Their Love For God

By James Poulter, *WOMAD Review: Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali * - The Epoch Times - USA
Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali is a performance quite unlike any other. Two devotional singers, two harmonium players, and a simply exceptional tabla player accompanied by five handclapping backing singers, create a wall of sound that mesmerises and enraptures.

The rhythms are magnificent, multi-layered, rich and varied. The harmony is flawless, with the two principal singers leading the call and response.

The lead vocalists come from a direct family line of Qawwali musicians which spans over five centuries, and the tradition of Qawwali music itself dates back 1000 years.

Qawwali is the devotional music of the Sufi mystics of Islam, which initially spread from the Gulf States to the Indian sub-continent, and is now enjoyed all over the world.

Brothers Rizwan and Muazzam, the devotional singers, are the nephews of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, generally considered to be the greatest Qawwali singer of them all. The brothers consider themselves torchbearers of this heritage, and take their responsibilities very seriously.

Despite performing sitting on the ground, the traditional Qawwali style, the energy created by the music is immense, and many of the crowd at the BBC Radio 3 stage were clapping their hands and swaying, with some dancing.

The singers at times entered an almost trance like state, and their hand movements and gestures were expressive and fluid. At times tears were shed as they attempted to convey their love for God.

Each song was epic, changing rhythms and styles many times, threatening to end and then continuing, ebbing and flowing from periods of quiet devotion to intense vibrancy, and by the end even the audience members that remained seated were exhausted.

Transcending narrow cultural, linguistic and religious barriers, a crowd of various ages, backgrounds and races enjoyed the traditional renditions, performed in Urdu, Punjab, and the Persian language Parsi.

Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali are firm favourites at WOMAD [World of Music, Art and Dance], and it was their performance here as teenagers in the late 1990s that brought them to international prominence.

Picture: Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali at WOMAD. Photo: Pete Hodge/TET

Hizmet

By Orhan Akkurt, *Gülen, the most important figure of tolerance and dialogue* - Today's Zaman - Istanbul, Turkey

Sunday, July 25, 2010

“Mr. Fethullah Gülen is the most influential representative of love, tolerance and dialogue in our world today. In the West, especially in the United States, an increasing number of scholars have discovered Gülen to be a man of love and tolerance and consider his teaching as a model of dialogue among religions, cultures and civilizations.”

These are the words of Dr. Heon C. Kim, a specialist in contemporary Islam. Highlighting the great need for dialogue in today’s world, Dr. Kim praises Gülen’s teachings of love, tolerance and dialogue, which have been practiced and spread worldwide by the Gülen movement, the fastest expanding Islamic movement around the globe. “It is appropriate and reasonable,” Dr. Kim states, “that a recent survey, ‘The 500 Most Influential Muslims,’* published by Georgetown University in 2009, placed Gülen as one of the top 50 influential Muslims today and introduced him as one who affects huge swathes of humanity and has gone on to become a global phenomenon.”

Dr. Kim completed his years of doctoral research on Gülen and the Gülen movement in 2008, and is currently teaching at Temple University, Philadelphia. One of the most pioneering and cutting-edge contributions of his dissertation is to make tangible the spiritual dimensions of Gülen’s life and thought and the inner dynamic of the Gülen movement. His research shows in detail that the Islamic spirituality of love, tolerance and dialogue, which was once exemplified by the Prophet Muhammad and subsequently followed by great Sufi saints, is at the core of Gülen’s thought and the activities of the Gülen movement. Base upon this finding, Dr. Kim agrees with those Western scholars who identify Gülen as “a contemporary Rumi” (Jalal al-Din Rumi, a great Sufi saint in Islamic history and the best-known Muslim mystic in the West), and further considers Gülen’s teaching of dialogue as an alternative to both the jihadist/fundamentalist movements and those in the West who adhere to the “clash of civilizations” paradigm.

When and how did you first learn about Gülen?
After I graduated from Arabic studies in South Korea I went to Egypt to further learn about Islam. While studying Islamic theology in a graduate program at Al-Azhar University, Cairo, I observed that many Muslim scholars hold an intolerant view of Islam when it comes to other religions and cultures, which was contrary to my conviction that Islam is a religion of ‘submission and peace’ that is respectful of other religious traditions. After having this experience, I was fortunate to meet several Turkish students of Gülen in South Korea. Being initially impressed by their open-mindedness, I read some of Gülen’s books, and his ‘moderate Islamic thought’ was intellectually and spiritually inspiring to me. In order to introduce his moderate and authentic form of Islam as a counter to the Wahhabi/literalist versions of Islam prevalent in our world today, I translated one of Gülen’s books into Korean. It was published first in 1999 and subsequently reprinted in 2001 in the aftermath of Sept. 11. My growing interest in Gülen’s thought led me to visit Gülen in Turkey in 1998. With his permission, I was able to participate in the daily class that he gave for his students. Although I could not readily follow his lectures at first since I was not fluent in Turkish at the time, I could still appreciate his gentle behavior and simple lifestyle.

What did you do after meeting with Gülen?
After spending three months participating in Gülen’s daily class, I learned enough Turkish to be admitted into a graduate program in Islamic philosophy at Marmara University in İstanbul. The more I learned Turkish, the better I began to understand Gülen’s teaching, especially his Islamic ideal of love, tolerance and dialogue. I ended up spending three years in Turkey in order to study at the university and better learn about Gülen’s thought. During my stay I also traveled throughout the country and observed Islam in public life. Especially in Anatolia, central Turkey, I witnessed the beautiful characteristics of hospitality, peace, tolerance and self-sacrifice, all of which Gülen praised as ‘Anadolu İnsanlarının Ruhu’ [the spirit of the Anatolian people]. Another characteristic that was strongly impressed upon my memory was the people’s living embodiment of Gülen’s teaching to “give, give and give more for God’s pleasure and ‘hizmet’ [service for humanity].” My learning of Gülen’s moderate Islamic thought did not end with his arrival to the US in 1999. After he left Turkey, I decided to pursue my doctorate in the US, a nation which actively promotes religious and cultural diversity and encourages academics to do their study and research free of political/religious restrictions. This is unfortunately not the case in many Islamic countries, Turkey included.

Why did you choose Gülen and Sufism as your dissertation topic?
First, what I had directly experienced in Egypt and Turkey was not Islam in literature but Islam in people. Islam in people was not literalist-fundamentalist Islam, but Sufi Islam, a spiritual form of Islam that is deeply embedded in the lives of ordinary people and appears as a cultural reality. Literalist-fundamentalist Islam, also known as jihadist and Islamist, views non-Muslims, especially from the Judeo-Christian world, as ‘the other’ and adopts a somewhat antagonistic view towards them. Many Western academics have spent far too much time focusing on this form of Islam. In reality, however, this version of Islam is followed by less than 5 percent of Muslims in the world. What the vast majority of Muslims follow instead is what we academics call ‘a popular Islam,’ and Sufism has played a major role in helping to define popular Islam with its millennium-long history. This reality of Sufism has not been fully understood in academic circles. Worse, Sufism has long been condemned by fundamentalist-jihadist Muslims as a non-Islamic tradition and misunderstood by the Orientalist Western scholarship as a naïve personal mystical experience. Both approaches fail to accord with my own experiences and the reality of Sufism. An academic approach to Sufism phenomenological ‘as it is’ is very much needed, and this was the principle motivation behind my dissertation research.

Based on my own experiences in Turkey, I was confident that Turkey in general and Gülen in particular would provide the most remarkable case study for an in-depth analysis of Sufism. Since the Kemalist secularist ban on Sufi orders in 1925, Sufism was blamed as a reason for the nation’s backwardness in comparison with the development that was occurring in the West. Consequently, Sufi orders were considered to be a threat to the foundation of the Republic of Turkey. Certain politicians, secularist intellectuals and army elites suspected Gülen as an Islamist Sufi leader who led a dangerous ‘cult.’ Quite opposed to this suspicion, the Western view of Gülen and the Gülen movement, from academia to newspapers, recognized the significant contributions that Gülen has made in the world. I wanted to see what the true identity of Gülen and his movement is.

Do you mean there is a strong connection between Gülen and Sufism?
Yes, absolutely. What I have found is that Gülen can be considered a Sufi saint, but he has never been an Islamist, as all of his life, works, his thought and his movement indicate ‘moderate Islam’ that acknowledges other religions as partners of dialogue. Indeed, Gülen himself has met with Jewish and Christian leaders, including Pope John Paul II in 1998. Another important fact is that while Gülen can be considered a Sufi saint, he is not the leader of a Sufi order. He does not teach from the platform of a Sufi order but instead teaches that Sufism is to live an Islamic spiritual life as practiced by the Prophet Muhammad, his companions, Rumi, Yunus Emre, and Bediüzzaman Said Nursi, all of whom did not found any kind of Sufi order. To underline this understanding of Sufism, I refer to it as ‘Sufism without Sufi orders.’ This ‘Sufism without Sufi orders’ in Gülen’s thought has the benefit of not creating boundaries, as often occurs amongst Sufi orders. Instead, it calls all Muslims to respect other Muslims and non-Muslims as equal creations of God’s Love. He encourages Muslims to engage in dialogue with others, remembering that they are all a reflection of the Divine Love. This ‘dialogic Sufism’ that I call it offers an alternative to fundamentalist/jihadist Islamist movements and creates a dialogical bridge between Islam and other religions.

