The Power of Popular Culture Chapter 10 Part # 5 Sufi Saints, Sufi Sinners, and Sufi Alternatives 20th century Sufis ...and into the 21st century Who are America's best known Sufis? We can start with one of America's all time basketball greats, Shaquille O'Neal. According to a site called "haroonkaran" O'Neal's mother is Baptist and his stepfather is a Muslim. Although some biographies identify him as a Muslim he has described himself in these words: "I'm Muslim, I'm Jewish, I'm Buddhist, I'm everybody 'cause I'm a people person." This is also, in many cases, a common definition of a Sufi. Another American Sufi that many people know of is Ellen Burstyn. She is a Hollywood and television actress who has been a presence in American movie theaters and living rooms for many years. Her filmography includes The Exorcist, Requiem for a Dream, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, and Interstellar. She may be best known from television, however, where she has appeared in the Perry Mason series, Gunsmoke, and House of Cards. About her religious faith, Burstyn is quoted as saying that although she was raised a Catholic she has come to the point of view where she found truth in a number of religions, particularly Sufism, Hinduism, Christianity, and Buddhism. During a Beliefnet interview in 2006 she said that along the way she had been initiated into Sufism by Pir Vilayat Kahn. Doris Lessing, the novelist, was strongly influenced by Sufism, something discussed in detail in a 1997 volume by Müge Galin, Between East and West: Sufism in the Novels of Doris Lessing. She won the 2007 Nobel Prize in literature. Her mentor in Sufi religion was Idries Shah. Lessing was British but had a devoted following in the United States Also British, Robert Graves was interested in a variety of religions, especially what he considered to be the original faith of Europeans of prehistory based on Goddess veneration. He wrote about that subject in his 1948 book (revised twice afterwards), The White Goddess. This followed his 1946 opus, King Jesus, an historical novel that took the view that Christ was related to Herod the Great as well as having Davidic geneaology. Probably best know for his best seller, I, Claudius, about the Roman emperor of that name, Graves' greatest contribution to scholarship came in 1955 with his two volume study, The Greek Myths. Amidst all of this, and there is much more, he became friends with Idries Shah and wrote the introduction to Shah's 1964 study, The Sufis. Although that introduction makes much of Islam, Graves, in private correspondence, as the Wikipedia article about him notes, took the view that Shah, for all of his Sufi traditions, was anything but an orthodox "Moslem." The most anyone can say is that Graves was lukewarm toward Islam. Graves lived in America for several years during the WWII period. His home at the time was in Pennsylvania. Perhaps the most unusual Sufi leader and thinker of 20th century America was Samuel Lewis, sometimes called "Sufi Sam" or Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti. He was a Jewish convert to Sufism who was active in Sufi activities mostly in the 1960s. Lewis died in 1971. Lewis was also a Zen Buddhist simultaneously and was regarded as expert in that tradition. In addition, Lewis was the co-founder of an ecumenical Christian group called the Holy Order of Mans, which was a mystical form of Christian faith but based on organic foods and the like, what was eventually called "green spirituality." Lewis also created an activity called "_Dances of Universal Peace_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dances_of_Universal_Peace) ," intended to bring together people of different religions for common good through the experience of physical activity and music. This is only a brief outline of Lewis' life and his accomplishments. Lewis primarily spent his time in California, mostly involved with young people in what is sometimes called the "counter culture." Most American Sufis were introduced to the religion through the writings of one or the other of two men who are most known for their work in Europe, especially Great Britain. This refers to Pir Inayat Khan and Idries Shah. Khan, who died in 1927 was originally a noted musician from India who only later began to put his religious views into philosophical form, usually stressing the importance of musical themes as intrinsic to spiritual consciousness. Idries Shah ultimately had the greater influence and was a gifted writer who became best known for his many stories and parables and humorous anecdotes. Born in 1924, Shah lived until 1996. Khan was the founder of The Sufi Order of the West, an organization that became the International Sufi Movement in 1923. Local groups could be found in France, Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Netherlands, Germany, and, of course, Britain, Australia, Canada, and the United States. Among the interesting facts about Khan was his marriage to Ora Ray Baker, a cousin of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science. Pir Inayat set a number of precedents for almost all versions of Sufism that put down roots in Europe or America. These included: * The view that all religions are based upon divine truths. * The view that there is a spiritual self, regarded as "higher," and a lower self of the emotions and sensuality. * The view that the cardinal virtues consist of love, harmony among people, and quest for beauty in life, especially through religious experience. There was also de-emphasis on the Koran, which, while still regarded as a holy book, was not regarded as crucial to 'enlightenment' or other religious experience. In so many words, Western Sufis in the Pir Inayat Khan tradition, or the tradition of most subsequent Sufis in America or Europe, taught a form of "Universal Sufism." This kind of Sufism was mixed gender in nature, men and women worshipping together unlike orthodox Islam which segregates the sexes. It was also pretty much indifferent to any number of beliefs and practices of normative Islam. While never more than a small minority, some members were not Muslim at all. Others belonged to two or three religions besides Sufism. These tendencies were taken even further by Idries Shah, who became a true 'celebrity of religion' by the end of his life. It was Shah's opinion that Sufism was a modern form of ancient religion that existed long before Islam, more or less contemporary Sabaeanism. This is in reference to the Sabians (there are various spellings) mentioned in the Koran -a group that did exist and which could still be found in scattered locations into the 7th century AD. Actual Sabianism was not the pristine monotheism imagined by Muhammad, however, who possibly confused the ancient faith with one or another group of Christian ascetics he came across in his travels. Scholars now think that several groups of the first few Muslim centuries called