Quest Magazine

Printed in the Spring 2016  issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Lizzio, Kenneth P., "Mubarak Sahib: A Firsthand Portrait of an Afghani Sufi Master" Quest 104.2 (Spring 2016): pg. 75-79

By Kenneth P. Lizzio

Afghanistan has long been known as the redoubt of mysterious and awe-inspiring Sufi schools. Today, when the nation has been subjected to decades of warfare, one could wonder what may have happened to these schools and to the masters who taught them.

In this account, Kenneth P. Lizzio describes one such man, Pir Saif ur-Rahman, known as Mubarak Sahib (“blessed master”) to his disciples. (Pir means spiritual guide.) Head of the Naqshbandi order of Sufis, he was forced by persecution to flee to Pakistan in 1978. He never returned to his homeland and died in 2010.

Lizzio lived and studied in Mubarak Sahib’s school for several months in 1994–95. This article is excerpted from his book Embattled Saints: My Year with the Sufis of Afghanistan, published in 2014 by Quest Books and reviewed in Quest magazine, fall 2014. Reprinted with permission. —R.S.

Who was Mubarak Sahib?

As I think back, the answer to this question is not about the kind of individual he was. By this I mean the pir’s personality held no special attraction for me or, I believe, for any of his other close disciples. It is a common fallacy that disciples view the spiritual master with a kind of childlike fascination. In the khanaqah (lodge), we did not spend our idle time talking about him in rapt wonder. Nor did we invest his every act with portentous magical significance. For his part, he did not talk about himself and regarded questions about his personal life and his upbringing as frivolous, unless, of course, there was a moral or historical lesson to be derived from it.

In fact, many disciples were quite objective in their assessment of the pir. One said he was a “good cleric, though not exceptional” and not a particularly good writer. He certainly did not publish works of distinguished literary merit, as had Sirhindi, Rumi, and many other Islamic mystics. There were even times when he could be the simple, rustic Afghan. Like many Afghans, he possessed an almost magical regard for Western medicines. Medication was a panacea to be taken willy-nilly for any ailment, or for no ailment whatever as a preventive regime. The pir was not immune to this cultural idiosyncrasy, of which his European doctor was constantly trying to disabuse him. He could be politically naïve too, a common failing of those who traffic in spiritual matters.

That the pir had a personality there can be no doubt, but in way that a person has skin: it was incidental to the being that resided within. The “being within” abided in a state of unitive consciousness. It was probably not a state he lived in continuously, a consequence of both phenomenal existence and the mysterious working of grace. The pir dedicated his life to showing others that such consciousness resides in each individual willing to pursue the Naqshbandi path. It is in this sense that he was extraordinary. He showed, as do all spiritual masters, what it meant to be fully human.

To be fully human meant being fully Muslim. At times the pir was the Old Testament lawgiver, the righteous exemplar of the shari‘a, the body of rules guiding the life of a Muslim. To live in imitation of the prophetic sunna (the life and example of Muhammad) was, for him, the alpha of life. It informed his waking and sleeping activities to such a degree that there was hardly another person existing apart from it. He lived in imitatio Muhammadi.

He never forgot the slightest thing said in passing or jest, to be called upon when he needed to make a point. In time, I learned that he said very little not intended in some way to edify or instruct in the sunna. He was an indefatigable ombudsman, chastising disciples for carelessness in their dress and length of turban or beard. He never failed to scrutinize and correct the appearance or comportment of everyone who came within his orbit. Our pants were too long, our turbans too small, our stays too brief. Once when the pir was introduced to some Iraqi students from Lahore, it was near midnight. While the rest of us were tired and anxious for bed, the pir began to lecture them on the proper dress for a Muslim, raising his right leg aloft to show the proper length of his pants. In one sense, he was instructing them individually. In quite another, I suspected even so small and insignificant a gesture was intended for all of Iraq. Another time he ordered a man out of the mosque who had entered improperly, leading with his left foot instead of his right.

One time an old Afghan man, impoverished and decrepit, came into the mosque during suhbat (the practice of keeping company with a Sufi master). He slowly crawled on his belly like a reptile toward the pir, sobbing and moaning. It was a heartbreaking display, and I imagined the man must have just suffered a great loss in the war. I expected the pir to take pity on the wretched figure before him. Instead he chided him for his abject behavior. Later, I was told that this kind of behavior—pir worship—was forbidden by the sunna. It was also the kind of thing that the pir’s critics falsely accused him of encouraging in his followers.

Another time, a disciple came to ask him to make an amulet to improve the disciple’s relationship with his wife. Whereas the pir freely made them for persons who were ill, in this instance he refused, for such an amulet, according to the sunna, was viewed as meddling in one’s personal affairs.

His daily routine was not just dictated by the sunna; it was the sunna personified. Each day the pir woke before dawn, performed ablutions, and recited twelve supererogatory prayers known as tahajjud. He also performed two prayers after every ablution. He then recited an Arabic prayer formula, “I ask forgiveness from God,” 626 times. If he missed this prayer, he would make it up sometime during the day.

Then, with his copper-plated staff in hand, he crossed the narrow drive that separated his house from the mosque to lead the morning prayer. He was always impeccably attired in an immaculate white turban and a colorful khirqa (cloak). At this hour he was usually solemn and, except to issue instructions sotto voce to his attendants, he said nothing. Upon entering he would glance at those in the mosque, seemingly making a mental photograph of everyone in attendance. He took his place in front of the mihrab, or prayer niche, and led us in prayer. After prayer he recited suras from the Qur’an, which he required his disciples to do as well.

After the Sura Yasin was read by the qari (reciter), a large white chair was drawn from one side and placed directly in front of the mihrab for one to two hours of exercises. Until late in his life, the pir always sat on the floor with his disciples, but with increasing age and weight, he had begun to use a chair most of the time. He occasionally struggled to his feet when rising, but for the most part remained remarkably agile for a man in his seventies.

Dhikr, sometimes spelled zikr, is a Sufi practice of repeating the names of God. During dhikr sessions, the pir was a tireless orchestrator, directing disciples to form a more even circle in front of him, correcting their posture, or calling for adjustment of the lights. On weekends when many more disciples were present, he often ate breakfast in the mosque so as to extend the time for disciples to be in his company for suhbat. If he returned to his house to eat, as he did during the week, he conducted exercises there with his female disciples, who were not permitted in the mosque. When the sun rose, he performed four more prayers.

