The Sufi Spirit

Download audio show transcript Sunday 27 November 2011 6:00PM

Prayer that brings a permanent awareness of the Divine Reality is the aim of Sufism first and foremost, which London based Sufi scholar, Reza Shah-Kazemi, believes is the key to its universality. Sufism's mystical universalism is what interests Hebrew University scholar, Sara Sviri, who reveals the fascinating phenomenon of 'Jewish Sufism'. Email

Transcript
Hide Rachael Kohn: 'You were born with wings. Why do you prefer to crawl through life?' No, this isnt an ode to a caterpillar. Its an appeal by the Sufi poet Jalaluddin Rumi to the spiritually downtrodden, to lift up your heart and allow your spirit to fly. Hello, Im Rachael Kohn. Todays Spirit of Things on ABC Radio National will open up a world of Islam which we dont often hear about: its mysticism. Sufism is best known in the West through the poetry of the 13th century Persian mystic, Jalaluddin Rumi. But he was following in a tradition laid down much earlier in Islam which revolved around prayer. Yet while prayer is central to the Sufi life of the spirit, its not the same as just saying the words. Its vitally different, and well hear how from my first guest, Reza Shah-Kazemi.

Later in the program, well hear from another expert in Sufism, Sara Sviri from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She opens up the fascinating phenomenon of Jewish Sufism.

Reza Shah-Kazemi is based in London, and is the managing editor of Encyclopaedia Islamica. Hes the author of several books on Islam and comparative religion, and he has a strong interest in comparative mysticism, including Indian, Christian and Sufi.

Reza Shah-Kazemi, welcome to The Spirit of Things.

Reza Shah-Kazemi: Thank you, it's a great pleasure to be here.

Rachael Kohn: You're here actually to launch your book called Spiritual Quest: Reflections on Qur'anic Prayer According to the Teachings of Imam Ali. Who was Imam Ali?

Reza Shah-Kazemi: Imam Ali was the son-in-law and the cousin of the Prophet. He was the husband of the only surviving progeny of the Prophet, his daughter Fatima. So through Ali and Fatima we have the spiritual nobility of the Muslim community, called the Sharifah, a nobility that is more of a spiritual nobility than a social one, a spiritual aristocracy you may say.

And he is revered by Shia Muslims and Sunni Muslims alike, and constitutes something of a bridge in relation to all of the spiritual traditions of Islam, bringing the Sufi tradition within Sunni Islam close to the Irfani within Shia Islam. Because he's known as, if you like, the first Imam of the Shia Muslims, the first spiritual leader, but he's also known as the first real mediating link between the Prophet himself and all of the Sufi brotherhoods that developed much later in the tradition who look back to Imam Ali as the founding father of the school of thought, the spiritual discipline known as Sufism.

Rachael Kohn: And Sufism is so much associated with prayer, with the importance of prayer as really the primary duty.

Reza Shah-Kazemi: Correct. Of the five pillars of Islam, the prayer comes immediately after the double testimony of faith. You affirm your belief in the oneness of God and in the Prophet Muhammad as his messenger, and thereafter you have prayer which is on a daily basis, and of the five pillars it's one that's repeated five times each day. But this prayer also enters into the spirit of all of the other rites of Islam, including the pilgrimage, which is basically a prolonged prayer over a series of days. It also infuses the consciousness with which one pays one's charitable dues to the poor, one of the other pillars of Islam.

Rachael Kohn: What do you mean by that?

Reza Shah-Kazemi: When you perform your prayers you are opening yourself up to a mode of consciousness which goes beyond the rational mind. You're opening yourself up to the spirit of ultimate reality and you are becoming more aware with each prayer of why it is that that reality is described in terms of loving compassion, why it is that every chapter of the Qur'an except one begins with the formula 'in the name of God, the infinitely compassionate and the infinitely merciful'.

So, to go back to your question, what is the relationship between the prayer and the giving of charity, when you are praying and when you open yourself up to ultimate reality, your taste of the mercy and compassion, the goodness and the beauty of that ultimate reality is deepened and strengthened within you. And it's on the basis of that kind of opening to the beauty, the generosity, the compassion and the mercy of God that makes the giving of charity to others not so much a formal duty imposed from without, but a moral imperative surging from within. You want to give, you want to help others because you now know what that ultimate reality is and you want to be one with it. To be one with it requires charity, generosity, goodness.

Rachael Kohn: So this is fundamentally different from the idea of picking up scripture, looking at a prayer and simply saying the words to feel some kind of obligation.

Reza Shah-Kazemi: Very much so. In the beginning of course it is an obligation. As a child growing up in a Muslim context you are told 'you must say your prayers', but after some time, as you mature and begin to contemplate the meaning of what it is that you're saying in those prayers, you understand why it is that Imam Ali in this book that I'm launching, why I give as my opening quotation from him 'There is no benefit in worship without contemplation, there is no benefit in recitation without pondering what it is that you are reciting'. So the two things come together in prayer, from the Muslim point of view. What you are praying, what you're uttering are secret formula that have been revealed from God, and therefore you have a sacred efficacy to what you're saying.

