BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA:
Film title: Sufism: The Heart of Islam, Director: Robert Mull?an, Year Made: 1990, Country of production: United Kingdom, Language of film: English, Length of film: 90 minutes.
GENRE:
Documentary Film
SYNOPSIS:
The documentary Sufism: The Heart of Islam consists of three parts (Living Sufism, Eternal Life, Losing Self), guiding viewers through Sufi tradition across the globe, with a particular focus on Western Sufism. It begins with the Sufi community Bayt al-Dīn (House of Religion), founded by Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri in 1980 in Blanco County, near San Antonio, Texas, showcasing the daily routines and spiritual practices of the community and giving voice to its members. Then it travels to Egypt, featuring interviews with Western and Eastern Sufi teachers, while presenting Sufi rituals in Cairo in the background. Finally, it gives voice to various Western Sufi teachers, embodying both Islamic and universalist perspectives on Sufism.
The film explores various issues of the Sufi path through the voices of Sufi teachers, such as defining Sufism and its relationship to Islam, the role of the Sufi community and Shaykh, core practices and concepts like dhikr (remembrance of God), love, heart, ego (nafs), Sufi cosmology, and a critique of modernity.
BACKGROUND/CONTEXT:
Sufism: The Heart of Islam (1990) was directed by Robert Mulan (d. 2024), a British filmmaker, writer, and producer. Mulan started his career with documentaries and later expanded into feature films. He is known for his feature dramas: Letters to Sofija (Lithuanian: Laiškai Sofijai, 2013)and the award-winning (Galway Film Fleadh 2017; Newport Beach Film Festival 2017) film Mad to Be Normal (2017).
Sufism: The Heart of Islam is a three-part TV series that aired on Channel 4 in the UK on January 1, 1990. Unlike the earlier short documentary Islamic Mysticism: The Sufi Way (1979), created by American actress and documentary director Elda Hartley (Voelkel) (d. 2001), and Religious Studies Scholar and traditionalist thinker Huston Smith (d. 2016), which showcases different cultural expressions of Sufism around the world, this current documentary offers a more detailed look at how Sufism is understood and practiced in the West, along with its connections to Sufi traditions and teachers in Muslim-majority countries.
The film features voices of teachers from different backgrounds, ranging from more Islam-focused to universalist, showing the changes in the Western religious scene since the 1980s — often called the re-Islamization of Sufism in the West (Sedgwick). It also offers a unique look into the life of one of the American residential Sufi communities.
KEYWORDS:
TV Series, Popular, Sufism, Islam, Practices, Shaykh
ACADEMIC COMMENTARY:
Thedocumentary Sufism: The Heart of Islam explores Sufism, presenting it as the pure and inward dimension of Islam, a path for spiritual development and self-discovery, guided by teachers (Shaykhs) and represented by different communities. It portrays several Western Sufi communities and their teachers in connection with Sufi traditions in Muslim-majority countries.
Several Sufi speakers emphasize that Sufism is essentially Islam, often called the “pure Islam,” or “the heart of Islam” (Fadhlalla Haeri), and sometimes described as “the journey of the slave to the King” (Abdalqadir as-Sufi aka Ian Dallas). They see it as impossible to separate the two. A Sufi is described as a good Muslim who outwardly follows the sharīʿa (Islamic law) and inwardly seeks a deeper understanding behind the law. Nooruddeen (Stephen) Durkee explains the relationship between sharīʿa and Sufism as “a quantum state, which is if the sharīʿa is at one dimension and the ṭarīqa (Sufi path or order, O.Y.) is at another dimension, there is the flowering of that which is the ḥaqīqa (Truth, O.Y.), which is the truth of both that law which exists in the horizontal and the way which exists in its verticality into a flowering, into a globalness, into a spherical reality in which finally everything settles into place”.
Therefore, the majority of teachers in the film represent the vision of Sufism embedded in Islam. At the same time, female teacher Irina Tweedy introduces a dissident voice, claiming that there is no necessary connection between Sufism and Islam, and it aims to train the human being in spiritual life, to help the human being get rid of the ego (nafs). She understands this as a purification and ‘unlearning’, “We don’t learn spiritually. We have to unlearn what we have learned in this world”.
While this view is challenged by other Sufi teachers, who argue that Sufism cannot be separated from the whole reality of Islam, Fadhlalla Haeri emphasizes that the goal of Sufism is “to save ourselves from the tyranny of our own selves”, thus bridging the gap between Islamic and universalist understandings of Sufism.
The film explores Sufi practices in both Western and Eastern contexts, especially the ḥaḍra typical of the Shādhilīyya Sufi ṭarīqa and its branches. It literally means ‘presence’ and represents a collective Sufi dhikr, performed in a circle with rhythmic bodily movements, chanting divine names, Qurʾanic verses, or litanies, to enter the ‘presence’ of God. “It’s a symbol of unity in that we all stand in a circle and it’s a technique that we use to replace remembrance of anything else with the remembrance of Allāh”, claims Shaykh Abu Ali Fattah of Bayt al-Dīn community. Another Shaykh Mohsen Ibrahim al-Labban from Egypt claims that ḥaḍra consists of three parts: first, its makes man aware of what he is saying and develops a level of concentration and awareness of the words and sentences said, second it creates in man the situation where he becomes free in his actions, and finally develops the ability to be with yourself, with others, and with the environment. He also emphasizes that the Sufi path isn’t purely spiritual; it helps to cure bodily and mental issues of today’s man.
In summary, Sufism: The Heart of Islam provides deep insight into the teachings, practices, and community life of Western Sufism in the 1990s, connecting it with the broader global Sufi tradition. This makes it a valuable resource for the academic study of Sufism in the West.
Bibliography:
Eneborg, Yusuf Muslim. 2020. A Sufi for a Secular Age: Reflecting on Muslim Modernity through the Life and Times of Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri. PhD dissertation, University of Gothenburg.
Hermansen, Marcia. 2005. “The ‘Other’ Shadhilis of the West.” In Une voie soufie dans le monde: la Shadhiliyya, edited by Éric Geoffroy, 481–499. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose.
Sedgwick, Mark. 2019. “The Islamisation of Western Sufism after the Early New Age.” In Global Sufism: Boundaries, Structures, and Politics, edited by Francesco Piraino and Mark Sedgwick, 35–53. London: Hurst. Sedgwick, Mark. 2016. Western Sufism: From the Abbasids to the New Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