By late morning, if not at home with visitors or family, the pir could usually be found in one of the langars, or common dining areas, again conducting exercises. The purpose of these informal gatherings was not to socialize; only rarely did the conversation take the form of idle chitchat. Occasionally, a visitor came to request a special dispensation from the pir, such as a prayer or counsel. The pir always regarded these sessions as opportunities for the disciple to further his spiritual advancement. Once, when I decided to forgo the session and go for a walk, he upbraided me sharply for missing the session.

Despite the purposeful nature of suhbat, the pir was relaxed, talking animatedly about a variety of issues — trouble he was having with the fundamentalists, how he was betrayed by a disciple, doctrinal points of hadith (sayings of the Prophet) or fiqh (jurisprudence) — all the while interjecting his talk with quotes from the Qur’an, Sirhindi’s letters, or Rumi’s Mathnavi, which was a kind of Persian Qur’an for him. Sometimes he would send an assistant to fetch a text from which he wished to read. His knowledge of the texts was prodigious, and he always seemed to know precisely the page he wished to cite. One time a disciple was reading from the voluminous Mathnavi while the pir was talking to us. Whenever the disciple misread a word — which was embarrassingly often — the pir corrected the disciple from the side of his mouth, in such a way as not to break stride in his conversation. We were all astonished.

Around lunchtime, the pir returned to his house, where he read three suras from the Qur’an. Then he might spend time with his large family in suhbat with the women. After a short rest, he prepared for the noon prayer, after which he recited more suras. Noon prayer was usually followed by an intense one- to two-hour dhikr session. As with the morning suhbat, the pir was constantly at work during dhikr, directing someone to move closer to him, or others to spread out and make room for late arrivals, giving bay‘a, an oath of allegiance administered to initiates, or chiding those looking around instead of focusing on him or one of the khalifas. (A khalifa, or successor, is one whom a Sufi master has designated to teach.) Usually these dhikr sessions were so long that they stretched into the afternoon prayer. He would close a session by reciting, along with the advanced disciples, the Naqshbandi prayers known as khatm-i khwajagan as well as individual prayers to Ahmad Sirhindi, Bahauddin Naqshband, and ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani. At the conclusion of dhikr, he returned to his house, where he performed six more prayers and then recited two more suras from the Qur’an.

He returned to the mosque for the evening prayer. Afterward, he called for another session of dhikr. On Thursday night, he ate dinner in the mosque with disciples so that those visiting for the weekend could get as much time as possible in suhbat with him. Dinner was followed by the night prayer. One never knew at what time the night prayer would take place; we were always kept in a state of vigilance until the alert was sounded that he was heading for the mosque, the call “Salat!” (prayer) reverberating throughout the khanaqah. Sometimes the pir would wait until midnight to lead the prayer. After prayer he recited still more suras. Before retiring for the night, he recited the Naqshbandi prayers of contemplation. Three times each year, including the twenty-seventh day of Ramadan, he prayed all night. During Ramadan, he recited the entire Qur’an.

I never saw the pir even once do something that contradicted the teaching or appeared to stem from a personal whim or selfish mood. Even though each disciple was at a different stage of development, the pir’s treatment of others was consistently measured by the extent to which they lived up to the teachings. Perhaps for this reason, he treated the more advanced practitioners more harshly than beginners. Once one of his most senior khalifas was giving the Friday sermon. Mubarak Sahib was in his house. When he came out to lead the prayer, the pir excoriated the khalifa in front of the congregation for thirty minutes for misquoting the Qur’an. He had been listening intently to the loudspeaker the entire time. His own angry tirade was broadcast over the loudspeakers too. The khalifa was deeply shamed. There was never any special treatment at the khanaqah or favored treatment for advanced disciples. What Mubarak Sahib said to one, he said to all.

One Friday afternoon, for no particular reason, there was almost no one present for prayer. I later remarked to Ihsan, a Swiss doctor who was one of the khalifas, how disheartening it was that more Muslims did not come to the khanaqah.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Whether there is one disciple standing behind him or one thousand, Mubarak Sahib will still come each day to the mosque and lead the prayer.”

During my time with the pir, I did not fully realize what an extraordinary man he was, paradoxically because he was so accessible to me. He was a husband, a father, a farm manager, a community head, an imam and religious counselor, and a spiritual master. A refugee saint and warrior, he had been driven from his country and witnessed the death or dismemberment of thousands of his disciples. In fleeing to Pakistan, he found little relief. Indeed his problems only increased as he ran head on into militant fundamentalists. Yet despite all these hardships, he remained undaunted. He fulfilled his office with an energy that belied his age and a host of ailments that included rheumatism, arthritis, high blood pressure, gastroenteritis, peptic ulcer, sciatica, and migraine headaches.

So much was the pir at the disposal of his disciples, male and female, that it left little time for his family. His youngest children, anxious to see more of their father, often wandered into the mosque during suhbat. By then, the children were already inured to the disciples’ bizarre behavior. Standing behind his chair, they would playfully touch the tail of his turban while disciples shook and groaned on the floor in front of him. The pir never displayed any affection or attention to his children at these times, his spiritual work with disciples being uppermost in his mind.

It was not hard to see how the heavy demands of his office and the privileged life his children enjoyed had corrupted some of his sons. The pir, fully aware of their shortcomings, did not hesitate to berate them in front of the congregation as “worthless to me.” This indictment was made as much in his capacity as father as in that of a religious leader for their failure to live up to the shari‘a. Despite his dissatisfaction with them, he refused to disown them. “What can I do?” he once said, “They are my family.” Given his exacting standards, however, their failings must have been a sore point in his life.

Mubarak Sahib owned a vehicle and a fax machine, but he placed no real value on them or on the larger intellectual and scientific world from which they issued. If these modern conveniences had been taken away, he would have felt not the slightest loss. I am certain of that. He was simply not interested in what the West had to offer — not its scientific achievements, and certainly not its intellectual and social achievements.

For the pir, Islam was a complete world, a total way of life. It offered a social and political system, legal injunctions, and intellectual and moral guidelines for a community of believers linked to one another and, ultimately, to God. The path to this life was not to be found in modern progress or scientific discovery. The path was laid down by the Prophet in the seventh century. It was thus to the past that Mubarak Sahib looked, historically, morally, intellectually, and most important, spiritually. The grace he received and transmitted was a living confirmation of the essential rightness of his chosen path. He lived so fully the sunna of the Prophet, within and without, that in reality there was only the living embodiment of the teaching. As someone once described his Japanese Zen teacher, the pir was seamless.

