Sufism in Canada

Weaving Islamic Practice and Contemporary Spirituality

Author: Geneviève Mercier-Dalphond and Merin Shobhana Xavier

Sufism in Canada considers how Sufism informs Islam and popular spirituality, opening new avenues of understanding about religiosity and Muslim identities in this country.

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Summary

Sufism in Canada considers how Sufism informs Islam and popular spirituality, opening new avenues of understanding about religiosity and Muslim identities in this country.

Description

Whirling dervishes. Ecstatic experience. Historical and contemporary expressions of Sufism are suffused with spirituality, asceticism, and mysticism. Sufism in Canada asks how we can understand this fascinating religious practice in a specifically Canadian context and, by extension, how Sufism informs Islam and popular spirituality not only in Canada but across the globe.

Using case studies rooted in Canadian concerns and communities, scholars of Islamic studies, sociology, ethnomusicology, and history analyze the meaning and practice of Sufism in this country. They investigate the institutional and transnational histories of the Inayati, Halveti-Jerrahi, and Naqshbandi orders. They explore tensions between gendered Muslim spaces and Sufism as a universal spirituality. And they revisit old Sufi stories in a new landscape.

Sufism in Canada not only adds to a growing body of literature on Islam and Muslim identities in Canada, but also helps define new paths of exploration for this important field of study.

Critic Reviews

"Until recently, there has been nothing written about Sufism in Canada. This collection is exceedingly important."-- "Mark Sedgwick, author of Western Sufism: From the Abbasids to the New Age"

About the Author

Geneviève Mercier-Dalphond is an independent scholar in Islamic and gender studies whose work has appeared in Canadian Ethnic Studies, ReOrient: The Journal of Critical Muslim Studies, and the Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

Merin Shobhana Xavier is an associate professor of religion and diaspora at Queen's University. She is the author of The Dervishes of the North: Rumi, Whirling, and the Making of Sufism in Canada and Sacred Spaces and Transnational Networks in American Sufism: Bawa Muhaiyaddeen and Contemporary Shrine Cultures, and a coauthor, with Meena Sharify-Funk and William Rory Dickson, of Contemporary Sufism: Piety, Politics, and Popular Culture.

Contributors: Sara Abdel-Latif, Emily Victoria Hanlon, Marcia Hermansen, Amina Jamal, Naïm Jeanbart, Atif Khalil, Maryam Khan, Abdul-Rehman Malik, Alia O'Brien