A Journal of Mystical Inclinations Toward the One

Sohrob

June 07, 2006

Conceiving a Universal Temple in the 21st Century: Part I of III
by Sohrob Nabatian

This article examines one possible answer to this question, which lies in the construction of a physical monument; a temple to unity within multiplicity, a tangible expression of an intangible reality. Most religious traditions enshrine this paradox, and are centered around such physical monuments, temples, churches, or monuments that bridge heaven and earth, physical manifestations of coincidenta oppositorum, the paradoxical coincidence of opposites. The paradox of the temple is old – even the wisest of prophets King Solomon cried out after building his temple, “How shall God come to earth, when He cannot be contained in the heavens of the heavens?”

Background to Articles

Solomon’s question resonates in our own age, as spiritual traditions continue to build temples of unity in multiplicity. One such initiative is currently being undertaken by the Sufi Order International, a Sufi community working for unity in the tradition of the great teacher Pir-o-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan, who placed great hope in the construction of the ‘Universel’, his word (from the French Universel) for a temple dedicated to the ideals of love, harmony, and beauty. In order to understand the meaning of such an initiative today, and to place the question of unity and multiplicity in particular context, this article explores the history of universal temples in North America. Divided into three parts, it is intended as both a historical survey and a forward-looking inquiry into the future of the Universel in North America.

Despite the eternity of the message, contextualization of the project is important -- since Inayat Khan laid the cornerstone of a Universel in France in the 1920’s, the world has transformed. A second world war came to shatter the bright illusions of modernity, the world began shrinking under globalization, and human consciousness became increasingly mediated by the bewildering fluorescence of communications technology. Although these developments have made us more unified now than perhaps ever before, the dark intimations of chaos and meaninglessness are felt as acutely as ever, and the stakes are certainly higher. Our planet quite literally depends on the transformation and emancipation of present generations. Those of us living in North America have a particular role and responsibility in this transformation.

It is with this in mind that I pray, along with thousands of students of Hazrat Inayat Khan, his prayer: “Build with Thine own hands the Universel, our temple for thy Divine Message…” And yet, I cannot say I know exactly what I pray for. It is an inner feeling, an inner knowing of the necessity of actualizing human oneness. But how does inner knowing translate into our embodied, lived lives? The future to which Inayat Khan looked was now. What does his vision really mean to us? Are we really ready to bring this idea to earth? Over the next several issues of Saffron, I will be addressing these questions, in short: how do we conceive the universal temple in the 21st century?

At the time of Inayat Khan, the Universel was envisioned primarily as an immaterial structure, constructed by the thoughts and prayers of devotees, as a sanctuary to treasure the Message of God. In his 1926 ‘Address to Murids’, Inayat Khan says:

…it is to be constructed by our thoughts of harmony, of love, of beauty. It is our thoughts and our feelings which will serve in this temple as stones and bricks and tiles, and it is our feelings which will hold this temple for centuries to come.

And yet, Inayat Khan also affirmed that everything shaped on the spiritual plane must be finished in material manifestation: “[E]verything that is to be built on a spiritual plane is finished when it is also built on the physical plane” . Thus, by the time of Inayat Khan’s final return to India in 1926, plans were afoot to bring this structure into material reality. In his final appearance before his students in France, Inayat Khan laid the cornerstone of a foundation for the Universel, offering his deepest blessings and hopes for the building. After false starts and political challenges, two Universels were eventually constructed in Europe, one in France and one in Holland. Today, Inayat Khan’s grandson, Pir Zia Inayat Khan, carries on the goal of manifesting a universal temple in North America. This is in essence a task of conception: the Universel of Inayat Khan in 1925 must now be reconceived in the 21st century North American geocultural context.

As the Sufi Order International makes plans for a new Universel in North America, universalists have the opportunity to participate in its conception and eventual birth into North American history. My intention for this article is to provide some background of American universalism in a manner that supports consciousness and discernment in the task of conceiving the Universel. For although the Universel was particularly conceived by Inayat Khan in 1925 as the physical manifestation of his order’s spiritual ideals, the concept of a universal temple is an ancient one with many recurring instantiations. Each one of these instantiations constitutes an entire field of study; the aim of this article is simply to survey some key expressions of a universal temple on the North American continent in order to contextualize our own moment of conception.

The article is divided into three parts, which will be released serially every month during Saffron’s initial issue on conception. This first part frames the construction of the universel in Inayat Khan’s teaching on thought and manifestation, for the conception of the Universel depends very much on the capacity with which it is held. This is followed by a brief discussion of the first, pre-industrial examples of a universal temples on North American soil, the Iroquois longhouse and the Christian church of European immigrants.

The second part of the article, to be released in April, discusses universalism in modernity. The triumphal spirit of modernity was essentially universalist, and it engendered religious movements like the 1893 Parliament of World Religions, the Theosophical Society, and other groups who in their own way envisioned some form of universal temple.

The third and final part, to be released in June, addresses the disillusion and lessons of post-modernity. The expressions of the universalist impulse in interfaith work and policy initiatives, as seen in the Temple of Understanding and the 1993 Parliament of World Religions are considered in relationship to the Universel. Post-modern criticisms of universalism are considered from an esoteric perspective, taking seriously its ethical reproaches and affirming the Universel’s necessity as North American culture moves into a new age.

