Spring issue 57.2 of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies is now available. For each issue, the Diablogue features one author and makes available a full-text version of their article for 30 days. This issue, we are featuring “Creating Space for Piety and Dialogue: North American Sufi Devotionalism” by Dr. Kashshaf Ghani, assistant professor of history at Nalanda University in Rajgir, Bihar, India. Dr. Ghani spent the summer of 2018 with the Dialogue Institute as a Study of the U.S. Institutes (SUSI) scholar studying religious pluralism in the United States. The genesis of the article began with a visit to Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship, a Sufi mosque in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
ABSTRACT: 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.
The full text article can be accessed via Project Muse HERE.
The 2018 SUSI Scholars visited the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship, a Sufi Muslim community, in the Overbrook section of Philadelphia.
