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Creating Space for Piety, Practice and Dialogue: Religious Freedom and North American Sufi Devotionalism

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Creating Space for Piety, Practice and Dialogue: Religious Freedom and North American Sufi Devotionalism Creating Space for Piety, Practice and Dialogue: Religious Freedom and North American Sufi Devotionalism Kashshaf Ghani Nalanda University, India This exploratory study draws from a larger engagement with religious plurality in the U.S. through the SUSI program in 2018, combined with my own research on Islamic spiritual tradition in South Asia. The idea of religious plurality in the U.S. contextualizes itself within the broader vision of religious freedom upheld in the First Amendment. While the latter has created sufficient scope for varied religious traditions and practices within the U.S. to voice themselves, a major shift in this regard was realized only through the transnational dimension, which witnessed the opening up of U.S. territory to international immigrants. The following exploration studies the early history of Islamic devotional tradition in the U.S. particularly through the rise of the Sufi movements. I intend to approach this study primarily from the vantage point of historical origins and development of Sufi groups in the U.S. from the late- 20th century. This approach will be grounded on the perspective of Sufism as a minority faith practice and its various manifestations in U.S – spiritual practices, devotional exercises, artistic expression and cross-cultural dialogue. Sufism being one such manifestation, its career in the U.S. can be identified along multiple positions of ideology and practice – drawing from normative Islamic teaching and morals, following an eclectic and universalist approach, and transplantation of Sufi practices from parent societies, like South Asia and Africa. The exploration will conclude by focusing on the dimension of transnationalism through a reference to the career of a South Asian Sufi master in Philadelphia – Bawa Muhaiyadeen. 1 Introduction The vision and practice of religious freedom in the U.S. upholds the spirit of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that rules out any legal formulation concerning an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Understandably, this has created the space for plural religious traditions to flourish – dominated by major religions from the Abrahamic tradition – Christianity, Islam, Judaism, as well as non-Abrahamic ones – Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. In such a diverse religious space what is more interesting are not the big names, but the minor faith traditions, who on most occasions draw their inspiration from the Christian Church, the teachings of Jesus, the Islamic sharia, teachings and practices of Muhammad – and sustain their own beliefs on a bedrock of what can be called ‘inspired spirituality’. A relevant approach to chart the historical career of these minor faith traditions, driven by a strong spiritual impulse, is not to stop by merely acknowledging their presence. Rather it is important to study their ways of negotiating the diverse arena of American society and culture. To frame it through a question would be to ask, In what ways did these minor traditions appeal, and adjust themselves, to American sensibility and emotions? However, it is one thing to pose this question for any spiritual tradition inspired by Christianity, followed by majority of the U.S. population. It is a completely different challenge to pose the same question for an obscure spiritual tradition like Sufism, drawn primarily from Islam, the youngest Abrahamic faith whose social presence in the U.S. has only gradually increased over the last century. In the following discussion, keeping the aforementioned question as the polestar, we explore ways in which Sufi movements from the early 20th century manifested itself in the U.S. 2 Early History: Spiritual traditions arriving in the U.S. in the early 1900s were primarily traced to the East, an exotic civilizational idea fed and sustained by Orientalist scholarship, whose exploration of Sufi wisdom through the poetry of Hafiz from Shiraz (d. 1390) and Jalaluddin Rumi from Turkey (d. 1273) introduced Sufism to a Euro-American audience. In the 1960s and 70s the counter cultural movement riding on the first wave of feminism, demand for civil rights, led young middle-class Americans to protest against racism and the Vietnam War, criticizing established religions for their failure to contain the evils of technocracy – all of which signaled the second phase of Sufi movements. The third phase saw the transnational dimension in American Sufi movements strengthen itself when favorable immigration laws opened U.S. territory to international communities. The fourth phase of Sufi activities can be seen in the post-globalisation era of 1990s when spiritual