By understanding the larger context of the Universel, I hope that the conception of the Universel in the 21st century may be conceived with greater consciousness, appropriateness to our age, and fertility.

I. Conception and Re-conception

The English verb ‘to conceive’ is a derivation, both grammatically and semantically, of the Latin concipere, itself a compound of con ‘together’ and capere ‘to take’. Developing alongside the verb captiare, to catch, concipere had the similar meanings of ‘to take in’, ‘to hold’, effectively, ‘to catch’. Indeed, conception is a kind of catching: the egg catches the sperm, the mind catches an idea and, if systems are healthy, fertilization occurs, leading to incubation and birth. From the neo-Platonic perspective that undergirded the Sufi and many other esoteric cosmologies, the trained human mind is like a baseball catcher receiving pitches from the Active Intellect. Human creativity, in this scheme, is constituted of abstract forms caught snugly in a receptive mental capacity.

This receptive mental capacity is central to much of esoteric training. Hazrat Inayat Khan calls this capacity an akasha, a mold or vessel which catches, forms, and is itself formed by its contents. The womb is a quintessential akasha, providing the locus of conception and gestation for a new life. On subtler levels, etheric akashas are formed by the mind and heart; through thought, prayer, and contemplation, a subtle container is formed for descending energy from more abstract planes of being. Akashas receive the ‘pitches’ of energy from higher planes, and allow them to gestate for birth into our own material world.

Unlike a child, however, ideas occasionally need to be reconceived. As the ages of humanity change, as the understanding of self and other is reconstituted, the akasha must evolve to continue to ‘catch’ the emanation from the realm of form. Even the most perennial and consistent ideas of the human race must be reconceived again and again according to the era and circumstance. Conceptions of heaven, earth, and the Divine, for example, are universal to every culture, yet the akasha is differently constituted for each new constellation of human energy. As these elements are reconceived, so is their meeting place, the temple.

The meeting place of heaven and earth in a temple is central to most known spiritual cultures. In this simplest definition, the temple is universal, for there is no human culture that does not seek the meeting point of the limited and unlimited, the structure that encompasses opposites. This perennial temple has been called by Henry Corbin the Imago Templi, the earthly ‘image’ of a permanent archetype in heaven.
Here on the cusp of a new age, whether we call it digital or Aquarian, the desire for a universal temple is as strong as ever, maybe more so since our separation from the heavens is felt so severely. At the same time, we have passed through a major age of disillusion. The naiveté of modernity was historically crushed through devastating world wars, and philosophically crushed by the advent of postmodernism. Yet the desire for a temple cannot be crushed because it is deeper than any historical circumstance or philosophical cataclysm; the human being will always require a place where the sacredness of existence is manifest. Our new age calls, however, for a new articulation of this temple, a re-conception.
In order to re-conceive the universal temple at this cusp of a new age, it is helpful to see where we’ve been. The remainder of this article and three more installments offer a history of the conceptions of the universel temple in North America. It is certainly not complete; each example on its own could make up a detailed study. My hope is that by getting an idea of where we’ve been, however preliminary, we can get an idea of where we’re going. Understanding the main trajectory of the universal temple in this continent helps us in our contemporary task of re-conception.

II. Pre-modern history of the universal temple in North America

The Iroquois Longhouse

To begin our history of the universal temple in North America, we must begin with the first North Americans, about which all too little is known. Much of the oral history of First Nations was lost in the catastrophe of colonialism, and as a result grievously little is known about the pre-modern religion and culture of original peoples of our continent.

From what survives, we can point to one magnificent example of a universal temple in the Longhouse of the Iroquois Confederacy. The Iroquois Longhouse (gononh'sees) was both a daily reality and a powerful, multivalent symbol for the Iroquois, properly called Haudenosonee, the ‘People of the Longhouse’. The Longhouse was a primary dwelling unit of extended families, the gathering place for political and religious ceremonies, and most importantly it was the primary political and religious symbol for the Iroquois Confederacy. This Confederacy, which came to comprise the Seneca, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Mohawk and Tuskarora nations, spanned from upstate New York to Pennsylvania to Ontario. Established in the twelfth century by a Huron prophet simply known as the Peacemaker, the Iroquois Confederacy represents the oldest living representative democracy of humanity.

The democracy was established through a sacred process of healing, and as such represents one of the most enlightened political philosophies of humanity. The story of the Peacemaker is the story of how the Iroquois Confederacy emerged out of a time of endemic violence, vendetta killings, and even cannibalism. The Peacemaker knew that to create lasting unity he had to include the most dejected and antagonistic members of society. His prophetic mission, therefore, began by honoring the outcaste and by healing those whose characters had been poisoned by suffering. This latter was symbolized by the evil sorcerer Tadodaho, whose body was disfigured by hate and who had snakes in his hair. The Peacemaker’s delegation was able to win over Tadodaho through humble songs of peace and a ritual to heal his deep grief. Tadodaho’s spine was straightened, the snakes combed out of his hair, he was made chief of the Grand Council. This great symbol of confronting one’s shadow and offering the accommodation for healing was the foundation of the Great Peace of the Haudenosonee, whose motto was ‘peace, power, and righteousness’.

