Varieties of American Sufism

Islam, Sufi Orders, and Authority in a Time of Transition

Elliott Bazzano, Marcia Hermansen, Elliott Bazzano,Marcia Hermansen

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781438477923
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

From Rumi poetry and Sufi dancing or whirling, to expressions of Africanicity and the forging of transnational bonds to remote locations in Senegal, Sri Lanka, and Turkey, Varieties of American Sufism immerses the reader in diverse expressions of contemporary Sufi religiosity in the United States. It spans more than a century of political, cultural, and embodied relationships with Islam and Muslims. American encounters with mystical Islam were initiated by a romantic quest for Oriental wisdom, flourished in the embrace of Eastern teachings during the countercultural era of New Age religion, were concretized due to late twentieth-century possibilities of travel and immigration to and from Muslim societies, and are now diffused through an explosion of cyber religion in an age of globalization. This collection of in-depth, participant-observation-based studies challenges expectations of uniformity and continuity while provoking stimulating reflection on a range of issues relevant to contemporary Islamic Studies, American religions, multireligious belonging, and new religious movements.

1

The Message in Our Time

Changing Faces and Identities of the Inayati Order in America

GENEVIÈVE MERCIER-DALPHOND

The “Delocalization” and “Relocalization” of the Inayati Order

The recent academic study of “Western Sufism” tends to “reveal the hybrid character of Sufism in the West” in view of the relocalization of Sufi groups in new American and European contexts.1 Among Sufi organizations that came to America or emerged within the American religious landscape, we may count the Inayati Order, known as the Sufi Order International until January 2016, and previously known as the Sufi Order in the West. The Inayati Order is one of those perennialist Sufi orders in North America that initially revised its Islamic Sufi message for a non-Muslim Western audience, and has continuously adapted its identity and outlook with the coming of new leaders and the emergence of new social settings.2 The Inayati Order is currently led by Pir Zia Inayat Khan (b. 1972), grandson of the founder of the Sufi Order in the West, Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan (1882–1927). The latter, who came from India, is credited with the first intentional transmission of Sufism to America in 1910.3

Following his work in North America and Western Europe, where he founded the Sufi Order in the West,4 Inayat Khan’s organization evolved into a number of different orders that branched out from his message of “universal Sufism.”5 Of these offshoots, the Inayati Order is the most prevalent and active in North America, with ninety-three centers as of 2019.6

This chapter will trace the historical development of the Inayati branch of the Order and the way its identity changed across time and space, from its beginnings until its latest developments in a globalizing and technological world. First, I will give a brief historical overview in order to address the teachings and identity articulated by the founder Hazrat Inayat Khan. Second, I will discuss the practices of the Inayati Order under his son and successor Pir Vilayat Khan in view of ongoing social and intellectual shifts in America, notably the emergence of the New Age movement in the 1960s and ’70s. Finally, I will show how these transformations shed light on the transnational identity characterizing the movement today under Pir Zia, taking into particular consideration the authority acquired through the Order’s global connections and centralized online platform that now acts as a cyber-spatial source of community and belonging.

Historical Overview of the Founder

Inayat Khan (1882–1927), a prominent Indian classical musician from Baroda (Vadodara), Gujarat, was a disciple of the Hyderabadi Chishti Sufi Abu Hashim Madani (d. 1907).7 According to Inayat Khan’s autobiography, he was “told by his dying master to ‘harmonize the East and West with the harmony of thy music,’ ” after which he traveled to America, arriving in New York City with his brothers and cousin in 1910 on a performance tour with the intention of spreading classical Hindustani music.8 While Madani had projected that Khan’s mission lay in the West, the Western audience was unprepared to understand his Indian classical music but instead was eager to receive Eastern spirituality.9 Khan soon married an American woman and started spreading Sufi teachings instead of music, finding that sharing spiritual wisdom was in fact the purpose of his mission.10

Although Khan was and remained a Muslim, he managed to penetrate the anti-Islamic sentiment pervading American society at the time by promoting Sufism amongst his followers as a “preIslamic” tradition or practice that derived from universal teachings beyond those of any institutionalized religion.11 As a result, the Sufi Order of the West was established in 1918, and then, in 1923, incorporated in Geneva as “The Sufi Movement” by a group of followers of Inayat Khan who “combined Khan’s training in the Indian Chishti Sufi order with motifs and practices drawn from other religions as well as metaphysical strands from Theosophy, esotericism, and religious eclecticism.”12 In fact, these latter concepts were already popular during that era among a privileged class of Westerners seeking some form of spirituality, or esoteric “hidden knowledge,” that had been silenced in the Age of Enlightenment subsequent to the eighteenth century.13 Theosophy and esotericism were similar in offering Western spiritual seekers some deeper knowledge of reality, beyond Enlightenment rationalism, while combining the wisdom and practices of different religious traditions considered to have mystical insights. This religiously eclectic approach sets out to find the occult, hidden truth within all religions. The early followers of Inayat Khan had been exposed to Theosophy and esotericism mostly through the Theosophical Society, which was active and increasing in membership in Victorian Britain as well as American society before Khan’s arrival.14

