Meeting My Sheikh- Sidi Sheikh Muhammad Al-Jamal

 In 1979, I sat on a bluff on the Mount of Olives, overlooking the Dome of the Rock.  This stunning mosque is the third holiest in Islam.  Nearby was the Wailing Wall, which was all that remained of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, which the Romans destroyed in 67 AD.  Both places had attracted legions of worldwide pilgrims for thousands of years.

I felt depressed and lonely. Maybe I was a little drunk. During the last several weeks of traveling across Europe alone, I developed a fondness for wine. I loved it more than I care to admit.

Jerusalem was the last city on the journey. Many people consider it the Holy City. 

It draws countless pilgrims seeking truth. People who connected with important events also took place there in the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Perhaps for New Age seekers like myself, it is a site that might be attractive simply because of all those holy people and events—not necessarily because one is an adherent, in a traditional sense, of any of the three.

I came across some interesting things I appreciated, but a vaguely imagined hope for some revelatory spiritual experience in Jerusalem apparently would not happen.  

And just seeing buildings and art wasn't all that great, either.  At least not by oneself.

I viewed myself as a spiritual seeker. I grew up on the San Francisco Mid-Peninsula in the 1960s, during which time I tried psychedelics. I also frequently attended concerts of the SF Music Scene, including The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Big Brother. 

Those carefree times are difficult to imagine today.  We young people thought we were going to change the world.  In the meantime, we'd get VERY HIGH on LIFE and other substances, including shared joints and communal jugs of wine. 

We trusted every kid with long hair!  Once, somebody started throwing unknown pills into the audience at a rock concert.  I instantly took one.

The Carefree 1960's

Though it threw me into a dissociative blackout for several hours, it never occurred to me that I was naive to trust someone who offered free drugs at a concert.  I thought maybe my own head wasn't in the right place. (I later understood that I had taken Angel Dust or PCP. A powerful and dangerous horse tranquilizer.)

I approached spirituality with the same abandon. While this led me to at least ONE serious group—that of a branch of Chinese Zen Buddhism—it also led me down some blind alleys, like the three months I spent as a shaved-head, traveling monk in the Hare Krishna Movement.

I majored in Religious Studies in college, hoping to understand how to be spiritual. I spent a year studying Arabic, which gave me insights into understanding at least one ancient religious language. 

 So, I had previously been willing to join any spiritual group that came my way. At the time, I didn’t see them as cults; I believed they were places where I could significantly change myself with little meditation or effort—just surrender.

Little did I know here in Jerusalem, another spiritual drama was about to begin. And, once begun, it would prove almost impossible to extract myself from

.

As I sat there, a Palestinian youth came over, and we talked while taking in the stunning view beneath us.

His demeanor was friendly. We briefly chatted about religion, and then he offered to take me to the home of a famous Sheikh on the Jericho side of the Mount of Olives.

At this time, before the first Intifada, a tall Western person walking into a Palestinian area faced little danger. The only exception might have been from small rocks thrown by children, mistaking him for Israeli Settlers.

So, following him, I took a sweeping view of the distant desert.  Somewhere over there was Jericho, which claimed to be ‘The Oldest City in the World.’

 I suddenly heard a loud call to prayer broadcast from a nearby mosque. The recording was age-old and scratchy but also endearing for those features. I loved it!

I was brought halfway down the steep street to a nondescript stone house. We knocked, and a couple of Western ladies welcomed us in.

I understood from them that they were long-term students of the Sheikh. 

Little did I know that, within a few weeks, one of them would be my wife.

A few minutes later, the man who would determine the direction of my life from then on opened the squeaky metal door. 

He was a solid, grounded gentleman with a well-maintained beard. His presence radiated wisdom, warmth, and authority, instantly winning me over.

Sidi Sheikh Muhammad Al-Jamal

He reminded me of an Old Testament prophet!

He shook my hand and politely asked me to sit down. 

I don't remember our first words,  but I remember feeling overwhelmed by the exotic unfamiliarity of the situation. 

It seemed like it was a break in the continuity of my thus-far unsatisfying Reality.  And perhaps an Aperture into a new Reality... 

This guy was the Real Deal!  An OldTestament Prophet come to life And right here in the World's Spiritual Disneyland! 

 I was within a mile or two from the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus reportedly prayed in the final hours of his earthly life.

Five times a day, competing  Calls to Prayer from local mosques blared out over the landscape.

Exotic, it was indeed!  I suddenly began to feel myself being drawn into it--whatever 'It' was.

After a short talk, the Sheikh suggested I return the next day.  Walking back to the hotel, I felt embraced by a new sense of the sacred.  The stones in the area were so white that they reflected the moonlight.

Although this effect was almost blinding in the daytime, it gave everything a stunning, other-worldly luminosity at night, particularly that night. 

