Spiritual Reflection

By Atika Shubert, *Inside Muslim summer camp in southern Spain* - CNN Belief Blog - USA
Wed. August 18, 2010

Islam is often called the fastest growing religion in Europe, thanks to the tremendous growth in migration and a galloping birth rate in Muslim communities.

But Islam is not new to Europe. The religion has been a part of the European cultural fabric for hundreds of years.

You can see it in the majestic Islamic architecture that graces the landscape of southern Spain. It thrives in the Muslim majority nations of Bosnia and Albania. And, of course, there is Turkey, the bridge between Europe and the Middle East.

Then there are the growing Muslim communities that have come from abroad to settle in Europe: Pakistani and Bengali-run shops are commonplace on the streets of London; the many dialects of Arabic from Morocco to Somalia compete to be heard from Stockholm to Amsterdam.

It’s clear that a “European Islam” is emerging from the interaction of all these communities.
In Spain, “new Muslims”–converts to Islam–are clustered in the country's southern Andalusia region. They practice a more liberal interpretation of Sufi Islam that takes its inspiration from Spain’s Muslim history.

I got the chance to spend two nights at Al-Madrassa, an Islamic center founded by new Muslims in Andalusia's Alqueria de Rosales. Every year, the center host a two-week summer camp for kids of all faiths aged 8-16.

This year, the last two days of camp coincided with the beginning of Ramadan. For many of the younger children, it was an opportunity to try fasting for the first time.

We got up before sunrise for a bleary-eyed breakfast of honeyed doughnuts and coffee at the canteen and then quickly made our way to the mosque for prayer at dawn.

At prayer, I couldn’t help but notice how children here looked like any other streetwise kids you would see in Europe. One had a tilted baseball cap that he quickly removed; a set of flashy white headphones permanently hung from his neck. The girls chose to cover their heads with brightly coloured scarves inside the mosque, but fashionably wrapped the cloth around their shoulders when they left.

Their daily routine was much like any other camp, with a few modifications: Archery lessons mid-morning, Arabic class in the afternoon. Sometimes, they did ceramics learning how to make the famous Moorish tiles of Southern Spain. Other times, they headed outdoors for horse-riding, hiking or camping.

During Ramadan fasting, there was plenty of down time for kids, conserving their energy during the hottest time of the day.

The call to prayer sounded five times a day, but children were not required to be at every one. Non-Muslim children did not participate in the prayer, but sometimes lingered in the mosque to join their friends before and after.

The kitchen remained open for anyone who wanted to eat or drink during Ramadan fasting, including Muslim children. The idea was not to force anyone to participate in the fasting but to encourage spiritual reflection, even if only for a few hours.

“This place is about learning and understanding. Above all, this is the most important to us,” Abdussamad Antonio Romero the camp’s director told me.

He and his wife are Muslim converts and they founded Al-Madrasa 17 years ago. The idea was to create a haven for a uniquely Spanish view of Islam that follows a liberal Sufi ideology of Islamic learning and tolerance of other faiths.

Al-Madrasa now has visitors from all over Europe, but also the U.S. and Canada and has become a popular stop on Muslim tours of Spain. It has quietly become one example of this “European Islam” now being forged.

I’ll be doing several stories for CNN’s Muslim in 2010 series looking at how Islam in Europe is growing. And Al-Madrasa, it seems, is a fine place to start.

An Inner Meaning

By Amira el-Noshokaty, *Living Sufism: A different Islam* - Al-Masry Al-Youm - Cairo, Egypt
Wednesday, August 18, 2010

In his latest book of photographs on his favorite topic, Nicolaas Biegman unveils the details of the enchanting world of Sufism.

*Living Sufism* (AUC 2009) effortlessly showcases the rich and deep philosophy of the main Sufi sects.