A few years before his death in 2010, the pir went to a village in Afghanistan to seek treatment for an ailment. When villagers heard that he was in town, they flocked to his house in the hope of sitting with him in suhbat. Even though he was sick, he sat with his disciples into the wee hours of the morning. His life was one of constant service to his disciples, whom he called “my moral children.”

The title Mubarak Sahib was not a mere honorific given to a religious authority but an affirmation of a being who bestowed a real, tangible blessing power on all who approached him sincerely and availed themselves of it. He was an impeccable exemplar of his religion and an inexhaustible source of baraka (spiritual power), and disciples said that when he passed, there would be no Naqshbandi pir alive capable of matching his exacting moral standards or the power of his baraka.

It seems paradoxical to revere a man for the fastidiousness with which he imitated a religious ideal and for his inner spiritual realization. For these imply that the person transcended individual existence as the rest of us live it. But that has always been the unspoken, the unutterable, message of the Sufis.

As the tariqa (Sufi path) was to the shari‘a, so was there an another side to the stern lawgiver: the mystical ecstatic. Early on, when I complained to a khalifa that the pir was constantly criticizing me, he said, “Don’t you understand, he loves you?” Indeed, if I was absent from the khanaqah more than two weeks the pir would, upon seeing me again, inquire as to my health and why I was not coming more often; this despite the fact that in the intervening period he might have seen more than a thousand individuals and dealt with as many problems.

He was so attentive to each disciple that each felt that he was the object of his special attention. During sessions, he intuitively knew when I wanted to sit up front with the khalifas, even when there were dozens of other disciples in the mosque clamoring for the same attention. At these times, he would beckon me to the front with a warm smile. If he was demanding of his disciples, it is because he worked relentlessly to close the gap between where we were and where we needed to be in order to participate in the ecstatic life of the spirit.

When the pir learned that my departure from Pakistan was imminent, he ordered his closest pirs to sit with me in tawwajuh so that I might know his spiritual universe and share my realization with others. (Tawwajuh is a practice whereby a Sufi concentrates upon a disciple as a means of transferring spiritual grace.) He never showed disappointment or disapproval of me, even long after I had lost faith in myself to experience dhikr. He never asked me for a single thing, even though he gave so much of himself. All he asked was that I follow the Naqshbandi path. I know that he wanted me to be his khalifa in America, a task I was unfit to assume, but a goal for which he never lost hope. Perhaps in some small way this book is a kind of fulfillment of that wish.

Of course, I cannot claim to know the innermost state of any man, least of all a mystic like Mubarak Sahib. There were things he did that were well beyond my ken. Several times individuals — nondisciples — showed up at the khanaqah in a state of what could only be described as possession. Foaming at the mouth, fitful, shaking, they seemed beyond help. After examining them, the pir usually pronounced them to be suffering from physical or psychological afflictions and had them taken to the hospital for treatment.

One time, however, a man came to the pir whom Ihsan insisted was suffering from epilepsy. With wild, feverish eyes and spittle lining the edges of his mouth, the man made bestial whoops like a wounded animal. This time the pir’s diagnosis was some sort of psychic possession, and he proceeded to treat him. When the man departed the next day, he was completely healed of his horrific condition and walked off placidly as if nothing had happened. “You think he was suffering from epilepsy or some other disease, but he was possessed by jinn [spirits],” the pir said to me and Ihsan. “But you people [meaning Westerners] don’t believe in such things.” The pir had turned the tables on us, and benighted belief was our error, not his.

There is an entire body of esoteric sciences in Sufism that I was told existed, but which I never studied. The pir sacrificed black chickens for supplicants. He created lockets with magic charms and talismans for the weak and the needy, some of whom were disciples but most of whom were simply desperate victims of the war, poverty being their plight as refugees. Whether he was simply trying to give these people moral support or there was more than met the eye, I could not say.

In the khanaqah disciples never talked about the pir’s ability to perform miracles. Such talk was regarded as sensationalist and as a distraction from spiritual work on ourselves. For the most part, he did not perform miracles. Sirhindi taught that miracles were not necessary for a saint and advised Sufis to conceal their activities in this regard. In the khanaqah, the one exception to this prohibition was stories concerning the strange workings of the pir’s baraka, stories that were not myth — the usual anthropological interpretation — but a reality confirmed every day in the khanaqah.

One such incident occurred near the end of my stay. It was the afternoon prayer and I was sitting at the back of the mosque. The mosque was full. I was despondent that after ten months as a Naqshbandi I had made no progress. Unable to control my sense of failure, I began weeping silently. I was seated directly behind someone, so that the pir — unaccustomed to looking at the congregation during prayer anyway — would not notice me if he were to turn around. As soon as the prayer ended, he immediately turned around and, staring blankly into the crowd, began calling for me.

“Ahmad, Ahmad, where are you?” he asked. “Are you all right?” He was looking around and still had not found me in the congregation.

At that point, my face dry, I held up my arm. “Baleh, Mubarak sahib, khailikhub-am, merci [Yes, I am fine, thank you],” I said.

But I remained distraught. After so many months of immersing myself in the Naqshbandis’ rigorous spiritual exercises, I knew I would soon be returning to the United States without ever having tasted that intoxicating wine I had so desperately sought. In a way I had prepared for years for my spiritual adventure, intensively studying Persian and the history and culture of the region. But the real learning, the spiritual, had eluded me.

Was I too much an academic, too analytical, too critical, too intellectual? Did I erect unconscious barriers to the pir’s teaching because it required me to live in the Khyber, which I abhorred?

The great Sufis have said that the first true step in the spiritual path is ikhlas, sincerity. This means that one really begins the spiritual journey when and only when one realizes that the demands of the ego for fulfillment through money, career, and other forms of worldly gratification are a fruitless quest, a fool’s game. Coming to the end of himself is what made the conversion of Ismael, a German disciple, to Islam so unqualified, so complete. Only then can one shed the old self and begin to move toward the divine mystery. On the other hand, did not the Naqshbandis offer a taste of the spirit for people just like me as a way of getting us over our lingering egoic attachments? Perhaps I just needed just a bit more time, like Ihsan.

The answers were not clear then, or even now. Indeed, several years later, a deep sense of disappointment still pervades my memory of that special time at the khanaqah. I lived in a spiritual community that needed no intellectual defense, no justification to the world of modern intellectual skeptics or that of backward religious fanatics. We knew who Mubarak Sahib was and what he embodied: the highest human endeavor — the pursuit of the Divine. And we all sought in our own way and in our time to participate in that life.