Rachael Kohn: And wasn't that saying also repeated by Al-Ghazali in the 12th century, who said 'There is no good in a devotional act which is not understood, nor in a Qur'an reading that is not pondered'.

Reza Shah-Kazemi: Exactly. Al-Ghazali actually cites many sayings of Imam Ali, either explicitly or implicitly. Often he will just give a saying from one of his predecessors without saying this is necessarily Imam Ali. But Imam Ghazali's books are full of citations from Imam Ali and that is one of them indeed.

However, one can go a little bit too far in the opposite direction to say that the prayer only has goodness if you understand it. Imam Ali would immediately say to that that the prayer has additional meaning, it has a full plenitude of meaning and benefit if you understand to whatever degree what it is that you are saying. But the very recitation of the holy Qur'an, which is one of the main forms of prayer in Islam, according to Imam Ali when you are reciting the Qur'an you are inviting the divine word, and in doing so you are bringing the very nature of Nabuwat, of Prophethood, into your own being. Except, he adds, you will never become a prophet by doing this. It's as if you were causing the prophetic blessing to enter into your being, you are becoming more and more similar to the prophetic reality without ever becoming a prophet as such.

So the ideal from Imam Ali's point of view is to combine an understanding of the sacramental efficacy of the divine reality that is actually within the sonoral recitation. You hear it and you recite it and you're participating in the divine word in much the same way as in Christianity. One feels that one is entering into the very spirit and reality, the real presence, as it is said in Christianity, of Jesus through the Eucharist.

Rachael Kohn: It strikes me also as parallel to Judaism where the saying of the Torah in Hebrew is meant to be fundamentally different from simply reciting it in the translation, because in those words, and I think that's what you are saying, the Qur'an actually embodies the presence of God, Allah, and therefore hearing those words is actually bringing the presence into your space.

Reza Shah-Kazemi: Exactly. That's exact. The quintessence of the Qur'anic revelation is of course the name Allah itself, so much so that the Sufis have said that the Qur'an is the divine name differentiated, and the divine name is the Qur'an synthesised. So here we're going from Qur'anic recitation into what the Sufis would regard and what Imam Ali affirmed as being the most excellent form of worship, the repetition, the invocation of the divine name, of the name Allah or of the other names that God uses in the Qur'an to describe his nature.

Rachael Kohn: And is that practice Zikr?

Reza Shah-Kazemi: That's Dhikryes, in the Arabic it's a more difficult sound. Dhikr, and it becomes referred to as Zikr in Persian or Indian contexts. But the original Arabic is Dhikr, which means 'remembrance, invocation, repetition'. So it's a principle of consciousness first and foremost, but it also is a methodical practice

intended to precipitate that state of consciousness, which is permanent awareness of the divine reality.

Rachael Kohn: Can I just take you on a side path for a moment there? Today people want to understand these texts, perhaps without going through the difficult process of learning Arabic, and so they do resort to translation. And translation always raises up questions, either for the translator as to how to translate, or for the reader who suddenly sees more clearly what is being said or what they are repeating. And that prompts rival interpretations. And once you have that situation of rival interpretations you have the propensity for division and conflict and for sects to arise.

Reza Shah-Kazemi: Well, the Qur'an itself recognises and affirms the legitimacy and even the inevitability of diversity of interpretations, both across the religious spectrum and, as regards to the Qur'an itself, the inevitability of levels of meaning, because the Prophet of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad said that each verse of the Qur'an has seven levels of meaning. He also is reported as saying each has 70 levels of meaning. He said that each verse has an inward and an outward aspect, a limit and a point of assent. So he has indicated that the Qur'an must not be seen as something monolithic and unilateral. It is a scripture that is addressed to every individual according to the level of that person's intelligence and spiritual sensitivity.

So, schools of interpretation are something to be encouraged. And the spirit of dialogue that should emerge out of these diverse interpretations is one that is clearly given to us in verse 125 of chapter 16 in which it said 'Call unto the way of your Lord with wisdom and with beautiful exaltation, and only engage in dialogue in that which is most fine, most excellent, most beautiful'. This word ahsan can mean all these things. So this means both within Islam, within interpretations of the Qur'an, you engage in dialogue in a manner that's respectful and beautiful.

And also as regards the mode of dialogue with people in other faiths, the polemics that you find so often poisoning the dialogue between believers of different faiths is strictly precluded in the Qur'an, which actually refers to earlier polemics between Christians and Jews, each one saying that we alone are the chosen people, we alone enter paradise. And the Muslims are instructed to say when confronted with such polemical, mutual exclusivism, 'No, bring your proof of your claims if you're truthful, rather whoever submits his purpose completely to God and is virtuous, these people will receive their reward from their Lord. They will neither have fear nor grief.' Which is the formula of salvation, if you like, in the Qur'an; receiving a reward from the Lord without fear or grief.