What is so remarkable to our survey of universal temples is that the longhouse was the uniting symbol of the confederacy. Each nation represented a physical wall or part of the longhouse, which housed in its center a sacred fire. This sacred fire represented the spirit of peace which must never be extinguished. Although a physical symbol of the longhouse existed in the capital of Onondaga, the physical structure reflected an ideal structure, formed by the participation of the six nations and their commitment to peace. In this sense the longhouse was a universal temple, it embodied and enshrined the commitments and peace of disparate nations, and an open invitation stood for other nations to join the Great Peace. Despite the great setbacks and challenges of the Haudenosonee, on reserves throughout the Northeast the longhouse continues to be a gathering place to worship and reaffirm the commitment to ‘peace, power and righteousness’. The longhouse of the Haudenosonee is a remarkable example of a Universel: it symbolized not only the divine blessings on earth, but the unity, healing, and commitment needed to live out the spiritual ideals of peace, power, and righteousness.

Christian Universalism

Following the Iroquois Longhouse, the most easily discernable universal temples on North American soil were the Christian churches of European immigrants. In regards to North American Christianity, we must speak of two meanings of universalism.

First, we can understand universalism as a theological rejection of Calvinism beginning in the 18th-century German Pietistic movements. Calvinist theology held a strict doctrine of unpredictable divine election amidst the unilateral sinfulness and unworthiness of humanity. According to Calvin, all humans were irredeemable sinners, and the few who made it to heaven did so by God’s (seemingly haphazard) grace and election. In reaction to this rather stark doctrine, there emerged an opposing trend of universal salvation, especially within German Pietists of New England, of universal salvation: that all souls, no matter how sinful, were universally saved through Christ’s sacrifice. Anti-Calvinist universalism was articulated famously by authors like Georges de Benneville, Caleb Rich, William Ellery Channing, Hosea Ballou and others. This theological position became the basis of the Universalist Church of America, which merged in 1961 with the American Unitarian Association, to form the current Unitarian-Universalist denomination. The Universalist churches whose steeples began to pierce the skies of New England were temples to the universality of God’s love and the human condition.

The second meaning of Christian universalism is not specifically related to the Universalist Church, but refers rather to the general ethos of Christian triumphalism in North America. Of the different Christian denominations that established themselves in the ‘New World’, the universality and eventual triumph of Christ was a core belief. Christian triumphalism, as it is sometimes called, assumed that in time all people of the earth would come to accept Christ as the “King of Kings”, and a universal Christian age would dawn with a ‘second coming’. Churches of different denominations, which quickly began to speckle the New England landscape, were a structural embodiment of this universal hope. While we live in a more pluralistic time, the universalization of Christianity remains an inner (and sometimes outer) hope of Christianity.

I hardly need to mention the shadow of this universalizing triumphalism; in the enthusiasm of religious fervor, Christians extended this triumphalism into the political and economic worlds, forming a pernicious alliance with colonialism and mercantilism. Missionaries co-operated with colonial powers to extend Christian civilization with the most disastrous of consequences. Many Christian hymns enshrined this triumphalism, the most famous being “Onward Christian Soldiers, marching off to war, with the cross of Jesus, going on before, Christ the Royal Master, leads against the foe; forward into battle, see his banners go.” Needless to say, this interpretation of Christ forgets that the crucifixion symbolizes vulnerability and self-sacrifice, not domination and colonialism. The triumph of Jesus was of life over death, faith over sin, and not a political one. Christ the King was meant to rule by love, not by socio-political domination. While many North American Christians rejected the triumphalist tendency in favor of peace, these systematic distortions of Christ’s prophetic message have shaped much of American history. The triumphalist drive of Christianity established churches, structures which embodied the hope of universal acceptance of Christ, all across the continent.

Conclusion to Part I

Christian universalism is an important background for the universal temple of Sufi Order International, which by contrast is explicitly dedicated to pluralism and interfaith activity. Inayat Khan’s universalism was fundamentally pluralistic and against homogenization. For him, it was not a set of religious beliefs that were universal, but rather an ontological condition of the human being. Inayat Khan described this condition as the divinity of the human soul, but honored the variety of descriptions and articulations of this condition in different religions.

The honoring of difference is essential to the understanding of unity, as the grim history of Christian universalism and triumphalism in North America reminds us. Universalism improperly conceived can have a dark shadow, and we are wise to understand its history on North American soil before digging a new foundation. As Protestant American culture evolved in the 19th and 20th centuries, the triumph of Christ was substituted with the triumph of other universal principles: modernity, science, democracy, and capitalism. The fundamental triumphal attitude of American Christianity did not recede, rather, it was rearticulated with less Christocentric content. Inayat Khan came to the West at the height of modern triumphalism, which impacted the articulation of his Message and the Universel. The next chapter of this article, to be released in June, examines both triumphalism and universalism in modernity, and especially its development in the 1893 Parliament of Religions and the Theosophical Society. Even as they embodied the next generation of triumphalism, these two events also symbolize the beginnings of universal mysticism in North America, and formed the immediate background to Inayat Khan’s Sufi Movement.