Sufism has always been an intriguing part of Islam. Sufis are known for their modesty, spirituality, and rejection of of materialism. Their eternal quest to purify their souls and reach the utmost truth continues to attract millions of followers worldwide. Egypt’s 15 million Sufis are divided into some 70 sects.

The opening lines of this documentation of Sufi rituals state that “this book is about a different Islam.”

As opposed to fundamentalist Islamists who are exclusive, politicized, and vociferous, “wedded” to their literal interpretation of the holy text, Sufis are “mystics within Islam who are in love with God. Rather than clinging to the letter, they believe in an inner meaning of texts and rituals. They respect different creeds and opinions and they abhor violence. Music and rhythmic movement are an essential part of the rituals that allow them to draw closer to God.”

In addition to being an accomplished photographer, Nicolaas Biegman holds a PhD in Balkan History, is an expert on Islam, a Goodwill ambassador to the United Nations Development Funds (UNFPA), and a member of Netherlands Foreign Service. Having lived in Egypt in the 60s and 80s, Biegman instantly fell in love with the Sufi world.

This panoramic view of Sufi rituals covers the Middle East and the Balkans, and is a treat for those interested in either Sufism or photography. With an eye for details and a short but thorough accompanying text, this book zooms into the faces of Sufis from very different backgrounds.

From Belbies, Egypt, where Sheikh Zaher al-Rifaa’i is the head of the Refaa’i Sufi sect, to Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

These photos were taken with a loving eye that managed to capture the essence of the human spirituality of Sufis in their endless quest to God.

Angles and light tones captured their movement, making them floating and quite vivid; the serenity and ease of Biegman’s lens was able to effectively capture the subjects while maintaining the photographer’s position as among the “respectful outsiders.”

This book adds to Biegman’s catalogue of great photography books on Egypt and Sufis. In 1990, he published a book of photographs called “Egypt: Moulids, Saints, and Sufis,” which was translated into Arabic last year.

The book is available at AUC bookstores.

The Flying Shams

By TE/HGH, *Konya to host Iran play on Mowlavi* Press TV - Tehran, Iran
Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Iranian theater director Pari Saberi has been invited to stage her Flying Shams in Konya, where the Sufi Persian poet, Mowlavi has been laid to rest.

The play will be performed on the birth anniversary of the world-renowned poet, Saberi told Mehr News Agency.

The award-winning director has also been invited by the cultural office of Iran's East Azarbaijan Province to stage The Flying Shams in the cities of Tabriz and Khoy.

The Flying Shams, which has been staged in many countries, recounts the story of Mowlavi and his spiritual guide Shams Tabrizi.

Saberi was born in 1932 and studied at Vaugirard Cinematography College in France. She has staged many plays based on classical Persian literary works.

Bijan and Manijeh, Rustam and Sohrab, and Mourning of Siavash are among Saberi's better-known works.

She has received UNESCO's 2003 Avicenna Award and the French Literature and Art Cavalier Badge from former French President Jacques Chirac.

More Vocal

By Anjum Jaleel, *Muslims are Failing to Call for Minority Rights in the Islamic Countries* - TAM The American Muslim - Bridgeton, MO, USA
Tuesday, August 17, 2010

It’s been quite interesting to read and hear all the rhetoric, for and against, on the community center that has been planned for near Ground Zero in New York – the site of an evil act that took place on September 11, 2001, in which over 3,000 innocent were brutally murdered, about 10% of them were Muslims.

Both sides have produced their arguments and some of them have clearly tried to politicize the issue for their own purpose.

But, in the spirit of self-criticism, as a Sufi Muslim who believes in the unity of religions, I would like to emphasize one issue on which the Muslim individuals and organizations do not say much.

And, it’s the issue of religious minority rights in the Muslim countries, especially, since one argument against the building of the community center in NY is that the Muslims do not allow the building of churches, synagogues, and temples in their own countries, especially in Saudi Arabia, so why should we?

