The Americanization of Sufism

There are two aspects to this post, the first (as usual) a bit on the cynical side, the other a different perspective.

I've written on the Americanization of Rumi in several other posts. This is when Rumi is ripped from his Islamic context and promoted as the poet of love which thus sanitizes him and leaves open his poetry to any version of love we bring to it.

One of my favorite movies is Baraka. However, as I've gotten a little older and a little wiser and realize that every movie (and song and book and news report, etc.) is selling a point of view, I have seen through much of the propaganda of this film as well. If you're interested you can read some earlier posts on the subject.

There is a scene in Baraka featuring the whirling dervishes (the Melevi Order of Sufism founded by the followers of Rumi) so familiar to many a student of religion. It's a beautiful scene:

However, in reality, here is what it looks like:

Notice the folks in the background.

I have an old VHS tape of mystical Iran and it shows another side of Sufism, this one of dervishes in Kurdistan.

It's a powerful scene but certainly isn't one that your average Western tourist gets to see.  Don't see this one in too many Sufi/Rumi books.  This too is mild compared to some of the deeper aspects of their tradition:

This is not a critique in any way, shape or form of those participants in the ritual. I cannot speak for them nor can I judge their frame of mind and depth of experience. That isn't the point of the post.

My wife was moved by the intensity of the participants in the second video shown above.  She appreciated the cultural difference.

Not that I don't (which is why I have the tape in the first place) but there is something destructive in the "prettification" of everything (video one) that is somehow 'other' to traditional American culture. Too often beauty is shallow.

However, rather than appreciating the differences, there is a tendency to ignore those things we don't like (video two and three) and mix it into a homogeneous soup that offends no one. Too often those things that offend are demonized.

Religion without offense is neutered (and I need to work on my cynicism...).

Americanization of Rumi...PartFour

Part Four of the series on Americanization.  Below is a transcript of the April 23, 2009 broadcast of "Speaking of Faith" on NPR radio about Rumi, featuring an interview with Iranian scholar/academic Fatemeh Keshavarz.  Rather than my commentary, I'll let the transcript speak. 

Text highlighted in bold simply reinforces the point of sanitizing Rumi from his Islamic context.  By "freeing" him in this fashion, his words cease to have root and mean what we what them to mean.

Ms. Tippett: Welcome back to Speaking of Faith, public radio's conversation about religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas. I'm Krista Tippett. Today, "The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi," the 13th-century Persian poet and mystic.

In recent years, English translations of Rumi's poetry by the American poet Coleman Barks have sold more than half a million copies in the U.S. UNESCO has declared 2007 International Rumi Year to honor the 800th anniversary of his birth. Rumi has been the subject of creative work by contemporary artists from composer Philip Glass to pop icon Madonna.

But such popular renditions of Rumi often give little hint of his Islamic identity. He was the son of a Muslim teacher, born in the center of Persian Islamic civilization. He spent time as the head of a madrassa, religious schools which were centers of great learning, at the same time that Western Europe had fallen into the dark ages.

Rumi's themes of separation and longing come straight from the heart of Islamic theology. There is no idea of original sin, but rather of a human tendency to forget and thus become separated from Allah or God. Islam imagines faith as zikr or remembrance of a knowledge that is embedded in human beings. My guest, Fatemeh Keshavarz, finds resonance in Rumi for the deepest challenges before the world and Islam today.

Ms. Tippett: I'd like to talk about Rumi's Islamic grounding and identity. That gets lost in 21st-century translations.

Ms. Keshavarz: Absolutely.

Ms. Tippett: Coleman Barks' translations are the ones that many people have read, that became popular, I assume. I was reading his introduction to The Essential Rumi. You know, he suggested that with a mystical writer like this, you know, he suggested that placing this person in historical and cultural context is simply not a central task. And he wrote, "My more grandiose project is to free his text into its essence."

Ms. Keshavarz: I think one thing that Coleman Barks has done, he has written Rumi's ideas in the American poetic idiom. He's made it accessible to the broad readership, and that should definitely be valued. And, you know, don't hear me saying anything else on that.

But I don't think you can free people from the context in which they live, and I don't think even if you try to do that, that that serves a useful purpose. I don't see Rumi as detached from the Islamic context at all.

In fact, I see his work as actually and completely immersed in the Islamic tradition. I tell you, it would be hard to read a single ghazal, not even the Masnavi, which is expressly a work with theological and mystical intentions, but even a ghazal, it would be hard to read a ghazal and not find quite a few illusions to Qur'anic verses, to sayings of the prophet, to practices in the Muslim world, so I don't think we need to separate him from his Islamic context.