1. I Kings 8:27. Solomon’s answer to his own question, which follows in the next verses, where he implores Israel to pray toward the temple, and God to “hear in heaven your dwelling place, forgive, act, and render to all whose hearts you know – according to all their ways, for only you know what is in every human heart” (I Kings 8:39).
2. For more information on the Sufi Order International and the construction of the Universel, please see www.sufiorder.org, or e-mail sohrob@saffron.org.
3. See Hazrat Inayat Khan, “Our Efforts in Constructing, July 21st, 1925”, The Message Papers. Much of Inayat Khan’s published work is available online at www.wahiduddin.net./mv2/index.html.
4. Ibid.
5. Plans also exist to build a new Universel in Germany. See www.unitheum.de
6. As of this writing, there is no Universel established on the North American continent. Read forthcoming issues of Saffron for more detail on construction plans for a Universel at The Abode of the Message in New Lebanon, NY.
7. Avicenna, for example, imagined the Active Intellect as Gabriel, the archangel of humanity, whose body spewed forth ideas and forms into material manifestation. These forms could eventually converge in the mind of an enlightened human. See Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s Three Muslim Sages,
8. Inayat Khan’s teachings on the manifestation of thought can be found in The Soul Whence And Whither, in the chapter entitled “Manifestation”.
9. See Corbin, Henry, Temple and Contemplation, tr. Philip Sherrard. London: Kegan Paul International in association with Islamic Publications Ltd., 1986.
10. Iroquois is a French colonial term, that may have had derogatory connotations. See http://sixnations.buffnet.net/
11. The fire of the Iroquois Confederation was ‘covered over’ only in the 18th and 19th century by the aggressive divide-and-conquer policies of the new American nation, and New York state in particular. The Confederacy lives on, however, with headquarters in Onondaga, New York, and internationally recognized status as a distinct nation.
12. Although the Haudenosonee did at times engage in war, it was not a colonial enterprise, and any offer of peace had to be accepted according to the Iroquois constitution or Gayanashagowa (lit. ‘great law of peace’). The invitation stood to join the longhouse, furthermore, which was taken up by the Tuscarora nation in 1720.
13. See www.UUA.org for more information on the Unitarian Universalist Association.
14. Lyrics by Sabine Baring-Gould, 1864.
15. Hazrat Inayat Khan, sensing the danger of homogeneity and globalization showed a great sensitivity between the balance of unity and uniformity. The goal of universal mysticism is not to create uniformity but to make harmony of the difference:

No doubt the world is evolving to uniformity. Now we see no very great difference between forms, different customs of meeting or dressing, and many other things. People are coming to a certain uniformity. At the same time, when we look at the subject from a different point of view, we shall find that uniformity very often takes away the beauty of life. People in the countries so civilized and advanced that the architecture and houses are all built the same and who all dress the same become so tired that they go to a different country and see houses and people distinct and different from one another… To want to make all people live alike and do alike means to turn all people into the same form and same face, and what would happen then? The world would become very uninteresting. It is like tuning all the keys of the piano to the same note. It is not necessary to change the notes of the piano. What is necessary is to know the way of harmony, how to create harmony between the different notes.

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June 02, 2006

Sufi Order Interracial?

A couple of years ago, I worked in a restaurant run by Sufis of the Naqsbandi-Haqqani order. Sufism, typically defined as “the mystical dimension of Islam”, spreads wherever Islam spreads. It is organized into different orders or “paths”, based upon a saintly founding figure. Each order has a particular flavor that depends on its history and the culture in which it manifests. Generally, Sufis are considered to be the liberal, spiritual counterbalance to Islamic legalism, however, there is quite a range, from universalism and “interspirituality” (the Sufi Order International) and to involvement in violent Islamist movements (e.g. Chechen rebels).

The Naqshbandis at the restaurant were the type of beautiful, committed, and glowing Muslims one wishes the American news media would show once in a while. Utterly dedicated to living the path of love according to the traditions of the Prophet and saints, the owners of the restaurant hired mostly Sufi staff to preserve an atmosphere of love and service. I would prepare hummus and salads in a kitchen overflowing with Qur’anic recitation, chanting of sacred phrases, and laughter punctuated with Alhamdullilah! and Mashallah! (Praise be to God, It is God’s will). It was a wonderful experience.

On the topic of religion, however, we disagreed frequently. The Naqshbandis believed that, ultimately, Islam was the only true religion, and that my universalism was a risky delusion. I liked the culture, but I couldn’t take their theology, which seemed far too tribalistic. Nonetheless I visited their mosque periodically and enjoyed praying and chanting with them.

At the mosque, I was amazed to find myself standing next to West, North, and East Africans, Western and Eastern Europeans, Arabs, Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, French and English Canadians. It may have been the most racially diverse religious community I’ve ever experienced. Standing shoulder to shoulder with people all over the world, who were actually living the ideal of authentic brotherhood in the glorification of God, I had the overwhelming feeling of something being right with this situation. But consequently, I also began to feel that something was wrong -- why hadn’t I ever felt this in my Sufi order?