On my last day in the mosque, I informed the pir of my imminent departure. He suddenly redoubled his efforts to awaken my dhikr. First he drew me close to him, performing dhikr exclusively with me. Then he instructed Habib ur-Rahman, a pir who was a disciple of his, to work on me intensively. Taking me to a corner of the mosque, Habib fixed a wild gaze on my heart region, mustering what looked like his total spiritual force to awaken me once and for all. After several minutes, a pain arose in my heart; after a few more minutes it had become so acute that it felt as though a knife were being thrust into it. The pain was so great I had to ask him to stop.

It was our last time together.

Kenneth P. Lizzio is a specialist in Islam with a Ph.D. in Near Eastern studies. He has taught anthropology at Winthrop and James Madison universities. He has also served as a democracy officer for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Rwanda, Indonesia, Guyana, and Macedonia and has held other posts in the Middle East and Africa. He is presently working on a book about Morocco.

Printed in the Spring 2016  issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Abbasova, Pyarvin. "Women in the Shadows: Reflections on a Muslim Girlhood" Quest 104.2 (Spring 2016): pg. 68-69

By  Pyarvin Abbasova 

There are two main denominations in Islam, Sunni and Shi’a. The division happened soon after the death of the Prophet. Shi’as see Ali, cousin of Muhammad, as his successor; Sunnis believe that it was Abu-Bakr, the Prophet’s father-in-law. After many wars and persecutions over the centuries, Sunni has become the largest denomination. Shi’a is practiced mostly in Iran, Azerbaijan, Iraq, India, and Pakistan, and accounts for about 10 percent of all of the Muslims in the world. Over the centuries the Shi’as established different traditions, holidays, and rules that set them even further apart from the Sunnis. The two sides are in constant conflict with each other, sometimes resulting in violence or war.

My family is from Azerbaijan, where 90 percent of the population is Shi’a. I grew up in a Shi’a family in Russia. Because I did not grow up surrounded by my own culture, I was ignorant about this rift in the Islamic world. In Russia I often felt like a stranger to my own people, because we lived in a Christian country, as well as a stranger to the Russians. My black hair, dark eyes, and olive skin unmistakably showed that my roots were not Slavic.

Like many Muslim girls who are growing up in non-Muslim countries, I just wanted to be like the rest of my peers. With little or no desire to wear long skirts, long sleeves, and a scarf on my head (known as a hijab) or to marry my first cousin (a normal practice in Azerbaijan), I was seen as a rebellious teenager, shaming my family. So at the age of nineteen I moved to the United States to start life on my own terms, an action that few Muslim women have dared to take because of the consequences they might face. I have also converted to Orthodox Christianity and begun my exploration of world religions that, among other things, has led me to Theosophy. Although during my teen years I rejected Islam and the role it offers women, studying Theosophy has helped me to make peace with the religion of my ancestors.

I have actually seen many happy Muslim families, where Islam was practiced with a pure heart and mind, where namaz (prayer) became meditation and Allah is seen in all living things. I have learned about the beauty of Sufism. Some of my friends willingly choose to wear hijab. They stay at home, even though they are lawyers, doctors, and accountants. These women are happy. They don’t want to experience the stress of an everyday job, going to work after six weeks of having a baby, or leaving a child at the hands of unknown people at the day-care center. And I can understand that — actually most Western women can probably relate to some degree.

In his book Man, Son of Man Sri Madhava Ashish says that in our present world there are people of three races— the fourth, the fifth and the emerging sixth race— living side by side. Those living in the shadow and in ignorance are of the fourth race, but there will be less and lessfewer and fewer of them as the planet evolves.

There is a shadow side of Islam that is impossible for me to accept. It comes from the unconscious desires and fears of men, and it hides its ugly form behind interpretations of the Qur’an.

It’s likely that few readers are familiar with the word namus. The word is Arabic in origin and literally means honor and respect. However, the meaning of this word is much broader. Namus is the cornerstone of any Muslim woman’s life. Her sexual integrity and purity is what earns respect and honor for her father, brothers, and, later, her husband. Anything that promotes that purity is reinforced, and anything that threatens it is prohibited. Virginity before marriage is of the utmost importance, and in many cultures it needs to be proved. That makes one’s virginity a social rather than personal matter. The infamous “hanging of the sheets” — whereby on the wedding night, blood-stained sheets are hung out to prove that the bride was a virgin —is not an old wives’ tale, but a strong, living tradition. Other things that can violate a man’s namus are the birth of a daughter (particularly if she is a first child), an offense on the woman’s part that the husband has tolerated, and the loss of control over the women in his family.

The concept of namus has led to the horrible things that are done to women in the name of Islam. A man’s respect and public opinion are of the greatest importance in Islam. As a result, any means is used to achieve respect, and in the eyes of society anything is justifiable. There are verses from the Qur’an that prescribe rules for women, but many ethnic groups take it further. Some people live in ignorance so dark that they perform abortions based on the sex of a child, murder raped women, and force women to commit suicide. One of the ways to ensure the purity of a woman is to hide her from the eyes of any man that is not her immediate family. As a result, women do not get an education, go to work, or in some countries drive a car.

For most Westerners the way Muslim women are dressed is a bit frightening. Their modest clothing is seen as an instrument of male oppression and tyranny. The classic image is of a woman in a burqa — all draped in black with only a little gap for her eyes to be shown. Very few know that according to the Qur’an this is only one of the many ways to dress. Hijab, burqa, niqab, shayla, khimar, chador, and al-amira are all styles of clothing for Muslim women. While the requirement is mostly to wear long sleeves and a long skirt, the color, fabric, design and type of headscarves are infinite. A burqa does not always have to be black; it can be blue, green, or golden brown. Different nations have different styles of traditional outdoor dress. It’s also important to understand that this is only the style of clothing for outdoors. When women are inside the house, in the company of women only, or with men who are close relatives, the veils are not required. It is interesting how Western ladies wear their best clothes when they go out, but Muslim women wear their best clothes, makeup, and jewelry at home. 