Very romantic, too, in the broadest sense of the word.

The next day, I returned to the rooms where I had met the Sheik.  The Western women called it the zawiya, or ‘sufi center’ in Arabic.  I was given a binder with typewritten copies of Skeikh’s ‘Subjects,’ which earlier students had translated, typed, and left behind. 

This gave them the cachet of ‘rare manuscripts’ seen by only a select few.  

In our own notebooks, we carefully copied each subject by hand and started again after we'd come to the end.

These poetic, flowery utterances were of great beauty.  They brought to life a new dimension of spirituality for me.  Though I had studied Islam before, I had read little about Sufism.

They spoke of the relationship between Man and God in an entirely new way.  As a kind of spiritual romance--sometimes tragically in separation, in other times in glorious union.

And I was pleased with this ‘easy,’ almost subliminal way of studying, which one could pick up or put down as needed.

After my first full day of studying in the zawiya, the Sheikh came down from his house above and offered another informal talk. 

 Frequently, these began with points of interest in his day or the local public scene.  

Clearly, he was a person of some weight in the local Islamic ulema or clergy.  

On Fridays, he frequently preached at the Dome of the Rock Mosque and was a judge in the Islamic court.

After a few days, he called me up one evening and, with a dramatic flourish, offered me the opportunity to take the bayat or promise to join the Sufi Order with him as my Sheikh.

He promised that if I did this, I would experience God’s proximity in a way that nothing in my prior experience could prepare me for.

 Had I been given time to think about it, I might have thought back to that concert where I readily accepted 'free' drugs and what the strange and unexpected consequences had been.

I readily agreed without knowing how to perform the daily prayers, the ablutions beforehand, or much else, and I was given the name Yunus.

I was hooked.

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The Cultic 'Arranged Marriage' Syndrome--Sidi's Cynical Cult-Building Exercise.

Wherein we participated in a mythic, romantic encounter.  It was presented as a kind of play based on the Biblical tale of Adam and Eve, with Sidi in the Director's chair.

Underpinning some schools of Sufism is the allegory of the relationship between God and man as that of an absent Lover.  The Turkish Sufi Rumi is famous for his poetry, which explores the depths of this spiritual love story.  Check out his love-drunk poetry here:

https://www.rumi.org.uk/love_poems/#LastNightYouLeftMeAndSlept

It's a captivating analogy that enables one to use feelings of loneliness as a mirror for the Original Loss of a relationship with the One.

In Islam, man is NOT, as in Christianity, the inheritor of the Original Sin from the progenitors, Adam and Eve.  To be honest, I am not sure what role that couple plays in Islam-- only that Adam is considered a Prophet.

In what was to become my most peculiar and disturbing life episode, Sidi compelled Aisha and me to wed--even though we had and had known each other for about two weeks!

Perhaps it was all Sidi's attempt to bring to Life that metaphor.  This metaphor is endlessly riffed upon by the Sufi Poets.  As such, maybe it wasn't all THAT strange! 

I was at his zawiya for strictly spiritual purposes and intended to focus solely on spiritual matters.  However, I noticed Aisha was a single, attractive female about my age   Her passion for God was intriguing and exhilarating.  

She seemed so confident she was EXACTLY in the Right Place with the Right Guide.  I LONGED to have the same certainty about spiritual things that she seemed to have   (Of course, as was often the case for me, I hadn't actually been WORKING any path or depth psychology system to acquire any confidence in MY abilities.  I was a bit of a lazy spiritual seeker.)

In the zawiya, the last thing I would have had in mind was initiating any kind of relationship   In the first few days, I had still been drinking, Which probably meant my libido was diminished. 

And I was generally miserable.  I despised myself deeply.  I did not consider myself suitable even for the most casual relationships   I certainly never considered marriage, which I had never experienced.

Nor would I have assumed that Aisha was anything other than a supportive sister and the thought of her as anything else never crossed my mind..

Nevertheless, two weeks after I moved in and a few days after I took his bayat, Sidi came down in the evening, as usual.  This time, however, he sent everyone but Aisha and me outside the room. 

 He asked us to approach him and take each other's hand.  

He then launched into an Arabic version of what I quickly understood to be an impromptu marriage ceremony.  When he got to the "I do" part, I demurred.

I told him I could not think of marrying Aisha then   I barely knew her, and I had not introduced her to my parents.  

To be honest, the idea of marriage was shocking to me, although my memory is a little sketchy on which came first, the marriage or the 'courtship' following my refusal to complete the marriage.

Sidi abruptly took another tack and abruptly told us both, 

"Take off all your clothes."

Or something to that effect.  While shocking, this was almost a relief compared with the 'instant marriage' alternative I had just narrowly escaped.