Though this argument is also irrational – for America is a light unto other nations, a model for all humanity, and its freedoms and laws should not be dependent on the laws of the repressed, undemocratic, backwards Muslim countries, it is, nevertheless, a point which the Muslims must deeply reflect upon.

The fact of the matter is that Muslims living in the Muslim countries are generally intolerant towards their own minorities, and are even less tolerant towards members of other faiths. This usually comes from a lack of interactions with the religious minorities, myths and misconceptions about them and a sense of superiority as well as irrational fears.

The idea of a pluralistic Islamic society is alien to most of the so-called “practicing” Muslims living in the Muslim countries. Luckily, many Western Muslims have now discovered religious plurality in the original Islam and for which they are indebted to the Western influence.

For example, Ahmadi Muslims are a persecuted minority in Pakistan, and Muslim countries, like Saudi Arabia and U.A.E. – all American allies – are not very particular about allowing non-Muslims to build their places of worship in their countries.

At the very least, the individual Muslims and Muslim organizations, as well as the imams in the West, must become more vocal in favor of more religious rights for the minorities in the Islamic countries and even go a step farther and demand that they are allowed to build their places of worship and centers in the Muslims countries, are allowed to practice their religion peacefully and even allowed to promulgate their religions freely.

What is needed is a clear, organized and concerted efforts by the Muslims living in the West to fight for religious equality and freedoms for the non-Muslims and the Muslim minorities, like the Shi’as, the Ahmadis, Christians and Hindus in Pakistan, the Bahai’s, the Jews and Christians in Iran, the Sunnis and the Christians in Iraq, and the Shi’as, the Sufis, Christians, Jews, Hindus and Sikhs in Saudi Arabia and U.A.E.

Without that, I am afraid their demands for religious tolerance and equality here in the West are hypocritical and therefore ineffective.

The very first organization that should adopt my suggestion immediately is the organization that is planning for a community center near Ground Zero.

They need to become more vocal and demand the Muslim countries to allow the non-Muslims to build their places of worship in the Muslim countries.

Sow Flowers

By William Dalrymple, *The Muslims in the Middle* - The New York Times - New York, NY, USA

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

New Delhi: President Obama's eloquent endorsement on Friday of a planned Islamic cultural center near the World Trade Center, followed by his apparent retreat the next day, was just one of many paradoxes at the heart of the increasingly impassioned controversy.

We have seen the Anti-Defamation League, an organization dedicated to ending “unjust and unfair discrimination,” seek to discriminate against American Muslims.

We have seen Newt Gingrich depict the organization behind the center — the Cordoba Initiative, which is dedicated to “improving Muslim-West relations” and interfaith dialogue — as a “deliberately insulting” and triumphalist force attempting to built a monument to Muslim victory near the site of the twin towers.

Most laughably, we have seen politicians like Rick Lazio, a Republican candidate for New York governor, question whether Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the principal figure behind the project, might have links to “radical organizations.”

The problem with such claims goes far beyond the fate of a mosque in downtown Manhattan.

They show a dangerously inadequate understanding of the many divisions, complexities and nuances within the Islamic world — a failure that hugely hampers Western efforts to fight violent Islamic extremism and to reconcile Americans with peaceful adherents of the world’s second-largest religion.

Most of us are perfectly capable of making distinctions within the Christian world. The fact that someone is a Boston Roman Catholic doesn’t mean he’s in league with Irish Republican Army bomb makers, just as not all Orthodox Christians have ties to Serbian war criminals or Southern Baptists to the murderers of abortion doctors.

Yet many of our leaders have a tendency to see the Islamic world as a single, terrifying monolith.

Had the George W. Bush administration been more aware of the irreconcilable differences between the Salafist jihadists of Al Qaeda and the secular Baathists of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the United States might never have blundered into a disastrous war, and instead kept its focus on rebuilding post-Taliban Afghanistan while the hearts and minds of the Afghans were still open to persuasion.

