News

Pir Zia will be offering a variety of public events over the coming week, as well as programs and retreats in the US and Europe this summer! Links to details can be found below.

Maybe we will see you at one of these special gatherings? We hope so. We also hope to see your friends — please help us tell others! Thank you!

King Akbar’s Daughter: Tales for Everyone as Told by Noor Inayat Khan

Best known for her heroism as a clandestine Allied wireless radio operative in occupied Paris, Noor Inayat Khan had the distinction of being a published author of children’s poetry and stories in France when WWII upturned her future and led to her ultimate sacrifice in the cause of liberty.

Noor’s previously unpublished stories are presented here in new English translations alongside her original French language versions and her known English renditions.

On the misty morning of June 8th at the Abode of the Message, the Shama class of the Suluk
Academy celebrated its graduation.

As their project, the class cleared and marked an enchanting woodland trail, known as Jamil Loop, leading from Chair Factory Road (past the Abode farm and pond) to the Sanctuary atop Mt. Lebanon.

We have been born into a world that is fast changing. Never have so many men and women lived upon the earth. Never have men and women taken so much from the earth. The planet is groaning under the strain of our demands. Glaciers are melting, rivers turning toxic, rubbish heaping up, species vanishing—all that we may keep up a way of life that gives us happiness. But are we really happy?

By Saki Lee

Khankah Gathering Space

At the end of April, some eighty pilgrims from various Sufi communities met together at Fazal Manzil (“House of Blessing”), the home of Hazrat Inayat Khan and his family in Suresnes, France. For many it was their very first visit.

In the 1920s Sufi seekers used to gather in Suresnes, France each summer for two months of sacred study, practice, prayer, and remembrance. After the Second World War the municipality appropriated the large Sufi garden to make room for urban sprawl and the Summer School moved elsewhere.

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.