There are a growing number of women in different countries who willingly choose “modest” clothing. Believe it or not, there are even some Jewish women wearing burqas. Bruria Keren, one of the religious leaders of the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) sect, has encouraged wearing burqas based on one interpretation of Jewish scriptures. She states: “Follow these rules of modesty to save men from themselves. A man who sees a woman’s body parts is sexually aroused, and this might cause him to commit sin. Even if he doesn’t actually sin physically, his impure thoughts are sin in themselves.” Hundreds of women follow her lead and wear Arabian-style veils.I have heard Muslim women saying the exact same thing over and over again. In their eyes, covering up from head to toe is a way to be merciful to the weak minds of men.

In his book Yogatherapy, Swami Shivanada says the inability of men to control sexual energy is a major obstacle on the path of yoga. He says that for women this issue does not exist, because the nature of female energy is pure, whereas men need to achieve purity through tapas (discipline and hard work) and austerities. He also adds that women should not fast or be ascetics, because they will practice austerities too fiercely and in the end hurt themselves. But somehow in the Islamic world things are not viewed this way. It is the women that sacrifice in order for men to refrain from sin.

While there are many restrictions in Islam, there are also many paradoxes. One of them is the perception of men as strong, dominant figures, but who are nevertheless not strong enough to control their own sexuality. Another paradox is the practice of temporary marriage or nikah mut’ah practiced byamong Shi’a Muslims. Nikah mut’ah is a contract that allows men to “marry” women for a specific duration of time, usually no less than three days. The sole purpose of this “marriage” is to have a sexual relationship with the woman without any further obligation. The contract is private. and no one has to know about it, not even the man’s legal wife. It can be verbal or written. The woman will usually get financial support or payment. Sound a bit like prostitution? Not according to Twelver Shi’as, who believe in the sacred nature of nikah mut’ah. (Twelvers are the largest Shi’a sect. Their name comes from the fact that they believe in twelve divinely appointed leaders, or imams, the last of whom is hidden or occluded and due to reappear as the Mahdi, the promised redeemer.) Sunnis are very critical of nikah mut’ah, but it has been around for centuries and is still widely practiced today.

I often wonder where we would be if great women hadn’t taken a stand against cultural and religious norms. If H.P. Blavatsky had followed the rules of Russian society and stayed with her husband, had children, and lived a “happy” marital life, the Theosophical Society might never have been formed. She rebelled, she smoked, she cursed, and she tested every boundary. She traveled the world, became accepted as a chela, founded the TS, and wrote brilliant books. It makes me think that there are many women out there covered in scarves, chadors, veils, and saris that have never had a chance to spark, to get an education or explore their spiritual potential.

What would the world look like if all the women in Islam suddenly had the freedom to do what they wanted? This new world, I believe, would be a blessing to some and a curse to others, but it would not look like the world we live in right now.

Pyarvin Abbasova, M.D., was born and raised in Siberia. She is a psyhiatrist and yoga teacher, and has been a member of the Theosophical Society since 2009. has beenis a longtime volunteer Pumpkin Hollow Retreat Center in Craryville, New York Her article “Altered States of Consciousness” was published in Quest, winter 2015.

Printed in the Spring 2016  issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Millar, Angel. "Islam and Prince Charles " Quest 104.2 (Spring 2016): pg. 64-67

By Angel Millar

Although still a relatively unknown figure in both the West and in contemporary Islamic thought, the French esotericist René Guénon (1886–1951) “has exercised profound influence in certain significant circles in a number of Islamic countries,” says Seyyed Hossein Nasr, an Iranian-born scholar of Islam, “and [Guénon’s] impact is very much on the rise” (Nasr, 363). Members of these circles either read Guénon in the original French or in translation, or have learned about his ideas through the writings of other major Traditionalist authors as well as a number of “Muslim-born” thinkers.

“Tradition,” capitalized, is a technical term associated with Guénon. It does not indicate a conservative reverence for the customs of a particular society. Rather, “Tradition” refers to the authentic revelations of Deity and a way of life that was in accord with Divinity, cosmic laws, and so on, that preceded contemporary religions.

According to the Traditionalist doctrine, knowledge (gnosis) of Divinity is acquired through stages of esoteric learning, which is, necessarily, structured hierarchically, as is the case in initiatic organizations such as Sufism, Freemasonry, and Hindu Tantra. For Guénon, as for Islamic esotericists, it was the haqiqa (the inner, spiritual truth) that counted. The Qur’an had to be understood not by the procedures of the doctors of the shari‘a (external Islamic law) but by inward truth. Guénon personally observed the shari‘a, but believed that the raison d’être of Islamic law could only be grasped through comprehending its haqiqa. (For more on Guénon and his relation to Theosophy, see Richard Smoley, “Against Blavatsky: René Guénon’s Critique of Theosophy,” Quest, winter 2010.)

Although less influential in the Arabic-speaking world than in Iran, Turkey, Paksitan, Bosnia, or Southeast Asia, Guénon’s Crisis of the Modern World — critical of Western modernity — as well as a number of his essays on esotericism and Sufism, have been translated into Arabic since the turn of the century. Nasr himself introduced Guénon’s work to Iran when he returned from studying in the U.S. in 1958. During the 1960s, Nasr commissioned the translation into Farsi of Guénon’s La crise du monde moderne (“The Crisis of the Modern World”) and Le règne de la quantité (“The Reign of Quantity”), and from the middle of the decade, he says, the ideas of Traditionalist authors “became part of the general intellectual discourse” in Iran.

If the Islamic Revolution of 1979 disrupted the growing interest in Traditionalism, it was only a temporary blip. In 1998 and 1999 Mufid University in Qom devoted two issues of its journal to the subject. These included translations of some of Guénon’s articles as well as others about Guénon himself. Also significant, a “major conference” on “Traditionalism and modernism” was held in Tehran in 2002. Guénon’s books Le symbolisme de la croix (“The Symbolism of the Cross”), Aperçus sur l’ésotérisme islamique et le taoisme (“Insights into Islamic Esoterism and Taoism”), and Orient et Occident (“East and West”) have been translated into Farsi, and a Persian-language book on Guénon’s life and work has also been published.

Defender of Faith

But Guénon has also had a significant if largely unacknowledged impact on some Western thinkers vis-à-vis Islam. Perhaps one of the most unlikely contemporary defenders of Islam, from a perspective that is at least informed by Traditionalism, is Charles, Prince of Wales. Though heir to the British throne, he is perhaps best known to Americans and many others outside of Great Britain as the former husband of Diana, Princess of Wales, from 1981 to her death in Paris in 1997.

The country’s monarch has traditionally been the head of the Church of England. Consequently, the prince’s admiration and sympathy for Islam has sparked controversy, partly because he may one day be made king of what many still regard as a Christian country, partly because Islam — and more especially Islamism — is not infrequently regarded as a threat to Britain’s secular, liberal institutions, such as women’s equality with men.

