#sufi lodge

The traditional young person, especially the male I suppose, was initiated. In every culture, there was an initiation by the elders of the teenager, which was an initiation into manhood, but also into the belief system and the moral system of the tribe. That's fundamental to being part of the human family. We have always had those rituals and those ceremonies. And part of that is the lesson of overcoming self and exploring transcendence. So, modernity only believes in nafs (desires). We believe in ruh (soul), and the nafs being something that is a kind of trap, an illusion, unreal. And all of the religions really agree on that. This is not specifically Islamic. So the big fight, the futuwwa (virtue) for young people has to be overwhelmingly against the lower self. Unless that is subdued and one becomes a beautiful, balanced, restrained, courteous person, full of compassion rather than anxiety, one is never going to overcome any of these issues. One becomes just another turbulent, shouting voice in the crowd. We need to reinvent, rediscover those traditions of futuwwa. And I am probably not making many friends because I am very critical of Sufism in the West, and the fact that the traditional policy of the ummah (Muslim nation) when it expanded into a new territory was, first of all, before the muftis or the qadis (judges) or any of that got going, was to create the Sufi lodges and the shrines and that infrastructure which was the network of Islamisation. We haven't really done that in the Western world. And as a result there is a whole dimension of the religion and the deepening of peoples' faith that is simply absent and there is no access to it. Where do you go if you want to go to a Muslim retreat centre, for instance, for the weekend? You can do it with the Buddhists or the Christian monasteries. Where do you do it in Australia for instance? Are there established places the way there used to be across the Muslim world? Plenty of Turks in Australia. Before Ataturk there were 400 Sufi lodges just in Istanbul. It was just part of Muslim life. For the training of akhlaq, adab, futuwwa (virtue, morality, and etiquette), sacrifice, beauty. Where is that now? So we need to deepen our infrastructure I think, and that's where young people, especially young men, need to be. -Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad (may Allah grant him long life).