1 1 South Asian Sufis: Devotion, Deviation and Destiny Marcia Hermansen Loyola University Chicago South Asian Sufism in America South Asian Sufism has a long and variegated history and presence in America. Some of the complexity of the topic should be indicated at the outset. One dimension is that South Asia extends beyond India and Pakistan to include Sufi trends from Sri Lanka and even Fiji. Further, America extends beyond the United States, and although I know little of Mexican developments, Canada, which has received so many South Asian immigrants, has been and continues to be a center for Sufi movements. How we define Sufism also needs to be elaborated. The strictest definition might limit the discussion to initiatory Sufi orders that have a discrete identity and inculcate some form of exercises and guidance toward individual development along with collective spiritual practice. Beyond that, however, we find South Asian influences both among universalist groups that invoke the name Sufi with minimal reference to Islamic identity or practice, and within South Asian post-tariqa movements such as Deobandism, Barelvism and Tablighi Jama'at that may have little or no scope for initiation or individual Sufi practice alongside collective activities. In the United States, three types of Sufi movements emerged over the 20th century. One strand of movements, more universalistic in outlook, invoked Sufism and some aspects of Muslim tradition, but did not demand formal conversion to Islam of their adherents. The earliest, most well known, and successful of these movements was that brought by the Indian Chishti Sufi, Hazrat Inayat Khan (d. 1927). Other universalist Sufi movements include branches or offshoots of the Inayat Khan movement such as the Sufi Movement, the Sufi Islamiyat Ruhaniyat Society, and the Dances of Universal Peace (Samuel Lewis) that are more remotely connected to South Asia. The Society for Sufi Studies (Idries and Omar Ali Shah) also included a South Asian element, for while Idries Shah claimed royal Afghan blood, he was born in Simla India and his father and grandfather were born in British India as well.
2 A second type of South Asian Sufi movement, while substantially recruiting among Americans, has a grounding in the Islamic shari'a (ritual law) and understands being Muslim as essential to spiritual progress within the Sufi tradition. In one of my early papers on the subject I termed such movements "hybrids"." Most of the leaders of these movements have been immigrants from Muslim societies. Notable among South Asian movements of this type is the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship, established by a Sinhalese teacher, Guru Bawa (d. 1986). Even in this case there remains some ambiguity about the shari'a orientation since a substantial proportion of Bawa's pupils see his teachings as universal, rather than specifically Islamic. I can think of no other South Asian hybrid Sufi movement, although South Asian immigrants and their children have joined other non-South Asian hybrid movements, in particular the Naqshbandi-Haqqani Order led by the Cypriot, Shaykh Nazim, and directed in the West by Shaykh Hisham Kabbani, who