To be perfectly honest, I had a typically male version of prurient curiosity   I was a male human who hadn't experienced much romantic activity in a long time. 

And as was typical of me then, my considerations were all selfish.  I didn't think much about Aisha's situation.  I guess I figured she knew Sidi better than I did and just accepted everything he told her as coming directly from God,

Sidi then directed us to a lovemaking session.  

I'll never know why I didn't protest this.  I completely trusted this otherwise impeccably well-mannered and apparently beyond-reproach gentleman.  Even if his methods were unorthodox, they may be specialized therapy for our spiritual and psychological issues. 

And I REALLY WANTED TO BELIEVE that I had found a SOLUTION to all the existential doubts about Life and my place in it that had PLAGUED me since I was a teen.  

I didn't know a lot about it at the time; I was just sort of stunned by the unusual and hitherto unknown scenario of a Muslim Sheikh directing his disciples into a sexual encounter.  

Plus, I felt he was taking us through an "Original Man & Woman At the Dawn of Creation" performance piece.  It felt at once Artistic and sacred like being directed by God.

I thought maybe we were using the sex as a primordial Return of the two into One, the missing Pieces coming together as One in a joyous Union. 

I didn't WANT to think it was just some cheap sex show we were putting on for some horny old man.

 It was just too unearthly.  Sidi kept saying things like, "Be the Real Eve for him" and "Drink her Wine!" 

In fact, my assumption and only real explanation was that we were connected by some sort of hidden hand of Allah, the Web of Karma, or some other kind of magic that was putting us together.

Unfortunately, I didn't know this WAS NOT  a ONE-TIME-ONLY special occasion for Sidi.  In fact, it had happened at least once before and would repeat itself dozens of times in Sidi's long history in America. 

The marriage part of it, that is   I'm not sure if the sexual performance was experienced by other couples.

The 'performances,' or whatever they were, continued for several more nights.  It always began and ended with whether we were ready to marry.  In each case, I was no further along in accepting this proposal than the first time.   

It was off the table.  I first needed to return to the United States to get my bearings.

In addition, she was Canadian, and any marriage would necessarily involve one of us moving to another country.  

But the physical intimacy had begun its work   I was thoroughly enamored with Aisha, as was probably intended.  Nothing like intimate romance to generate that!

We commenced a series of back-and-forth visits between Winnipeg and the San Francisco Bay Area, where I lived.

We corresponded at great length. However, since we used abstract, flowery Sufic English as we had studied in the zawiya, it was difficult to determine precisely what we were saying.

At this point in my Life, I had few confidants. My parents were my best ones, but they weren't entirely taken with Aisha after spending only a few hours with her.

I didn't them about all that had happened in Jerusalem or that we were so close to getting married.

They simply wanted the best for me.   They probably sensed that our relationship was new and not very stable. 

I would have agreed with them if I had been honest with myself.  Even with some short visits back and forth, it still felt like they had seen me make poor decisions before in my repeated attempts to 'leave the world' by joining other-worldly and sometimes highly questionable religious cults.

One of the visits included a romantic weekend in the beach town of Carmel, California, which I had put together as a sort of 'pre-honeymoon.' 

Followed by a sensuous drive down one of the world's most beautiful coastal highways, Route 1, through Big Sur, down to the Hearst Castle area.  One hundred miles of twists and turns, all offering stunning views.

I expected these romantic venues would light a fire under ANY woman even remotely interested in me.  Yet, the trip fell utterly flat. 

We were both almost catatonically depressed, or so it seemed.  I couldn't WAIT for it to be over. I was embarrassed. We weren't so good by ourselves, as a couple. 

We weren't ENOUGH for each other; why didn't I take a hint?  Why didn't I SHARE what was going on with me with a trusted friend?

The answer was that I had no friends or hadn't cultivated friendships since graduate school.

I didn't really know HOW to make friends very well.  I grew up a single child in a nuclear family far away from family in the New York and Florida Panhandle branches of my extended family,

 I lived alone in a shared apartment in Berkeley, worked as a traveling salesman, and drank and otherwise acted out on the weekends. The Sixties had ended—for me, with a whimper.

Somehow, we managed to recover from that disaster.  And rather than allowing myself some time to grapple with the consequences of marrying someone I was possibly ill-suited for, I was now more afraid of 'missing out' on the anticipated spiritual bonanza I expected to have with Aisha.

Ultimately, I selfishly hoped that my relationship with Aisha would change my Life without much effort  (THAT theme again).

And I was losing control over myself and my self-destructive impulses.  I felt powerless over my baser instincts and my underlying mood of existential loneliness. 

Except when I was at my Buddhist Monastery--that might be a story for another time.

Marrying Aisha might fix all that.  Plus, she came with her daughter, the delightful 8-year-old Teresa, whom I had already conceived an affection for.