And that is exactly what is stated in verse 62 of chapter 2 where if you ask the Muslim the question; who is it who has access to salvation? He would go to that verse most probably, whether he was a Sufi or a theologian or a philosopher, he would say, well, the Qur'an says this. I don't know who is saved, God only knows, but he says this in the Qur'an, that whoever believes in the Qur'anic revelation, and whoever is a Jew or a Christian or a Sabean, whoever believes in God and the day of judgement and acts virtuously, these people will receive their reward from their Lord, no fear or grief will befall them.

Rachael Kohn: But it does of course require belief in the Qur'an as the last and final word of God.

Reza Shah-Kazemi: In this verse you have a list of those who will receive their reward from their Lord. It begins, 'Those who believe' and you understand that that means those who believe in the Qur'an, and the next category of people do not in any way have to believe in the Qur'an to be included in the literal meaning of this verse because it says, 'Those who believe in the Qur'an (ie: the Muslims), those who are Jews, those who are Christians, those who are Sabeans' (a group about which there is difference of opinion who is being referred to here), but then you have a universal clause, 'whoever believes in God and the day of judgement and acts virtuously, they will receive their reward from their Lord and they will have no fear or grief. So it's a universalist opening to members of all faiths.

Rachael Kohn: London based, Reza Shah-Kazemi, a scholar of Sufism, outlining its universalist vision. Sounds quite different from the warning in the Qur'an not to take Christians and Jews as friends because Allah does not guide unjust people. Youre listening to The Spirit of Things on ABC Radio National and this is the Sufi spirit, which is very much about prayer:

Reza, let me ask you about the opening of the Quran, the Al-Fatiha I think it is called. What is its significance?

Reza Shah-Kazemi: It's the opening to victory. The other meaning of the word 'Fatiha', the root of it is 'fth' and it means it's the opening to that which gives you the victory from God. And it's the foundation of prayer in Islam. It begins with the same formula we referred to earlier, 'In the name of God, the infinitely merciful, the infinitely compassionate,' and it takes you through seven verses altogether.

And according to Imam Ali the whole of the Qur'an is contained in the Fatiha. The whole of the Fatiha is contained in the Bismillah Ir'Rahman Ni'Rahim. And so you have here an understanding that the whole of the Qur'an is actually a message of mercy. Because if you begin the Fatiha with 'In the name of God, the infinitely compassionate, the infinitely merciful', and Imam Ali is telling us that the whole of the Qur'an is contained within the Fatiha which is contained within this formula, implicitly he's telling us to find this message of mercy throughout the Qur'an.

And so, to begin with these seven verses 'In the name of God, the infinitely compassionate, the infinitely merciful, praise be to God, Lord of all the worlds, the compassionate, the merciful, king of the day of judgement, thee alone we worship and from thee alone we seek help. Guide us upon the straight path, the path of those whom thou hast blessed, not the path of those who are subjected to anger, nor of those who go astray.' That's the Fatiha, and in Arabic it's: Bismillahi r-rahmani r-rahim Al hamdu lillahi rabbi l-'alamin Ar rahmani r-rahim Maliki yawmi d-din Iyyaka na'budu wa iyyaka nasta'in Ihdina s-sirat al-mustaqim siratal-ladina an'amta 'alayhim gayril magdubi 'alayhim waladdallin Amin. One adds an 'Amin' at the end of uttering that prayer.

Rachael Kohn: I think you write in here that in the same way that that prayer is thought to contain almost the whole Qur'an in it, reciting the name Allah is also like reciting all of the Qur'an, that it contains within it the truth of God.

Reza Shah-Kazemi: Yes, that's a very good point. In one of the earliest revelations to the Prophet in which he is addressed as the one enwrapped in his shroud, in his garment, Al-Muzzammil, he is told to stand all night in prayer. This is when he is in Mecca and he is part of a very small band of persecuted Muslims in a sea of pagan worship, an oasis of monotheistic worship. And the Prophet is instructed to stand in prayer to keep vigil the night, all of it except a little of it, and to recite what has been

revealed to him of the Qur'an. But also he is told invoke the name of your Lord and devote yourself to it utterly.

So you can imagine that this Prophet standing all night long in prayer is repeating certain verses of the revelation that has come to him, but also spending hours, one would imagine, simply repeating the name of God, because at this stage not very much of the Qur'an has actually been revealed. And the Sufis based their Dhikr very much on these sorts of verses, and they interpret that particular verse I mentioned, 'Devote yourself to it with utter devotion', they say the 'it' can refer either to the name of God, Allah, or to the Lord himself, because the Arabic pronoun can refer either to the name or to the Lord. And for the Sufis, they say it's the same thing because the name is identical to the named, that when you are invoking the name of God, you are invoking nothing but the divine reality. So you are opening yourself up to the very source of the divine reality that expresses itself in multiple ways through the rest of the Qur'an.

