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New York 1998.Marcia HermansenThe United StatesIn the United States Sufi orders range from uni-
versal or New Age movements whose membership770 sufi orders and movements
is largely Euro-American to transplanted commu-
nities of recent Muslim immigrants. Other Amer-
ican Sufi orders are hybrids of traditional Islamic
and modern Western attitudes, practices, and
individuals.
To the degree that Sharì≠a-based rituals are incor-
porated by a particular Sufi order, gender distinc-
tions become visibly operative in its functioning in
America. In the more strictly Islamic Sufi move-
ments such as the Naqshbandì-£aqqànìorder led
in the United States by Shaykh Hishàm Kabbànì,
deputy and son-in-law of Shaykh NàΩim, women
participate in the gender segregated rituals but are
not accorded formal leadership roles. Female mem-
bers of the leaders’ families are viewed as role mod-
els for women disciples.
In the case of many American Sufi women, gen-
der segregation and other restrictions on female
participation are likely to provoke some discom-
fort. This leads to a subversive quality in these
women’s reflections on Sufism in which they chal-
lenge normative Islamic concepts and cultural
expectations regarding maleness and femininity
and gender-specific roles. It is noteworthy that
when Western women visit Sufi teachers in the
Muslim world they are often accorded privileges of
the shaykh’s company and occupying male spaces
denied to local females. The symbolic masculiniza-
tion of Sufi women in American orders may include
the adoption of symbols of affiliation and authority
that were traditionally unique to men such as wear-
ing special caps or robes.
It is said that Sufism was first brought to the
United States in 1912 by the Indian Chishtìteacher,
£aΩrat Inàyàt Khàn. His teachings evolved into a
universalist interpretation of the unity behind all
Prophetic revelations inspired by the same spirit
of guidance. After Khàn’s untimely death in 1926
his movement was revived by his son, Pìr Vilàyat
Khàn, in the 1970s and joined for a time by disci-
ples of an American Sufi, Murshid Samuel Lewis
(1971). Eventually Lewis’s disciples broke off to
form their own movement, the Sufi Islamia
Ruhaniat Society, now an international movement
including practitioners of the Dances of Universal
Peace developed by Lewis. Inàyàt Khàn initiated a
number of Western women as Sufi teachers (mur-
shidas) and himself married an American. Today
his grandson, ZiàInàyàt Khan, directs the move-
ment in the United States.
American Sufi movements of Turkish origin, the
Halvetì-Jerrà™ìs and Mevlevìs, are particularly
interesting in terms of the extent of their female par-
ticipation and leadership. The Halvetì-Jerrà™ìorder
was brought to America by Shaykh Muzaffer Ozak