CSOC 443 & 543: Sufism: Islamic Mysticism; Music Dance and Identity

Chandra Khan

" Don't look at your form, however ugly or beautiful.
Look at love and at the aim of your quest. ...
O you whose lips are parched, keep looking for water.
Those parched lips are proof that eventually you will reach the source."
by: Rumi


Course Description

3 Unit.

In this course we will study the historical formations, practices, and aesthetic achievements of Sufism, and how it has greatly enriched the literary, aesthetic, artistic, and musical life of Muslim cultures. We will study the  development and spread of,  “Islamic mysticism” through the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and ultimately Europe and the United States. Moving beyond a focus on doctrines and practices, we will focus on Sufism in its social, cultural and historical contexts.  Through close readings of sufi texts we will study the metaphysical formulations of Ibn al Arabi  and  Al Ghazali, poetics, pilgrimage, and the traditions of love mysticism embodied by Rabia, Junayd, Al Hallaj, Farid ud Din Attar and Jalal ud din Rumi along with the  various meditative techniques of Sema and Dhikr.  Our focus will be on understanding why Sufi masters place so much emphasis on music, and dance commonly associated with the 'Whirling Dervishes' and how Sufi poetry, dance and music are used to  create an aesthetic experience,  an  'altered state of consciousness' to awaken the realities of one’s own self/identity. Our focus will be to study the relations of Sufism to spirituality as well as other aspects of cultural and intellectual life, and an appraisal of Sufism’s place in modernity and globalization of Islam.

Objectives
learn about different  view points about the absolute "truth/Reality" from diverse perspective,  In doing so, students become aware that no single perspective has an  absolute claim to Truth/validity.


Outcomes

  1. Students will understand the formation of Identity from multiple viewpoints in the construction of the self.
  2. To think about Ontological and epistemological questions from different perspective.
  3. To develop familiarity with the theory and cultural practice of Sufism and the role of dance and music in that practice.
  4. To think critically about religion, spirituality, aesthetic experience, mysticism and the self.
  5. Students become aware that there is no  single path to  absolute “Truth/Reality” that each person has a different quest to truth, which unites all path in  it self.

Required Readings: 

1. The Conference of the Birds (Penguin Classics) Online PDF  
 Farid ud-Din Attar (Author), Afkham Darbandi (Translator), Dick Davis (Translator, Introduction)
2. Sufism: A Short Introduction, . William C. Chittick,  
3. Islam An Introduction, Annemarie Schimmel,
4.Mystical Dimensions of Islam

Recommended Readings:

  1. S.M Nsar, Islamic Art and Spirituality
  2. Sufi Music from the world
  3. THE Masnavi

 

Kill me, my faithful friends,

For in my being killed is my life.

 

Love is that you remain standing

In front of your Beloved

When you are stripped of all your attributes;

Then His attributes become your qualities.

 

Between me and You, there is only me.

Take away the me, so only You remain

 

Al- Hallaj

From Music of a Distant Drum: Classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish & Hebrew Poems, trans. Bernard Lewis