A 'Tale of Two Sidis'- Nurideen Durkee-Sidi's Ambivalent American Friend

In the 1980s, Aisha and I traveled to northern New Mexico to meet other Western students of Sidi. Although we stayed in a private home, these 'Beloveds' were affiliated with the Dar-Al-Islam Center in Abiquio, New Mexico.

I'd indirectly come to have been acquainted with Sheik Durkee, both through his earlier support for Ram Dass and the creation of the book Be Here Now and through his own book Seed, which is similar in content to Be Here Now but also has an interesting deck of holy cards in the back that could be used as meditation or divination objects. 

                Ram Dass and Stephen/Nurideen Durkee in the Early Days

The local area in New Mexico was a stunning naturalistic environment with a stripped, beautiful, but somewhat hostile desert.  The house where we were staying had a direct view of the backyard of Georgia O'Keefe, the esteemed and iconic American artist, still alive although aged, who we would see taking walks with her caregivers.  It was easy to understand where much of her inspiration came from.

 The relatively large institution, Dar-Al-Islam, was utterly unique in terms of its architecture and the composition of its residents. The residents were primarily middle-class American young people who had taken on various elements of Islam and/or Sufism under various Middle Eastern Sheiks. 

Nurideen was an artist and student of Islamic Architecture, and the layout of the community was a work of art in itself.

It was perhaps my insecurity, but I felt an undercurrent of hostility/ambivalence at Dar towards Sidi Sheik al Jamal.  The American wife of our Dutch host, with whom we spent several nights, evidently had made the case with Nurideen of Sidi's alleged sexual misconduct with her.  

She also later told me that Sidi had inflicted this reprehensible behavior upon Aisha, but who knows where the truth lies. 

(Though Aisha later took on the Sheik's name despite having no apparent relationship with him, certainly not through any kind of legitimate marriage, I always considered the impetus for that to be the fact that her later 'friend'/boyfriend, Ali Ansari, came from a Sufi order where it was common to take on the name of the Sheik as a token of one's respect and reliance upon him).

I was also violently ill at the time from some foodborne illness, so I wasn't yet my best in terms of sorting out all the claims and counter-claims.  But we were still welcomed by these two fellow (if former) disciples with whom we already had established a deep, recurring friendship.

One day, we went to meet Nurideen, who was, at the time, somewhat qualified in his endorsement of Sheik Jamal.  He seemed to conclude that Sheik Jamal was okay and that following him was in our best spiritual interests, but there was some hesitancy.  (Though there was apparently a standing order that Sheik Jamal would not be allowed to visit Dar-Al-Islam). 

Naively, though, I thought as a new murid of Sheik Jamal, I would be somewhat celebrated, as I had been in Jerusalem, by other Muslims.  Yet, I sensed a slight hesitancy from the DAL crew. 

My perceived incredible reception might have been self-consciousness based on my sloppy execution of ablutions before and the technical performance of the mandatory 5x-per-day Islamic prayers.

Perhaps Nurideen was simply reflecting some subtle tension with the Saudi Arabian sponsors of such a large and unusual Islamic complex on American shores.  Saudi Arabia was a well-known state sponsor of the Wahhabi branch of Islam, which strictly rejects Sufism as a form of shirk or polytheism.  

Perhaps Nur-Ad-Din, who already had built a reputation as a sincere and rigorous Islamic scholar, was concerned they would lose funding if too many apparent Sufi influences appeared.  (Which, apparently, they eventually did anyway, at least for a while.) 

The tenor of Dar-Al-Islam was, to ME,  mainly Islamic rather than Sufi (which, to my limited understanding, was more IMPORTANT than the 'Outside Islam,' and the pillars of Islam were rigorously practiced.

After some hemming and hawing, Nurideen finally came up with the same tepid endorsement that I encountered more than once among Sufi Teachers who knew him: "I'm sure that Sheik Jamal can help you in your journey to find ALLAH."

In fact, I'd gotten used to a fair amount of celebrity as we sometimes walked in East Jerusalem, the Old City, or the two mosques on the Temple Mount.  

Typically, the passers-by would greet the city, and he would welcome them back and then point to us as, "New Muslims from America!"

