Sacred Spaces and Transnational Networks in American Sufism: Bawa Muhaiyaddeen and Contemporary Shrine Cultures
Ebook
This book sheds light on the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship (BMF), one of North America's major Sufi movements, and one of the first to establish a Sufi shrine in the region. It provides the first comprehensive overview of the BMF, offering new insight into its historical development and practices, and charting its establishment in both the United States and Sri Lanka.
Through ethnographic research, Sacred Spaces and Transnational Networks in American Sufism shows that the followers of Bawa in the United States and Sri Lanka share far more similarities in the relationships they formed with spaces, Bawa, and Sufism, than differences. This challenges the accepted conceptualization of Sufism in North America as having a distinct “Americanness”, and prompts scholars to re-consider how Sufism is developing in the modern American landscape, as well as globally.
The book focuses on the transnational spaces and ritual activities of Bawa's communities, mapping parallel shrines and pilgrimages. It examines the roles of culture, religion, and gender and their impact on ritual embodiment, drawing attention to the global range of a Sufi community through engagement with its distinct Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, and Christian followers.
The first in-depth study of the first Sufi Shrine in North America, examining its transnational context and challenging current theories of Islam in the West.
The first study of the historical development of the first Sufi shrine in North America
Challenges current conceptualizations of Islam in the West
Includes extensive ethnographic data from America and Sri Lanka
Acknowledgments
List of Images
Introduction
1, Charting Bawa's Ministries from Jaffna to Pennsylvania
2.From the Ashram to Mankumban: Everyday Practices amongst Bawa's Sri Lankan Followers
3. From the Masjid to the Mazar: Rituals and Spaces in the American Fellowship
4. Women in Bawa's Ministries from Jaffna to Pennsylvania
5. Swami to Qutb: Bawa as al-Insan al-Kamil
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
This highly recommended study would work well at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in courses focusing on Sufism, method and theory in the study of religion, new religious movements, globalized religions, comparative spirituality, religion and immigration, and charismatic spiritual leaders.
A masterful, ground-breaking study. Combining textual analysis with ethnographic interviews, Xavier traces the remarkable life and enduring legacy of a charismatic, boundary-blurring spiritual teacher. The book reveals the complexity and fluidity of religious identity, sacred space, gender boundaries, and ritual piety within a global Sufi community. A beautifully written and provocative portrait of living Sufism in everyday practice.
Xavier offers many creative insights for understanding contemporary transnational Islam and Western Sufism as part of new configurations of sacred space that transcend the binary of East and West.
This is an important book on an important topic. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen and his heritage are key to understanding one really important aspect of Islam in a global world.
This book is a fascinating and original study. The book is scholarly, simply and directly written and will be of interest to scholars of Islam, diaspora, Sufism, and transnational studies, as well as religious sociology more generally.
- Title: Sacred Spaces and Transnational Networks in American Sufism: Bawa Muhaiyaddeen and Contemporary Shrine Cultures
- Author: Merin Shobhana Xavier
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2018
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781350026704, 9781350132436, 1350132438, 1350026700
- Resource ID: LLS:9781350026704
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-04-09T01:28:22Z
Merin Shobhana Xavier is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Ithaca College, New York, USA.