Posts Tagged Sufism

Before such spirit-bestowing Beauty, how should
I not die? How should I not go mad and seize hold of Thy
chainlike tresses?
When I drink Thy wine, how should I not be
obliterated? Thou art wine and I am water, Thou art honey
and I am milk. (more…)

Stop talking!
What a shame you have no familiarity
with inner silence!
Polish your heart for a day or two:
make that mirror your book of contemplation. (more…)

You call him a moon,
yet moonlight fades.
You call him a king,
yet kingdoms fall.

How often you say,
Wake up, you’ll miss the sunrise.
But His Sun always shines within me.
How can I miss the sunrise?

– Version by Jonathan Star and Shahram Shiva
A Garden Beyond Paradise
Bantam Books, 1992

I am drunk and you are insane
tell me, who will lead us home?
How many times have I asked you not to drink so much
for I see no sober soul in town.
Come to the tavern my dearest and taste the wine of love
for the soul is joyous only in the company of lovers.
The tavern of love is your livelihood
your income and expenses, the wine.
Be careful, not to trust a sober soul
with even one drop of this wine.
Go on playing your lute, my drunken gypsy but tell me,
between the two of us, who is more drunk?
As I left my house a Sufi approached me,
in his glance I saw a hundred gardens.
He swayed from side to side like a ship without an anchor,
while a hundred reasonable men watched on enviously.
Where are you from? I asked him.
He replied, “Half from Turkistan and half from Farghaneh,
half from water and clay and half from soul and heart,
half from the edge of the sea and half from the depths of the coean.”

Rumi — Ghazal (Ode) 2398
Translated by Azima Melita Kolin
and Maryam Mafi
Rumi: Hidden Music
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 2001

Natana DeLong Bas’ Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad is not a bad book, but it is not a particularly helpful book either. One of its strong points is how adroitly DeLong-Bas eases the reader into topics. This is no small feat since the protagonist is Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab (d. 1792) , a controversial Shaykh who lived during the eighteenth century. The reformer made an alliance with Muhammad ibn Saud, ruler of a small market town Diriyya, and this led to the formation of a state which claimed to live under the guidance of the Shariah and tried to bring the pastoral tribes all around it under its guidance too. More than I care to admit, the book was a page-turner for me, in spite of its moderate heft. 

However, the simplicity comes at a price. The narrative, especially when it discusses Shaykh Ibn Abdul Wahhab, is afflicted by a linearity that becomes unconvincing after a while. The book proves incredibly readable throughout, but the one-dimensional character that DeLong-Bas chooses to maintain for the Shaykh quickly becomes a cartoon superhero- too good for his own good, so to speak, and quite unbelievable. (more…)

I need a mouth as wide as the sky
to say the nature of a True Person, language
as large as longing.

The fragile vial inside me often breaks.
No wonder I go mad and disappear for three days
every month with the moon. (more…)

Announcement by Taimoor Khan Mumtaz

Baytunur registered as a trust in the year 2006 to promote the understanding of the spiritual branch of Islam known as ‘tasawwuf’ or “Sufism”. Managed and supported by six trustees, its academic activity is overseen by a board that includes three trustees and three scholars. It also has an academic advisory council.

 The Islam Seminars:  are a series of seminars and/or colloquiums that are held in spring and/or summer each year where different scholars are invited to speak in an interactive environment on a certain topic. The topics are usually set on public demand. The inaugural seminars were held in collaboration with Iqbal Academy Pakistan in Lahore, Pakistan and Teachers’ Development Centre, Karachi in 2007. To date a total of six Islam Seminars have been conducted. (more…)

whenever you meet
someone deep drunk
yet full of wisdom
be aware and watch
this person is enthralled
only by love (more…)

Finally Sadia Dehlvi’s book, Sufism: The Heart of Islam (HarperCollins), is published and was launched last week in Delhi. India’s eminent writer Khushwant Singh and historian Mushirul Hasan launched the book while Vidya Rao and Oroon Das rendered Sufi verses with music  and subtle intonations befitting the Sufi path.