Unlike Guénon, who had to move to Egypt to live under shari‘a, the prince lives in a time in which shari‘a family tribunals are operating in Britain, with their rulings on civil matters, such as inheritance, legally binding. In 2008, when the existence of these tribunals — some of which are run from the back rooms of shops or other commercial premises — was reported, it provoked alarm and debate in the country, which has since been witness to campaigns by Saudi-style “morality police” patrols proclaiming areas of London and other cities “shari‘a-controlled zones.”

With this background, the prince’s views on Islam are more controversial than they might be otherwise, though he seems to be fully aware that, on a range of issues, his opinions are outside of the mainstream. In 2010, the prince published Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World, with the opening words “This is a call to revolution” — not exactly what one would anticipate from a member of the British royal family. Harmony’s premise is that the environmental crisis, financial crisis, and other crises of the modern world are the result of “a crisis of perception.” Man no longer knows how to live in harmony with the planet because he no longer has any knowledge of the sacred principles that it embodies, and that, for at least thousands of years, traditional cultures have revered and represented in their material culture, such as the architecture of temples, cathedrals, mosques, and so on.

Max Hastings, a writer for the British newspaper The Daily Mail, was alarmed by 7 message and proclaimed, “Anyone who reads the Prince of Wales’ new book will have little doubt that the chief peril to our royal institution in the decades ahead lies within his well-meaning, muddled, woolly head.” For Hastings, modern monarchs had to be “distant symbols of glamour, beauty and decency.” The public should not know their opinions, especially if they happened to think that “revolution” — even of an internal sort — would be a good idea.

In general, the prince’s outlook is usually believed to be a combination of nostalgic longing for the past and slavishness to political multicultural ideology, which holds all cultures and religions to be inherently equal and, in some sense, the same. A more thorough reading of Charles’s statements and interests show that, even if he does not formally call himself a Traditionalist, his thinking approximates Guénon’s Traditionalism, of whose doctrines and thinkers the prince is well aware.

But it is his sympathy for Islam that has worried especially center-right journalists in Great Britain and, in a few cases, abroad. Daniel Pipes, an author and journalist broadly in the American neoconservative camp, has aired the suspicion that Charles might even be a secret convert to Islam. Similarly, one of the biggest firestorms to erupt around the prince occurred in 2008, when Charles announced that he planned to be known as the “Defender of Faith” rather than by the official title of “Defender of the Faith” (i.e., of the Church of England) when he ascends to the throne.

It is probably true that this change was intended, in part, to reflect the fact that Britain was no longer primarily a churchgoing nation, but one in which Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, etc., are active, alongside the various, dwindling denominations of Christianity, propped up by large-scale immigration. If this were the whole story, the declaration would be — and was seen to be — impeccably multicultural. Misconstrued, for many, Charles’s statement has come to signify that he is out of touch with the problems of contemporary Britain. The prince would probably contend that he is looking deeper.

In a nation fracturing along lines of various competing “identities” — religious identities in particular — and increasingly ill at ease with political multiculturalism, it was easy to lambaste the prince’s comment as just the latest pandering to the politically correct — and some, of course, seized the moment. Damian Thompson of The Telegraph, a conservative British newspaper, complained that the heir to the throne’s statement had “a whiff of vanity about it.”

It was, he suggested, as if the prince were saying: “Britain is a multicultural society, so aren’t you lucky that I contain multitudes?” Thompson wanted to know whether spiritualism or the Church of Jesus Christ of Aryan Nations would be considered faiths to be defended. “How,” he addressed the prince directly, “are you going to tiptoe through the theological and constitutional minefield created when unscrupulous, bizarre or extreme religions demand Royal protection — as they will?”

Thompson’s main concern with the prince becoming the “Defender of Faith” was, perhaps not surprisingly, the erosion of the country’s Christian identity, which had informed its unwritten constitution and even its secular traditions. In the popular, center-right media, Christianity seemed to be under sustained assault. The concern was a valid one, although Thompson’s assertion that the proposed change was “the Royal equivalent of replacing the word ‘Christmas’ with ‘Winterval’” was grossly in error. Such secularizing of Britain, and the West more broadly, profoundly disturbs the heir to the throne. Thompson had misinterpreted a small but crucial detail. The prince had expressed his desire to defend “faith,” not “faiths,” to be a champion, in other words, not for various competing religious and cultural groups, but for a sense of the sacred in contemporary life.

Still, not everyone believes that monarchs should be seen but not heard. Writing in The American Spectator, Rod Dreher defended the prince against his critics, despite being fully aware of the intellectual influences on the heir to the British throne. “It’s impossible to read his words on Islam,” commented Dreher, “without recalling the thought of René Guénon . . . the French traditionalist who converted to Sufi Islam.” Picking up on Charles’s statement in Harmony that “we are not the masters of creation,” Dreher concluded his article and assessment of the prince with apparent approval: “In modern Western civilization, it is hard to imagine a more profoundly conservative statement,” he said, “or a more revolutionary one.”

A Guénonian Prince

Defending faith, from the Traditionalist perspective (and, it would seem, from Prince Charles’s perspective), could have nothing to do with the exterior, that is, with pandering to particular politicized groups. Rather, it is to defend the spirit against a modernity that has squeezed out the Divine, and turned man away from eternal and immutable truths and into a mere consumer. It is, in simpler terms, to defend the sacred against the superficial. The prince himself articulated this in his video address to the Traditionalist-oriented Sacred Web Conference held in the Canadian province of Alberta in 2006: “In these uprooted times, there is a great need for constancy; a need for those who can rise above the clamor, the din and the sheer pace of our lives to help us to rediscover those truths that are immutable and eternal; a need for those who can speak of that eternal wisdom which is called the perennial philosophy.”

“The perennial philosophy,” we should note, is sometimes used as another name for Traditionalism, but in case we are in any doubt, Prince Charles continues, observing that the conference that he is introducing is dedicated “to a critique of the false premises of Modernity — a critique set out in one of the seminal texts of the traditionalists, René Guénon’s The Reign of Quantity.” Referring to the Traditionalists, the prince contended that “their’s [sic] is not a nostalgia for the past, but a yearning for the sacred and, if they defend the past, it is because in the pre-modern world all civilizations were marked by the presence of the sacred.”

We should recall the prince’s phrase “Defender of Faith.”