Could you explain more about Gülen’s views on dialogue?
In Gülen’s thought, dialogue appears as a natural consequence of humanism. Mr. Gülen defines humanism as a doctrine of love and humanity. He warns against an unbalanced understanding of humanism, for instance one that misunderstands jihad and views non-Muslims as the antagonistic others. Gülen’s humanism opposes a fanatical jihadist approach to humanity, and instead intends to actualize ‘love of all humanity.’ To Gülen, humanity is the most valuable being in the universe as the greatest mirror of God’s names and attributes. Every human being is equally endowed with capacity to mirror divine nature and has the capability to be developed to an excellence greater than the universe. Thereby, first, all humans are equal as a mirror of God’s attributes, irrespective of religion, race, wealth and social status. And second, since humans are created by the Creator’s own love, love is the most essential element in humanity. These concepts of equality, love and humanity are the basis of Gülen’s humanism, and serve as the founding principles of the Gülen movement.

A foremost practical manifestation of Gülen’s love-based humanism is dialogue. To Gülen, dialogue is an activity of forming a bond between two or more people. To form such a bond means to position human beings at the axis of dialogue. Therefore, dialogue in a true sense is a sublimation and pragmatic extension of humanism, which can be only accomplished by mutual respect, tolerance and love. Nowadays, more and more people in the world realize the need of dialogue for peaceful coexistence. Mr. Gülen has been advocating love and tolerance-based dialogue for almost three decades now. He has always said ‘we should engage in dialogue with everyone without any discrimination.’ To me, his teachings of dialogue are extremely important today since many people believe in the ‘clash of civilizations.’

So you see dialogue and tolerance as the solution to the clash of civilizations?
Yes. I consider them as an alternative and even the only solution to contemporary problems of humanity. In recent years, a great number of political social scientists have adopted Samuel Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’ theory. This theory suggests an intrinsic incompatible relationship between Western civilization and non-Western civilizations and foresees inevitable civilizational clashes and wars. This view has spearheaded immense scholarly debate, producing a number of critical works. I myself have taken part in this debate by writing several papers and presenting some of them at a series of academic conferences in the US. In these papers I traced back the intellectual origin of Huntington’s theory. His conviction of civilizational incompatibility and clashes essentially premises the dialectic tension or opposition of the antithetical relationship of ‘the self and others,’ which evolves from Friedrich Hegel’s and later the Hegelian concept of ‘ideologically inferior others’ and Karl Marx’s and later the Marxist notion of ‘political-economically alienated others.’ Huntington adds to his predecessors by putting forward the concept of religious incompatibility as between Christianity and Islam. Though embracing different foci, the views of Hegel, Marx and Huntington are constant in identifying humanity as the opposing and conflicting relationship of the self and others, which can be called a ‘dialectical approach to humanity.’

As a polar opposite to the dialectical approach to humanity, Gülen’s understanding of humanity and humanism assumes the equality and compatibility of the self and others that leads to love, tolerance and dialogue. In fact, Gülen’s humanism directly refuses to see others as a dialectical antithesis. Instead it asserts that the distinction between the self and the other can only exist as an object of dialogue in a way of protecting and empowering one’s spirituality against his/her egoistic carnal self that gives rise to constant conflict with others. I term this humanism ‘dialogic humanism,’ and define it as a system of thought and way of life that approaches humanity as a unit of ‘self and others’ and as an object of love and dialogue. I specifically assign it as an alternative consideration to the dialectical approach to humanity. For this aspect alone, I think Gülen’s teachings on humanism should be considered and valued.

You mentioned that Gülen’s humanism and his approach to dialogue are the founding principles of the Gülen movement.
Yes, I did. I also mentioned hizmet, or service for humanity in English. My own research has demonstrated that Gülen’s humanism is reflected in both the members’ individual lives and the group activities of the Gülen movement. Hizmet is the core working concept here. I further consider that hizmet is the most distinctive principle that characterizes Gülen’s thought and the Gülen movement and differentiates it from other Islamic movements.

Hizmet in Gülen’s Islamic theology is an ultimate ideal to be pursued individually and communally for the service of humanity. Gülen teaches that ‘the worldly life should be used in order to earn the afterlife and to please the One who has bestowed it. The way to do so is to seek to please Allah and, as an inseparable dimension of it, to serve immediate family members, society, country and all of humanity accordingly. This service [hizmet] is our right, and sharing it with others is our duty.’ Hizmet can be best actualized by a ‘man of action and thought’ [aksiyon ve düşünce insanı], another well-known concept of Gülen’s. Unlike a typical Sufi order that gives priority to individual mystical experience in remembrance of Allah in seclusion, Gülen emphasizes that any spiritual experience and exercise is completed by taking action in society. Unlike Islamist movements, he stresses that the action in society is vitalized by humanism of love and dialogue.

Gülen initiated the Gülen movement as an instrument and living model of hizmet. With the principle of hizmet, the movement has spread Gülen’s humanism over the world. His movement now reaches major cities in over 100 countries and counts millions as members. My research has shown that hizmet has been the key factor in spreading the movement. While most studies on the movement focus on external factors like organizational structure as being the main reason for the movement’s success, my findings are that the practice of hizmet is the primary reason, if not the only reason, for the success of the movement. Other than the practice of hizmet, it would be very difficult to explain why almost all members of the Gülen movement volunteer much of their money, time and effort. The spirit of giving is the real source behind the movement’s activities over the world. Many outsiders who partaken in the movement’s activities would agree with my conclusion.

If properly presented, I believe the Islamic humanism of love, tolerance and dialogue that Gülen teaches is the perfect antidote to the dialectical approach to humanity, which leads to endless conflict by continually creating tensional gaps among civilizations, nations, social classes and humanity itself.

*The 500 Most Influential Muslims -2009

Distant From The Turmoil

By Jon Pareles, *Songs of the Saints, With Love, From Pakistan* - The New York Times - NY, USA
Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Hands waved overhead. Voices shouted lyrics and whooped with delight. Children were hoisted onto parents’ shoulders. In the tightly packed crowd a few dancers made room to jump. T-shirts were tossed to fans from the stage.

Yet in the songs that Abida Parveen was singing, saints were praised. They were Islamic saints, the poets and philosophers revered by Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam.

It was the first New York Sufi Music Festival, a free three-hour concert on Tuesday in Union Square, and it had music from the four provinces of Pakistan, including traditional faqirs who perform outside temples, Sufi rock and a kind of rapping from Baluchistan.

The concert was presented by a new organization called Pakistani Peace Builders, which was formed after the attempted bombing in Times Square by a Pakistani-American. The group seeks to counteract negative images of Pakistan by presenting a longtime Pakistani Islamic tradition that preaches love, peace and tolerance.

Sufism itself has been a target of Islamic fundamentalists; on July 1 suicide bombers attacked Pakistan’s most important Sufi shrine. Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Nations, Abdullah Hussain Haroon, spoke between sets on Tuesday. “What we’re here to do today,” he said, is “to be at peace with all of America.”

The music’s message was one of joyful devotion and improvisatory freedom. Ms. Parveen, one of Pakistan’s most celebrated musicians, was singing in a Sufi style called kafi. Like the qawwali music popularized worldwide by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, kafi sets classical poems — about the love and intoxication of the divine, about seeking the spirit within — to visceral, handclapping rhythms and vocal lines that swoop and twist with passionate volatility.

Ms. Parveen carried songs from serene, hovering introductions to virtuosic euphoria. Long, sustained notes suddenly broke into phrases that zigzagged up and down an octave or more; repeated refrains took on an insistent rasp and became springboards for elaborate leaps and arabesques; quick syllables turned into percussive exchanges with the band. Each song was a continual revelation, making the old poems fully alive.

While the crowd was there for Ms. Parveen’s first New York City performance in a decade, the rest of the program was strong. The Soung Fakirs, from Sachal Sarmast Shrine in Sindh, danced in bright orange robes to devotional songs with vigorous, incantatory choruses. Akhtar Chanal Zehri, though he was introduced as a rapper, was backed by traditional instruments and seemed more of a folk singer, heartily intoning his rhythmic lyrics on a repeating note or two and, eventually, twirling like a Sufi dervish.

Rafaqat Ali Khan, the heir to his family’s school of classical singing (khayal), was backed only by percussion, pushing his long-breathed phrasing into ever more flamboyant swirls and quavers. The tabla player Tari Khan, who also accompanied Rafaqat Ali Khan, played a kinetic solo set that carried a 4/4 rhythm through variants from the Middle East, Europe, New York City and (joined by two more drummers) Africa. There was also instrumental music from the bansuri (wooden flute) player Ghaus Box Brohi.

On the modernizing side, Zeb and Haniya, two Pakistani women who started their duo as college students at Mount Holyoke and Smith, performed gentler songs in the Dari tradition, a Pakistani style with Central Asian roots, with Haniya adding syncopated electric guitar behind Zeb’s smoky voice.

Under wooden flute and classical-style vocals the Mekaal Hasan Band plugged in with reggae, folk-rock and a tricky jazz-rock riff. But the lyrics quoted devotional poetry that was 900 years old, distant from the turmoil of the present.