Rachael Kohn: And how does that affect the actual human being who is reciting this name? Is there a sense that that person is attaining a quality of perfection?

Reza Shah-Kazemi: What's happening is a process of reducing one's imperfection. From the Sufi point of view, the only perfection really is the perfection of the perfect man, Al-Insan al-Kamil, who is the Prophet and who is the saint appointed by God for a particular function, the Insan al-Kamil it's called, the perfect human being, and it can be a woman as well is a man. 'Insan' is neutral as regards its gender, the perfect human being.

But for the ordinary Sufi, the ordinary Muslim, the point of invoking the divine name is not to attain that perfection for oneself, that is a gift that God bestows upon whom he chooses. So to use the idea of perfection as a goal would itself be regarded as somewhat proud, it would be regarded as hubris. So what you are thinking to do is to purify yourself of your impurities and bring to light within yourself your original human nature, the Fitrah, the primordial human nature according to which every human being is created.

God tells us in the Qur'an that he established a pattern for each and every human being, and that is immutable, it changes not from human being to human being, and it's also inalienable. So in Islam one never had the sense when one encountered other traditions or people who appear to be less civilised than oneself that these people were anything but embodiments of the Fitrah, of the primordial human nature, and that they may well have been recipients of the divine message, because the Prophet told us that

there are 124,000 prophets of God sent to humanity and that every community has its prophet.

So there is a plurality, a universality to this phenomenon of revelation which goes beyond even the people of the scripture who are named in the Qur'an, because the Qur'an tells us we have told you about some prophets, about others we have not told you. So it throws wide open the doors of our own discernment, of our investigation, of our research into the spirituality and the religions of all peoples on Earth, not only those that are mentioned explicitly in the Qur'an.

So this fundamental human nature is what we are born with, and the Prophet of Islam said that every child is born according to this Fitrah, this primordial human nature, his or her parents make the child a Jew or a Christian or a Zoroastrian. This is an immutable spiritual infrastructure, on the basis of which formal religion has to be established, but that infrastructure takes priority over the religious superstructure. And from that infrastructure of the spirit one has the potential of realising their meaning of divinity, through salvation, through sanctification.

And to go back to your question, what the Sufis are aiming to do through the indication of the divine name, it is first and foremost a moral purification, and this is referred to by Imam Ali as 'the polishing of the heart'. In one of his most wonderful commentaries on a Qur'anic verse, he says, 'Truly God has made it the remembrance, the Dhikr, a polish for the hearts, by means of which the hearts are beginning to see after being blind, they hear after being deaf, and they yields to God after being resistant.'

So here Iman Ali is referring to the various processes of moral, intellectual and spiritual purification that are set in train by this process of polishing, to which the Prophet of Islam also referred when he said that for everything there is a means of polishing away the dirt, the rust, and the means of polishing the heart is the remembrance of God. This is a kind of commentary in turn upon the verse in the Qur'an which says, 'That which they (human beings) have committed has rusted over their hearts.'

It makes one think of the Hindu notion of karma, that we perform actions, we indulge in attitudes, we engage with thoughts, all of which are contrary to the spirit of reality. And those actions, thoughts and attitudes rust over the organ of perception within us, which goes beyond our rational mind. Our minds may be very sharp, but if we have bad attitudes and bad actions, these rust over the spiritual organ of perception, preventing us from seeing anything beyond the senses, beyond the rational faculty,

because the Qur'an is very clear that it is through the heart that one sees reality, not through the eyes, and not through simply the rational mind.

Rachael Kohn: That sounds remarkably like the ancient Christian mystics who practised prayer of the heart, which I learned about from a visiting scholar to Australia, before he became the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. Today my guest is another Londoner, Reza Shah-Kazemi, an expert in Sufism. His book, Spiritual Quest, focuses on the teachings of Imam Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad.

Coming up later, Sara Sviri, a scholar of Sufism at Hebrew University, reveals the amazing phenomenon of Jewish Sufism, past and present.

Every generation has its spiritual trends, and for a while there, Sufism was sailing high, with Western movements like Dances of Universal Peace, founded in the late 1960s by Samuel Lewis, a Sufi Murshid (spiritual leader) and Rinzai Zen Master. I was keen to know what brought Reza to Sufism:

Well Reza, I can readily see why so many people have been drawn to Sufism because of that universality, and I wanted to know whether you were drawn to Sufism because of your interest in universality.

Reza Shah-Kazemi: It was more of a search for meaning within Islam that drew me to Sufism, it wasn't so much an opening to the universal dimensions at the beginning. I was struck when I started, I'm ashamed to say at a relatively late stage in my life, when I started to practice Islam in my late 20s, what I really was searching for was a spiritual path that would be a complement to the religious law. By this I mean in the verse 48 of chapter 5 God tells us that he has ordained for every community a path and a law, and this is a form of universality because God says if he wished he could have made humanity one religious community, one Ummah.

