love, gnosis & other suicide attempts by amir sulaiman

Wow, it has been a while since I've blogged. I'm not sure if I will try to "catch up" on talking about what has been happening for the past couple years. I will just sort of pick up in the moment. I've been splurging on books lately. I feel like I need to "come back" to the deen in a real way. I feel like I need a sheikh, or  at least  find a good group of brothers to be encouraging and to help  me avoid  certain traps. I need to be re-energized.   

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Amir Sulaiman's webpage: Love, Gnosis & Other Suicide Attempts

el zahir, borges and sufism

If you are interested in some of the intersections between Hispanic/Latin culture and Islam after the Reconquest, you might want to check out a recent entry at the Technology of the Heart blog: Sufi Themes in Jorge Luis Borges' Writing

thanksgiving from the islamic perspective

In contrast to my usual remember-the-Native-Americans type of Thanksgiving post I thought it would be nice to share Thanksgiving from the Islamic Perspective by Ibrahim Gamard which takes a glance at the concept of thanksgiving in the Quran and in Rumi's Masnavi.

spiritual message of the occupy movement

Technology of the Heart: Spiritual Message of the Occupy Movement | Driving out the Money Changers, Once Again Bangladeshi blogger Sadiq Alam shares an extended reflection on how multiple spiritual traditions connect to the Occupy Movement, with a special emphasis on the money-changers in the Temple.

from tarim to granada

h/t to www.caribbeanmuslims.com

Granada. In Muslim imagination the mere name conjures up images of a magnificent city. A place where science and culture thrived during Europe's dark ages. A place where the streets were lit at night and ornate fountains fed verdant gardens of exquisite beauty. Where a tolerant convivencia brought the Abrahamic faiths together in a most remarkable coexistence. Granada and its iconic Alhambra Palace represents Islam's Andalucian legacy in Europe.

Tarim. Nestled in Yemen's Hadhramaut valley, it is a city like no other. A place of spirituality and learning, tended to by the descendents of the Prophet Muhammad himself. From Java to East Africa and beyond, the scholars of Tarim led by their guides - the Habibs - have taken their tradition all over the world establishing a truly global spiritual community dedicated to living and celebrating the sacred.

Now the living tradition of Tarim and the glorious legacy of Granada meet for the first time. Habib Umar bin Hafiz travels to Spain, visiting Muslim communities in Madrid and Granada. Accompanied by journalist and commentator Fuad Nahdi and Muslims from the Spain, Yemen and the UK, From Tarim to Granada chronicles a remarkable journey.

This is the story of new communities and ancient legacies. Of enduring faith and the burden of history. Of renewing the connection between East and West. Of finding a new convivencia for our times.

From Tarim to Granada

rumi anniversary

Whirling Dervishes Celebrate Rumi Anniversary

sidney, ny wants local muslims to dig up their graves

A town in upstate New York is trying to force a local Muslim religious community to dig up a small cemetery on its property and never bury anyone there again because it says it's illegal. Part of the "problem" is that there are no laws in Sidney -- or New York state, for that matter -- covering cemeteries on private land -- religious cemeteries included. Plus, the town approved the cemetery in 2005.

The cemetery is part of the Osmanlı Nakş-ı'bendi Hakkani Dergahı led by Shaykh Abdul Kerim al-Kibrisi.

For more details about the facts of the case, you can check out: Tiny Upstate New York Town Wants Local Muslims to Dig Up Their Cemetery

For me the case raises a couple of different issues. Obviously on one level its just a basic (and all-too-frequent) example of Islamophobia. What makes this case especially frustrating is that Sufi groups like the above mentioned Naqshbandis are supposed to be among the "good Muslims" and yet they are still facing difficulties finding acceptance.

legion

I also caught the movie Legion at a midnight opening last week. The film had its interesting moments but overall it wasn't very well made and I definitely could have waited for it to appear in the bargain DVD bin at Blockbuster.

Legion is a dark and twisted Christmas card on film. The premise: God has lost faith in humanity so He orders the angelic hosts to bring on the apocalypse. We see darkness, swarms of insects and other phenomena, but mostly we see angels possess other human beings (e.g. the foul-mouthed, wall-crawling old lady prominently featured in the commercials).

