Voices of Islam (269 page)

On August 11, 1976, Bawa inaugurated ablutions and
dhikr
which included parts of the
Salat
prayer until in 1981 he instituted the performance of
Salat
. He gave as the translation of the
Shahada:
‘‘Nothing else is, only You are, God.’’

As photos and films disclose, Bawa was an extremely gentle and graceful man in his manner and speech. Although he looked youthful, legends surrounding him suggested he lived beyond a hundred years. In a practice rarely known among Muslims, he was a vegetarian. From living in the jungle, he had become deeply attuned to nature. His discourses refl inner

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knowledge, more than intellectual knowledge. And although he technically belonged to the lineage of ‘Abdul Qadir al-Gilani, the founder of the Qadiriyya Sufi brotherhood, Bawa’s teachings were more inclusive and eclectic than sectarian. These facets of his teaching made him especially attractive to New-Age devotees and Interspiritually-oriented persons: pacifi vegetarianism, healthy cooking and eating, nature-mysticism, ecumenism, and his inner or intuitive, rather than text-based knowledge.

Bawa’s prominence in American Sufism has continued since Rumi transla- tor Coleman Barks and Sufi author–illustrator Michael Green have become better known for their work and the role they acknowledge Bawa to have played in inspiring it. Since 1986, Bawa’s tomb (
mazar
) in Coatesville outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has been a pilgrimage site.

Bawa consistently described Islam as unconditional peace and love.

Everything is Islam. Islam is the spotless purity of the heart, it is a vast ocean. If God’s teaching is there, it is Islam. To act out the qualities of truth and embrace it with true love, that is Islam. The tired hearts, the hurt ones, to embrace them with love, and give them the milk of love, embrace them face to face, heart to heart, in unity, that is Islam.
75

In
Islam and World Peace
(1987) Bawa describes a radically inclusive vision of Islam as a religion of nonviolence.

Truth is one and Islam is one. It shows no preference for any particular religion, sect race, or tribe.
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We must realize that the human society is one. We are all the children of Adam, and there is only one God and one prayer. The Bible, the Hindu Puranas, the Zend-Avesta, the Torah, and the Qur’an—all these scriptures contain the words of grace given by God to the prophets.
77

Bawa conveyed the signifi of the Prophet Muhammad as a reality within humankind. Gisela Webb describes Bawa’s word play in Tamil:

...
muham
in Tamil means ‘‘face’’ or ‘‘countenance’’ and
aham
means ‘‘heart.’’ Thus Bawa will say, ‘‘Muhammad is the beauty of the heart reflected in the face [
muham
]
...
that the Light of Muhammad, the Inner Muhammad, is the first reflection or ‘‘countenance’’ of [
aham
] God’s very being
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In Bawa’s view, Allah and the Prophet Muhammad exclusively intended nonviolence:

Praising Allah and then destroying others is not
jihad.
Some groups wage war against the children of Adam and call it holy war. But for man to raise his sword against man, for man to kill man is not holy war
...
. Allah has no thought of killing or going to war. Why would Allah have sent His prophets if He had such

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thoughts? It was not to destroy men that Muhammad came; he was sent down as the wisdom that could show man how to destroy his own evil.
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Bawa emphasizes absolute love and compassion:

It is compassion that conquers. It is unity that conquers. It is Allah’s good qualities, behavior and actions that conquer others. It is this state which is called Islam. The sword doesn’t conquer; love is sharper than the sword. Love is an exalted, gentle sword.
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Bawa’s symbolic correspondences between the fi prayers and the fi elements (earth, fire, water, air, and ether) resonates with New Age holism. As Michael Green paraphrases and summarizes them: in the dawn prayer (
fajr
) ‘‘prayer loosens the earthly torpor
...
Fajr releases these grasping earth obsessions into the generosity of the dawn.’’
81
Noon prayer (
salat al-zuhr
tempers the fiery power reflected in the sun’s zenith overhead and embodied within as the result of the day’s build-up of ‘‘anger, arrogance, and impa- tience.’’ The noon prayer transforms ‘‘these wild surging energies into a passionate search for God.’’
82
The afternoon prayer (
salat al-asr
), marked by the time when the sun casts shadows, carries us into the quality of water. In this watery fl the soul yearns for clarity. The sunset prayer (
salat al- maghrib
) finds the mind given to airiness and needing grounding. At the time of the night prayer (
salat al-isha’
), ‘‘solidity falls away, but the spacious quality of ether grows, hypnotizing us with twinkling illusion.’’
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Bawa’s teachings about food and cooking also link Islamic and New Age values. He advocated vegetarianism as the real meaning of the practice of
zabih
(
halal
) slaughter of animals. He taught that the purpose of
zabih
was to make slaughter diffi so that people would eat less meat and that ultimately the symbolism of
zabih
means slaughtering the lower ego (
al-nafs al-ammara
).
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A final note on Bawa’s influence on the New Age Movement is his role in motivating Barks to translate Rumi.

