From tariqas-approval@world.std.com Tue Feb 09 06:06:22 1999 Return-Path: Delivered-To: yronwode@prog-relay.sonic.net Received: (qmail 13938 invoked from network); 9 Feb 1999 06:06:21 -0000 Received: from sub.sonic.net (208.201.224.8) by buzz.sonic.net with SMTP; 9 Feb 1999 06:06:21 -0000 Received: from mindy.accesscom.com (root@ns2.accesscom.com [205.226.156.3]) by sub.sonic.net (8.8.8/8.8.5) with ESMTP id WAA10348 for ; Mon, 8 Feb 1999 22:04:46 -0800 X-envelope-info: Received: from shell.accesscom.com (root@shell.accesscom.com [205.226.156.10]) by mindy.accesscom.com (8.8.8/8.8.8/Debian/GNU) with ESMTP id WAA32378 for ; Mon, 8 Feb 1999 22:04:45 -0800 Received: from mindy.accesscom.com (root@ns2.accesscom.com [205.226.156.3]) by shell.accesscom.com (8.8.8/8.8.8/Debian/GNU) with ESMTP id WAA18209 for ; Mon, 8 Feb 1999 22:04:44 -0800 Received: from europe.std.com (europe.std.com [199.172.62.20]) by mindy.accesscom.com (8.8.8/8.8.8/Debian/GNU) with ESMTP id WAA32371 for ; Mon, 8 Feb 1999 22:04:37 -0800 Received: by europe.std.com (STD1.2/BZS-8-1.0) id AAA01289; Tue, 9 Feb 1999 00:55:45 -0500 (EST) Received: from world.std.com by europe.std.com (STD1.2/BZS-8-1.0) id AAA01284; Tue, 9 Feb 1999 00:55:42 -0500 (EST) Received: from hotmail.com (f185.hotmail.com) by world.std.com (TheWorld/Spike-2.0) id AA09806; Tue, 9 Feb 1999 00:55:41 -0500 Received: (qmail 25525 invoked by uid 0); 9 Feb 1999 05:55:40 -0000 Message-Id: <19990209055540.25524.qmail@hotmail.com> Received: from 12.78.98.72 by www.hotmail.com with HTTP; Mon, 08 Feb 1999 21:55:38 PST X-Originating-Ip: [12.78.98.72] From: "Nima Hazini" To: tariqas@world.std.com Subject: Re: Sufis & Corruption (long) Date: Mon, 08 Feb 1999 21:55:38 PST Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Sender: tariqas-approval@world.std.com Precedence: list Reply-To: tariqas@world.std.com Status: RO Unfortunately there is a 'dark side' not merely in the history of Turkish Sufism - albeit the Sufi orders under the Ottomans shared a much closer proximity to the Sublime Porte (viz. the court & government in Istanbul) than perhaps in other areas of the Islamic world. Persian Sufism has suffered its fair share in the past two hundred years, which is one reason why there are so many branches and sub-branches in the Nimatullahi order (i.e. Kowthar `Ali Shahi, Munawwar `Ali Shahi, Safi `Ali Shahi, Shamsu'l-`Urafa, Nazar `Ali Shahi, Munis `Ali Shahi, Nur `Ali Shahi, ad nauseum). While under Muhammad Shah Qajar (reigned 1835-48) Sufism enjoyed relative peace - probably due to the fact that the immediate members of the royal family in toto were all initiates of either the Nimatullahi or Khaksar orders -, nonetheless the involvement of certain Sufis within the 'high-profiles' of Qajar government was responsible for one of the darker episodes of nineteenth century Iranian society. With Hajji Mirza Aqasi (d.1849), Muhammad Shah's outstanding premier, Iran witnessed one of the worst famines in its history, not to mention one the most ruthless and corrupt administrations ever (Aqasi had two-thirds of his family appointed to governorships and high posts in civil service, to name a few). The premier, who apparently exercised keen spiritual influence on the impressionable Shah, was a shaykh of the Khaksar-Jalali order and at one time fought with Zayn'ul-Abidin Mast `Ali Shah Shirvani (d. late 1840s) for the qutb-ship (Mastery) of the Nimatullahi order after having run the Agha Khan and the entire Isma'ili community out of Iran over a dispute involving property-estates and the hand of one of the latters daughters. More recently the accession of Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh in 1953 to the qutb-ship of the Nimatullahi/Munawwar `Ali Shahi order seems to have been orchestrated by the late Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi's entourage and Iranian military officers. Nurbakhsh, a young 26 year old medical intern at Tehran university, had been close to Asadullah Alam (later to become Prime Minister and then Minister of Court). Since the Shah had recently ousted popular liberal premier Mohammad Mossadeq in a coup d'etat backed by the CIA, it was imperative that loyalists and royalists take control of as many facets of Iranian society as possible. The Nimatullahi/Munawwar `Ali Shahi order was one important key to the Shah's grand design. Since the last Master of the order, Dhu'l-Riyastayn Munis `Ali Shah Kirmanshahi (d.1953) had died without publicly appointing a successor, Alam and his allies carefully utilized a letter by Munis `Ali Shah extolling the humanitarian efforts of a young Nurbakhsh in setting up medical clinics in his home town of Kirman as documentary proof of the latters spiritual accession to the Master-ship of the order. This, notwithstanding the fact that there were six other claimants, one of whom (Shams'ul-`urafa Hujjat Balaghi) had the strongest claim - the details of which are too involved to get into here now. At the ceremony where the previous Master's last will-and-testament was to be read and the enigma of succession to be decided, all six claimants were apparently prevented by soldiers and Iranian military officers from entering the room where the ceremony was being held - and thus Nurbakhsh's succession was smoothly hand crafted by the demands of the dominant politics of the time. Leaving Iran and moving to the West: one of the most outstanding metaphysicians and Traditionalist thinkers of the current century, Frithjof Schuon (d. 1998), left in his wake a highly embarrasing, not to mention disappointing, legacy. Schuon, the author of such classics as _Understanding Islam_, _Transcendent Unity of Religions_ and _Stations of Wisdom_, and self-appointed Shaykh (i.e. Isa Nureddin al-Alawi) and master of the Tariqa Maryamiyya, towards the final years of his life, engaged in among the worst aberrant and spiritually cultic practices in the name of Sufism and esotericism. Without going into explicit details, some of these practices eventually led to a suicide of a younger individual in the group, charges of child-molestation and sexual aberrant and authoritarian behavior by the shaykh, which all led to a subsequent Grand Jury inquiry in Bloomington, Indiana in 1991, where the group resided until Schuon's death last year. It seems that for years, among the inner circle of the group, Schuon had made claims not only to having been the successor of the late Alegerian shaykh Ahmad al-Alawi (which he clearly was not) but also of being the Pole of the Age and, beyond that, of some kind of universal Avatar (contents of Schuon's unpublished autobiography are numerous in the claims he makes for himself and erotic visions of the Virgin Mary and Buddhas he says he witnessed, to but name a few). The moral of all this is that for all its nobility and loftiness, Sufism (and any spiritual path for that matter) does indeed manifest a darker side at times; one which leaves the sincere spiritual seeker to painfully with a broken heart sort out the mess of the many seemingly insurmountable contradictions in the words and deeds of a particular guru they have loved and cherished - albeit that the breaking of the idol of the guru is perhaps the hardest but most importantly crucial step one can ever take on the Path. But all in all, the 'corruptions of Sufism' do not even begin to compare with the excesses of the fundamentalists. Ya Haqq, Nima ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com