God has created a special child who will possibly be born to a pregnant waitress in a diner and could somehow oppose and counter-act the apocalypse. But then in a spectacular example of logic, He also orders the archangel Michael to kill this self-same child before it is born.

The interesting thing is that Michael ends up being almost a perfect inversion of the Islamic concept of the devil by refusing this command. At one point he even announces that when God made mankind he was the first angel to bow down to the the crowning glory of God's creation (as opposed to Iblis in the Quran who refuses to bow down to Adam). And to add another level to the inversion, just as al-Hallaj suggested that the commandment to bow was more a test of the purity of the devil's monotheism than a straightforward order, in Legion, the commandment to bring on the apocalypse was really a test of compassion (which Michael passes) by holding on to his faith in humanity.

see also:
the devil and al-hallaj

Unfortunately, this one interesting aspect is outweighed by the film's various flaws including: 1) There is way too much violence given that the film is ultimately a fable on compassion. 2) Unlike the film The Prophecy which was able to portray angels with a dark side with the right amount of tension, most of the "angels" in Legion just appear creepy and demonic. 3) More specifically, the angel-possessed crowds basically made Legion reminiscent of a zombie movie. But then the massive crowds clearly could have overwhelmed the heroes in the dinner and it isn't plausible that our heroes would last as long as they do.

"i'm both muslim and christian" (part 3)

We've mentioned (the former Rev.) Ann Holmes Redding, the Episcopal priest who announced her conversion to Islam, before but here is a clip of her speaking in her own words.

The latest update in her story is that in April she has been officially defrocked by her bishop, so she is no longer an Episcopal priest. Also, she has co-authored the recently published book: "Out of Darkness Into Light: Spiritual Guidance in the Quran with Reflections from Christian and Jewish Sources.". Her co-authors are Jamal Rahman, a "Muslim Sufi minister at Interfaith Community Church" and Kathleen Schmitt Elias, "a former nun, now a Sufi Jew".

"i'm both muslim and christian" (part two)
"i'm both muslim and christian"

qawwali kissing flamenco

for more of this amazing fusion and synthesis, you might want to check out the Sologak blog: Sufi Chant: Qawali & Flamenco

mevlevis in miami

I finally went to my first local Mevlevi gathering. So far I think that it will be good for me on multiple levels. One of the many interesting things about the group is that most of the participants are Latino and almost everyone is Spanish-speaking. I grew up going to a Spanish/English bilingual church and it was interesting to "be religious/spiritual" in Spanish again. It was sort of a spiritual homecoming of sorts.

sufi rap

The Naqshbandi-Haqqani media library gives this clip the title of African Salawat / Rap / Hadrah I've been to the Burton masjid before for other activities (Eid prayer, dhikr) but apparently I missed hip-hop night.

See also sufi breakdancing.

speaking of love...

and Rumi... I just found out about a local group of Mevlevis and will possibly start attending some of their gatherings. At this point I'm still a little cautious about them and I hope they are more traditional than New Age-y (e.g. see Why Gurdjieff's "Fourth Way" Teachings are not Compatible with the Mevlevi Sufi by Ibrahim Gamard). We'll see how things go.

more room for rumi

Tonight I plan to go to a Rumi/whirling dervish event analagous to one I went to several months ago where I met a buddhist sufi. Should be interesting.

sarah silverman on kabbalah

I sometimes wonder if the practice of Sufism will wind up like the practice of kabbalah and become a Islamic-but-not-Muslim celebrity-ridden New Age fad (audhu billah) Let's hope not.

dhikr and my "inner taliban"

So I "went to dhikr" yesterday. I use quotes because in reality dhikr should be part of the basic punctuation of Muslim life so the idea of going to a specific location where dhikr can occur ir arguably rather odd. More specifically, I went to a gathering of the Shadhili tariqat [2] for group dhikr. The people were nice but I had to wrestle a bit with my "inner Taliban" since the people there were into "Sufism" but I wasn't sure if they were ready to say that they were "Muslim" or not. If I continue with them its just going to be something I'm going to have to work on somehow.