A NOTE ON RUMI AND THE NEW AGE MOVEMENT

Rumi, whom Coleman Barks helped raise to fame, has emerged as a bridge between Islam and the New Age Movement, and offers Sufi perspectives that appeal to New Age participants’ need for spirituality outside religion. As ‘Abd al-Rahman Jami (d. 1492
CE
) once said, Rumi’s
Mathnawi
is ‘‘the Qur’an in Persian.’’ Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, a Sufi poet and master who lived in Konya, Turkey is widely read and quoted in the New Age Movement. In 1995, according to
Christian Science Monitor, Publisher’s Weekly,
and Bill Moyers of PBS, Rumi emerged as ‘‘America’s best-selling poet.’’ Poets

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Robert Bly and Barks had begun public readings and performances of Rumi’s poetry in their paraphrased ‘‘translations.’’ Barks became a best-selling celeb- rity and Rumi became an icon for the New Age Movement. Through recited and musical performances, Rumi’s poetry also became part of the curriculum of the Men’s Movement of the 1980s and 1990s and drew audiences at uni- versities and auditoriums. At the time of this writing, Amazon.com ranked sales of Barks’ anthology
The Essential Rumi
as 5,657 among over 600,000 titles. Recently author-illustrator Michael Green has collaborated with The Illumination Band, a group of bluegrass musicians from the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship, to release a CD of Rumi’s poems set to country- bluegrass music.
85
In his handbill for his lecture series on Sufi poets, Hazrat Inayat Khan wrote this about Rumi’s
Masnavi:
‘‘The Masnavi has all the beauty of the Psalms, the music of the hills, the color and scent of roses; but it has more than that, it expresses in song the yearning if the soul to be reunited with God.’’
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CONCLUSION: A ‘‘SUN RISES IN THE WEST’’—AMERICAN SUFISM AND THE NEW AGE

Here I present conclusions about two questions: (1) What bridges Islam and the Interspiritual Age or New Age Movement? (2) How have the lineages of these four Sufi teachers helped contribute to and develop the New Age Movement and the Interspiritual Age?

1. New Age Movement participants—both practitioners and con- sumers—typically affiliate more independently than they could in traditional Islamic cultures where family and community identification tend to regulate religious affi In the course of their lifetimes, New Age participants have typically tried or followed a number of spiritual paths. This is true among many of the followers of the movements we have discussed. And while syncretism and innovation stand at odds with most Muslim rhetoric, they have appeared throughout Islamic history. Inayat Khan’s lineage initiated Hindus. All the teachers we discussed studied in multiple traditions. In spite of their eclecticism and syncretism, each of these movements accepts the
   Shahada
   or
   kalima
   as an ultimate statement of truth. What varies is how the
   kalima
   is interpreted. People in Inayat Khan lineages translate the
   Shahada
   as ‘‘There is no reality other than the One Reality.’’ Bawa translated it as ‘‘Nothing else is, only You are, God.’’ Both of these lineages acknowl- edge Muhammad as the Messenger of Allah. In a more complicated and problematic sense Meher Baba also accepted the
   kalima,
   (translated as ‘‘There is no one greater than God.’’), modified by the fact that he identified himself as Muhammad. It is no coincidence that teachers from India provide
   

   such continuity between Islam and the Interspiritual Age.
   