Picture: Abida Parveen. Photo: Joshua Bright for The New York Times

Three Autonomous Regions

By Sarah Zaaimi, *SUFI STATES INSIDE THE STATE* - Morocco Board - Washington DC, USA
Friday, July 23, 2010

A state is a political body which has well defined boundaries of its sovereign territories.

A state must also have effective administration to rule its citizens, legal and defense structures to apply its laws as well as a taxation system to cover its expenses.

In opposition to tribes and chiefdoms, states are the only sociopolitical systems which are not based on kinship but on citizenship.

Archaic and modern states have different models, which have specific structures. Some Sufi orders for religious and historical reasons succeeded in founding autonomous states inside other sovereign states. In Senegal for instance, many clerical city-states and Jihadi villages emerged as independent beings following some particular historical events.

These city-states in Senegambia enjoy total autonomy from the central state, and run their territories as independent structures in all fields. In Kurdistan, the Sufi Derwish in Boiveh has a total control over their religious ceremonial lives and autonomous running of their administration and services. Yet, the Boiveh Derwish brotherhood can’t be considered fully as a state because it is still undergoing many pressures by the Iranian state and has no historical impregnation in time.

This paper will examine the characteristics of two main Senegambian autonomous regions: Touba and Pakao. The first is a Sufi city-state of the Mouride brotherhood; the second is a region were autonomous Jihadi villages run themselves in a local kind of organization. It would try to see if Touba and Pakao can be called States. Then, it would try to analyze the features of the Boiveh Derwish community with regards to modern state characteristics. This paper would focus mostly on the ceremonial, the economic and the administrative aspects of autonomy in the three studied cases.

The Example Of Touba
In 1206 Senegal was already a state under Sundieta Keita. It had a 44 points constitution, an army and administrative structures. The first mention of a state in Senegal was in the early 9th century (Chronology, Sahel / West Africa). Therefore, the Senegambian has an important heritage from archaic states.

Touba is a very interesting case study in modern Senegal, as it is one of the rare deeply organized autonomous city-states in the world.

“Touba is a Muslim holy city, and it is brand new. The city was founded in 1887 by Ahmadou Bamba Mbacké, the Sufi who established the Mouride brotherhood. Its construction was initiated in 1926, and its great mosque was inaugurated only in 1963” (Ross 2005, pp: 243).

What is interesting about Touba, is not its being Senegal’s second largest city or its spiritual importance for million of followers of the Mouride brotherhood, but it is its status as an autonomous rural community, functioning as an independent state under the rule of the Khalifa General.

The phenomenon of the appearance of “autonomous Muslim towns” in West Africa and Senegambian history is mainly due to the introduction of Islam in the region. Educated clerical lineages appeared by the 17th century, and occupied important functions in royal courts and magical services. Thus, in exchange of their services, the clerical lineages obtained land where they established schools for Islamic education.

Sufi brotherhoods rose only during the 19th century. Enjoying a special status under occupation, they started building their own private towns with the expansion of Islam in Senegal (Ross 2005).

Ceremonial life is very important in Touba as a holy city for the Mouride brotherhood. We may call Touba a Theocratic city state, because of the religious nature of the leadership system. The Khalifa General is a direct descendent of Ahmadou Bamba and is supposed to rule from a divine inspiration due to his position as the sheikh of the Sufi brotherhood.

Ceremonial life is totally independent from the Senegalese Government, as the Mouride developed in Touba their own religious structures and infrastructures as it is the case in their other cities like: Darou Karim, Porokhane, and Touba Bagdad... The brotherhood designed a whole religious urban design to consolidate its power among its followers. The great central mosque, mausoleums, houses of the sheikh, religious schools and other buildings are there to remind of the holiness and religious autonomy of the town.

Touba is legally an independent city like the city of Madina-Gounass. “In Touba’s case the special status is base on conditions during the colonial period, when the French authorities came to an accommodation with the Mouride brotherhood… Since 1976 it has the status of communauté rurale autonome, or “autonomous rural community”” (Ross 2005, pp: 258).

According to Dr. Ross’s research, for the Mourides it is obvious that Touba must be autonomous because of its spiritual value, but legally it is thanks to a 1928 lease proving that the city is constructed on a private property. As a result of this special status, Touba has its own administration, provides its own services and has nothing to do with state taxes or the intervention of government authorities, even if the president of Senegal is a Mouride follower.

Touba also has its special laws imposed on all residents and visitors. The city’s law is a moral code inspired from the Islamic Chari’a and the teachings of the spiritual leaders, like: banishing songs, cigarettes and other practices, which are seen non-Islamic. Thus, punishment can be imposed on whom violates this moral code by the judiciary body of the city.

Economically, Touba was initially an agrarian town like other Jihad states in the region “where students paid their “tuition fees” by toiling their masters’ fields during agricultural seasons” (Ross 2005, pp: 250). Nowadays, agriculture is still important for Touba’s economy, but it has more of a tertiary sector based economy, as it provides mainly schooling and religious services.

Touba don’t get any loans of financial support from the state. It gets its resources from the important contributions of the followers of the Mouride brotherhood in Senegal and other countries of the region. Consequently we can say that Touba is economically independent.

As we’ve proved, Touba can truly be considered as state. Touba benefits from the historical heritage of the Senegambian other city-states, and has developed under the French regime a special status. Therefore, Touba enjoys nowadays total independence in terms of religious practices, administrative and legal institutions as well as economic welfare.

The Example of Pakao
Ha Pulaarim is the social cast of fighters in the Senegambian region. The Pulars, who fought for Islam in the name of Jihad, moved to Futa Jalon after the defeat of Casamense, conquered the Mandinka and became the dominant social class in the Pakao villages since the 17th century. Therefore, many religiously based “Marabout states” raised on the region of Pakao since that period.

The Mandinka region of Pakao includes fertile lands and 160 miles of the Casamence River where many autonomous villages lays. In terms of administration, we can’t say that the Pakao villages are autonomous.

“Administratively, Pakao lies in the department of Sédhiou, named for its capital. The department is divided into five districts. The one administrated from Djendé, near Sédhiou, subsumes Pakao. Karantaba, lying in Suna on the south bank, is the Tanaff district. The head of a district supervises the census and tax, provides identity cards, and some instances resolves disputes” (Shaffer & Cooper 1980, pp: 27).

Hence, politically and administratively the Pakao can’t be called an autonomous region, since it pays taxes to the central state and even benefits from the state’s services like schooling and healing. Yet, “the idea that villages are independent of each other is very much a part of social ethic of Pakao” (Shaffer & Cooper 1980, pp: 44).

The villages run themselves as autonomous unities since Islam destroyed the kinship system during the 19th century.

Ceremonial practices are impregnated deeply in the Mandinka people, as the villages were founded first of all upon Islamic values. The Marabouts are the Islamic clerics, who claim to have supernatural powers of healing and predicting the future as oracles. Each Pakao village has its Marabouts, who maintain the link with orthodox Islam by going to pilgrimage. Islam, is present is a local form in all aspects of life like marriage, prayer or death (Shaffer & Cooper 1980, pp: 39-41).

The Imams enjoy a very important role in the Pakao system as a leader of the prayers and a holy man, whereas a secular chief is designated to rule administrative and daily life issues of the village’s populations.

“Pakao is primarily a sedentary agricultural society dependent on a good rainy season for successful harvest” (Shaffer & Cooper 1980, pp: 28). Farming and agriculture are the main activities of the Pakao economy. Pakao villages were organized in cooperative associations to keep their autonomy and improve the incomes of their people, but it was a weak experience. Pakao villages aren’t totally independent from government programs and subventions.

Pakao villages are autonomous as small communities, but can’t be called States because they depend in many fields on the central state like: education, administration, taxation…

The Example Of The Boiveh Derwishs
Kurdish people never had a real state. The Kurdish people were most of their history living between the borders of other dominant countries, even if they repetitively claimed their right to a sovereign Nation State. Yet, The historical complex about not having a state was translated in the construction of autonomous Sufi communities like the Kaderi Derwish community which lives in Boiveh in Iran today.

Many Kurdish Sufi Derwishs moved from Iraq, during the late 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, to Iran. The Iranian government gave the communities lands in Boiveh where they could grow corps and practice freely their religious activities under the shelter of their sheikh.

Administratively, the situation of Boiveh is very problematic. The pilgrims from Iraq come every year to the town to visit their Sheikh, and the allegiance to the spiritual leader and kinship relationships goes beyond the borders of Iran and Iraq. However, Boiveh population has to follow the Iranian government in terms of the implementation of the Iranian educational system and compulsory military service as well as other administrative formalities (Moser 1987).

The administrative and other aspects of life seem very mild for the Boiveh Darwishs, who believe that “faith goes in daily work not only in ceremony” (Moser 1987). In fact, ceremonial life is at the forefront of the life of this community. Daily Dhikr ceremonies take place every day and auto-flagellation actions are administrated by adults and children in presence of the Sheikh Koha Mohammed, using snakes, electricity, swords, fire...

The Sheik and his offspring are seen as holy people, who are in contact with the Prophet (pbuh)and God, so they follow the path of initiation since their early years to get closer to God through the Sheikh. The Sheik has also the authority to build mosques to consolidate the position of his tarika, as people come and work voluntarily and without payment following the words of their spiritual leader.