The answer of course is that my Sufi order is predominantly white. Ok, so why are we so homogenously white? We have inspiring gatherings of prayer and remembrance, we offer personalized spiritual instruction, we devote our lives to the awakening of our hearts. What’s more, our founder Hazrat Inayat Khan established our order on the premise of universal, global awakening! It is enshrined in our 10 Sufi thoughts, the closest thing a Sufi of my order has to a credo, that:

“There is one Family, the human family, which unites the children of earth indiscriminately in the parenthood of God.”

Elsewhere, Khan writes:

Our movement is a movement of the members of different nations and different races united together in the ideal of wisdom. Wisdom does not belong to any particular religion or any particular race; wisdom belongs to the human race. It is a divine property, which everyone has inherited. In this realization we, in spite of different nationalities, races, beliefs, and faiths, still unite and work for humanity in the ideal of wisdom (Gatheka 23).

Furthermore, we know that black and Latino inmates in prisons are some of the most enthusiastic readers of Inayat Khan’s writings. The Church of John Coltrane, a predominantly black Pentecostal group that uses jazz in worship, takes The Mysticism of Sound and Music, one of Inayat Khan’s most inspired books, as a guide for worship. I think it’s safe to say that the message is interesting and relevant to people of all races. So there must be something in the way that we’re carrying this message that makes it less interesting to people of different colors.

It turns out we’re not alone. Liberal theology in the USA, in general, tends to attract a homogenous, white following. Paradoxically, it is often the groups that try to be the most open-minded, which value the universal dignity of human beings and say so out loud, that suffer from white homogeneity. Our founder and philosophy speak eloquently of the harmony of races, but as they say, the proof is in the pudding. So I wanted to find out: what is wrong with our pudding?

This article presents a few of the factors that may contribute to the general racial monotone in the Sufi Order International. I do not necessarily suggest that we should change on each of these points, I only hope that by considering some of them we can gain insight and consciousness into how we are carrying forward the Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan.

The Accommodating vs. The Prophetic
One way of approaching this question is the spectrum of accommodating vs. prophetic in spiritual communities. This paradigm is introduced by Unitarian Universalist theologian Paul Rasor in his 2005 Faith Without Certainty, drawing from the work of James Cone and Reinhold Niebuhr. To describe the spectrum briefly: accommodating religious movements seek to accommodate all seekers by emphasizing openness, non-dogmatism, plurality, as seen in many liberal and other theologies. Prophetic movements, on the other hand, have an urgent prophetic message that demands a response, and will often emphasize consequences (e.g. damnation) of failing to hear the message, as seen in many evangelical and other movements. This is not a binary, but rather a spectrum, and most liberal religious communities find themselves way over on the end of accommodation.

Several Christian authors have claimed that the emphasis on accommodation, for many liberal communities, has “blunted the edge of prophetic witness”. Even though many liberal religious communities have their roots in social reform work, the balance has largely tipped in favor of accommodation. The problem with this is that accommodation all too easily accommodates the status quo and the ‘idols’ that it generates. According to Cornell West:

This accommodation is suffocating much of the best in American religion; it promotes and encourages an existential emptiness and political irrelevance. This accommodation is, at bottom, idolatrous – it worships the gods created by American society and kneels before the altars created by American culture (West 1988, ix).

Parker J. Palmer comments on the insidious affirmation of middle-class values and blind spots in overly-accommodating theology:

The religion of the American middle class sometimes seems to mock the Gospels; it aims at enhancing the self-esteem of persons who have material comfort while ignoring conditions of poverty and pestilence which deprive a whole class of people of life itself, let alone feelings of self-worth (Palmer 1993).

Rasor calls the loss of prophetic witness in liberal theology a “prophetic crisis”, which blocks the work of anti-racism (as well as any other issue of social justice).

In Sufi terms, prophecy (nubuwwa, risala) has a somewhat different meaning than the Christian emphasis on “prophetic witness”, meaning the outspoken truth-telling and rabble-rousing of Jesus and prophets of the Hebrew Bible. For the Sufi, prophecy is an inner, ongoing, primordial illumination, the “spirit of guidance” and source of wisdom, the “sun at the dawn of creation”. Inayat Khan, furthermore, was clear on accommodation: the SOI was to be open to people of any religion, race, caste or creed, who was interested in the transformative wisdom of Sufism, thus his first book was called The Sufi Message of Spiritual Liberty. This accommodating spirit shaped our order a great deal, such when I entered the order I often heard the phrase “There are no rules in Sufism”. The great split of the Sufi Order International and The Sufi International Ruhaniat Society occurred in part because of the imposition of a “rule” about the use of drugs on the spiritual path.

But of course, there are rules in our path: Inayat Khan carefully wrote a code of ethics, or suluk, in the Iron, Copper, Silver, and Golden Rules (see Vadan: Alankaras). To follow the recommendations of Inayat Khan requires extreme, almost ascetic self-discipline, self-sacrifice, and self-awareness. The taming of the ego, in short, is a prophetic and not an accommodating process. While our order generally takes the gentle path of alchemical transformation as opposed to violent annihilation (fana’) of the ego, nonetheless a great deal of discipline and rigor is involved, which Murshid continuously repeats must be reflected in the moral culture.