But he made us as we are in order to test us in relation to that which he has given us, different paths and different laws for different communities, different rites, different modes of spirituality, to enhance on the one hand the diversity within the unity of the human race, and on the other hand to allow us to get to know each other in mutual enrichment, this being given in the Qur'an as one of the main purposes for God establishing us as nations, tribes, races and so on, that we may come to know each other better. This mutual knowledge is very much part of the Qur'anic discourse.

So when in this verse 48 the reference is made to a Shira'a, which is a law, and a Minhaj, which is a path, there is a clear reference to the outer aspect of religion and the inner aspect of religion, the letter and the spirit. So after having begun to practice Islam on the formal plane, realising my need for prayer, for God in my life in a direct and dynamic and transformative fashion, I very quickly realised that in order to taste something of this divine reality more deeply, to open myself up to it more completely, I needed something more than the law, I needed the spirit. And it was the Sufis who were the custodians of the spiritual values of the tradition, imparting them to people in a way that harmonised with the outer aspect of the religion and didn't violate it or undermine it or contradict it.

The normative tradition of Sufism from the time it first was established in about the 2nd century of the Islamic era it began to acquire this name, Tasawwuf. The people who accepted this label or this reference were people who were fixated on the preservation and cultivation of the specifically spiritual values of Islam which were in danger of being engulfed by the worldliness and the formalism that were beginning to become entrenched as Islam grew into an empire where fortunes were being amassed and where rules and regulations were being codified.

The Sufis stood as witnesses to the essential otherworldliness of the religion, to move people away from a materialistic conception of life, a worldliness that was becoming part and parcel of this burgeoning empire, and to remind people that the mechanical performance of the rites and the rituals was not enough, they needed to cultivate the spirit and to imitate the Prophet himself in those night vigils that I was speaking about earlier. They're the ones who say, 'We are the Taifa' the Sufis most often referred to themselves as the Taifa or as 'the group' rather than as Sufis. Sufis are like the ones who have got to the end of the path.

The Taifa are the group or the tribe who are referred to at the end of the Surah AlMuzammil, the Surah I referred to earlier, where in the Medina phase of the Prophet's career when he was the head of state, engaged in campaigns, head of the large household, many, many duties, a judge, an arbitrator, and the leader of the Muslim community which now numbered thousands instead of just a few families, at this stage of his mission God says to him, 'Your Lord knows that you stand for prayer at night, a third of it, two-thirds of it, half of it. You do this, as do a Taifa, a group of people with you.'

It was only a small group who could stand at night in prayer for those hours in a monastic style, as it were, without being monks. These were people who were active

in the world but who at night would give themselves to prayer hour after hour, imitating the Prophet and receiving these blessings.

So the Sufis of later generations would much more frequently and modestly refer to themselves as 'the group', we are the group that wish to preserve and cultivate those values that the Prophet stood for and that the Taifa with him stood for at that part of his mission.

Rachael Kohn: Sufism today is still a small part of the very large Islamic tradition. In your ideal world, would it be a much larger part?

Reza Shah-Kazemi: Well, it was a much larger part for most of its existence as a phenomenon within Islam. If you look to the Ottoman Empire which for over 500 years ruled a diverse multi-ethnic, multi-religious empire, you see that Sufism was like the blood that ran through the veins of that empire. You had a whole number of different Tariqas, which you might translate roughly as a brotherhood, rather like a monastic brotherhood, but, as I say, these were people who would be actively involved in all levels of society, even to the point of engaging with the emperors themselves who would often be members of Sufi Tariqas, and if not they would patronise them. So the spirituality of Sufism was very much part and parcel of the culture of the Muslim world in all of the empires from about the 12th century onwards.

In the Middle Ages when the brotherhoods was established you found tens of thousands of Sufis who would also be responsible, in a sense, for giving the guilds a sense of direction. Artisans, peasants, they would belong to guilds that gave them a professional corporate identity, and that identity was very often linked to a Sufi Tariqa.

And it was the Sufis who by and large were the most successful missionaries of Islam. It's often said very falsely and against all the evidence of history that Islam was spread by the sword. If you look at the processes by which Islam was spread, you will see that Islam as an empire was indeed an empire of conquest, as were the other empires at the time, but when you ask how did people become Muslims, you'll see that it was the Sufi preaching that was very attractive to non-Muslims, and that there was no evidence of forceful conversion into Islam, quite the contrary. The Muslim rulers were actually much happier to have their Christian and Jewish populations remain Christian and Jewish because the tax they received from them was higher as a religious minority than if they were Muslim. So there was an economic motivation for

the rulers to ensure that their subject populations remained what they were, Christian or Jewish or otherwise.