For Prince Charles, Traditionalism represents the prospect of “integration” in an era of “dis-integration, dis-connection and de-construction,” and one that is, consequently, hurtling toward a “Dark Age” of environmental disaster.

In his introduction to the Sacred Web Conference, Charles reminded his audience that “the traditionalist perspective is that we are living at the end of an historical cycle,” i.e., the Kali Yuga or Dark Age. According to this doctrine, as Charles observed, at the beginning of the cycle of time all potential manifestations were latent. Emanating throughout the ages, these manifestation descended from higher, spiritual forms to lower and more materialistic ones. However, because of the ever-increasing distance of existence, society, etc., from eternal, spiritual laws, at a certain point collapse becomes inevitable. Yet, Charles went on, it is “through our understanding of and attachment to traditional norms of metaphysical doctrine and spiritual practice that we can, in a measure, transcend the baleful influence of the descent that is the eventual exhaustion and end of our cycle of history and prepare ourselves and the world for the beginning of the next.”

According to the prince, “tradition” is not something constructed by man, but “a God-given intuition” of the rhythms and harmony of opposites that can be found throughout nature. Imbalance has occurred because over the last four centuries, the prince asserts, the West has become increasingly characterized “by a mechanistic approach to science.” Although science is valuable, he says, it cannot “articulate matters of the soul.” Guénon is nowhere mentioned in Harmony, but the spirit of Traditionalism and esotericism more broadly is apparent: ancient traditions, Christianity, Islam, sacred geometry, ancient Egypt, and Hermeticism are all used to illustrate the prince’s worldview.

Like Guénon before him, the prince conceives that Islam is able to act as a bulwark against a type of modernity that strips man of his relationship to the Divine. We in the West must rediscover our relationship to the sacred, both have asserted. It is a task that will require us to understand not with the head but with the “heart” — a word that Charles sometimes uses when speaking of the Islamic faith. Quoting an Arab proverb, “What comes from the lips reaches the ears. What comes from the heart reaches the heart,” the prince has reminded audiences (at the Open University in Cambridge in 2007, and in Oxford in 1993) both of his own sincerity and, if one reads between the lines, the necessity for what the Sufis refer to as tawajjuh, or spiritual concentration.

The history of Islam and the West has long been intertwined and overlapping, and Muslims and Christians share essential beliefs — “one divine God,” an afterlife, accountability for one’s actions after the death of the body, etc. — as Charles asserted in an article published in The Telegraph a month after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Both sides had to be aware of the dangers of misunderstanding each other, and of seeing history only from their own perspective. More daringly, considering the timing, the prince renewed his call for Westerners to “understand the Islamic world better,” including “the extent to which many Muslims genuinely fear our own Western materialism and mass culture” as a threat to their traditional culture and societies.

Although, in 1993, the prince spoke at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, attempting to dispel Western stereotypes about Muslim countries — telling the audience, for example, that women in Turkey, Egypt, and Syria are given equal pay, and received the vote as early as women in much of Europe — his interest in Islam is not that he views it, as some multiculturalists do, as more liberal or progressive than the West. For the heir to the British throne, it is not politics that will enable the West to understand the East, or vice versa. “TADABBUR is the word . . . to open our minds and unlock our hearts to each other,” he declared in 1993. The Arabic term tadabbur refers to contemplation of the Divine, especially through meditating upon chapters of the Qur’an (tadabbur al-Qur’an), on what they tell the Muslim, and how their lessons are to be implemented in daily life. Tadabbur is often defined as the “remembrance of God” and “remembrance of the thoughts of God.”

The prince’s is a gnostic, esoteric understanding of Islam. It is not primarily the faith of the shari’a or fiqh (jurisprudence)— nor of what is permitted (halal) and forbidden (haram) — or of international politics and group identity, but of the inner reality connecting man and God. It is the faith of the Islamic mystics, Rumi and Ibn Ashir, whom the prince has cited in his speeches, albeit in passing. Like the Traditionalists, Britain’s heir to the throne believes that the West has focused on the external at the expense of the inner, creating a confused and “exploitative” materialist culture. The “oneness and trusteeship of the vital sacramental and spiritual character of the world about us,” the prince has said, “is surely something important we can re-learn from Islam.”

Sources

Camber, Rebecca. “‘No Porn or Prostitution’: Islamic Extremists Set Up Sharia Law Controlled Zones in British Cities”; Mail Online, July 28, 2011; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2019547/Anjem-Choudary-Islamic-extremists-set-Sharia-law-zones-UK-cities.html.

Charles, Prince of Wales. Harmony: A New Way of Looking at the World. New York: Harper Collins, 2010.

———. “Sacred Web Conference : An Introduction from His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, Sept. 23–24, 2006”; SacredWeb.com; http://www.sacredweb.com/conference06/conference_introduction.html.

———.“A Speech by HRH the Prince of Wales Titled ‘Islam and the West’ at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies”; Princeofwales.gov.uk, Oct. 27, 1993, https://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/media/speeches/speech-hrh-the-prince-of-wales-titled-islam-and-the-west-the-oxford-centre-islamic.

Doughty, Steve. “Just 800,000 Worshippers Attend a Church of England Service on the Average Sunday”; Mail Online, March 21, 2014; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2586596/Just-800-000-worshipers-attend-Church-England-service-average-Sunday.html.

Dreher, Rod. “Philosopher Prince: The Revolutionary Anti-Modernism of Britain’s Heir Apparent”; The American Conservative, March 12, 2012; http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/philosopher-prince/.

Gledhill, Ruth. “Church Attendance Has Been Propped Up by Immigrants, Says Study”; The Guardian, June 3, 2014; http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/03/church-attendance-propped-immigrants-study.

Hastings, Max. “Why Prince Charles Is Too Dangerous to Be King”; Mail Online, Dec. 18, 2010; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1339707/Prince-Charles-dangerous-king-This-eccentric-royal-imperil-monarchy.html.

Hickley, Matthew. “Islamic Sharia Courts in Britain Are Now ‘Legally Binding’”; Mail Online, Sept. 15, 2008; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1055764/Islamic-sharia-courts-Britain-legally-binding.html.

Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. Islam in the Modern World: Challenged by the West, Threatened by Fundamentalism, Keeping Faith with Tradition. San Francisco: Harper One, 2010.

Pipes, Daniel. “Is Prince Charles a Convert to Islam?”; Danielpipes.org, Nov. 3, 2009, http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2003/11/is-prince-charles-a-convert-to-islam.

