I’ll Register as a Muslim
As poisonous as the southern border bigotry has become, as raised to consciousness as that is and as it demands, now, our action ought to include, I must say this, too, because I remain convinced it’s in the offing.
I will register as a Muslim if/when government requires American-Muslims formally to register with the state.
Gumming up that work, slowing down bad government’s efforts to suppress the Bill of Rights, to demonize and demean and further render to subjugation additional vulnerable whole classes of persons, is what I can do, what we can do.
Commit to such an act. Join me.
07/03/2019 @ 10:45 pm
I’m in.
07/04/2019 @ 9:25 am
I’m in….
07/04/2019 @ 11:00 am
As a member of several Sufi orders, I actually AM a Muslim. Back when I was actively involved, it was necessary to perform the shahadda (profession of faith) in order to be initiated into a Sufi order. Still a Jew. Still an atheist.
After 9/11, Sufi communities across the United States took steps to remove or cover up the Arabic writings on the walls of their meeting places. Took years before we felt safe taking those coverings down.
07/04/2019 @ 11:05 am
I once attended, (70s) an in-home concert w Shlomo Carlbach and his fellow musicians, all Sufis. Fascinating evening.
07/04/2019 @ 4:30 pm
Yes, I knew Shlomo and several other rebbe-dervishes, including Samuel Lewis and Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. One of Zalman’s acolytes, Moshe Blatt, actually conducted my wedding. At Beit Hatfutsot, the Museum of the Diaspora in Jerusalem, there was once a slide show of Jewish wedding customs around the world. There was an American Hippie Wedding frame in the slide show that was taken at my wedding, with Moshe Blatt officiating.
One of the most significant historical Jewish-Sufi connections was the relationship between Moses Maimonides (Ramdam) and Salah ad Din, the first sultan of the Egyptian caliphate. Maimonides was the sultan’s court physician, and served as a go-between for the Crusaders and the Muslim during the Crusader occupation of Jerusalem.
Maimonides’ son, Abraham ben Moses ben Maimon, was reportedly the sheik of a Sufi order while at the same time the leader of the Egyptian Jewish community of that period
Another Jewish Muslim Rabbi, Sabbatai Zevi, was also associated with the Sufis, eventually converting to Islam entirely…but his life’s work shattered the Jewish community with his pretentious of actually being the Messiah.
When the founder of the new Hassidic movement, Israel ben Eliezer (Baal Shem Tov) first appeared in the 1726 at age 18, his movement (the new Hassidic movement differentiated from the one that flourished just before the destruction of the Second Temple), was nearly strangled in its infancy by the orthodox community.
Israel Baal Snem Tov (the man is known by many names) also had to deal the fallout from the Jacob Frank episode. Jakub Lejbowicz (anglicized as Jacob Frank) was another heretical rabbi who picked up where Sabbatai Zevi left off. The Baal Shem sided with the Talmudists against the Frankists, who claimed that Frank was in fact the awaited Messiah, which made little sense after Frank’s conversion to Christianity. Frank was in fact the original Jew for Jesus, a movement that descends from the Frankist cult.
In form and effect, the Bresht’s hassids were very much like the Muslim Sufis, ecstatics who practiced a discipline of meditation, combined with dance, recitations, and joyous behaviors that seems inconsistent to outsiders even today who do not know about the ecstatic nature of modern Hasidim.
So, how does one differentiate between genuine mystical movements and manipulative cults? One of the keys determinants is actually the rejection of dogma. For example, real sufis have no specific dogma other than the right to free will which seems to be the only theme that all legitimate dervish orders agree upon. Sufis are relativists. Religionists tend to be absolutists.
This was probably a ridiculous amount of excess, but this is one of the subjects that I have obsessed about throughout my life and you gave me a chance to air out some of my accumulated chiceraro,