In a great work by Thomas Arnold called The Preaching of Islam, he says that the merchant and the mystic, these were the preachers, the most successful ones, for Islam, it wasn't a soldier or the ruler. The ones who made Islam attractive and allowed people to see the beauty and the dignity and the spirituality of the tradition were these merchants who were often themselves members of a Sufi brotherhood.

Rachael Kohn: Well, Reza Shah-Kazemi, thank you for allowing us to see the beauty of Sufism in your words and in your book, Spiritual Quest. Thank you so much for being on The Spirit of Things.

Reza Shah-Kazemi: Thank you Rachael for being such a graceful host.

Rachael Kohn: Reza Shah-Kazemis book is Spiritual Quest: Reflections on Quranic Prayer According to the Teachings of Imam Ali, published by the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London. And he was brought to Australia by the Prince Aga Khan Shia Imami Ismaili Council for Australia and New Zealand.

[Music: 'Travelling Hacham', Breakfast in Baghdad, Kim Cunio and Heather Lee]

The music youre hearing, composed by Kim Cunio, could be described as a combination of Sufi and Jewish influences.

Judaisms link to Sufism goes back almost a thousand years, when Moses ben Maimon, known as Maimonides, was the leader of the Jewish community in Egypt and a doctor to the caliph. His son Abraham succeeded him, and therein lies a tale. Today in Israel there are Jewish Sufis, which may or may not be why Sara Sviri, Professor of Arabic and Comparative Religion at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, became a specialist in Sufism and Sufi prayer as a means of repentance or conversion of the heart.

Sara Sviri: Id like to give you one example which really developed into a practice, but practice which is associated with Sufism and not necessarily with other types of Islamic piety, and this is Dhikr. Dhikr means remembrance of God. It has many different meanings in fact, and in orthodox Islam even the Qur'an is called Dhikr, meaning this thing by which God is remembered or in which God is mentioned.

But in Sufism it has become into a practice in the sense of you take time in different periods of the day to repeat either audibly or inaudibly the names of God or sacred formulae. Like, for example, 'la ilaha il Allah'. This is of course connected with the Shahada. The Shahada has two parts, the Islamic confession, one relates to God and the other relates to the Prophet Muhammad. But the Sufis will usually repeat the first part of the formula, 'la ilaha il Allah', 'there is no God but God'. Or they may shorten it into just repeating the name 'Allah, Allah, Allah', in a very particular intonation. Or someone will reduce it even further and leave only the sound 'hu, hu, hu', which also means 'he', et cetera. And so it becomes a practice that people get more and more involved with, and this is supposed to bring them into some sort of cleaning the inner spaces or getting closer to God.

Rachael Kohn: Sara, with the many names of God, I wonder whether there is a connection to the Jewish practice in Kabbalah of the many names of God.

Sara Sviri: Well, there must be, and in fact we can go on and on when we try to dig into the past and origins, and we don't want to do that of course, but I think it's worth mentioning a very ancient Jewish book which is considered mystical. It's a known as Sefer Yetzirah, or The Book of Creation. Nobody knows when exactly it was composed, who composed it, but it is ancient, that's for sure. The great scholars tried to convince us how ancient it is. And its idea is the world is created by letters and words, even less than words, by letters. So this idea you can find also in Islam, also in ancient traditions. So from this point of view Islam has kind of developed a basically Jewish idea.

But then it developed it in its own way, and when it comes back in Judaism later, let's say 12th, 13th, Kabbalistic sources, this is already developed in a Jewish way. So we have interesting...like we can use the metaphor of a tree, like there is the trunk or there are the roots which are common, and from these roots and trunk, branches evolved and they are different.

Rachael Kohn: Well, when you were describing the Sufi practice of repeating the names of God, one gets a sense that it would have put the practitioner into a

psychological state that might be close to a trance. I wonder whether there were similar efforts at the same time in Judaism or not.

Sara Sviri: First of all let me ascertain that the idea of Dhikr is it really to make possible other states of consciousness. And I must say, whether you want to leave it or not it's up to you, but I must say that one year students and myself went to visit a Sufi sheikh in Sakhnin, which is in Galilee, and there was a circle of Dhikr...now, only the men could participate, but my students, some of them Jewish, some of them Muslim, participated in the circle of Dhikr. One of them in particular definitely got into a trance state. So, it is evident, it is not just books, you can see it.

As for Judaism...let me tell you something interesting from the point of view of making connections. There is something which is known in history and in scholarship as Jewish Sufism. Jewish Sufism is a term that scholars invented. No Jew actually called themselves a Jewish Sufi, except now today in Israel there are people who call themselves Jewish Sufis. What I'm referring to is groups of people who lived in Egypt in the 12th, 13th, 14th century, and they were practising in a very similar way to Sufis. Interestingly enough, one of the main figures in this tradition was the son of Maimonides, Rabbi Abraham Maimonides, he was a rabbi, he was the leader of the congregation. But he was extraordinarily interested in the Sufi phenomena which he saw, where he lived in Fustat, which is old Cairo.