The way first I visualize this myself is that he goes through the religion, he lives it, absorbs it, and uses it in his way. So in the process, he self-births a lot of things. He changes a lot, reinterprets a lot of things, but he does not step outside of it. He lives in it. Let me give you an example.

Ms. Tippett: Good.

Ms. Keshavarz: You know that in his discourses — I try not to use the word "sermons" because "sermon" brings such a specific connotation that's probably not there. But the discourses are when Rumi is sitting in a local mosque, in the local gathering, talking to people. It's very interactive, it's very informal, and he kind of steps down the pulpit in a way and reaches out to the people and it's very poetic even though it's in prose and he didn't write it down. His students and, you know, people around him took it down.

On one of these occasions, he quotes a Qur'anic verse, if I might quote the Arabic, is (recites Qur'anic verse in Arabic). We — this is the royal "we," God — we stand down the zikr and we will be its protector. Now, the word zikr in Arabic means "remembers" and traditionally the commentators have defined the word zikr as the Qur'an itself, and they have good reason to do so because elsewhere in the Qur'an, the Qur'an refers to itself as zikr and remembrance, in part because humanity is described as forgetful, so the Qur'an is a way of remembering.

Now, he says the commentators have said that this verse refers to the Qur'an itself, that God says we have given you the Qur'an and we are — that I am the protector of it. And he said (foreign language spoken). That's fine. (Foreign language spoken), but there is this interpretation, too, that God says (foreign language spoken). "We have put in you a desire and a quest, and I, God, am the protector of that desire." That's a very different interpretation. First of all, it opens it immediately to all humanity.

Ms. Tippett: I think that there is something in Rumi's writing which is so large, so generous. I don't like the word "universal" because I think in some ways it waters things down. Ms. Keshavarz: I agree with you. "Generous" is a very good…

Ms. Tippett: Yeah. But it's easy to read this and also I think people from many different religious traditions can read this poetry or his discourses, or people who are not people of faith can read it and feel themselves addressed and feel their spiritual lives addressed.

Ms. Keshavarz: Yes. And I think sometimes people feel that if they take away or overlook the Islamic flavor of it, maybe that makes him more accessible, more theirs. I think generosity and openness is a very good way of putting it. If you're not rooted in the specific and in the small, in the local, you can never see the broader vision. You have to love a tradition and to be completely immersed in it before you can subvert it and transcend it. You have to…

Ms. Tippett: Before you can subvert it from the inside.

Ms. Keshavarz: Exactly. And you have to love it for you to think that I want to open it up, I want to make it better, and then go forward with it. And, you know, you can't break laws in an acceptable way unless you know them really well and practice them with tradition. That's the only time. And that's what I think he does. He's so well rooted in the Islamic tradition, so completely aware of the nuances, that he says, you know, 'Hey guys, we can open it up here. Look. Look at this. This is what you always thought, but now look one step beyond.' And he can do that precisely because he's rooted in the tradition.

Ms. Tippett: And I think it's true also that around the same time that Rumi was entering popular imaginations by way of poetry, there were images of Islam suddenly in the news in this post-9/11 world which were so very different from that. I mean — and, you know, you've written that Rumi is a true child of an adventurous and cosmopolitan Islam. And, you know, those are not two words that you would associate with headline Islam that we've had these past years.

Ms. Keshavarz: I'm actually, you know, really glad you bring this up because I think one thing that's desperately needed at this point, to show the adventureness, the surprise, the play, the aspects of his work that now are not normally associated with that part of the world. You kind of think that, you know, people just — it's all religion, and it's religion followed in a fairly institutionalized and stylized and, you know, planned form. Not at all. I mean, he's playing with it all the time. So I think another contribution he could do for us right now, exactly in this post-9/11 environment, is to bring out that side of the Muslim culture, that contribution to the world."

Americanization of Sufism...

Rather than a specifically Americanized version, there is a larger Western scholarly category called Orientalist which is basically the Western study, often biased or with a specific agenda, of things "Oriental" under which Islam falls.

An article from Carl W. Ernst in Brannon Wheeler's compilation of essays pertaining to Teaching Islam goes more deeply into how Sufism has been isolated from its historical roots. Brannon Wheeler, in several articles on Khidr/Khezr (one of my favorite characters of any religion), radically altered my views in "influence/borrowing" in Islam. On this, I'll post more when I get time.

