The son of Shàh Maghsoud, Saleheddin Ali Nader
Angha, heads a separate organization known as the
MTO (Maktab Tarighat Oveyssi) or the Shah-
maghsoudi School of Islamic Sufism with over
39 centers in North America. The membership is
drawn from both the Persian émigré and American
convert Muslim communities. Women have a high
degree of leadership within the movement and run
a number of the local centers, giving lessons and
teaching Sufi practices. Rituals (the dhikr) of the
MTO are performed with males and females seated
separately but in the same space. Head covering is
not required although both genders generally wear
white clothing for the ceremonies. A number of the
female members of the movement have published
works related to Sufism, including California psy-
chologist Dr. Lynn Wilcox, Linda O’Riordan, Bar-
bara Larsen, Soraya Behbehani, Farnaz Khoromi,
Melvina Noel, and Avideh Shashaani.
Another prominent American Sufi woman is Dr.
Laleh Bakhtiar of Chicago, who has been affiliated
with several Sufi orders. She is a writer in the fields
of Sufi thought and psychology and edits and trans-
lates classical Sufi and Islamic sources.
Gray Henry is an American woman who was
initiated into the Shàdhilìorder. Through the
publishing houses Islamic Texts Society and Fons
Vitae, which she founded, Henry makes available
scholarly translations of works on Islamic spiritu-
ality for both the serious seeker and the academic
classroom.
In the African American Muslim community
Sufismhas not played a very large role. African
American Muslims usually join Sharì≠a-oriented
movements such as the Bawa Muhaiyadeen Foun-
dation and the Naqshbandì-Haqqànìorder. In
African-based immigrant movements such as the
Tijàniyya, the Bur™àniyya, and the Murìdiyya the
leadership is largely drawn from African immi-
grants, and therefore women’s leadership roles
have not been prominent.Bibliography
N. Angha, Principles of Sufism, Fremont, Calif. 1991.
L. Bakhtiar, Sufi women of America. Angels in the mak-
ing, Chicago 1997.
L. Banner, Finding Fran. History and memory in the lives
of two women, New York 1998.
C. Helminski, Women of Sufism. A hidden treasure,
Boulder, Colo. 2003.
M. Hermansen, What’s American about American Sufi
movements?, in David Westerlund (ed.),Sufism in
Europe and North America, New York 2004, 36–62.
S. Reinhertz, Women called to the path of Rumi. The way
of the whirling dervish, Prescott, Ariz. 2001.
G. Webb (ed.), Windows of faith. Muslim women scholar
activists in North America, Syracuse, N.Y. 2000.772 sufi orders and movements
L. Wilcox, Women and the Holy Quran. A Sufi perspec-
tive, Riverside, Calif. 1998.
Sufi Women Organization, Sufi women. The journey
towards the beloved, Novato, Calif. 1998.Marcia HermansenWestern EuropeThe reception of Sufism
When European research about the “Orient”
began in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–
1832) included Islamic and especially Sufi motifs
in many of his poems, serving to introduce some
of the ideas of Islamic mysticism in the West.
Founders of European Islamic studies such as Ignaz
Goldziher, Carl Heinrich Becker, and Christiaan
Snouck Hurgronje saw Sufism as functioning to
close the gaps between Islamic law, theology, and
individual piety, and Sufism was labeled as second-
ary to the dominant development of orthodox
Islam. Not until the middle of the twentieth century
did Sufism come to be understood by European
scholars as an integral part of the cultural heritage
of Islam and as a widely influential power in the
development of the religion. In recent years, Sufism
has also been transformed into a medium for deal-
ing with East-West philosophy and cultural global-
ization by Western researchers and believers.The establishment of Sufi
groups and orders
Sufism in Western Europe has developed in three
primary types. First is that developed by Westerners
in the early twentieth century looking for sources of
religious and spiritual truth outside the Christian
church. Second, since the 1960s Muslim labor
migrants have brought traditional Sufi orders and
practices to the West. Third, today there are
Western Sufi orders which are mixtures of the first
two types.Westernized Sufi Groups
Some extraordinary forms of Sufi practices at-
tracted Western intellectuals and travelers. One of
the first travelers to be initiated into a Sufi order
was a woman, the Russian Isabelle Eberhardt
(1877–1904). In 1900 she became a member of the
Qadiri order in Tunisia, but she died four years
later. The initiation of the Swiss Fritjof Schuon
(1907–98) in 1932, and more especially of Georges
Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1866–1949), had a serious
impact on the spread of Sufism. Gurdjieff was a