In light of this it is worth asking, along the lines of Parker J. Palmer, ‘what idols have we accommodated in our order’? In the accommodating spirit of the SOI, have we also accommodated the invisible shadow of white privilege? In our meditations and retreats, have we accommodated impressions that are poison to our moral body, and which prevent us from representing the Message to our full ability?

I suggest that this line of inquiry is not an exercise in guilt or complaining about the blessings we have received, but is rather a part of muhasiba, our moral inventory. Sufi orders who interpret prophecy more in terms of law (shari’a) and tradition (sunna) tend to reflect a greater racial and cultural diversity. Why has our accommodation and openness paradoxically led to a demographic narrowness? Let us hold this question in our hearts as we pray:

Ya Shafiq, ya Rafiq, nojenonee min kulee deeq. (O Friend, O Rescuer, save me from all narrowness of heart.)

No Evil
Related to the sense of prophetic urgency is the question of evil. In spiritual traditions that de-emphasize evil, hellfire, condemnation, etc., or reject such concepts out of hand, there is less dramatic imagery available to push a group outside of its comfort zone. If there is no experience of one’s salvation being on the line, it’s that much harder to work against one’s own societal and ego-structures, against the kingdom of nafs al-amarra (the imperious ego).
Inayat Khan wrote that the Message of our time was the realization of the divinity within humanity. Murshid’s strongest writing on evil warns us not to judge another, but only focus on our own evil, for only God can judge another (Supplementary Papers – Classes for Murids IV, “Resist Not Evil”). It is presented with great psychological nuance, but not really as a dangerous force which confronts our innermost being.

The principles of guidance, as far as I understand them, are to gently reflect and nudge the murid into an experience of her own divinity, it is a gentle process that faces the pain and trauma of human life with compassion and grace. Thus there is no place for strict moralism and judgment.

This provides the SOI with great efficacy and skill in helping murids develop spiritually. But it also makes the urgency and hurry less explicit, because there is fundamentally no danger to the soul. Again, this can support accommodation of a great many dysfunctions and problems in addition to the positive aspects, because the only motivation for growth is inner. The question of urgency of our growth, especially in spiritual culture, recalls a saying of Shihabuddin: “The greatest mistake the young make is thinking they have time; the greatest mistake the old make is thinking there’s not enough time.”

Theological Plurality
In the same vein as the above point, theological plurality can in many ways prevent moral cohesion and action. If there are multiple theologies and understandings of community within a spiritual tradition, it’s hard to motivate the whole into a rousing commitment to do anything, much less confront implicit societal structures. A great deal of time is spent in organization and coming to common agreement, which does not leave the SOI in a position to do vast amounts of work on other projects, such as outreach to minority groups.

Esotericism
Sufis throughout history have been criticized for quietism, that is, silently and quietly doing practices while injustice rolls over the earth. Again, it is a question worth considering in our own age. Many may argue that the role of the Sufi is to hold the accommodation for transformation of consciousness and begin the process by transforming and illuminating oneself first of all; leaving aside questions of politics, and “rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matt. 22:18). This teaching of Christ to keep one’s priorities straight, however, can be easily misinterpreted to justify the “spiritual bypass”. By that term I mean ignoring what is presented to our consciousness for our own transformation by glomming onto esoteric concepts that have been handed down in our tradition. In doing so we perform a classic dissociation from what is real, choosing instead what we think should be real, based on what we’ve read from someone else’s experience. The spiritual bypass, therefore, actually halts the transformation of consciousness in mid-process.

Racism is a part of everyone’s experience in the U.S.A., whether conscious or unconscious. At a certain point in the practice of muhasiba we must examine what we have inherited from not only our ancestors but from our nation and culture. No matter what color we may be, Americans have inherited a 300-yr. old legacy of racism that is deeply interwoven into the physical, mental, emotional, and moral bodies of this nation, and it continues to produce racist structures. To truly transform our consciousness, therefore, I argue that the issue of racism must be addressed. Because the ongoing realities of structural racism are so deep, it is easy for whites to overlook them having rejected racism as a moral principle. But because there is so much pain, trauma, and suffering wrapped up in racism, if we address and deeply transform racism in our own bodies, hearts, and souls, we can accommodate much more light, and be more effective in our goals of spreading the message of love, harmony, and beauty. A good place to start, it seems to me, would be our own hearts, Sufi communities, centers, retreats, and camps.

Modernity and Social Darwinism
Historically, liberal theologians have wanted to remain credible and relevant to contemporary culture by agreeing with science, siding with reason, empiricism, etc., especially over and against conservative religious groups. This continues today, as the bitter debates in Christianity about evolution vs. creation continue, sometimes with significant political consequences.