Thompson, Damian. “Prince Charles’s Plan to Become ‘Defender of Faith’ Will Help Destroy Our Christian Identity”; The Telegraph, November 14, 2008; http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/5718748/Prince_Charless_plan_to_become_Defender_of_Faith_will_help_destroy_our_Christian_identity/

Angel Millar is the author of Freemasonry: Foundation of the Western Esoteric Tradition (2014) and Freemasonry: A History (2005). His articles and papers have been published in The Journal of Indo-European Studies, New Dawn, and Eurasian Review, among others. This article is adapted from his book The Crescent and the Compass: Islam, Freemasonry, Esotericism, and Revolution in the Modern Age (Numen Books, 2015). Reprinted with permission.

Printed in the Spring 2016  issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Smoley, Richard. "A Glossary of Islam " Quest 104.2 (Spring 2016): pg. 62-63

By Richard Smoley

A list of this length obviously cannot be comprehensive. It is designed principally to explain the Islamic terms most commonly used in this issue. Unless otherwise noted, the language from which these words are derived is Arabic.

Arabic words are often transliterated using diacritical marks: e.g., ḥadīth. These have been left out of this glossary and this issue.

Allah. God.

Baraka. Also barakah. Grace or blessing. A spiritual influence or energy infusing the universe. Saints, spiritual teachers, Sufi orders, and the tombs of saints are considered to be conduits of baraka.

Dervish. A member of a Sufi order. From a Persian root meaning “needy” or “beggar.”

Dhikr. Also zikr. Literally, “remembrance.” Usually refers to a spiritual practice involving repetition of one of the names of God. Sometimes used to characterize a state of mystical contemplation.

Five Pillars. The five essential practices of Islam: shahada, salat, zakat (charity), sawm (fasting during the month of Ramadan), and hajj.

Fiqh. The body of Islamic jurisprudence.

Hadith. (Plural ahadith). Literally, “report.” Reports of the deeds and utterances of the Prophet Muhammad not contained in the Qur’an.

Hajj. The pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, obligatory (if financially possible) once in a lifetime for Muslims.

Hijra. Also Hegira. The flight of Muhammad and his followers from Mecca to Medina in AD 622. It marks the first year of the Islamic calendar.

Islam. Literally, “submission” or “surrender.” 1. The surrender of the individual human will to God. 2. The faith proclaimed by the Prophet Muhammad, or Mohammed (AD 570–632). An adherent of Islam is called a Muslim (in an older form, Moslem).

Jihad. Literally, “struggle.” The obligatory effort to sustain the Muslim faith. The “greater jihad” is regarded as the inner spiritual struggle within the believer. The “lesser jihad” is the struggle against enemies of Islam. Jihad, often translated as “holy war,” usually has the second meaning in the Western media. One who carries out a jihad of either sort is a mujahid or (in Western media) a jihadi.

Jinn (singular and plural); occasionally djinn. Invisible spirits, mostly malevolent, created from “smokeless fire” (Qur’an 55:15). The English derivative is genie.

Kaaba. A cuboid structure, made of hollow granite bricks, located in Mecca. It is the focal point of Muslim worship. Muslims worldwide are required to perform daily salat in the direction of the Kaaba.

Khalifa. Literally, “successor.” 1. The successor of the Prophet Muhammad. The correct line of succession is a source of dispute between Sunnis and Shi’ites. Anglicized as caliph. 2. In Sufism, the representative of a master, or sheikh.

Pir. (Persian, “old one.”) In Sufism, an elder or guide; the equivalent of sheikh.

Qur’an, Quran. Also Koran. The holy book of Islam. According to Muslim belief, the Qur’an was revealed in verses by the angel Jibril (Gabriel) to the Prophet Muhammad over the period AD 610–32.

Salat. The daily prayer, obligatory five times a day for Muslims.

Shahada. The attestation of faith: “There is no god but God [Allah], and Muhammad is the Prophet of God.” One must recite this statement in front of two witnesses in order to be acknowledged as a Muslim.

Shari‘a. Also shariat. The exoteric rules, or law, of the Muslim faith.

Sheikh. Also shaikh. In Sufism, the designated head of a Sufi tariqah or order.

Shi’a, Shi’as, Shi’ite. One of the two largest Islamic sects, comprising some 10–13 percent of the world’s Muslims. Shi’as hold that Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, was his true khalifa, or successor. Most Shi’ites are found in Iran and Iraq. Shi’a can apply to the sect as a whole or to individual believers, who may also be known as Shi’ites.

Silsilah. Literally, “chain.” The line of succession in a Sufi order.

Sufi. A term generally applied to Islamic mystics. The name is usually said to be derived from the Arabic suf, “wool,” referring to a particular type of garment believed to be worn by Sufis, or from the Persian saf, “pure.” Another theory holds that it is derived from the Greek sá½¹phoi, “wise ones.”

Suhbat. Literally, “companionship.” The practice of keeping company with a Sufi sheikh in order to gain his baraka.

Sunna. The exemplary behavior of the Prophet Muhammad, expressed in the ahadith.

Sunni. The largest sect of Islam, comprising about 85 percent of the world’s Muslims. Sunnis holds that Abu Bakr, the father-in-law of the Prophet, was his true khalifa or successor. The word Sunni applies both to the sect and to individual believers.

Sura. Also sura. A chapter of the Qur’an.

Tariqa. Literally, “path.” A Sufi order or brotherhood.

Ummah. The community of Muslims worldwide.

Zikr. See dhikr.

The author wishes to thank Robert Frager, Jay Kinney, and Kenneth P. Lizzio for their helpful comments on this glossary.

Sources

Frager, Robert. Sufi Talks: Teachings of an American Sufi Sheikh. Wheaton: Quest, 2012.

Glassé, Cyril. A Concise Encyclopedia of Islam. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989.

Kinney, Jay. A Glossary of Sufism. Gnosis 30 (winter 1994), 13.

Lizzio, Kenneth P. Embattled Saints: My Year with the Sufis of Afghanistan. Wheaton: Quest, 2014.

Nasr, Seyyed Hossein, ed. The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary. San Francisco: Harper One, 2015.

Toussulis, Yannis. Sufism and the Way of Blame: Hidden Sources of a Sacred Psychology. Wheaton: Quest, 2010.

Richard Smoley’s new book, How God Became God: What Scholars Are Really Saying about God and the Bible, will be published in June 2016 by Tarcher/Penguin.