A strict religious education and initiation is also one of the aspects of the autonomy of Boiveh. Yet, people in the town aren’t all obliged to assist to ceremonies and don’t get punished for that, since according to the Sufis religion is a personal practice (Moser 1987).

Economically, Boiveh is an agrarian town. People are farmers and merchants and work at the same time in the lands of the Sheikh and his sons without getting paid, as a sign of love for the Sheik.

One of the men in the documentary even said: “We work for the Sheikh, because the Sheikh works for God” (Moser 1987).

In the documentary we didn’t have enough proves about the economic autonomy of Boiveh (Moser 1987).

The Sufi Darwish brotherhood of Boiveh can’t be called a state, because it doesn’t have the powerful administration of economic system a state should have. In addition, Boiveh depends on the Iranian government in many ways like in military service and education despite its strong religious autonomy.

In this article we’ve seen three different autonomous regions that try to run their issues independently from the central state. In the case of Touba, it is very interesting to notice how notorious a Sufi brotherhood can be to benefit from all legal, religious and economic autonomy from the Senegalese state.

Pakao which inherited the autonomous aspect of the Jihadi states can’t be considered as a full state because of the economic problems and the strong administrative presence of the state in its structures.

As regards the Boiveh Sufi brotherhood, we noticed the prevalence of religious ceremonies over all other aspects of life. Consequently, Boiveh can be seen as a highly religiously autonomous town in the Shia state of Iran. Yet, the state of refugees doesn’t allow the Boiveh people to claim more administrative autonomy.

As Dr. Ross noted in his article, we can say that maybe these forms of autonomous city-states provide natural examples for the success of a Globalized world where the Nation state has less authority over its regions, which have specific needs and historical heritage.

Significant Educational Merit

By Ian Burrell, *BBC to launch world music archive* - The New Zealand Herald - Auckland, New Zealand
Thursday, July 22, 2010

The Ugandan xylophonists, the Sufi fakir and Saddam Hussein's favourite pop star. It sounds like the line-up for an indie rock festival but it is, in fact, the latest offering from the BBC - an extraordinary collection of some of the most unlikely and most beautiful music ever recorded.

The BBC will tomorrow launch a globally-accessible online archive that features indigenous music from some of the world's most dangerous conflict zones, as well as its most inaccessible states. There are audio clips of singing waitresses performing sea shanties on the coast of North Korea, and harp-playing cowboys in rural Venezuela. The Sufi fakir is, in fact, Sain Zahoor, who plays his three-stringed tumba in the Pakistani shrine of Pakpattan. Saddam's favourite pop star is Qassim al-Sultan, whom the BBC's Andy Kershaw recorded in 2001, singing the praises of the Iraqi dictator.

In all, there will be 100 hours of programming on the BBC's World Music Archive, alongside dozens of photographs of recordings being made in the most remote locations. Essentially the resource - a mix of entertainment, journalism and curation - comprises the output of Radio 3`s world music programmes from the past decade. An index offers the music of 40 countries.

Kershaw, who recently returned to Radio 3 after two years off-air, is especially excited to have his back catalogue given a permanent platform. "There are documentaries here I'd forgotten I'd made, some of which uncover the music and the reality of life in the world's most extreme, secretive, feared and misunderstood countries," he said.

"I'm amazed some these regimes let me out. Even more amazed they let me in. Since joining Radio 3 in 2001, it seems I have seldom been home. This archive would explain why."

Since recovering from a nervous breakdown, Kershaw has been back on the road, making shows in Laos, Thailand, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. He is about to head off to record further material in the Middle East and Southern Africa. "I haven't finished yet," he added. "Cautiously, I feel I'm getting the hang of this radio caper."

One of the highlights of the archive is a recording made for the Radio 3 programme World Routes, in which presenter Lucy Duran travelled to the mountains of Georgia,to hear ancient polyphonic singing. Radio 3`s senior producer for world music, James Parkin, said the programme-makers were only able to reach the remote Svaneti region in a former Russian military helicopter flown by Georgian air force pilots.

"BBC journalists frequently fly in military helicopters but not to record folk music," he said. "We went to a meadow where 25 men of all ages stood in a small circle and sang music that hasn't changed for 2,000 years and has probably never been recorded, let alone broadcast before. It was a very moving experience."

Duran described the sound of the choir as "singing of astonishing beauty" and one of her favourite moments on World Routes. She said the discovery of the music of a region provided a gateway to a better understanding of its society. "Finding out about the roots music of a country leads you right to the heart of its culture," she added.

"Everything is recorded on location, and we talk to all kinds of people, getting insights into what it's really like to be there, and what makes them tick."

Another rare recording, made in Uganda in 2005, features a xylophone played in a hole in the ground in order to make it more resonant. "The first thing they did when we arrived was to dig a hole," said Parkin. "This instrument has never been anywhere. You have to go to that village to hear it. What we are trying to do is offer music that you cannot hear at a festival or buy in HMV."

The archive also includes recordings of some of the greatest names in world music, such as Ali Farka TourE, Youssou N'Dour and Salif Keita.

The BBC is under political pressure to reduce its online operations on the grounds that they damage its commercial rivals, but additional money was provided for this project, which is seen as having significant educational merit. One recording from Jerusalem's Oud Festival shows how the music of the oud - a classical Middle Eastern stringed instrument, is part of both Arab and Jewish culture and attracts audiences from both communities.

The launch of the BBC World Music Archive coincides with the annual Womad world music festival, which Radio 3 has broadcast for the past 10 years, and which begins tomorrow at the Charlton Park Estate, near Malmesbury, Wiltshire.

Picture: Youssou N'Dour, one of the artists in the BBC's new global music archive. Photo: AP/NZH

Powerful and Authentic

By Giuseppe Acconcia, *The saint sings* - Al-Ahram Weekly - Cairo, Egypt

Issue # 1008 / 22-28 July 2010

A week ago the Sayida Zainab mawlid brought the flavour of popular -- Sufi -- celebrations back to the heart of Cairo: having attended several of the saints' anniversaries this year, Giuseppe Acconcia celebrates a glorious grassroots tradition

After the ban on mawlids due to swine flu, those saints' anniversaries finally started again on 13 April at the Imam Hussein Mosque. I attended the Leila el-Kbira (big night, the night of the actual birth of the saint in question) on 19 May at Sayeda Nafisa: coloured light bulbs and hangings, carpets and covers on which men and women from the countryside kept talking, sleeping and cooking. In the courtyards and under the wood scaffoldings, Sufis started their circular dances, which converged in two frontal lines. Outside, boys and girls played on the merry-go-round, while the faithful went inside the mosques. When the sun rose rising, people looked possessed; someone pierced his cheeks with blades, horses passed trough the people, men and women went towards the tombs.

I talked to Samuli Schielke, a cultural anthropologist working as a research fellow at Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) in Berlin. From 2002 until 2005 he conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Egypt for his PhD on mawlids.

"Mawlids are often mistakenly assumed to be a tradition of Pharaonic origin," he starts. "Instead, the oldest Islamic mawlids were established in the 15th and 16th centuries AD and their emergence is related to the spread of Sufi orders. The origin of Islamic mawlids is due to the emergence of the veneration of Muslim saints, which is based on the centrality of spiritual authority in mystical Islam. And so mawlids are part of a global wave of mystical Islam that took place in the late Middle Age. The similarities that exist between Christian and Islamic mawlids are often due to a mutual influence and shared festive forms, characterised by the idea that religion and joy belong closely together."

But which religious liturgies are linked to mawlids? "Mawlids have always combined different elements, and while their occasion is religious, the celebrations take different forms, some of which can be spiritual, and others profane. The most important spiritual rituals are the visit to the tomb of the saints. This is a collective celebration, called dhikr, invocation of God, held inside the mosques and in tents located around the festive grounds. Each group has their own style, ranging from rather restrained vocal recitation to very ecstatic dancing to a band and a singer reciting mystical poetry".

And what about the profane side of those feast, perhaps the more amazing. "On the profane side of the mawlids, youths gather for carousels, swings, shooting stands, ferris wheels, music, magicians, sweets, snacks, etc. In Upper Egypt the traditional sports of stick dancing and horse races are an important part of the feast. There are some small groups of ecstatic Sufis who keep live snakes and practice walking on knives or pricking themselves with needles to show one's invulnerability to fear or pain, but such practices became quite marginal".

And the hundreds of singers who were somehow involved? "Um Kulthum, for example, started her career as a singer in mawlids, and she could still master recitation of the Qur'an as well as love poetry. Today, there are two main genres of music at mawlids. One is the tradition of Sufi inshad, which is based on spiritual poetry praising the Prophet and 'friends of God' and telling of mystical spirituality often through the allegory of love. The other is the genre of shaabi pop music, which is a much more secular, but not purely, for it also makes use of inshad -style motifs and religious topics. Those styles have their own stars, and the biggest among them is certainly the Sufi singer Yasin El-Tohami whose performances always draw thousands of people."

