Word: sufi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Islam roughly what Hasidism is to Judaism. He believed that the soul and God are one and the same. The world, he taught the faithful, is but a tomb, temporarily separating the soul from its divine milieu. In order to release the imprisoned spirit, he taught the Sufi dervishes (Persian for beggars) to dance themselves into an ecstatic trance; all their movements were made in rhythm with the music of reed flutes, drums and tambourines...
Doris Lessing herself has gone the route from Marxist materialism to Sufi mysticism. The parallel with Orkney is quietly apparent. So is the meaning: that the beliefs one holds at various times are not always as important as the journey to and from them...
...riot that began when a 16-year-old boy was seized stealing a cheap penknife in a white-owned variety store. This was the height of the Depression, and for months Negroes had been mesmerized by the nationalistic "buy black" speeches of a Philadelphia Negro who called himself Sufi Abdul Hamid (real name: Eugene Brown). The rumor spread that the boy had been beaten to death, and though it was false, the mobs left four dead, 100 injured and $1,000,000 in property damage, largely to white stores...
...Simple theology, plural marriage, the promise and threat of mystics - judgment, the these were all military part of a tradition, the beautifully toleration and balanced the sufi machine which made converts faster and more smoothly than Christianity ever did in its most blessed days. In most areas where Moslems conquered Christians, the bulk of the people eventually be came Moslem.* Where Christians conquered Moslems few of the people embraced Christianity...
...Iran the militant faith of Mohammed grew into a violent, mystic evangelism, complete with its own saints, rituals and miracles. Through the centuries Iran became the home of the Sufi mystics and the whirling dervishes, wild-eyed ascetics who fascinated the marketplace in Teheran and Isfahan with their homemade trances and visions...