Hazrat Inayat Khan, who was firmly devoted to the underlying unity of mysticism and science, also affirmed the science of the day. The science of 19th and 20th centuries, however, had some distinctly racialist, if not downright racist elements. Religious liberals sided with the ‘scientific’ interpretation of Darwinism, which was distorted into a racialist social Darwinism that affirmed white supremacist structures. In the zeitgeist of ‘Manifest Destiny’ and modernity, even some of the strongest proponents of the social gospel believed that the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant had a teleological obligation to rule the world politically and economically. Thus one could speak of universal brotherhood while affirming in every way the underlying, racist social structures such as colonialism. Social Darwinism, of course, subsists in manifold capitalist and political permutations today, many of which are invisible to the white middle class.

While Inayat Khan affirmed the unity of mysticism and science, he resisted the conflation of evolution with the progress of modernity, pointing out that civilizations rise and fall (Khan 1996, 161). An Indian who had experienced first-hand the evils of colonialism, Inayat Khan was wary of racial hierarchy and repeatedly emphasized the necessity of harmony and unity of the world’s races. The racialism of the era, however, was deeply embedded into Western culture and language, and Inayat Khan was not immune to language that offends modern sensibilities.

The Theosophical Society
The racial hierarchy that became established in the modern notion of evolution and ‘progress’ took a peculiar turn in early 20th century mysticism of the Theosophical Society. For the Theosophists, it was the Himalayan ‘Masters’ who were at the peak of human evolution, and who were working to bring universal wisdom to the world, (mediated by an elite group of white Westerners) in the form of a ‘Maitreya-Christ’. Several members of the Theosophical Society formed the ‘Order of the Star of the East’ whose specific purpose was to seek out this Indian messiah. When they discovered Hazrat Inayat Khan, many members of that order believed they had found what they were looking for, and joined the Sufi Movement, becoming some of the most devoted students. Thus much of the early culture of our order was established by the Theosophical Society, who had a penchant for hierarchies, initiations, Masonic-type ritual, and who interpreted evolution in a particular way. Mahmood Khan writes of these early students that:

They needed to regard him as a Mahatma descended from the highest Himalayas, if not from Heaven, to illumine their benighted belle époque lives out of the perfection of his unearthly being. It must remain for future research meaningfully to disentangle Hazrat Inayat Khan's own ideas, ideals, and contemplative perspectives from the colloquy and role he was cast in, indeed caught in, by his initiatic followers... (M. Khan 2001, 114-126).

As Mahmood Khan expresses, Inayat Khan had to work within the limits of his students, which included certain racial and cultural priorities. Inayat Khan was heavily critical of the Theosophical Society, and felt that they lacked a strong prophetic message (Guillaume-Schambert 1979, 222-224). Nonetheless, he was constrained by aspects of the Theosophical culture.

For example, when Inayat Khan was living in London from 1914 - 1920, he created a society called “Anjuman-I Islam”, which was for the support of Muslims living in Britain. At this time, Muslims and other Indians living in Europe were exposed to extreme racial stereotyping and prejudice. The organization sought to improve the Western understanding of Islam and improve the conditions of Muslims, but it was unpopular with the body of murids, and eventually the project was quietly dropped. In its place, the “World Brotherhood” was inaugurated, which sought mutual understanding between all religions and the improvement of all peoples (Graham 2001, 144). From an anti-racist perspective, this secured the involvement and power of European, universalist murids, and prevented the actual anti-racist work of supporting oppressed Indians in Britain. Under the guise of greater universalism, the actual work of kinship was undercut. It is an example of how ‘universalism’ can be used as a spiritual bypass, precluding the commitment to really working with somebody different, which true kinship requires. It is an example worth keeping in mind, because today also many Muslims in the Sufi Order feel marginalized, as though they are ‘second-class’ murids outside of the mainstream culture.

Civil Rights
During the 40’s and 50’s,

Liberal theologians and church leaders… became fairly good at making formal statements against racial discrimination. But they were pitifully ineffective at challenging the racism of everyday America. On the whole, the theological leaders of American liberal Christianity gave low priority to the battle against racism. They rarely treated the issue with the kind of passion they devoted to peace or intellectual freedom, and their own rhetoric was often casually racist (Dorrien 2003, 430).

This tradition weakened liberal participation in the civil rights movement. Many (e.g. Cone, Malcolm X, even Martin Luther King, Jr.) see liberal theology as having failed the civil rights movement, because it couldn’t fully face the legacy of racism. (Rasor 2005, 108). Liberal religious communities, by and large, could not see the civil rights movement through: “the liberal coalition reached its philosophical limits with the signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.” (Cook 1997, 161). In reality, this nominal victory was just the beginning of a longer struggle that continues today, a struggle from which most white, liberal religious groups have distanced themselves.

It is not the policy of the Sufi Order to take a side in political issues, believing that each murid is responsible to act according to his or her own conscience. Furthermore, the renaissance of the Sufi Order in the late 1960’s meant that the order was in infancy during the bulk of the civil rights movement. To my knowledge, there was not a great deal of SOI participation in the civil rights movement in the United States, on individual or group levels. If I am mistaken in this, I ask for people who do know of such involvement to post a reply to this article, to share their stories and experiences, how the spiritual path strengthened protest, resistance, and activism. How was the Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan represented in the struggle for Civil Rights? Let’s begin a conversation about esotericism and outer action.