How has the atmosphere of mawlids changed recently? "Mawlids changed very much in last decades, mainly through urbanisation, electricity and the spread of Salafi movements. Electricity has changed the style and size because loudspeakers have made it possible to gather large audiences, which would have been unthinkable in the past. Contemporary urban planning is also often very much at odds with mawlids which are by nature open to all kinds of activities and do not fit into Egyptian urban planners' ideas of neatly differentiated urban space. The spread of Salafi movements, with its strict refusal of ecstatic spirituality, unbounded joy, and veneration of saints, has made many Egyptians doubtful about the religious foundations of mawlids. This has slowly turned those feasts from a central part of people's social and religious lives into the occupation of a mystically dedicated minority".

But perhaps mawlids are thus becoming a secular occasion for having fun. "Due to the political and religious campaigns against those rites, there is a decrease in the numbers of audience," Samuli admits, "and in general a split between people who are engaged in the mawlids as a religious festival and people who enjoy the atmosphere but keep their distance from the religious aspects".

The mawlid being the only time for Sufis to gather and practice their rites, which are now the most important Sufi brotherhoods in Egypt? "Egyptian law requires Sufi brotherhoods to be officially registered, and to have a formal organisation and membership. In practice, however, most Sufi groups are not officially registered in this way. They are informal groups held together by allegiance to a spiritual leader. In consequence, there are usually different degrees of involvement, varying from people generally sympathetic to mystical Islam or to a specific leader, to followers who have taken an oath to a sheikh from whom they learn the mystical path and regularly attend the group's meetings. Today, mystically engaged people often frequent more than one group. It is very difficult to say where Sufi brotherhoods are based, because the big, officially recognised brotherhoods like the Shadhiliya, the Ahmadiya, the Burhamiya, the Rifa'iya consist of countless independent branches which usually share little more than the allegiance to a founding leader. These branches are all located around specific mosques or in specific villages or neighbourhoods. It can be said that Upper Egypt is currently the strongest base of Sufism in Egypt."

But it is not so easy to know when a mawlid will take place, is it? "The mawlids in Egypt follow different calendars, and their dates are often adjusted depending on other festivals and public holidays. The Islamic mawlids in Cairo and Upper Egypt mostly follow the lunar calendar. Instead, mawlids in the Nile Delta and Alexandria usually follow the solar calendar." (see guide[below]).

I had the opportunity to participate in the Senegal mawlids of Tijani orders and in Shi'a's mawlids, I finally say to Samuli. What about events out of Egypt? "There are a lot of similarities between mawlids in Egypt and in other countries around the Sunni Muslim world. For example in Morocco it is called mawsim, in Pakistan, 'urs, and in Indonesia, hauli. While mawlids among Sunni Muslims are typically characterised by joy, and usually closely related to Sufi brotherhoods, Shi'a pilgrimages are characterised by sorrow and mourning, and Sufism plays little or no role in them".

In Andalusia, traditionally beside the celebration of "Semana Santa" [Holy Week], there are profane feasts. In the south of Italy during the religious feasts of Materdomini [Mother of the Lord], Madonna delle Galline [Lady of the Chicken] and Monte Vergine [Mount (of the) Virgin], "pagans" dance and sing songs that are orally hand down across generations until morning. Still, Egyptian mawlids are powerful and authentic, in both their spiritual and profane sides. They are a unique event in the Mediterranean that should be defended and safeguarded.

Dates of most important mawlids in Cairo:
As-Sayyida Fatima an-Nabawiya: first Monday of Rabi' al-Thani,
Sayedna al-Husayn: last Tuesday in Rabi' al-Thani,
As-Sayida Nafisa: second Wednesday in Gumada al-Akhar,
As-Sayyida Zaynab: last Tuesday in Ragab,
St. Barsum al-'Aryan: End of September
Abu al-Haggag al-Uqsuri (Luxor): 13 Sha'ban,
Sidi Abd al-Rehim al-Qinawi (Qena): 14 Sha'ban,
Sidi Abu al-Hasan al-Shadhili (Western Desert): three days before the Feast of Sacrifice,
The Virgin Mary (Asyut): 22 August (Ascencion Day in Coptic calendar).
Sheikh al-Sha'rawi (Daqadus): around 17 June,
Sidi Mursi Abu al-'Abbas (Alexandria): Thursday in late July,
St. George (Mit Damsis, Daqahliya): end of August,
Al-Sayyid al-Badawi (Tanta): Thursday in mid-October,
Sidi Ibrahim ad-Disuqi in Disuq: Thursday two weeks after al-Sayyid al-Badawi.

More

By Music Editor, *Exporting Sufi music* - The Express Tribune - Karachi, Pakistan
Wednesday, July 21, 2010

In an e-mail interview with The Express Tribune, Pakistan’s permanent representative to the United Nations Abdullah Hussain Haroon talks about the theme of the concerts, which take place in New York over the next few weeks. The musicians – who have been picked from all provinces – represent Sufi tradition in its true spirit.

What is the theme of the sufi concert?
The theme of the sufi concert is based upon a gift of brotherhood, peace and love from the people of Pakistan to the people of New York and the United States. The concept has emerged after the failed Times Square bombing where there was a concern by the Pakistani community and a strong condemnation of what happened. The Pakistan Mission to the United Nations wanted to reflect the real face of Pakistan, which is of tolerance, peace and brotherhood, and decided to exhibit this through a strong display of music of the sufis as a gift to the city of New York.

After the attempt by Faisal Shahzad to bomb Times Square, there has been a revived interest in how urban Pakistanis are ‘converted’ to militancy. Can efforts such as the concert help change perceptions of young Pakistanis – especially since there are artists such as Zeb and Haniya on the bill – in the US?
While we are quite sure that we cannot change in this one expression the perception of some young Pakistanis regarding militancy, people’s interest will be aroused and the trend towards normalcy may accelerate. That itself would be a valuable contribution.

What kind of support does the event have from organisations in New York?
We would primarily like to thank the United Nations, the Roosevelt Hotel, American Pakistan Foundation, specifically Asia Society and the Rubin Museum of Arts. We are also grateful to Mayor Bloomberg of New York and various municipal groupings. Community based human rights cultural organisations are also involved in spreading the message.

What is the expected attendance for the event?
We expect several thousands of people to attend the Union Square event. At the United Nations event at the Roosevelt we expect over 500 to attend, at the Rubin Museum over 200 and at the Asia Society we expect approximately 300 people.

Are there any more efforts such as the concert being planned to promote Pakistani music and culture in the US this year?
This is in fact the first event of its kind which is being held now and we hope there would be more in future.

Picture: Abida Parveen is among the performers at the sufi concert in New York. Photo: Kohi Marri/Rizwanul Haq.

A Higher State Of Mind

By Mira Sethi, *The Ecstatic Sounds of Peace * - The Wall Street Journal - NY, USA
Tuesday, July 20, 2010

The Persian poet Rumi said that listening to Sufi music was like hearing the creak of the gates of heaven.

On Tuesday, Union Square Park will open its gates to the sound of tambourines, reed flutes, harmoniums and guitars as more than a dozen Pakistani musicians take to the stage to launch the inaugural New York Sufi Music Festival.

Conceived by the Pakistani Peace Builders, an independent cultural-diplomacy campaign, and presented in association with Asia Society and the Rubin Museum, the festival aims to repair Pakistan's image in the West through music that insists on the shared humanistic values of peace and plurality.

Musicians from Pakistan's four very different provinces will combine regional, contemporary and ancient influences to create music featuring Sufi poetry.

Sufism is the mystical branch of Islam that uses expressive forms of worship—poetry, dance and music—to contemplate the divine. Orthodox Islamic clerics brand Sufi music haram, or forbidden, because it is considered so powerful, often leading the performer into a trance. Yet reaching a higher state of mind is precisely what Sufis long for in their communication with God.

Like the best devotional music, Sufi music communicates across religious and racial lines, fueled by its own exultation. It is at once radically inward-looking and communal.

Deep knowledge of Sufism will not be necessary to appreciate this concert. The message in many ways is the sound—infectious and ecstatic. Audience members will hear the loud, ringing bass of the dhol, a double-sided barrel drum, and the plaintive, probing tune of the reed flute, a sound that focuses one's senses, moving from confusion and uncertainty to fear and, finally, hope.

On the bill is the Balochi folk singer Akhtar Chanal Zehri, whose handlebar moustache and curling beard identify him as soon as he walks onto the stage with his guitar-like five-stringed instrument, the dhamboora. Also scheduled is the Mekaal Hasan Band of Lahore, a group famous for its contributions to the Sufi rock genre, which blends Sufi lyrics with conventional rock music. The band's fusion of Eastern sensibilities and Western harmonic complexity has created a cult following in the underground music world of urban Pakistan.

Appearing, too, is the remarkable ethnic Pashtun female duo of Zeb and Haniya, whose music, be it in English, Urdu, Persian or Dari, mixes blues, jazz and pop influences to create a breezy whimsicality loved by schoolgirls and septuagenarians alike.

But every concert has a headliner. And the New York Sufi Music Festival knows that the star power of Abida Parveen, known from Morocco to India as the "Queen of Sufi Music," will be the most anticipated performance of the evening.

"We need anthems to pull us together," says Brooklyn-based Mahnaz Fancy, a co-director of the festival. "And who better to do it than Abida Parveen?"