According to Ernst the term and category Sufism was first coined by British Orientalists in India, particularly Sir William Jones. He notes that the "dervishes", the symbol of Sufism, were known but only as exotic curiosities. The term Sufi was given primarily to the literary phase, particularly the poetry, convinced that the elegant poems of Hafiz and Rumi could have nothing to do with the Islamic (then called "Mahometan") religion. The Sufis (whose character was gleaned from within the literature) were free spirits and thus had little in common with the "stern faith" of Muhammad.

Ernst notes that

the term Sufism was invented at the end of the eighteenth century as an appropriation of those portions of "Oriental" culture that Europeans found attractive.

Ernst seeks to make the point that the nonpolitical image of Sufism is illusory. It's a different angle than merely criticizing Sufism's excision from its Islamic roots which has overtones of a strictly "religious" critique. After all, Islam is a worldview and this includes politics under its umbrella.

There is often a polarity posed between Islam and Sufism, as if Sufism is somehow not Islamic or as if it intentionally freed itself from the grasps of a fundamentalist faith. While historically there have been clashes between the fundamentalist variety of Islam and the more "mystical" strain (which Orientalists have coined "Sufi"), the battle has been for the "control of [Islam's] central religious symbols" (113).

Fundamentalists (in any faith or political worldview, for that matter), who fear any alternative interpretation as threatening, have taken the lead of the Orientalist view and have sought to make Sufism into a subject separable from Islam, even hostile to it, as Ernst points out. This makes the fundamentalists the "sole authentic custodians of tradition" even though such groups constitute only 20 percent of any Muslim population. Sufism is thus not included in the "history" of Islam from this paradigm.

However, many a Sufi order has been actively involved in politics even, ironically, active in resiting colonial rule. Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood and Abu al-'Ala' Mawdudi, founder of the Jama'at-i Islami, were admirers of the structure of the Sufi orders. While they may not adopt the spiritual practices, they acted in relation to their followers "with all the charisma of a Sufi master in the company of disciples" (113). So the Sufi "mystique" has a powerful hold over on Muslim society so the fundamentalist reinterpretation of history is a powerful spin.

With differing motives, both Orientalists and fundamentalist have sought, quite successfully, to separate Sufism from its Islamic roots. Those associaetd with that which is now generically called "Sufism" are not called on to make explicit statements regarding their relation to "mainstream" Islam. However, according to Ernst, prior to the nineteenth and twentiety centuries, it was scarcely necessary for a Sufi, "steeped in the Quran and the example of Prophet Muhammad", to have to provide self-definition in terms of Islam. This has been a result of Islam becoming "the eternal other" as opposition to the modern West (115).

Ernst ends his essay discussing mysticism as a category. He notes that it is "often reduced to a bare universalism...and...to the private experience of the individual" (121). In this view, then, military and economic activities inherent in Sufism's past do not fit this picture of mysticism and is disgarded. However, Ernst notes that this is difficult to do with the truth about Sufism's history. Sufis are constantly reminded of this by the model of the Prophet Muhammad, who is, for them, the role of social and political leader, as well as mystical exemplar.

In essence, then, Sufism should be studied in its context for understanding. It is much more than Rumi; it is much more than the "mystical" side of Islam; it is much more than the "real" Islam. All of these are subjective, isolated views which, when not taken as part of a larger whole, become private affairs and cease to have any real application in the world at large. Religion as a solely private thing can be just as dangerous as religion at the institutional level.

In other words, "mysticism", a generic category into which Sufism has been lumped, has come to mean "I'm spiritual, not religious" or "I don't like organized religion" or "All religions are the same" or "All religions lead to the same place", well-meaning slogans that really equate to unwillingness to commit to any form of religious or doctrinal affiliation, Man as the measure of all things. Really, it is nothing more than the Great Em Ee desiring to be the center of all things, including the judge of Truth.

The problem isn't whether "Sufism" is "mystical" or Sufism vs. Islam or Sufism devoid of content as much it is the problem of how few of us are really willing to commit, i.e. surrender self, to any Path requiring genuine sacrifice. Believe me, I only recognize it when I see it because I am just as guilty of this as the next person.

Faith is messy because it changes us.

Americanization of Rumi...Part Two

As El-Zein notes, one of the major feature of the 'New Sufism' is the fact that the majority of the translations of Rumi's verse comes from English, not the original Persian. The name Jonathan Star, who has also "translated" the Dao De Jing, is listed in the article as one of these adepts. Star is among a seemingly endless group of English speaking authors (e.g. Stephen Mitchell et al) who render a multitude of works from different faith traditions.