Cultural Elements
There are some cultural elements worth considering in the question of why the SOI is predominantly white. Many of the murids who have shaped the order joined in the countercultural zeitgeist of the 60’s and 70’s, and have since then become more settled, raised families, and moved to the suburbs. Demographically, my suspicion is that the vast majority of committed murids are now middle class, white, and living in suburbs.

This means a few things:

- Many retreats and centers occur in the suburbs, and have a predominantly suburban constituency. Since the suburbs are predominantly white, this creates a kind of invisible barrier;
- The preferred environment of the white middle class in the USA tends to be nature. SOI camps and retreats tend to occur in beautiful natural settings. Since more people of color are born and raised in densely populated urban centers, and may not feel comfortable in natural environments, these events can be somewhat self-selecting;
- Almost all Sufi teachers in our order are white, which means that interested people of color do not see their race reflected in the leadership;
- Since there are so few people of color in the order, interested people might feel that this is “not for them”, that there is not a safe community where the particular issues of racial minorities can be understood and dealt with at the spiritual level. This continues the self-perpetuating cycle.
- Retreats and seminars tend to have a price tag reflecting a middle class constituency, i.e. more expensive than a lower class income can afford. At the same time, the SOI is not a wealthy organization, meaning that while scholarships for people of color are available, there are no funds for programs of outreach.

Avoidance of Conflict and Racial Tension
The issue of race is rarely mentioned in my experience of the SOI. It is an uncomfortable question, and reconciliation is emotional and tense. Many white people are not psychologically prepared to hear the anger, hurt, and pain of oppressed people of color, not wanting to ‘disturb the beautiful attunement’. For real anti-racism work, there has to be a relinquishing of control; Inayat Khan tells us that dissonance is an important part of the harmonious whole. Consider James Cone: “Whites to not mind talking as long as blacks don’t get too emotional, too carried away with their stories of hurt.” There can be a great discomfort with bearing witness humbly to the rage of another. But as Cone says: “Black anger upsets only whites who choose not to identify with black suffering.”

There is the risk of being pushed outside one’s comfort zone in working toward a racially diverse community. But in order to live the message of Hazrat Inayat Khan, we are called to push those comfort zones and devote ourselves to kinship. The pain and conflict that could arise by actively diversifying the racial demographic of the SOI would be a tremendous opportunity for growth, healing, and transformation. What’s more, we are blessed to have teachers to guide us through that process.

When a the issue of racial diversity is raised, a common response is “why should we go out of our way to try to bring in others? Why not just be who we are, and deepen our own attunement?” Some may feel that such a diversifying effort is forced and unnatural; better to just go with the flow and work with what we have.

Again, I would ask you to consider the practice of muhasiba: taking careful inventory of what we have, who we have become, and what we wish to be. The history of this country is a history of racism, trauma, and violation of the divinity within humans. The structures of our society are still shaped by our racist history, in subtle but powerful ways. The cumulative impressions of that history exist today in our individual and collective unconscious unless we choose to make it conscious. Only once collective impressions are made conscious can we dis-identify from them and begin the work of transformation. Racial reconciliation is an important part of the Sufi work, because racism blocks the transformation of consciousness. I believe Hazrat Inayat Khan knew this personally. As an Indian a generation after the brutally repressed Sepoy Revolt, Hazrat Inayat Khan experienced first-hand the dehumanization of colonialism. In his travels in Britain and the West between 1910-20, he was subject to constant orientalizing, stereotyping, and outright prejudice, likely made more severe by his interracial marriage with an American. Inayat Khan was acutely aware of race his whole life, and this is why nearly every description of the Sufi Message involves the harmonizing of races:

Our sacred task, not only as members of the Sufi Order but also as servers of the divine cause, is to waken in those around us and among those whom we can reach first, the spirit of tolerance for religion and scripture, and second, the ideal of devotion to one another. Our next task is to help people understand those of different nations, races, communities, and classes. By this we do not mean to say that all races and nations must become one, nor that all classes must become one. We say that whatever be our religion, nation, race, or class, out most sacred duty is to work for one another, in one another's interest, and to consider this as the service of God (Khan, Gatheka 29).

That being said, the most powerful argument for working for diversity in the SOI, from my perspective, is not the exhortations of our founder but rather the experience of connection. White people suffer from white privilege and racism because it blocks us from the sense of kinship that is our inheritance as a human family. The attunement of an interracial group of people praying is much more powerful precisely because the experience of human kinship has been realized; there is a far greater magnetism, which means a greater potential to spread the message of love, harmony, and beauty.

But please: don’t take my word for it. Go to the gathering of a more conservative Sufi order, or a traditional mosque, especially during Ramadan or at jumma prayers. And post your experience on the thread below. Let us meditate, experiment, and converse about how our community may better embody the prayer:

May the Message of God spread far and wide.

Biography

Sohrob achieved an advanced degree in topiary at a very young age, only to have it awarded to his evil twin in a bureaucratic mix-up gone horribly wrong. Always optimistic, he decided to start over -- this time at Harvard. We're pretty sure you can reach him at sohrob@saffronjournal.org.

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