In respect of the Dhikr, there is also an affiliated practice Sufi...I'm talking about the Muslim Sufism, a practice which is called Sama. Sama means listening, but it developed into some sort of...people call it sometimes spiritual concert, where people seeing or listen to singing or recite poetry. And via this practice, which is not a Dhikr, it's different but it's connected...via this practice of Sama which, as I say, means 'listening', they get into ecstatic moods.

Now, to go back to Abraham Maimonides, he used to tell his students, 'Go out and look for these Sufis on the mountains and wherever they are when they practice this Sama, because in fact that was a practice used by the ancient Hebrew prophets.' He used to give the example, and it's in one of his books, at least in one of his books, where he says you remember in the Bible the story about Saul, when he comes down from meeting with Samuel, which was a very traumatic meeting, and on the way he meets a group of what the Bible calls 'bene ha-'elohim' which means 'the children of the Prophet' or 'the sons of the Prophet'. And what are they doing? They are playing with cymbals and flutes and all kinds of musical instruments. And the Bible says, 'And the spirit of God descended upon Saul and he also uttered words of prophecy.' And thence the proverb: 'Is Saul also among the prophets?'

So Abraham Maimonides used to tell this, tell his students that Jews of our time, of mediaeval times, have lost it, we lost it, but this is a biblical tradition, so go out, look out for these Sufis because they preserve the biblical tradition. So there you are.

Rachael Kohn: That is an extraordinary story Sara, I think many people don't know about that. I wonder whether the Sufi tradition of singing, of repeating the names of God, of searching for and opening of the heart, whether this was in any way transmitted, or did it die with Abraham Maimonides?

Sara Sviri: No, it definitely didn't die with Abraham Maimonides. First of all in Egypt itself there were other descendants of the house of Maimonides who kept this practice and wrote about it, and he had disciples in this fashion. But since our time is very short and we cannot go into the lengthy history, I will focus on another period which relates to your question, and this is a 16th century Safed. Now, 16th century Safed, as most people know, has become a Kabbalistic centre.

Rachael Kohn: And of course Tzfat is here in Israel.

Sara Sviri: Yes, yes, you say it's Tzfat so I will also say it's Tzfat, because I wasn't sure whether it's all right to say it's Tzfat or Safed or Zefat, it's here in Galilee in upper Galilee, and in the 16th century it was a very important Kabbalistic centre. But people discover more and more how the poetry that was sung thereand it was a period immersed in poetry. For example, I will mention maybe the name of Israel Najara whose poetry is still sung today in synagogues. And they wrote poetry, and on top of the poem they used to write 'this is to be sung in the melody of such-and-such a poem' and they would mention a poem or melody in Turkish, because we are here in the Uthmanic Empire, the Jews live under the Uthmanic Empire

Rachael Kohn: The Ottoman Empire.

Sara Sviri: The Ottoman Empire, and culturally it's a different era. It's not even an era where Arabic is spoken so much. But the ear is accustomed to melodies which come from Turkey or from Greece or from Spain for that matter, and Jews are called upon to pour their hearts out in poetry in Hebrew, but poetry that is sung in Ottoman melodies.

Rachael Kohn: Today many people in Australia and around the world are quoting the poetry of Jalaluddin Rumi, a Sufi who wrote in Persian, and who ended up in Turkey. I think he began actually in Afghanistan, that's where he was born. But his poetry is so appealing to people today because it seems to speak in a universal language.

Sara Sviri: Yes, absolutely, you know, Jalaluddin Rumi, many people know has become a bestseller in...of course one should say it's in English rendering, which is very beautiful, by Coleman Barks mostly, there were also other translators. And you are right, it's very appealing because it touches on the common denominator of the human heart, on love, on longing, on missing the beloved, on different states of mind, et cetera. And he is really an extraordinary phenomenon of how religion can touch people's hearts, never mind whether they are Jews or Christians or Muslims and so on. And this is so today. But as far as we know it was also in the 13th century when he lived in Konya, and it is told that in his funeral there were people of all denominations, including Jews and Christians and of course also his many Muslim followers.

Rachael Kohn: Well, what about today? And in Israel, a place where we have Christians, Jews and Muslims also trying to find a peaceful footing. You've mentioned that there are Jewish Sufis here in Israel, and perhaps you count yourself as one yourself?

Sara Sviri: No, I'm not sure that I count myself as one, simply for the reason that I don't like denominations, I don't like to be called by names anyway. But there is definitely...I'll mention just one group, there are several groups but one group that I may want to mention is what is known as The Path of Abraham. It is in Hebrew 'Derech Avraham', in Arabic it is 'Tariqat il-Ibrahimiya' which translates into English 'The Path of Abraham'.