Feisal Abdul Rauf of the Cordoba Initiative is one of America’s leading thinkers of Sufism, the mystical form of Islam, which in terms of goals and outlook couldn’t be farther from the violent Wahhabism of the jihadists.

His videos and sermons preach love, the remembrance of God (or “zikr”) and reconciliation.

His slightly New Agey rhetoric makes him sound, for better or worse, like a Muslim Deepak Chopra. But in the eyes of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, he is an infidel-loving, grave-worshiping apostate; they no doubt regard him as a legitimate target for assassination.

For such moderate, pluralistic Sufi imams are the front line against the most violent forms of Islam. In the most radical parts of the Muslim world, Sufi leaders risk their lives for their tolerant beliefs, every bit as bravely as American troops on the ground in Baghdad and Kabul do.

Sufism is the most pluralistic incarnation of Islam — accessible to the learned and the ignorant, the faithful and nonbelievers — and is thus a uniquely valuable bridge between East and West.

The great Sufi saints like the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi held that all existence and all religions were one, all manifestations of the same divine reality. What was important was not the empty ritual of the mosque, church, synagogue or temple, but the striving to understand that divinity can best be reached through the gateway of the human heart: that we all can find paradise within us, if we know where to look.

In some ways Sufism, with its emphasis on love rather than judgment, represents the New Testament of Islam.

While the West remains blind to the divisions and distinctions within Islam, the challenge posed by the Sufi vision of the faith is not lost on the extremists.

This was shown most violently on July 2, when the Pakistani Taliban organized a double-suicide bombing of the Data Darbar, the largest Sufi shrine in Lahore, Pakistan’s second-largest city. The attack took place on a Thursday night, when the shrine was at its busiest; 42 people were killed and 175 were injured.

This was only the latest in a series of assaults against Pakistan’s Sufis. In May, Peeru’s Cafe in Lahore, a cultural center where I had recently performed with a troupe of Sufi musicians, was bombed in the middle of its annual festival. An important site in a tribal area of the northwest — the tomb of Haji Sahib of Turangzai, a Sufi persecuted under British colonial rule for his social work — has been forcibly turned into a Taliban headquarters. Two shrines near Peshawar, the mausoleum of Bahadar Baba and the shrine of Abu Saeed Baba, have been destroyed by rocket fire.

Symbolically, however, the most devastating Taliban attack occurred last spring at the shrine of the 17th-century poet-saint Rahman Baba, at the foot of the Khyber Pass in northwest Pakistan.

For centuries, the complex has been a place for musicians and poets to gather, and Rahman Baba’s Sufi verses had long made him the national poet of the Pashtuns living on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

“I am a lover, and I deal in love,” wrote the saint. “Sow flowers,/ so your surroundings become a garden./ Don’t sow thorns; for they will prick your feet./ We are all one body./ Whoever tortures another, wounds himself.”

Then, about a decade ago, a Saudi-financed religious school, or madrasa, was built at the end of the path leading to the shrine. Soon its students took it upon themselves to halt what they see as the un-Islamic practices of Rahman Baba’s admirers. When I last visited it in 2003, the shrine-keeper, Tila Mohammed, described how young students were coming regularly to complain that his shrine was a center of idolatry and immorality.

“My family have been singing here for generations,” he told me. “But now these madrasa students come and tell us that what we do is wrong. They tell women to stay at home. This used to be a place where people came to get peace of mind. Now when they come here they just encounter more problems.”

Then, one morning in early March 2009, a group of Pakistani Taliban arrived at the shrine before dawn and placed dynamite packages around the squinches supporting the shrine’s dome. In the ensuing explosion, the mausoleum was destroyed, but at least nobody was killed. The Pakistani Taliban quickly took credit, blaming the shrine’s administrators for allowing women to pray and seek healing there.

The good news is that Sufis, though mild, are also resilient. While the Wahhabis have become dominant in northern Pakistan ever since we chose to finance their fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan, things are different in Sindh Province in southern Pakistan. Sufis are putting up a strong resistance on behalf of the pluralist, composite culture that emerged in the course of a thousand years of cohabitation between Hinduism and Islam.