My limited Arabic came in handy, and it somewhat perplexed me that  Sidi was primarily describing us Muslims rather than Sufis. 

 

Whereas, in MY mind, at least, we were predominantly Sufis rather than Muslims.  To a greater extent, I thought I looked upon the practice of the five pillars of Islam as "the outside Islam."  Necessary, perhaps, but not really "the Point" of it all.

(I had no particular attraction to that 'Outside Islam,' which seemed like an Old Testament-style religion.  True, it did fit in the era desert environment where Sidi was located, but it also seemed rather medieval, patriarchal, and intolerant and often still seems so.  At least in its rather backward-looking iterations in the modern world.

As someone pointed out, 'Islam has never had a Reformation.—at least not in the same way Christianity had. Many of its loudest recent advocates want to harken back to earlier days when one Caliph ruled the entire Muslim World, without considering how impossible that would be in the era of the modern nation-state.

On the other hand, I found that most Muslims were hospitable, gracious, and proud of their traditions.  They were usually attentive to morality and anxious not to displease God with any moral lapses. Their 'leaders' sometimes forgot their Friday School lessons.)

Anyway...At that point, I didn't really understand how Sufism and Islam were integrally connected, and one really didn't think of having one without the other if one was living in most Islamic countries.  

It was only with the rise of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia that Sufism came to be seen as an 'innovation' or 'shirq'.  The same word is used for 'polytheism' or 'assigning Partners to God'--the worst-- and I mean THE VERY WORST --SIN a pious Muslim can commit!!

It's a tension/misunderstanding that still exists today where one finds Wahhabi-oriented groups in Pakistan regularly committing suicide bombings at the tombs of Sufi Saints.  At sites like those, which, until recent times, had also existed on the Arabian Peninsula, pious Muslims had venerated saints for centuries, not seeing much distinction between the 'auwliya' or 'saints' of Islamic Sufism and the original Companions of the Holy Prophet Muhammad.

The same sort of people who brought down the  Twin Towers on 9/11 are still today committing the same kind of horrors against their own fellow Muslims of a slightly different persuasion.

I was well aware that Islam had had a golden age where it was the repository of wisdom and books of Western Civilization, which were lost in the chaos following the fall of Rome and the subsequent dark ages in Europe.  

At that time, Islamic Civilization was a "Glittering City on a Hill."  It was said that every book ever written was on hand in the famous Library of Alexandria in Egypt.  It was the Prophet, after all, who said, "Seek knowledge, even if it be in China.")

So, while I would put down on forms for several years that my religion was 'Muslim,' I didn't explore the outside religion very much at all.  In contrast, Sidi obviously took it as a feather in his cap that he had created some Western Muslims   I think it gave him and the observing locals a sense of pride that former Christians were coming to Jerusalem and converting to Islam.

This subtle tension between Nurideen and Sidi evidently continued, which is also reflected in this epitaph, Nurideen wrote about Sidi, which can be found on Durkee's website here: 

http://greenmountainschool.org/slides/in-memory-of-a-great-shaykh-in-memory-of-a-long-long-friendship/

It's a prime example of trying to put lipstick on a pig. Although he tried, he just couldn't seem to say Sidi was beyond reproach. I noticed this frequently.

I feel sorry that Nurideen, despite an impressive, multifaceted, and extremely serious personal history of Islamic studies in Medina, Saudi Arabia, and Al-Azhar, the world's most  premier Islamic University, whose home was in Cairo, was still fundamentally unsatisfied with his life because he had not met the Qutub of his time—or so this document would indicate.

In the epitaph, Nurideen was obviously ambivalent about the 'Second Generation' that had begun to follow Sidi and were concerned that Sidi's message was 'too Islamic' as to be 'unsaleable' to the Western audiences to whom they were 'selling' Sidi's Sufism to.

I never met any of them myself, but from looking at their materials and hearing about them secondhand, I see that they were more interested in using Sidi as a figurehead than a Sufi Sheikh in the traditional sense.

However, I have noticed how artfully these folks manage to bridge the gap between Islam, Sufism, and New Age Healing Modalities.  I make no claims as to their relative sincerity or not.