Coincidentally, I also discovered the following short film yesterday called Ms. Judgements. The people at dhikr were dressed like "gypsies" so I guess I'd identify most with the person right after:

goatmilk: rumi and sufism

I've linked to Wajahat Ali's blog before but I haven't checked him out in a while. It turns out I've missed a lot of good stuff. Here is an interview between Wajahat Ali and Islamic scholar Seyyid Hossein Nasr (who is also part of the Perennialist tradition we've discussed before here on Planet Grenada).

RUMI AND SUFISM: Examining Islam’s Spiritual Science in the Modern Age

ken wilber

So I'm in the middle of reading The Essential Ken Wilber: An Introductory Reader. Wilber's an interesting guy. He's a perennialist in the sense that he attempts to bring together a number of different religious, mystical and psychological systems into a single integrated structure. He seems most familiar with Buddhism and Hinduism and doesn't really do much to actively incorporate Islam into his work. But the brother over at Inspirations and Creative Thoughts has a couple of interesting posts which emphasize some of those connections anyway.

Inspirations and Creative Thoughts: Integral mysticism in the postmodern world | Integral Spirituality and also I AMness | Integral vision of Ken Wilber and Sufism

See also:
Integral Naked on YouTube

Planet Grenada:
more on perennialism
perennialism and traditionalism

cheikh lo

I'm going to have to check him out the next time I go to a CD store. Muslically, he performs African music tinged with Cuban sounds. Spiritually, he is a member of the Senegalese Sufi order known as Baye Fall Sufi (sometiems called "Muslim Rastas").

Myspace: Cheikh Lo
catching up

the devil and al-hallaj

So I recently finished reading Philp Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. It is a kind of an anti-Narnia series where the heroes gather a multiverse-wide army to fight against the Judeo-Christian God, typically referred to as the Authority. Given the theme, I would have expected that that film The Golden Compass (based on the first book) would have caused more of a scandal than it did. In any case, the books got me thinking of other examples (both historical and fictional) of how perspectives on God or the Devil are sometimes dramatically inverted.

One example of such an inversion in an Islamic framework can be connected to a question I've reflected on from even before the time I became Muslim: If Islam is such a radical monotheism, then why would Iblis (the Devil) get in trouble for refusing to bow down to something other than God? (For those that don't know, in the Quran the Devil "falls" when he refused to bow down to Adam)

The Sufi Mansur al-Hallaj must have had a similar question, and in a chapter of his metaphysical treatise The Tawasin entitled Before Endless Time and Equivocation he gives a rather bold answer in the form of an imaginary dialogue between Moses and the Devil:

Musa met Iblis on the slope of Sinai and said to him: ‘Oh Iblis, what prevented you from prostrating?’

He said: ‘That which prevented me was my declaration of a Unique Beloved, and if I had prostrated I would have become like you, because you were only called upon once to ‘look at the mountain’ and you looked. As for me, I was called upon a thousand times to prostrate myself to Adam and I did not prostrate myself because I stood by the Intention of my Declaration.

Sayedina Musa said: ‘You abandoned a Command?’

Iblis said: ‘It was a test. Not a command.’

Sayedina Musa said: ‘Without sin? But your face was deformed.’

Iblis replied: ‘Oh Musa, that is but the ambiguity of appearances, while the spiritual state does not rely on it and does not change. Gnosis remains true even as it was at the beginning and does not change even if the individual changes.’

[...]

If He punishes me with His fire for all of eternity I would not prostrate myself before anyone, and I would not abase myself before any person or body because I do not recognize any opposite with Him! My Declaration is that of the Sincere and I am one of those sincere in love.'

So in Al-Hallaj's mind the Devil almost becomes an almost saintly figure, not unlike the historical Sufi, rabia al-adawiyya who famously expressed her love for God apart from fear of Hell or desire for paradise. To be honest, I find Al-Hallaj's view somewhat compelling. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to defend some kind of Islamic form of Satanism. But I do think that Islam's radical monotheism does imply that the Devil is "on the payroll" so to speak. The Devil's act of disobedience was only apparent and ultimately he serves some valuable function as a part of the divine plan.