April 2013

On April 6^th the Parvana class of the Suluk Academy celebrated its graduation at Fazal Manzil in Suresnes. The members of the class hail from France, England, Ireland, Scotland, Holland, Norway, Germany, Switzerland, Lithuania, and Spain.

Last September the Suluk Academy had the honor of hosting Huzur Sayyid Ahmad Shah Chishti Maududi, the root lineage-bearer of the Chishti Order, based in Herat and Chisht Sharif, Afghanistan. Huzur Sayyid Ahmad Shah recently sent the kind letter below, indicating that it should be publicly shared.

In India in the 1950s my father collected a large stack of old Sufi books in the form of lithographs and manuscripts. These books were mostly the works of saints of the lineage to which my father’s father belonged, and most of them have not been published since the nineteenth century. Among the authors represented were (by attribution) Khwaja Mu‘inuddin Chishti, the founder of the Chishti Order in India; Dara Shikuh, a Mughal crown prince and Qadiri Sufi; and Shah Kalimullah Jahanabadi, a major systematizer of Chishti teachings, and founder of the Kalimi line of the Chishti Order.

Meeting Bill McKibben

In February my family and I traveled to Washington D.C., where we visited the local Sufi circle, the Baraka Center, and took part in a major rally for environmental awareness and action. The rally, called Forward on Climate, was the largest climate march in U.S. history. Nearly 50,000 people assembled at the National Mall and marched to the White House, calling for meaningful political action on climate change. A movement is afoot, and Earth’s future hangs in the balance. For more on how to get involved, see Bill McKibben’s website 350.org.

In the century since Hazrat Inayat Khan brought the Sufi Message to the West, a number of lineages have developed and formed a variety of organizations.

Since the 1990s many of these groups have been coming together on an annual basis to overcome mutual misunderstandings, deepen friendships, and delve together into our common spiritual heritage. This gathering is known as the Retreat of the Federation of the Sufi Message.

Who would have thought that a peasant girl would lead the army of France in a heroic struggle and establish the rightful king on the throne? And yet Joan of Arc did just this. Six hundred years later, who would have thought that a demure young harpist and author of children’s stories would become the last link between the Allies and the Resistance in Nazi occupied Paris? And yet this is just what Noor-un-nisa Inayat Khan did. Like St. Joan, Noor-un-nisa paid the ultimate price and died a martyr’s death.