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Literary Productions of Western Sufi Movements

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Literary Productions of Western Sufi Movements 1 Literary productions of Western Sufi movements Marcia Hermansen The following contribution will focus on the literary productions of Western Sufi movements, with attention to determining the major genres represented and why these are selected. As a scholar of religion, I am concerned that studies of Western Sufi movements might easily become confined to the realm of social theory and immigrant religion. I therefore wish to open up the writings emerging from these movements to critical appreciation and analyses from other perspectives. I will discuss aspects of the new, Western Sufi literery works that challenge their being perceived as marginal discourses. Since many of these writers are of European or Euro-American background, in terms of social location they could be construed as privileged. Some of the works assume this privilege, others may reflect a sense of a certain marginality with respect to mainstream Western culture as well as a central- ized, authoritative Islamic discourse. Thus there is more than one type of conceptual location evident within the writings emerging from Western Sufi movements. I will commence with a brief outline of Sufism in the West and then proceed in the body of the contribution to deal with Sufi writings. Sufism in the West In order to get some grasp on the scope of the movements behind these materials I invoke a model I proposed in earlier papers of a ‘garden’ of American Sufi movements in which there are perennials, hybrids and transplants.1 I am using the term ‘hybrids’ for those movements that identify more closely with an Islamic source and content. In America these hybrid Sufi groups generally are founded and led by immigrant Muslims who were born and raised in Muslim soci- eties.2 Within those parameters, there are a wide range of responses and adaptations to the hybrid context in which they operate, for example in the membership of the movements. The ‘perennials’ of the garden are those movements in which the specifically Islamic identification and content of the movement have been de-emphasized in favour of a ‘perennialist’, ‘universalist’, or ‘traditionalist’ outlook.3 I am using the term ‘perenni- alist’ in its broadest sense to refer to the idea that there is a universal, eternal truth that underlies all religions.4 Certain movements deliberately espouse the ‘perennialist’5 title as articulated by Rene Guenon,6 and later Frithjof Schuon and his intellectual circle. Literary productions of Western Sufi movements 29 Most of these perennialists would say that adherence to and practice of a specific tradition is essential, so that while ultimate truth is universal, practice is specific and particular.7 Perennialists in the Schuonian tradition are characterized by an anti- modern and somewhat millenarian vision. Other perennialist or universalist movements simply have an orientation that spiritual practices from various religious traditions may be combined8 since they all emerge from the same true source which is, in fact, primarily gnostic, rather than religious. Transplants is the term I use to refer to Sufi movements conducted among small circles of immigrants with less adaptation to the American context. The transplants are the Sufi groups whose literature I will spend the least time on here, although they are certainly interesting from the perspective of transnational Sufi discourse. The fact that they appeal primarily to immigrants means that they have less need to produce their own literature in the West. Perhaps one could argue that the need to produce works in English or other Western languages is a signal of the hybridization of a Sufi movement. This is either due to its need to appeal to indigenous European or American populations, or to address a new generation born in the West of immigrant origins who are no longer literate in any ‘Islamic’ language. While I will discuss some of the movements and works individually, the material is by now so vast that it would require volumes rather than a paper to adequately present the history and doctrines of each of the groups, much less all of their writings. I can therefore only highlight a few general trends. Membership and relationship to Islam The literature on ‘new religious movements’ in the West sheds some light on broad characteristics of such movements. The clientele of most of the ‘new’ Sufi movements, whether hybrid or perennial, tends to be white and middle or upper middle class.9 Most of the members are from the generation of the late 1960s and 1970s, although there does seem to be a younger cohort now taking an interest, particularly in the hybrid movements. These hybrid Sufi movements also attract a number of immi- grants from Muslim societies and their children who either were born in the United States or arrived at a young age. The relationship to Islam is one point of entry in understanding the range of these movements. In the context of the West, and in particular, the United States, the iden- tification with Islam raises a complex challenge to those who wish to recruit to the Sufi movements. In the