themselves Sabians because doing so could be good camouflage for "Pagan" religion inasmuch as the Koran protects the Sabians without defining what they believed except in sketchy terms that could be interpreted in a dozen different ways. Yet, two groups in this category can make a case that they not only were disguised versions of archaic religion but actually were Sabians in a real sense. These were the Elxaities, after a prophet named Elxai who claimed to carry forth the mission of John the Baptist, and a group associated with the town of Haran in Syria which still venerated the moon God as a high deity but in the context of a 'purified' faith that respected the sacred beings of an assortment of historic religions of the area. In any case, Idries Shah seemed to have revived this tradition and made it his own. Sufism as he understood it was not Islam except incidentally. More important was the fact that Sufism is adaptable and always seeks to adjust to current cultures, whatever they may be, creating a new synthesis of religion each new generation. Shah's major innovation for his own version of religion was to mix psychology as it was known in the middle decades of the 20th century into the realm of faith. Shah recruited a parade of intellectuals to his cause, a disparate ensemble of journalists, artists, writers, film critics, and still others, who, in turn spread the word about him. This included Robert Graves, as we have seen. The problem was that Idries Shah was capable of playing loose with facts if it suited self promotional purposes. Hence, to his chagrin, Graves was suckered into believing that Shah had access to a manuscript dating to about 1200 AD which featured a "definitive" interpretation of the Rubiyyat of Omar Khayyam. Graves proceeded with work on a new version of the Rubiyyat based on what Shah claimed the historic document said. That is, to his regret, Graves took his word. After several scholars called the story of the "original" interpretation of Khayyam a hoax, Graves felt he should demand to see it for himself. Shah was unable to produce the material. Which meant that Graves' view, that the Rubiyyat was Sufi in character and inspiration, was almost certainly false. About which, for further details see the Wikipedia article about Idries Shah. This wasn't the last of the problems with Shah's contributions to literature. His autobiographical writings, other scholars learned, were also bogus, consisting of historically false "facts" -or no better then claims for which no verification was possible. Not that this mattered all that much to Shah's devoted followers, but his reputation at large would never recover. This can be taken as doubly unfortunate, not just because of the gratuitous fraud involved, but because Shah had made a genuine contribution to religious studies by way of his style as a writer and lecturer, for which, despite it all, he deserves recognition even today. For Idries Shah stories were essential to religion and the teaching of religion. But to be effective much more than narrative was necessary. As the Wikipedia article put it, there is a "therapeutic function" to use of "surprising anecdotes" and focus on the "mixed motivations" of all people. Moreover, the best way to learn is through practical work, through mastery of a profession, in the process passing along what one learns as you tell a story. Every story has a hidden dimension and it needs to be explored in order for the story to take on 'living' qualities. --------------------- The best 'graduate' of this kind of outlook can be seen in the work of Huston Smith (Huston Cummings Smith), who was with us for almost a century until his death late in 2016. He was 97. Smith eventually belonged to four religions. He was a Methodist in his youth and never abandoned his Christian faith but in time he also adopted Vedanta, Zen Buddhism, and Sufism as his own. Hence to characterize him as a Sufi must be understood as being only one of his spiritual identities. Best known for his work in the field of Comparative Religion, Smith was the author of The Religions of Man (later re-titled as The World's Religions, which went on to sell 2 million copies and is still sometimes used in college classes. But his interests went far beyond the realm of academia and formal religion. He also moved in circles that included Aldous Huxley, _Timothy Leary_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Leary) , Richard Alpert (_Ram Dass_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram_Dass) ), and various leaders of the Onondaga tribe of the Iroquois where he was involved with traditional American Indian religion. Huston Smith was also important in passage of the 1994 amendment to the _American Indian Religious Freedom Act_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_Religious_Freedom_Act) which legalized religious use of peyote. Smith was a film producer whose movies about Tibetan Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sufism won awards of various kinds at several film festivals. In 1996 Bill Moyers produced a 5 part series on the life and work of Smith for PBS. Feisal Abdul Rauf , aka Imam Rauf, is a Kuwaiti-American best known for his controversial plan to build a mosque at Ground Zero in New York City. This idea -which I strenuously opposed at the time it was newsworthy in 2010- drew widespread condemnation by people like Pamela Geller, _Robert Spencer_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Spencer_(author)) , and John R. Bolton. At one demonstration in Manhattan, Dutch political leader Geert Wilders spoke to the crowds. Rauf would have liked to have become known as a spokesman for his efforts to improve relations between Muslims and Americans, and he wrote several books on this theme, but everything came crashing down where investigations revealed that he was a slumlord whose New Jersey properties were basically unfit for human habitation. Rauf has essentially been discredited. But not only because of his indifference to housing standards. He is a prime example of a "naive Sufi," someone who has it in his head that all Muslims necessarily are Sufi in their heart-of-hearts, that Islam is actually a form of Sufism, and the Koran can be interpreted willy-nilly almost any way you like. Certainly this is the impression he gives through his pronouncements about religion and the purported sameness of faiths. These views he passes along to others, including religiously uninformed Americans, who take away a grossly misleading impression of Islam. As if the virtuous Trapp family was really what Nazism was all about, forget the Gestapo and the SS, what the Third Reich was really doing was promoting Alpine culture. -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
[RC] Sufi Saints, Sufi Sinners Chapter 10 Part # 5 20th century Sufis
BILROJ via Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community Sat, 13 May 2017 09:51:56 -0700