Ms. Parveen is completely at ease in both sacred and secular venues—from the shrines of saints in her native Sindh to the world's greatest concert halls. Her deep alto voice famously moves those who share neither her language nor her faith.

"Parveen could sing a shopping list and have an audience weeping," wrote the BBC's Peter Marsh when her album "Visal" was released in 2002.

Usually clad in a full-sleeved tunic with a traditional red Sindhi scarf thrown around her neck, Ms. Parveen jabs her finger in the air to emphasize certain lyrics, the thrum of the tabla—a hand-drum from North India—accompanying her in rhythmic, cyclical beats. Sometimes she will circle a low note, improvising and stretching its melody. Sometimes she'll soar to deep, anthemic heights, rising to the demands of her deeply emotional music. She has immortalized the lyrics of the Punjabi poet Bulleh Shah, whose mysticism was the assertion of the soul against the formality of religion.

In late 2008, at the World Performing Arts Festival in Lahore, Pakistan, Ms. Parveen was the last performer of the night. The audience, packed in an open-air theater, had stayed on to hear her sing. She appeared at midnight to shattering applause, extending her raised arms to appease the crowd. She sat cross-legged on the stage, and leaned into the microphone: "Countries that don't have respect for music, these countries fall apart." And the loud applause returned.

Asked what Sufi music means to her, Ms. Parveen, speaking into a staticky phone line from the airport lounge in Lahore, Pakistan, said in Urdu: "It is the light of the planets. It is the light of humanity."

Ms. Sethi is a Robert L. Bartley Fellow at the Journal.

Picture: Sufi singer Abida Parveen (center), performing in Delhi, India. Photo: Getty Images/WSJ.

Peace Through Sufism

By Staff Reporter, *International Sufi Council to be set up: PAL* - Daily Times - Lahore, Pakistan
Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Islamabad: Writers and intellectuals from France, Austria, Slovakia, Italy, Germany and Hungary have agreed with the idea to set up an International Sufi Council for spreading the message of peace through Sufism, said Pakistan Academy of Letters (PAL) Chairman Fakhar Zaman on Monday after his return from tour to Europe.

Briefing about his meetings with delegates of International "Sufism & Peace Conference" he said that the delegates were of the view that they had discovered a new Pakistan, which was a messenger of love, brotherhood and peace.

Zaman said he also got a chance to discuss the idea of International Literary and Cultural Festival with the delegates. They appreciated this idea a lot, he said, adding, he also gave briefing about PAL's publications in international languages, literary TV channel and other activities to the writers unions and cultural ministries of European countries.

Zaman said he also discussed with them the writers exchange programmes and translations of literary writings. Writers council of these countries have agreed to the proposal of writers exchange programmes and translations.

[Visit PAL]

Urging Respect

By Staff Reporter, *Altaf urges inter-faith harmony * - Samaa TV - Pakistan
Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Karachi: Muttahida Qaumi Movement chief Altaf Hussain has called upon the central and provincial governments to ensure security of Data shrines and other Sufi saints.

Speaking to Allama Shah Turab ul Haq Qadri and Haji Hanif Tayyab today (Monday), the MQM chief said those who believe in inter-faith harmony should set up their own security system in mosques, imambargahs and other places of worships.

Hussain said growing religious extremism is harmful for the country’s security and existence, urging respect for every religion and faith.

Far More Complicated

By Elaine Margolin, *Book review: Convert to Islam lives a love story* - The Denver Post - Denver, CO, USA
Sunday, July 18, 2010

There weren't any glaring warning signs during 28-year-old G. Willow Wilson's genteel upbringing by her loving and decidedly nonreligious Protestant parents in Colorado that would lead one to believe she would follow the path she did.

Soon after graduating from college in Boston, where she studied Arabic language and literature, she left for Cairo to teach, and fell hopelessly in love with a Sufi Muslim named Omar whom she soon married while converting to the Muslim faith. This all happened at lightning speed, soon after the 9/11 attacks by Muslim extremists whom Wilson has always regarded with fear and disdain.

Wilson's book, particularly in these treacherous times of mistrust and paranoia, is a masterpiece of elegance and determination; the story of a woman looking to fulfill her spiritual yearnings — feelings she confesses have always been an essential part of her DNA.

Most of us struggle to find faith, and if we do manage to find it, we fight to maintain it. Not Wilson, who has written one of the most beautiful and believable narratives about finding closeness with God that makes even the most secular reader wince with pleasure for her.

Wilson is unafraid to think seriously about her life choices and their ramifications, and she doesn't hide from harsh truths. She is not an angry rebel or a blind conformist or alienated from others, and she has great affection for America and the American way of life.

She writes with warmth about her childhood, which was for the most part uneventful. There were friends and music and great times playing drums in a punk rock band while dreaming about boys. But the desire to know and revere God was always there too, an albatross that hung over her, begging for release. For reasons that aren't precisely clear, Christianity and Judaism never appealed to her, but the teachings of Mohammed did.

When she first marries Omar in Egypt and attempts to set up a home for both of them as a proper and devout Muslim wife, she dons a veil and valiantly tries to learn all she can about the local customs and rituals. She is embraced by his family, a large group of aunties and uncles and nieces and nephews who try to help her by teaching her recipes and showing her where to shop and explaining to her the expectations of a Muslim husband, even one as mild-mannered and tolerant as her beloved.

She feels a part of something way larger than herself, but another part of her is rankled by the oppressive politics and chauvinism of the current regime, the heat and filth and danger that lurk throughout the streets of Cairo, and the blaring, angry and howling recitations blasting from megaphones each morning from the local mosques that promote extremism in thought and mandates that she finds troubling.

But none of this diminishes her ongoing fascination with the myths, people and culture of the Middle East. Although a married woman, she spends her time in Cairo writing articles and essays and was able to get an interview with Sheikh Ali Goman after he was appointed to the Grand Mufti, which is considered the highest religious authority in Egypt.

Her husband seems delighted by Wilson's intensity and adventurousness, and often helps her when he can by escorting her to interviews or acting as a translator for her. Like Wilson, he seems self-possessed and mostly caught up in his own personal journey, and somewhat uncertain of what the future holds for him. When she becomes restless and homesick to return to the United States, he willingly accompanies her, and they have spent the past few years in Seattle.

This is Wilson's first nonfiction book, and she is a natural- born storyteller. She has recently published several sophisticated and philosophical comic books [i.e. Cairo] that explore the themes that fascinate her: How does one straddle the boundaries of East and West? How can Muslim women be brought into the public debate? What does it feel like to be dispossessed?
Her comic books intertwine Islamic mythology, ancient and modern history, Egyptian culture and the country's societal ills, and the growing tensions of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Wilson never seems intent upon provoking or inciting anger. Rather, she wants to understand and spread understanding by showing us that things are always far more complicated than we believe them to be. In 2008, she said, "I'd just like to complicate people's existing assumptions about religion and its role in politics. Not necessarily change, but complicate. That's really what art should do, I think. Make suggestions, not absolutes. Dealing in absolutes is propaganda. You have to leave people with enough room to make their own legitimate judgments."

Reading Wilson offers the reader an almost transcendental experience by allowing them to feel authentically connected to someone who is indisputably close to God and finds great solace from this.

She tries to describe the feeling for those of us who don't feel that closeness. When discussing becoming a Muslim, she writes that she knew what it was to be astonished by faith:
"It's a word that makes many people uneasy and embarrassed; like sex, we talk about it as if it performs some efficient, necessary but unmentionable function, and is somehow contained, affecting only a small part of our daily life. But faith in reality is none of those things. I couldn't explain what it was to kneel to the inexplicable and feel not debased but elevated, in more complete possession of myself than I had ever been. . . .

"My faith did not require beauty or belonging — the deeper I went into my practice, the less it required at all. . . . Though I couldn't articulate it then, it was certainty that animated me; it was certainty that allowed me to watch the progress of the extremists and feel anger and disgust, but never disappointment: I had submitted too completely for either."

Elaine Margolin is a freelance book reviewer and essayist in Hewlett, N.Y.

G. Willow Wilson

The Butterfly Mosque

Atlantic Monthly Press (June 1, 2010)

Moulid El-Moursi

By Osama el-Mahdy and Mohamed Abu Elenen, *Sufi followers celebrate Abul Abbas el-Moursi in Alexandria* - Al-Masry Al-Youm - Cairo, Egypt
Saturday, July 17, 2010

On Friday, tens of thousands of followers of the Sufi orders gathered in Alexandria to celebrate the last day of the moulid of Abul Abbas el-Moursi, a founder of Sufism in Egypt.

The followers of more than 12 Sufi orders participated in the festivities. El-Moursi, the son of a merchant, died in Alexandria in AD 1287.

Following the afternoon prayers, participants organized five marches from the Sidi Ali Temraz Mosque in Anfoushy to other mosques in the area.

During the annual conference for Sufi orders—this year called “Sufism: Communication between Generations"—Sheikh Mohamed Abdel Fadeel, head of the religious endowments department in Alexandria, attacked Salafist groups which ban moulids, or visits to mausoleums and prayer in mosques that have mausoleums. Fadeel described these groups as “Zionist organizations.”

Security erected barricades in the streets leading to the Abul Abbas Mosque.