For example, Coleman Barks, whose publishing career is Rumi, worked with John Moyne to render the Essential Rumi (of which I have a copy) from A.J. Arberry's scholarly translation. El-Zein quotes Barks:

"John Moyne and I try to be faithful to the images, the tone as we hear it, and the spiritual information coming through. We have not tried to reproduce any of the dense musicality of the Persian originals. It has seemed appropriate to place Rumi in the strong tradition of American free verse." (75)

I've heard his poems expressed in the original Persian. A respected scholar of Islam who teaches where I obtained my BA in Religious Studies, fluent in Persian, recited some of his poems. American free verse melts like butter in comparison. Granted, not everyone can learn or understand Persian. Just as plastic can only be recycled so many times before it loses its strength completely, so too these renderings being removed from their original context one too many times loses any tie to its original and becomes eisegesis, proof-texting to sell the particular viewpoint of the one wielding the words.

El-Zein quotes Deepak Chopra following suit:

"They, (the poems) are not direct translations but 'moods' that we have captured as certain phrases radiated from the original Farsi, giving life to a new creation but retaining the essence of its source." (75)

Rumi has been Americanized. El-Zein states that the basic Islamic element in Rumi's work "has been diluted in the soup of 'New Sufism' to the extent that Islam appears as mainly folkloric" and Rumi himself nothing more than a product for spiritual consumption (76).

Here are some shortcomings of the New Sufism when compared to its Islamic context. The modern renderings do not stress, as in the scholarly works, the idea that human love is transformed into love of the Divine. Rumi's works are filled with allusions to Islamic themes. Without these themes there is no context, no ground, and one can say just about anything. Similarity in comparative religion does not mean sameness. Only by removing context can one sell a viewpoint that all "mysticism" looks the same, "superficial and vulgar" (78), to use El-Zein's expression. Such comparisons become nothing more than generalizations.

As an example, El-Zein takes Andrew Harvey to task. From Rumi's point of view the conception of silence, of emptiness, is interpreted through the first and most important aspsect of the shahadah, la ilaha illa allah (There is no god but God), the silence yielding to listening to the Qur'an. For Harvey, silence is related to the dance of Kali, to 'Shiva Shakti who is peace and energy in One' thus making it seem as if Rumi's verse belongs to the Tao which is not, El-Zein points out, the Tao as spoken of in the I Ching. Rumi's beloved, Shams, is even compared to a Zen master. (80)

If we pay careful attention to these New Agey interpretations, the agenda becomes clear. All bearings are lost and these comparative religions are cast adrift in a sea of endless meaninglessness, the ground of seemingly finding a "spirituality" that conforms to what is already believed, to confirm some utopian vision of the way things should be. This is not necessarily the fault of the listener/reader who is dependent upon the work of the authors nor is it to say that the authors are somehow being deceitful.

But if one really does any in-depth analysis of religious traditions the shallowness of such comparisons become abundantly clear and disconcerting. El-Zein calls this "spiritual elusiveness" (81). When everyone knows good as good, this is not good.

To drive the point home, El-Zein points out that Rumi was deeply rooted in Islamic tradition. Quoting Arberry:

"Before everything, he (Rumi) was a learned theologian after the firmest pattern of medieval Islam, very familiar with the Koran and its exegesis, the traditional sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, the sacred law and its erudite exposition." (81)

Seyyed Hussein Nasr, himself a member of the Traditionalist school, quotes Hadi Ha'iri, a renowned scholar of Rumi in Persia, as saying that some 6,000 verses of Rumi's Diwan and the Mathnawi are practically direct translations of Qur'anic verse into Persian poetry. In other words, "a different Rumi [is] created by Barks and Harvey and other interpreters, a Rumi for the American market." (81-2) To cut, isolate and dissect Rumi from his Islamic roots is to do an injustice not only to Rumi and his faith tradition but to the American public as well who are, in essence, being fed junk food.

Here are Rumi's words as rendered by Harvey:

"I do not know who I am
I am in astounding confusion.
I am not a Christian, I am not a Jew, I am not a Zoroastrian,
And I am not even a Muslim. (82)

To quote Rumi himself (as translated by Shems Friedlander):

I am the slave of the Koran
While I still have life.
I am the dust on the path of the Prophet Muhammad,
The chosen one,
If anyone interprets my words
in any other way,
I deplore that person,
And I deplore his words. (82)

What more is there to say?

The Americanization of Rumi...Part One

Religion, like most things in America, is a commodity. When someone finds a market for something, it grows and grows as others jump on the bandwagon. Context means little when it comes to the commodification of religion. As with anything "popular" it's about filtering it down to its basic marketing essence and stripping it of anything that may limit its saleability. Popular, in my opinion, is a derogatory term.