The Theosophical Society, founded in 1875, “advocated an esoteric perennialism and spiritual advancement through the comparative study of religion, particularly ‘Eastern’ traditions.”15 Theosophists, in general, sought in Eastern religions a way to assimilate science into a new “Western” religious discourse, and to this end explored Theosophy, Buddhism, Hinduism, and spirituality more generally.16 Inayat Khan came to be regarded as a Sufi teacher by many Westerners “drifting away from the Christian churches and forming themselves into free-thought societies, ethical cultural societies, non-sectarian societies and numerous other organizations the purpose of which [was] to seek religious truth.”17 These people were mostly Theosophists who had already a predilection for occult thought and prior knowledge of Eastern spiritualities usually focused on Buddhism and Hinduism, as derived from translations that had been made available as early as 1844 of Buddhist as well as Hindu scriptures.18

Despite the pervasive anti-Islam sentiment that Inayat Khan encountered in the West, he found the Western mentalities of these spiritual seekers capable of understanding certain elements of Sufism that resonated with the then familiar ideas of Eastern spirituality. The latter had been made popular in the aftermath of the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 and through the activities of groups such as the Theosophical Society.19 The Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago proved to be a significant event in American religious history as it “was to change the face of interreligious understanding.”20 Khan’s envisioning of universal Sufism was compatible with the contemporary idea of world religions and collective spirituality, central themes of the Parliament. He incorporated in his teachings and practices “elements from several religious traditions, including Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and sometimes Jewish kabbalism,” all traditions that had been presented at the Parliament.21

The Theosophical Society had been central in the articulation of the Parliament of the World’s Religions and was influential at the time both in the United States and Europe. Its attitude toward “the Orient” reflected the vision of many of this generation, which looked upon the East as “the romantic embodiment of the deepest and most lasting religious truths.”22 These influences had therefore prepared Westerners for “Eastern spiritualities” and a positive reception of a mystical, esoteric, and specifically universal—read nonexclusively Islamic—form of Sufism.23 As noted, Inayat Khan’s spiritual message regarding Sufism as that universal truth to be found at the heart of all religions became articulated along these lines.

Pir Zia Inayat Khan (b. 1971), Inayat Khan’s American grandson who currently leads the Inayati Order and holds a PhD in Religious Studies from Duke University, explains that “for Theosophists and ex-Theosophists who sought technical instruction in esoteric practice, but continued to favor Eastern spirituality over Western magic, the Sufi Order filled a pressing need.”24 To the Theosophists, Pir Zia explains, Inayat Khan embodied “an exemplar of Oriental wisdom in the flesh, one that came with a genuine initiatic pedigree and was capable of offering practical instruction in time-honored techniques of meditation.”25 Most of Khan’s early followers in England “were also important leaders within the Theosophical movement” who found Inayat Khan’s teachings resonant with their esoteric spiritual quest for universal religious truth.26 These followers came to play a mediating role in the adaptation of Khan’s teachings for a non-Muslim audience. Khan thus tapped into an ongoing discourse of exotification regarding Sufism and “esoteric Eastern spiritualities” among his mainly Theosophist audience, which in turn responded to an Orientalistic envisioning of the “mystical East.”

In addition to these attractive factors, Khan’s training in the Indian Chishti Sufi Order contributed to the successful adaptation of Sufism in a Western, non-Islamic context.27 According to Celia Genn, who has written widely on Inayat Khan and universal Sufi branches, the Chishtiyya Sufi Order in India “reflects an historically pluralistic religious environment that allowed religious traditions to evolve with less distinct boundaries than are commonly drawn between Islam and other religious traditions elsewhere.”28 Ernst and Lawrence, scholars of Sufism, also state that the Chishti Sufis are pluralistic and universalist in outreach, adding that this is an Order that has continuously adapted itself to its locality, spreading widely in the Indian subcontinent, in many cases by integrating Hindu practices.29 Fundamental to Chishti practices, accordi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The Message in Our Time: Changing Faces and Identities of the Inayati Order in America
• 2 The Golden Sufi Center: A Non-Islamic Branch of the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya
• 3 The Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship: Diverse Identities and Negotiated Spaces
• 4 A Shadhiliyya Sufi Order in America: Traditional Islam Meets American Hippies
• 5 The Mevlevi Order of America
• 6 From the Balkans to America: The Alami Tariqa in Upstate New York
• 7 “There is an ‘I’ deeper than me”: The Ansari Qadiri Rifa‘i Tariqa and Transcendence in America
• 8 When the Divine Flood Reached New York: The Tijani Sufi Order among Black American Muslims in New York City
• Contributors
• Index
• Back Cover