case of the perennialist movements it is less of a problem, since Islam is just one of many religious traditions which they honour. Members of such movements do not have to become formal Muslims, practise Islamic ritual, or follow any specific dress code. Examples of perennial/universal movements are ‘The Sufi Order International’,10 led by Pir Vilayat Khan and now his son Zia Inayat Khan, the ‘Society for Sufi Studies’ of Idries Shah (1924–1996) and the ‘Tradition’ of his brother Omar Ali Shah.11 Both Vilayat Khan and Idries Shah were born in Europe of Indian fathers and Western mothers. While Shah’s works are liberally pervaded by the term ‘Sufi’, references to Islam, or even to ‘God’, for that matter, are rarely encountered. The sense is rather 30 Literary productions of Western Sufi movements that of an occult wisdom or a psychological training system, which will be revealed only to a circle of initiates. Among all peoples, in all countries, there is a tradition about a secret, hidden, special, superior form of knowledge accessible to man after passing through circumstances of difficulty.12 Since the death of Idries Shah, many of his disciples have become affiliated with his brother Omar Ali Shah, whose teachings and organization, while similar, also display some distinctive features. For one thing, Omar Ali Shah has many more fol- lowers in South America,13 his movement attracts younger people and there are more references to Islam in his writings.14 There is some indication that Islamicate practices are performed as part of this movement. For example, a follower of the ‘Tradition’ describing his process of fighting cancer, mentions his practices of reciting the Fatiha (the opening chapter of the Qur’an), dhikr and ‘Ya shifa’ [sic].15 Other ‘universalist’ Sufi movements active in the United States are the Sufi Islamiyyat Ruhaniyat Society (Sam Lewis, d. 1971/Moinuddin Jablonski, d. 2001) and the Golden Sufi Center (Irena Tweedie, d. 1999/Llewellyn Vaughan Lee).16 The hybrid Sufi movements are relatively newer on the scene, probably due to the fact that it was not until the late 1960s that immigration became more feasi- ble for teachers born in Muslim societies.17 Examples of hybrid Sufi movements are the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship,18 the Helveti-Jerrahi and the Naqshbandi- Haqqani (Shaykh Nazim).19 Since many readers are likely to be unfamiliar with these movements, I will briefly describe the development of several tariqas in the American context. The Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship was founded by a Singhalese teacher, Guru Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, who first came to the United States in 1971. He gradually gathered a group of Western disciples at his Fellowship in Philadelphia, which is par- ticularly remarkable since he was already quite elderly and never learned to speak more than rudimentary English.20 (This movement is treated in Chapter 4 of the present volume.) The Helveti-Jerrahi Order was brought to America by Shaykh Muzaffer Ozak (1916–1993).21 Ozak first came personally to America in 1980, although many Western students of Sufism had previously visited his bookshop in Turkey. Branches of his tariqa developed in New York under the leadership of Tosun Bayrak22 and Shaykh Nur (Lex Hixon 1941–1995),23 and in the San Francisco Bay Area under Ragip Frager. The Naqshbandi-Haqqani order is headed by the Cypriot teacher Shaykh Nazim24 and is probably the most popular of the hybrid movements in the United States.25 (This movement is treated more extensively in Chapters 5 and 6 of the present volume.) In addition, during the course of this contribution I may cite writings from Islamically oriented Sufis and movements other than these. Sufi writings Western Sufi writings are in some sense comparable to Adab Islami or Islamist liter- ary works26 in suffering from similar scholarly neglect for some of the same reasons. Literary productions of Western Sufi movements 31 The contemporary critic of Arabic literature, Fedwa Malti-Douglas, commenting on the marginality of Islamist writings in critical study, notes: These religious texts may be popular among a certain group of readers, but they are far from popular among cultural and literary critics. The occultation of the more literary texts of the Islamic revival comes about because of the unwitting collusion of different academic specialities. On the one hand, most studies of religious movements concern themselves with political and theological ques- tions. It is therefore no accident that most western authors of book-length stud- ies on the Islamic revival should not be cultural or literary critics. On the other hand western specialists in Arabic and other literatures of the Middle East, or the Islamic world, or even the Francophone world, consciously confine them- selves to the enormous secularized literary and cultural production of the region, perceived as it is to be artistically serious and, hence, more worthy of study.27 In an earlier article on American Sufism, Gisela Webb suggests that scholarly attention to Sufi movements in the West has been limited by perceptions of such movements as cults, New Age movements, etc.
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