Abdel Hadi el-Qasabi, Sheikh of the Supreme Sufi Council, did not attend the celebration, instead dispatching Mohamed el-Khodeiry. The Governor of Alexandria, Adel Labib, was also absent.

Translated from the Arabic Edition

Picture: Sufi mathods' followers during remembrance of God, in one mosque in Alexandria, June 22 2010. Photo: Staff.

A Valuable Addition

By Sefa Kaplan, *Rumi frenzy transformed into an industry in Turkey* - Hürriyet Daily News - Istanbul, Turkey
Friday, July 16, 2010

A phenomenon sweeping both Turkey and the world, the “Rumi frenzy” is a juggernaut that has transformed a Sufi saint into a commodity bought and sold across the globe.

Books of poetry, calendars, ballets, performances accompanied by “live music,” CDs and hundreds of websites have already rendered Rumi an indispensable component of popular culture.

Some, like Franklin Lewis, however, are making a serious effort to halt the head-long rush toward the superficial popularization of Jamal ad-Din Rumi, a 13th century Persian mystic who died in the Central Anatolian province of Konya in 1273.

Lewis decries the popular appropriation of Rumi in his new biography of the Sufi, “Rumi: Past and Present, East and West.”

“I watch, feeling devastated by how popular culture dilutes and corrupts his teachings, with the foresight that the unrelenting advertising and consumerist tools of contemporary profane culture will inevitably homogenize the divine,” he said.

Although many were already aware of the breakneck speed of the Rumi industry’s development both in Turkey and elsewhere, the dervish has even been more commodified than originally thought.

Already the United States’ best-selling “poet,” Rumi’s works are read and sung as “live music” as an increasingly mainstream part of American popular culture; many others, meanwhile, listen to the great man’s poetry to relax while in traffic jams.

Naturally, there are certain contributing factors behind the introduction of Rumi to American popular culture, some of which might upset pious Turkish circles whom are most generally associated with the Sufi within the country.

For example, many articles in queer literature expound upon how Rumi and his closest friend, Shams Tabrizi, had a homosexual relationship that was covered up by Muslim scholars. Moreover, Rumi’s poetry has been appearing in LGBT poetry anthologies for a long while.

Exhaustive biography lacking

“The timing of this book is particularly on the mark, considering the current blossoming of the Rumi industry. Doubtlessly, the book will become an essential resource for students and research-seeking scientists alike because although words are as curtains, they also are signs that can point us in the right direction,” according to the preface of Lewis’ book from Professor Julie Scott of Oxford University.

Lewis himself discusses the subject in the first chapter “Rumi frenzy,” arguing that Rumi must be saved from the clutches of popular culture and delivered to the loving arms of the scientific community.

“Rumi, known for his poetry, has been kept alive in the hearts of his readers, spanning from Bosnia to India, for over 700 years. Nonetheless, right after his death in 1273, a veil of myth darkened the truthful details of Rumi’s life and in accordance with the traditional penning of a ‘menakıpname,’” Lewis said.

A menakıpname is a fantastically colored biography of an influential religious figure that is filled with elaborate exaggerations and legends about the person in question following their death.

“Rumi was transformed from a respectable human being into a mythological, even archetypal figure. Despite the efforts of Iranian, Turkish and European researchers who have been striving for the past half century to construct an account of Rumi’s life based on historical facts, nobody had undertaken the task of piecing together a scrupulous examination of all the past works published on Rumi. That was why I have been slightly distanced from the prospect of constructing an exhaustive, fully detailed biography, taking all that there is known about him into consideration.”

Two names from Turkey

Lewis’ book is a valuable addition to current literature in that his Rumi quotes are translated directly from an original source, rather than based off an English edition.

Unfortunately, such research has never been undertaken in Turkey, a country that often speaks with authority about Rumi and his philosophy.

Turkish cultural authorities seem more preoccupied with Rumi’s folkloric aspects and are more interested in making money off whirling dervishes.

In this, a “Rumi Research Institute,” would be welcome for all those who wished to investigate the life of Rumi – a possibility that is buttressed by the fact that two books by Abdülbaki Gölpınarlı, a Turkish scholar who focused on Sufi movements, and an article by Şerif Mardin, one of Turkey’s premier sociologists, appear in the book’s bibliography.

Rumi on the Internet

Noting that there are hundreds of websites on Rumi, Lewis advises caution, saying: “The information on personal websites does not necessarily need to be accurate and information collected over unauthorized resources must be used with care. In addition, the Internet provides one with loads of footage, audio and information that can’t be found anywhere else. Rumi’s popularity in the West has coincided with a time when the Internet has become an attractive form of communication; in one way or another, many websites share the love that their creators have for Rumi.”

A Song Of Separation

By Rinky Kumar, *Musical moments* - Screen - India
Friday, July 16, 2010

Mithoon is back on the block after three years with his soul-stirring numbers

Three years after he composed the music for Ananth Mahadevan’s Aggar, Mithoon is back on the block with his score in Lamhaa. A blend of traditional Kashmiri music and Sufi poetry, the songs have been rendered by an eclectic mix of singers comprising Mika, Palash Sen, Chinmayi, Kshitij Tarey and Mithoon himself.

The composer-singer admits that the film’s score is special for him. “Lamhaa is a very powerful story. It took me almost a year to do research and compose the music. So every song is close to me,” he says.

When director Rahul Dholakia approached Mithoon, his brief was simple: “Lamhaa is a film for Kashmiris from their point of view. The director wanted the music to reflect this, so it had to be an honest score that captured the emotions of the characters and portrayed the truth in a poetic manner,” adds Mithoon.

Mithoon travelled to the valley and researched the history of Kashmiri music. “Kashmir has a rich musical heritage that has been least exploited. They have a melody for each occasion. There’s a local song that is sung during carpet-weaving that utilises beats synchronised with the carpet’s design.” Though he did not use this particular beat in the film, he incorporated several other elements of the culture to make the songs sound authentic.

For Salaam zindagi, Mithoon got Kashmiri kids to record a minute-long prelude of their rendition of the local morning prayer. “Dholakia wanted to capture the early morning scene in a Kashmiri village. We decided to record with the kids to give out a positive message,” he reveals.

The young composer combined the Sufi genre with the Kashmiri culture to provide multiple layers to every song. “When you first listen to Madno, you might think it’s a love song. But in reality, it’s a song of separation where two people who like each other express their feelings but also confess that they can’t be together due to the circumstances.”

For this song, Mithoon chose Kshitij Tarey, who had earlier sung his Jaaveda zindagi (Anwar) and Chinmayi of Tere bina for A.R. Rahman’s Guru. “The song has a lot of Urdu words. Kshitij is not trained but has a polished voice. He has good command over Urdu diction and lent a certain vibe and technique to the song. Chinmayi has a done a lot of work down South. I heard a snippet of her Tamil song and liked her voice instantly. Madno demanded a female voice with a lot of pathos and her voice had that melancholy.”

Mithoon also decided to use Mika for Madno’s reprise titled Saajnaa. This is the first time Mika has sung a slow, emotional number. “Mika is known for his dance tracks. But whenever I heard him, I would feel that he has a raw voice. I had a vision that whenever he sings for me, it will be with a complete different expression. I called him and discussed this and he was quite enthusiastic. He has mellowed down his voice completely,” he explains.

Similarly, Mithoon roped in Palash Sen of Euphoria to render Main kaun hoon, which depicts the pivotal question of identity with which every Kashmiri is grappling. “I have heard Palash’s songs when I was in school. He has an excellent, resilient voice. I used him as the song starts off on a dark note and gradually builds up.”

Mithoon, who is also composing the music for Onir’s I AM, has also sung Rehmat zara in Lamhaa. But he confesses that rather than his singing, he would like to focus on his music. This is probably the reason that in a career span of four years, Mithoon has composed the music for only four films - Bas Ek Pal (2006), Anwar, The Train and Aggar (all 2007) and came up with his album Tu Hi Mere Rab Ki Tarah.

Says Mithoon, “After Bas Ek Pal, I was flooded with offers. But I wanted to disconnect as I was getting stuck in a creative rut. So I took time off to focus on my music. I travelled to different parts of the country, did research, listened to different kinds of songs and then composed the music for one film at a time,” he signs off.

Targeted

By HM/CS/MMN, *Gunmen kill Iraqi cleric family members* - Press TV - Tehran, Iran
Wednesday, July 14, 2010

At least four people have been killed and six others have been wounded after gunmen attacked the house of a Sufi Muslim cleric in the western Iraqi province of Anbar.

Three daughters and the grandson of Sheikh Mohammed al-Essawi were killed after gunmen broke into the cleric's house in Amariyah district and opened fire on his family members early on Wednesday.

According to police officials, three sons of the cleric, who are soldiers in the Iraqi army, were the original target of the attack. However, Al-Essawi's sons were not at the house at the time of the attack.

"Suspects from al-Qaeda threatened the cleric months ago ... They targeted him because his sons were soldiers", a police officer said.

The sheikh, his wife and four other members of his family were wounded in the attack.

Al-Qaeda-linked militants have carried out several attacks against Sufis -- practitioner of a Muslim mystic order -- since the start of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In 2005, 10 people were killed and 12 others were wounded after a bomb went off near a Sufi shrine (Tekiya) located in north of Baghdad.

