Contemporary Islamic Sufism in America: The Philosophy and Practices of the Alami Tariqa in Waterport, New York. Updated version now available through Rowman and Littlefield Publishers! The book title is "Sufism in America: The Alami Tariqa of Waterport, New York" (original) (raw)
Related papers
Religion Compass, 2020
Drawing upon our ethnographic research of the Jerrahi Sufi Order, in this paper we consider an analytical problem in the study of Sufism in North America. In engaging two distinct branches of the Jerrahi Order, we draw attention to the ways in which identities and practices shaped by classical Islamic law and theology cannot be easily parsed from those associated with the New Age movement in North America. We begin by offering a brief overview of Sufism in North America, highlighting reconfigurations of authority, organization, and practice. Following this, we
Creating Space for Piety and Dialogue: North American Sufi Devotionalism
Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 2022
The following essay 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 the 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 essay will conclude by focusing on the dimension of transnationalism through the career of a South Asian Sufi master in Philadelphia – Bawa Muhaiyadeen.
South Asian Sufis: Devotion, Devotion, and Destiny, 2012
This is a typescript of material that was published as “South Asian Sufism in the United States” in South Asian Sufis: Devotion, Devotion, and Destiny. Ed. Charles Ramsey New York: Continuum, 2012, 247-268.
Sufism in the Modern World - Special Issue of 'Religions' (2024)
MDPI, 2024
Since the advent of the “modern” age, the main mystical trend of Islam, namely Sufism, has become the target of novel, multifaceted criticism in the Muslim World. The strong denunciation of “folk” Sufism by Muslim purists and fundamentalists of the eighteenth century onwards—who often consider mystical Islam to be a major part of, and reason for, the deviation from an imagined, pristine Islam—was followed by a fresh wave of Sufi antagonism by a group of Muslim modernists and secular thinkers from the nineteenth century, who regard Sufism as something belonging to the past and thus incompatible with the present. Notwithstanding these intense and multifarious critiques, Sufism has remained an active part of Muslim life and culture in both Muslim-majority and Muslim-minority areas, even extending its presence to new spheres such as Europe and America. The current Special Issue analyzes and examines different aspects of such vibrant activity and scrutinizes the dynamics of the beliefs, practices, institutions, interpretations, conceptualizations, and aesthetics of Sufism in the modern world. It offers its readership a broad and multidisciplinary perspective on the contemporary vitality of mystical Islam and addresses the issue through various academic fields such as religious/Islamic studies, intellectual history, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, gender studies, and minority studies. Contributors to this volume have demonstrated that Sufism, like Islam itself, should be understood and studied “in context” and with regard to its constant change-in-continuity.
Mystical Strategies: Sufism in the 21st Century
2011
Like other traditional Islamic forms of religious and social expression, Sufism is becoming increasingly challenged by the forces of modernism and by the Islamicist movements. Yet, because of its tolerant view of other religious disciplines, there is great potential for Sufism to have a positive impact on the social evolution of Muslim and non-Muslim societies in the 21st century. This paper will investigate how Sufism can come to terms with this new social environment and its entourage of modernist and Islamicist logics. It involves an overview of Sufism’s past to give some insight as to how it can respond to the 21st century.