And this is very interesting because the people in this group are Jews but also they have become very strongly affiliated to Muslims Sufis. Whether they are Christians or not I don't know, perhaps, it is possible. And they also think...when they call it The Path of Abraham they think obviously about the patriarch Abraham who heads the three monotheistic religions, but they also think of Abraham Maimonides, the son of Maimonides, who was so inspired by a Sufism, as I said, in 12th century Egypt.

Rachael Kohn: What is your opinion of this movement? Do you think it is possible to forge a bridge, a gesher, between Jews and Muslims using this more spiritual path as opposed to a political or social one?

Sara Sviri: Yes, I am sure, I'm very positive about thinking that that is probably at the moment perhaps the only way for people to open their ears and hearts to the beautiful legacy of the others. I think that it is bound to stay a very minor...sort of like a ripple more than a wave in the very, very turbulent times that we live now. And it's good that it is so. I don't mean by that to say that it's good that not so many people adhere to such views, but I mean there always has to be something underneath, something working almost in a subversive way, underneath the surface. And so it should be.

Rachael Kohn: Said like a true student of mysticism.

Sara Sviri: I believe that I have learned a thing or two.

Rachael Kohn: Well Sara, I know that I have learned a thing or two from you and I'm sure many of the people listening to our conversation today will have too, so I want to thank you so much for being on The Spirit of Things.

Sara Sviri: Thank you very much Rachael, you came all the way from Australia, and I hope that things that you record here will carry forward.

Rachael Kohn: Professor Sara Sviri is in the Department of Comparative Religion in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where she specialises in Sufism, Jewish mysticism, meditative practices, dreams, and mystical consciousness.

Later in the week you can read a transcript of todays program, but in the meantime to listen again or catch something you missed, just go to our website and download the audio at abc.net.au/rn/spiritofthings. You can also find details of the music today, which was chosen by Geoff Wood.

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Sound engineering today was by Menny Wasserstrom.

Imagine what the world would look like if Goddess were in charge. Next week, we hear from women who are championing Goddess instead of God, how it helps them live a better life than the one they had, and what their religion does for the planet, healing and society. Im Rachael Kohn, join me for 'O My Goddess!' next week, on The Spirit of Things.

Guests
Reza Shah-Kazemi is a research associate at the Institute of Ismaili Studies (IIS), established in 1977 by His Highness the Aga Khan with the object of promoting scholarship and learning of Muslim cultures and societies, historical as well as contemporary, and a better understanding of their relationship with other societies and faiths. The institute's programs encourage a perspective that is not confined to the theological and religious heritage of Islam, but seeks to explore the relationship of religious ideas to broader dimensions of society and culture. Dr Reza has authored several books published by the Institute and is also the managing editor of Encyclopaedia Islamica, a projected 16-volume encyclopaedia on Islam and the Muslim world being produced by the IIS in conjunction with E.J. Brill. His books include Paths to Transcendence: According to Shankara, Ibn 'Arabi and Meister Eckhart (2006) and The Other in the Light of One: The Universality of the Qur'an and Interfaith Dialogue (2006). Sara Sviri is a Faculty Member in the Department of Arabic Language and Literature, Department of Religious Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Publications
Title Spiritual Quest: Reflections on Qur'anic Prayer According to the Teachings of Imam 'Ali Author Reza Shah-Kazemi Publisher The Institute of Ismaili Studies, Occasional Papers 3 / I.B.Tauris, 2011

Music
Track Verses from the Divan i Shams i Tebris Artist Ensemble Capella Floriani Album Songs of the Soul Composer:

Rumi Description CD details: On Q Multimedia ONQ001 Track The Shepherd and Bahira Artist Kim Cunio (flutes, baglama, oud) & Tunji Beier (zarb) Album Ishq: Music for The Arts of Islam Composer: Kim Cunio Description CD details: Lotus Foot/ Art Gallery of NSW LFP 110.2 Track Ali Mullah Artist Transglobal Underground, with Natacha Atlas Album Rejoice Rejoice Composer: Trad. arr. Mantu/ Kasiek/ H. Khan/ Atlas Description CD details: Nation Records NRCD1073 Track Travelling Hacham Artist Kim Cunio & Heather Lee Album Breakfast in Baghdad Composer: Kim Cunio Description CD details: Lotus Foot LFP105.2

Further Information
Dr Reza Shah-Kazemi Dr Reza was invited to Australia by His Highness Prince Aga Khan Shia Imami Ismaili Council for Australia and New Zealand to promote his recent book Spiritual Quest, and to address the Ismaili Communities at various capital cities, Australian academics, Church leaders, politicians and the Australian public on the esoteric and intellectual nature of the Islamic faith as depicted in the Holy Qur'an. Dr Reza also delivered a seminar at the University of Western Sydney's Centre for the Study of Contemporary Muslim Societies, which is among the recipients of a multimillion dollar government grant to develop centres of excellence in Islamic studies. Sara Sviri's Online Academic Profile Sara's primary research interests include medieval Islam and Judaism, Sufism, Philosophy and Mysticism.