practices and retreats came to counter a hyper-consumerist culture.1 Some major personalities who carried Sufism into the U.S. were connected to their parent societies in South Asia, primarily Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and the island nation of Sri Lanka. Since the early 13th century South Asia emerged as the most important region in the entire eastern world of Islam where Sufism flourished under multiple spiritual orders who migrated eastward from Iran and Iraq under the Mongol impact. When Sufism arrived in South Asia Sufi masters found themselves preaching to a non-Muslim population having little idea of Abrahamic religious beliefs. Centuries later, history would repeat itself, in rather interesting ways, when Sufi masters from Southern Asia arrived in the U.S. to preach to an American non-Muslim audience, who had 1 Merin Shobhana Xavier, Sacred Spaces and Transnational Networks in American Sufism: Bawa Muhaiyaddeen and Contemporary Shrine Cultures, Bloomsbury, 2018; Gisela Webb, “Sufism in America” in Timothy Miller (ed.), America’s Alternative Religions, SUNY Press, 1995, 249-58. 3 little idea of what Sufism meant as an Islamic spiritual tradition. Faced with this challenge early Sufi masters had to think of ways by which they could successfully convey the message of Sufism, and to some degree that of Islam as well, to an audience largely unaware, yet receptive. Sufism needed to be garbed and packaged in ways intelligible and appealing to an American audience standing at the crossroads of global cultures, steeped in modern sensibilities and multiple religious affiliations. Observing generations of Sufi activities in America, scholars writing from the 1990s came to see this movement along two approaches – the hybrid model which combined traditional Islamic practices with the American social environment; while the perennial model emphasized universalist trends of religion, thereby dispensing with any formal adherence to Islam by its members. By de-recognizing the practice of Islamic law as central to Sufism, perennialists allowed followers of any traditional religion to embark on the path of spiritual realization, through practices culled from various religious traditions under the belief that they all emanate from a single true source.2 The assumption latent in this approach shows a clear influence from the Abrahamic belief in one God as the source of all knowledge and creation. A second group of perennialists though accommodating and universalist in approach, put up a semblance of attachment to the Sharia. At the end of the day, these two approaches can be seen to project a conflict of cultural identity, either by upholding normative Muslim cultural styles of attire, name, religious worship, or blending into the host culture in an accommodating and adaptive manner. As 2 Marcia Hermansen, “Hybrid Identity Formations in Muslim America: The Case of American Sufi Movements”, The Muslim World, 90, Spring 2000, 158-97; Marcia Hermansen, “American Sufis and American Islam: From Private Spirituality to the Public Sphere” in Islamic Movements and Islam in the Multicultural World: Islamic Movements and Formation of Islamic Ideologies in the Information Age, Kazan Federal University Publishing House, 2014, 189-208. 4 we turn to the careers of some Sufi masters in America we will see how universalist trends and traditional Islamic practices intersect in complex ways. Early Sufi Master: Inayat Khan The earliest Sufi master to arrive in America was Hazrat Inayat Khan (1880-1927), who arrived in New York from Bombay in 1912. A musician trained in the Hindustani classical tradition, Inayat Khan was affiliated to the Chishti order, South Asia’s earliest and most popular Sufi order which arrived from Afghanistan in the early 13th century. Inayat Khan’s arrival inaugurated the first phase of Sufi activities in America that was already showing an increasing interest in the esoteric, spiritual and philosophical traditions of the East, formalized through the Theosophical Society; as well as the reception of the wisdom of Hafiz and Rumi deeply followed by figures of the Trancendentalist Movement like Ralph Emerson (d. 1882). As a believer in the oldest Sufi tradition from South Asia it was expected of Inayat Khan to project his spirituality through the lenses of Islamic tradition and practice, resting on the foundation of Sharia. Rather interestingly, Inayat Khan spoke through the language of universalism that was transmitted through the practice of ‘universal worship’ drawing from scriptural traditions across world religions, to be interiorized by his spiritually inquisitive American Christian audience through chants, recitations, meditation and concentration practices. This movement which came to be named the Sufi Order, did not require conversion to Islam and practice of the Sharia.3 3 Ibid.; Marcia Hermansen, “South Asian Sufism in America”,
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