Last year, when I visited a shrine of the saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in the town of Sehwan, I was astonished by the strength and the openness of the feelings against those puritan mullahs who criticize as heresy all homage to Sufi saints.

“I feel that it is my duty to protect both the Sufi saints, just as they have protected me,” one woman told me. “Today in our Pakistan there are so many of these mullahs and Wahhabis who say that to pay respect to the saints in their shrines is heresy. Those hypocrites! They sit there reading their law books and arguing about how long their beards should be, and fail to listen to the true message of the prophet.”

There are many like her; indeed, until recently Sufism was the dominant form of Islam in South Asia. And her point of view shows why the West would do well to view Sufis as natural allies against the extremists. A 2007 study by the RAND Corporation found that Sufis’ open, intellectual interpretation of Islam makes them ideal “partners in the effort to combat Islamist extremism.”

Sufism is an entirely indigenous, deeply rooted resistance movement against violent Islamic radicalism. Whether it can be harnessed to a political end is not clear. But the least we can do is to encourage the Sufis in our own societies.

Men like Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf should be embraced as vital allies, and we should have only contempt for those who, through ignorance or political calculation, attempt to conflate them with the extremists.

William Dalrymple is the author, most recently, of “Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India.”

[Visit William Dalrymple Website]

Pictogram by Luba Lukova/NYT

With Full Enthusiasm

By Staff Reporter, *Nation observes Nusrat Fateh death anniversary with solemnity* - South Asian News Agency - Pakistan

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Islamabad: Amid grief and sorrow, the nation observed the 13th death anniversary of world’s most leading vocalists and Sufi Qawwal Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan on Monday.

The nation prays to Allah almighty to rest his departed soul in eternal peace.

It merits a mention that the world’s top vocalist was born in 1948 in Faisalabad.

Nusrat made his maiden appearance as the leader of the Qawwali party at a studio recording broadcast as part of an annual music festival organized by Radio Pakistan. His song Haq Ali Ali hit a record with a traditional touch and nation still plays the same with full enthusiasm.

The Guinness Book of World Records says that Nusrat holds the world record for the largest recorded output by a Qawwali artist.

But unfortunately, Nusrat had developed a kidney and liver malady in 1997 in London.
An era ends when the God gifted Nusrat died of cardiac arrest in London in 1997.

[Picture: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan in London, 1997. Photo: Wiki.]

Music Never Dies

By Staff Reporter, *The Sufi Touch unveiled* -Manchester evening News - Manchester, U.K.
Monday, August 16, 2010

Mumbai Rouge [Artist Management and Booking Service] and Movie Box have unveiled their latest joint project, a live Qawali band ‘The Sufi Touch' bringing Qawali back to the next generation.

Originating from a tradition more than 700 years old, Qawali presents mystical poetry and stories in Hindi and Urdu which is performed by professional musicians who perform in groups led by one or two solo singers.

Originally performed mainly at Sufi shrines throughout South Asia, Qawali music has also gained mainstream popularity and received international exposure through the work of the late Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

The Sufi Touch demonstrates how classical music never dies and aims to revive this dying art form which takes over ten years to master.

Leading The Sufi Touch is lead vocalist Hunterz who has over fifteen years of classical training from the most established Ustads from Pakistan and India and comes from a family of musical background which stems back many years.

The band was unveiled last week at the UK’s biggest media event of the year held by Rishi Rich Productions, Mumbai Rouge and Movie Box. In attendance to the event were some of the biggest names in the ethnic media industry including stars such as Preeya Kalidas, H-Dhami, Juggy D, Heera and Alaap.

This live Qawali band not only follows their classical route but will integrate new aged music with a twist. Engaging audiences of all ages the Sufi Touch will no doubt make their mark on the Asian Music Industry.