Not Even That

By Chirosree Basu, *DANGEROUS LIAISONS* - The Telegraph - Calcutta, India
Tuesday, July 13, 2010

The relationship between religion and politics has always been troubled in Pakistan

The recent bombing of Data Darbar, a Sufi shrine in Lahore, is no less tragic than the bombing of two Ahmadi mosques in May that killed almost the same number of people in the same city. Yet, it has set nerves on edge.

Nawaz Sharif, whose brother runs the government in Punjab, has asked for a national convention to combat terrorism. The prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, a descendant of a Sufi saint himself, has readily taken up the gauntlet. There have been mass protests and condemnation from the Sunni ulema — reactions of a kind that has not been seen for a while in Pakistan.

Sufism, both in Pakistan and outside it, is increasingly being looked upon as a possible counter to talibanization. This perhaps explains the attention the Data Darbar bombing has got. Yet Sufism, traditionally associated with social harmony and non-violence, both threatened by the Taliban today, has not always represented this face in Pakistan. In rural Punjab and Sindh, it has long been associated with the brutal force exercised by landlords, often descendants of Sufi pirs, on the dependent population. They wield enormous clout by virtue of their role as spiritual mediators.

Since the birth of Pakistan, the flagbearers of what is seen as ‘folk Islam’ were deliberately co-opted into the political firmament by successive rulers, if only to offset the influence of the conservative ulema. Ayub Khan used them, so did Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. They needed the sanction of the sajjida nasheens (guardians of local shrines) to give legitimacy to their political power, given the complicated way in which political authority was conceptualized in Pakistan: a country unable to decide whether it was a nation for Muslims governed by secular laws and institutions or an Islamic state governed by the sharia as interpreted by the clerics.

The rise of Pakistan’s middle classes upset this arrangement. This was evident in the 2008 elections, when many powerful landlords — guardians of Sufi legacy — were booted out or saw their influence diminished. In constituency after constituency, power fell into the hands of a class of people with no landed roots. Many considered this to be a ‘new deal’ in which power seemed to change hands from the feudal elite to the urban middle class. The landed elite, however, stayed, but without a monopolistic control over political power.

The daring of the new power groups was evident from the force with which they pushed through several ‘democratic’ demands — the trial of Pervez Musharraf and the reinstatement of the chief justice of the supreme court, for example. But perhaps it would be unwise to think that they were all of a liberal disposition. If an analyst is to be believed, the political assertion of the newly-monied classes also symbolized the assertion of Salafi Islam that threatened the established power structure by gunning for the syeds or pirs or sajjida nasheens who were its building blocks.

Unlike Sufism, Salafi Islam is more flexible. Salafists do not require the intermediation of pirs for spiritual salvation. Salafi Islam allows believers free communion with god and ensures them an afterlife of infinite bliss through individual martyrdom. The followers of this form of Islam are mainly Sunni Deobandis, who look down upon Shias and Sunni Barelvis, many of whom embrace the free-flowing spirit of Sufism.

The attack on Sufi shrines is an expression of this disgust and subtle power play. This does not mean that all the makers of the new deal are Salafists or that all Salafists are suicide-bombers. But contempt for popular Islam is a palpable reality and no different from the Taliban’s contempt for faiths they consider as falling short of the superior standards of Wahabi Islam.

Public opinion on what constitutes true Islam is no doubt being shaped by the Taliban’s insistence on religious purity. However, there is no reason to believe that it is the Taliban that started Pakistan’s religious quest, which is an old one. Confusion over what is true Islam and who is a true Muslim (and has a natural right to citizenship in Pakistan) consumed the energies of politicians since the birth of the nation.

Pakistan’s tilt towards Wahabi Islam did not start with the Taliban either. It became the natural corollary of the nation’s efforts (starting soon after its defeat in the 1971 war) to turn its back on the more pluralistic South Asian brand of Islam and steer itself towards the Islamic brotherhood of West Asia, where only Wahabi Islam is acceptable.

It is not the Taliban who are responsible for making minority shrines vulnerable to suicide attacks; it is the State itself that is responsible for shaping attitudes in matters of faith.

The State accords primacy to Sunnis and its favouritism has not only fanned resentment against moderate and minority faiths, but has also given licence to anti-minority movements. In countless attacks on minorities, the police have been mere spectators. Pakistan’s blasphemy laws also deny minorities basic freedoms.

The bombing of Data Darbar, from all indications, was carried out not by the Taliban, but by Lahoris, who breathe the air of hatred promoted by religious organizations that do social work for the poor by day and plan to kill them by night for refusing to follow their diktat. Some of these organizations even get State aid.

The government has banned 23 such organizations knowing full well that they will change names and start functioning again. Sufism still has protectors in Gilani and a few of his party colleagues, descendants of some Sufi order or the other. The Ahmadis do not even have that.

Writing While Angry

By Asra Q. Nomani, *Writing While Angry* - The Huffington Post - USA
Monday, July 12, 2010

Last summer, Washington Post political columnist Dana Milbank spoke to a Georgetown University class I teach, the "Reported Opinion Piece," and gave our next generation of writers a pearl of wisdom about how he writes his biting columns with edge but not bitterness: "We've all heard about how you're not supposed to drive while angry.

You also shouldn't write while angry."It's a lesson Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert would have benefited from hearing before he penned his online screed to basketball star LeBron James, charging him with a "shameful display of selfishness and betrayal" for his decision to leave the Cleveland Cavalier to play with the Miami Heat.

In a letter to fans, posted on the Cavaliers' website, the Cleveland owner declared James would carry a "so-called 'curse'" to Miami, writing: "The self-declared former "King" will be taking the "curse" with him down south. And until he does 'right' by Cleveland and Ohio, James (and the town where he plays) will unfortunately own this dreaded spell and bad karma."

Ominously, he writes: "Just watch."

I haven't followed the NBA. I don't know LeBron James career. But, as a writer challenging interpretations of Islam that punish, kill, assault and discriminate in the name of religion, I do know a little something about meditating through anger when writing. Even if we don't write for public consumption, most of us have been tempted to write emails in anger at 2 a.m. There are at least three emails in my life that I can distinctly remember writing when angry, and I know I regret everyone of them.

It's easy to instantaneously express anger in electronic rants in this age of "digital maximalism," as former Washington Post reporter William Powers calls our day of information overload in his excellent new book, Hamlet's BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age.

But, if we -- like Gilbert -- really care about philosophies such as "karma," we'd be better served to do something wiser: sleep on it, meditate on it and express ourselves from a place of intellect and heart. In India, the country of my birth, karma is a word in Sanskrit that speaks to "samsara," or the concept of how our lives are a cycle of cause and effect. We don't serve ourselves or others well when we dole out bitterness and anger. It just feeds into a cycle of wrath. We are better served as a civilized society if we live with some pause. And I think even basketball coaches can aspire to that kind of reflection.

Some years ago, when the men at my mosque in Morgantown, W.V., banished the other women and me to an isolated balcony, I stepped out of the balcony, into the parking lot, seething. There, I called Alan Godlas, a professor of Islam and religion at University of Georgia in Athens, and he gave me words of wisdom, telling me, "Your anger reveals a deeper pain." Indeed, it did: years of anger at feeling marginalized in my traditional Muslim community. Over the next weeks -- and really all the years since -- I used my process of reporting to take a step back and engage in something called "Vipassana" meditation, a Buddhist philosophy known as "insight meditation" in the West, where we simply observe our state of being, instead of clinging to it, and try to get some insight into our rage.

It's a struggle, I know. But, as we dare to bring deep philosophical ideas such as karma into the conversation, it is best for us to reflect on our own legacy--not assign curses to others. Children should not follow the example of Dan Gilbert. As for all of us, his anger reveals a deeper pain, and -- not to be too touchy feely -- but I hope he finds some healing from his pain, rather than staying in a place of rage.

NBA Commissioner David Sterns seems to agree, fining Gilbert $100,000 for his remarks, acknowledging that, while "catalyzed as they may have been by a hurt," they were "ill-advised and imprudent."

We've all felt that sense of betrayal that Gilbert wrote about, telling fans, that LeBron had engaged in a "cowardly betrayal." Years ago, during one painful relationship break up, I sat at a table at the Peanut Butter & Co. Sandwich Shop on Sullivan Street in the heart of Greenwich Village, and told my boyfriend, "I curse you." Years later, he asked me if I'd lift the curse. I had -- indeed, the moment I expressed it. But they were words that would have been better left unexpressed.

Our lesson for children, I think should be: If someone angers us, we don't need to curse them. It's not appropriate on the playground. It's not appropriate in the game of life that is "samsara."

On the outburst of human emotion, India's Nobel Prize winning poet Rabrindanath Tagore wrote that nirvana "is not the blowing out of the candle. It is the extinguishing of the flame because day is come." In his letter to fans, Gilbert signed off, writing, "Sleep well, Cleveland."

For Cleveland, the next day has come. More days will come. Let LeBron James move into the next phase of his life in peace with a simple greeting that my seven-year-old son, Shibli, learned in pre-school: "We wish you well." That release from anger is the best karmic gift we can actually give ourselves. And if that means an NBA championship for Cleveland down the road, hurrah. If not, at least, it does mean, indeed, that we "sleep well."