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   Many practitioners and consumers of New-Age Sufism approach only the inner (
   batin
   ) dimensions of Islam. The one exception is the Bawa Muhayyiddeen Fellowship: in 1976, Bawa’s followers began performing ablution and reciting
   dhikr,
   then in 1981 they began to perform
   Salat
   and continued to adopt the
   Shari‘a.
   As we observed, even though Inayat Khan did not explicitly practice
   Shari‘a
   he expressed it as a ‘‘law needed to harmo- nize with one’s surroundings and with one’s self within.’’ Furthermore, he went on to say that Qur’an and Hadith warrant that the Shari‘a is ‘‘meant to be subject to change, in order to suit the time.’’
   87
   

   Islamic policies on environmentalism will always serve as a potential bridge between Islam and the Interspiritual Age. Ecology and Creation Spirituality will stand as other such bridges. The Qur’an’s advocates studying nature’s ‘‘signs’’ and manifestations for lessons about divine unity (
   tawhid
   ), and other divine mysteries. Many Sufi teachers presented
   tawhid
   as a form of
   wahdat al- wujud
   (‘‘unity of existence’’). This correlates roughly with the popular New Age use of ‘‘holograms,’’ ‘‘wave-particle theory,’’ and the ‘‘Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.’’ But fundamentally, both Sufi the New Age Movement, and Interspiritual thinkers, correlate science and spirituality as parallel expressions of harmonious unity in creation. Similarly the New Age and Interspiritualist interest in the sacredness of the earth matches that of the Qur’an which frequently presents nature as a book of signs and symbols (Qur’an 16:10–22; 27:64; 30:20–27). Ecology will be a bridge between Islam, the New Age Movement, and the Interspiritual Age.
   

   Does Islam share a doctrine of tolerance with the New Age Movement and the Interspiritual Age? The New Age Movement’s theological relativism con- tradicts most Muslim attitudes toward interreligiosity. Muslims have often embraced tolerance and ecumenism but usually in a context in which Islam is the supreme and final religion. Bawa alone among the teachers we dis- cussed echoes this conservatism. The others taught a spiritual path (
   tariqa
   ) outside of religion. In their time their movements were called by sociologists ‘‘New Religious Movements.’’ In Wayne Teasdale’s exemplification of Inter- spirituality there is at least a precedent for setting one’s own religion as the single framework for inclusivity.
   

   Many contemporary Sufi who practice meditation use a kind of
   chakra
   system, and practice theosophy (
   ishraqiyya
   ). They may also provide a bridge between Islam and the New Age Movement. Sufism offers a teaching about the energy centers (
   lata’if
   ) of the subtle body.
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   Technically, however, the system of centers differs from yogic and New Age
   chakras.
   Sufism shares with Transpersonal Psychology a recognition of extraordinary abilities. As in the New Age, Sufi saints are sought for spiritual healing. Most New Age Move- ment participants would be attracted to the Healing Concentration of the Sufi Order and Bawa’s philosophy of farming, cooking, and eating.
   

2. The four teachers discussed in this chapter are Islamic heralds of the New Age Movement and the Interspiritual Age. Since each stands on
   

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an isthmus between his Islamic background and the Interspiritual Age, his life demonstrates how Muslims and non-Muslims might relate Islam and the Interspritual Age. Hazrat Inayat Khan, Samuel Lewis, and Meher Baba knew Islam intimately but did not follow the
Shari‘a
based on the Five Pillars of Islam. Members of the Inayat Khan traditions meditate, practice
waza’if
(meditation on divine qualities), recite
dhikr,
and do Dances of Universal Peace. Meher Baba led
Salat
once as part of an Inter-Faith Prayer meeting in September 1954.
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‘‘Baba lovers’’ encounter Islam as part of Meher Baba’s teaching and culture. Only for Sufi Reoriented’s members did he prescribe the practice of reciting the Islamic Names of God. Still, these three teachers used Sufi literature extensively, especially Persian poets.

Bawa placed Qur’an and Hadith at the center of his discourses. Bawa alone established the conventional practice of
Shari‘a
including and especially,
Salat.
Bawa’s
dhikr
included traditional
salawat an-nabi
(recitations of bless- ings upon the Prophet Muhammad) and invocations to the head
pir
of Bawa’s
qadiri
lineage, ‘Abd al-Qadir Jilani.
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Bawa alone considered worship of Hindu deities incorrect and expressed concern over the proliferation of false teachers in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. Inayat Khan and teachers in his lineage have consciously incorporated Hindu, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, and Christian elements—more than one fi ds in most Islamic
tariqas.
The ‘‘Dances of Universal Peace,’’ meetings, publications, and workshops all show an inclusive and ‘‘integral’’ approach to synthesizing ideas and practices across religious boundaries. Each of these teachers has in his own way invented an American Sufism that continues to contribute to and reflect the New Age Movement.