Tariqa – the Way of the Sufi

Read this great blog and was tempted to cross-post a few bits here:

Every year, a few hundred thousand Sufis converge in Seh- wan, a town in Pakistan’s southeastern Sindh province, for a three-day festival marking the death of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, in 1274. Qalandar, as he is almost universally called, belonged to a cast of mystics who consolidated Islam’s hold on this region; today, Pakistan’s two most populous provinces, Sindh and Punjab, comprise a dense archipelago of shrines devoted to these men. Sufis travel from one shrine to another for festivals known as urs, an Arabic word for “marriage,” symbolizing the union between Sufis and the divine. (more…)

Another readable piece by Dr Sher Zaman Taizi

This poem in ghazal form is very simple and direct. It starts with a direct address to God and gradually moves on to ethical values, human needs and human nature. I will try to transliterate the original Pushto verses into English with the hope that readers will be able to appreciate its meaning.

Not for a single moment, am I indifferent to You! Not indifferent to Your invocation and reflection! Whatever shrine I go to, I have You in mind!

I am not interested in any pilgrimage to mosque or temple! (more…)

Cross-posted from here

Legend has it that a Bektashi dervish who was also a companion of the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent introduced roses to the city of Budapest. This man was thus named Gul Baba – Gul meaning ‘flower’ in Persian and Urdu. I am not sure if the legend is true but I was surely surprised to find the tomb of a 16th century sufi saint in Budapest. Of all places in the world, I didn’t expect to come across a sufi shrine there. But perhaps it’s not that unusual since the Ottomans ruled Hungary for 150 years and some traces of their occupation still linger in the form of architecture. Budapest still has a couple of original Turkish baths that are still open and functioning. (more…)

After everything Muslim has been trashed by the rejuvenated Hindutva across the border, now Southasian Sufism is also being highlighted as an Islamist-supremacist project. What utter ignorance to write about the syncretic mystics who were not part of power games nor were they parts of the armies. They were wandering mystics who found India’s spiritual landscape exciting and endearing and chose to stay and die there. The saddest piece that was forwarded to me by a reader is linked below by someone who holds forth – rather fumes – on Sufism and makes sure that he is introduced as “IPS (Retd)” – a scion of the Indian Police Service, an abominable legacy of the colonial state and its naked exploitative nature. Small wonder, his communalised veiw of the world is what the architects of his proud service wanted and achieved with much success.

False, pretentious and ill-informed. Alas.

Dark side of Sufism: Reappraisal of the Role of Sufis Working as Missionaries of Islam, R.K. Ohri, IPS (Retd)

For centuries the Sufi creed and Sufi music have been tom-tomed as great symbols of spiritualism and promoters of peace and harmony between the Hindus and the Muslims. The cleverly marketed concept of Sufi spiritualism has been unquestioningly accepted as the hallmark of Hindu-Muslim unity. It is time we studied the history of Sufis, (more…)

The marvelous sound
That comes from the sky – I am That.
The sweet fragrance
That comes from the garden – I am That.

The great beauty
That comes from the heart and soul
Until I leave . . . Wait!
I can’t leave – I am That.

Rumi – version by Jonathan Star and Shahram Shiva
A Garden Beyond Paradise
Bantam Books, 1992

I am grateful to Isa Daudpota for providing this translation by Jalaluddin Rumi’s verses that elaborate on the theory of evolution:

I have experienced seven hundred and seventy mounds.

I died from minerality and became vegetable;

And from vegetativeness I died and became animal.

I died from animality and became man.

Then why fear disappearance though death?

Next time I shall die

Bringing forth wings and feathers like angels;

After that soaring higher than angels-

What you cannot imagine, I shall be that.

Isa further writes in a recent piece on Darwin’s birthday: (more…)