A prime example of this commodification is the fascination with Rumi. Look at any bookshelf in Barnes & Noble or Borders under Islam or Eastern Religions. There will be some translations of the Qur'an, a few books dealing with historical Islam, a few works taking Islam to task (which is par for the course as works taking Christianity to task have become quite popular in their own right), a few books on Sufism (frequently Americanized) and the majority of the space filled with books on or about Rumi.

So who is Rumi? Rumi is marketed as the poet of love. To market him in an Islamic context would certainly hinder sales related to his name. Some speak of his universality and present him as a mystical poet who transcends religious bounds.

I searched for God among the Christians and on the Cross and therein I found Him not.
I went into the ancient temples of idolatry; no trace of Him was there.
I entered the mountain cave of Hira and then went as far as Qandhar but God I found not.
With set purpose I fared to the summit of Mount Caucasus and found there only 'anqa's habitation.
Then I directed my search to the Kaaba, the resort of old and young; God was not here even.
Turning to philosophy I inquired about him from ibn Sina but found Him not within his range.
I fared then to the scene of the Prophet's experience of a great divine manifestation only a "two bow-lengths' distance from him" but God was not there even in that exalted court.
Finally, I looked into my own heart and there I saw Him; He was nowhere else.

I first saw this poem on the liner notes of the cassette (not the CD for some reason) of Enigma's 1990 album MCMXC A.D.. Here is the version contained there:

I tried to find Him on the Christian cross,but He was not there;
I went to the Temple of the Hindus and to the old pagodas, but I could not find a trace of Him anywhere.
I searched on the moutains and in the valleys but neither in the hights nor in the depths was I able to find Him.
I went to the Caaba in Mecca, but He was not there either.
I questioned the scholars and philosophers but He was beyond thair understanding.
I then looked into my heart and it was there where He dwelled that I saw him; he was nowhere else to be found.

I haven't sourced either translation (the second I'm guessing is from Coleman Barks) but which do you think would sell to a popular market, primarily in the U.S.? This is representative of how he is viewed in popular culture. He has been accosted, reinterpreted, sanitized and repackaged as happens in consumer culture.

This doesn't have to be a bad thing. His works are popular for a reason and they certainly spark something positive in people. And the power of his words, even in translation/interpretation, are powerful and deep. There is obviously a hunger in people for truth.

While in the throes of my journey into Islam I picked up a free copy of the March 2000 issue of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations journal published through the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding out of Georgetown University. In it is an article by Amira El-Zein called "Spiritual Consumption in the United States: the Rumi phenomenon" which discusses how Rumi's work is "taken nowadays out of the Muslim Sufi tradition into an elusive spiritual movement [called] the 'New Sufism'" (p. 71).

El-Zein calls those who seek to recontextualize Rumi's works as the "new interpreters" and refers to translations of his works by those involved in this movement as "renderings" of his verse. El-Zein points out that his popularity has resulted in Coleman Barks' plethora of Rumi works selling over a quarter of a million copies, recordings of the works of Rumi entering Billboard's Top Twenty, a compact disc of Rumi's works being produced for a New York fashion show with participating artists including Madonna, Rosa Parks, Goldie Hawn and the one man who truly knows no boundaries when it comes to marketing religion, Deepak Chopra. Poetry readings have even been held at a Disney Store in Glendale, California.

So what is wrong with all this talk about love, trying to break free of the fetters of religion that often divide? If Rumi gives expression to such love, why is it so wrong to quote him? Why can't all religions be one? Why can't we heed the words of John Lennon? Why can't we pick and choose, recontextualize and make the world a better place?

El-Zein does not criticize this notion, as such. El-Zein is simply pointing out that Rumi has been eisegetically interpreted based on the beliefs of the 'New Sufism' movement.

There are academic translations which provide accurate translations and provide the context which is essential in understanding the symbolism of Rumi's poems. These scholarly works are certainly not popular in a mass marketed sense. Works such as Mathnawi of Jalaluddin Rumi (6 Volume Set) and Look! This Is Love (Shambhala Centaur Editions) are examples.

The context is essential to truly grasping and appreciating what Rumi is saying. In the two examples above, the second version has, with the exception of the Caaba, been sanitized of all Islamic references. It is safe and fluid enough to be framed and hung on the wall in the most religious of homes and the most non-religious of homes. This is the essence of New Age thinking. Man is the measure of all things.

The 'New Sufism' renderings follow similar patterns, though those in this movement are often quite critical of the New Age movement. Sufism is thus poised as being the face of "true" Islam while the media version of screaming maniacal gun totin' bearded rebels wrapped in turbans with their woman in burqas the face of the "hijacked" Islam.

It's all about spin, positioning and marketing.