I convinced myself that marriage would be like having a Spiritual Advisor 24/7   And since Sidi had suggested it, I hoped he might be RIGHT about us being the PERFECT COUPLE for each other.

So, I gave in, and we 'eloped' and were married by a lovely imam in the Winnipeg Mosque in December 1980.

As the marriage progressed, all of my original, high-minded impulses failed.   Truthfully, Aisha hardly ever talked about her earlier days.  She just wanted to be done with them and had imagined a perfect married life would help her accomplish that.

Our tendencies led us in different directions.  However, our shared commitment to our children and developing natural human affection for each other held us together for 14 years.

We were, in fact, luckier than many in the fuqara who stuck it out with partners they actually HATED!

And I assented to going back to Jerusalem almost every summer.  Aisha got a lot out of THAT myself, but not so much. But we were friendly with Sidi's family and went down to the Old City frequently for diversion and to shop for necessities.  And there were often other Western disciples coming through.

 I encountered Sidi many times, including spending entire summers in a vacant apartment in his house; he never mentioned the secret history of our courtship or asked us for money. 

 He occasionally asked for help with the utilities, but it was never more than what he reckoned we had used in the part of his household that we occupied.  

I did, however, notice a tendency for him to throw his weight around, whether to get the best price for watermelons based on his Islamic seniority or to get a better grade for one of his children on the same basis. 

 Eventually, in America, I even witnessed him redirect a significant amount from one of his wealthier disciples, who paid the annual two-and-a-half percent wealth tax, $10,000—in this case, which is incumbent on all Muslims—to one of his own children, who was experiencing some financial hardship and wanted to buy into a local enterprise with roughly the same amount of money.  BINGO!

While technically permissible, I thought it was a 'bad form' to redirect such a donation 'to the poor' to a member of one's own family.  

And the wealthy disciples caught on and were not pleased.  Though I admit this may have happened differently than my fading memory recalls, I began to lose faith in his ability to be rigorously honest.   

Sidi was, after all, a family man and had a large family in an occupied territory where honest opportunities for young men were few.  I know he loved his children and would always go to bat for them, whether or not it involved stepping on somebody else's toes.

Ultimately, I could not forgive him for the THOUGHTLESS and DEMEANING liberties he had taken with Aisha and me.  It seemed more like we were an experiment than people he actually, psychically,  knew anything about.  

As my experiences with him continued year after year, and when he finally started coming to America, I noticed the arranged marriage scenario being played out constantly every year with ever-increasing numbers of people, and often, apparently, with even less of a prelude than Aisha and I had had with each other.  

Sometimes, when one marriage didn't work out, any partners who remained Sidi's disciples could go to him and get a second wife or husband   I saw this myself. And it's even claimed that this happened THREE times for one particularly tough candidate.

How could he claim that the two people he chose to put together were "specially made for each other by Allah a SECOND time? 

Some people will believe anything they want to believe.  Though we were the first, we indeed weren't the last.

In a few exceptional cases, and especially in the cases of several European couples, some couples made their marriages work through continued common interests, a commitment to traditional Islam, and a lot of patience.

In any case, you won't find anything about this bizarre facet of Sidi's Teachings in written form, not in Sidi's writings or anyone else's. 

Anyone who presumed to put single Muslims together in this fashion in a Muslim country would not live very long.  A woman's virginity is pretty essential to Muslim fathers   And mother  . And brothers.

Yet, Sidi practiced it with Westerners in what came to be an assembly-line fashion.  As if there were a commandment to marry off his disciples as quickly as possible.  

Nobody questioned it—not Aisha, either. Even though it didn't work for her, she enabled it and encouraged others as she gained a certain status as a respected 'elder' in Sidi's group.

Sadly, as I learned, 'arranged marriage' is a common technique among invasive cults to inspire continuing loyalty.  He never did this among people from his own milieu.  It was only in the case of Europeans or North Americans disengaged enough with their culture and religion of birth to trust a traveling guru with their most intimate commitments.

However, most of my contact with him ended with my divorce from Aisha, which occurred in our 14th year of marriage.  I heard summaries of what was going on thereafter through second-hand contacts with his children in America and my own children's experiences.

The  "Compelled Marriages" continued unabated. The only thing that stopped them was his death.  Which frankly, when I considered all the evident harm I thought he was doing, was a relief.

I remembered Sidi's loving wife, a pleasant, accepting soul. Despite severe asthma, she never complained of her voluminous household duties.  What would she have thought of all this? 

Or his own daughter, Amina? 

Why was she not a candidate for Sidi's Cult Marriage Program?  Why did she get to choose her husband, A doctor, while the Western Disciples didn't?

In fact, it is common in traditional cultures for people to participate in arranged marriages, And in fact, it's the norm.  

I have a friend from India who will let his mother decide who he marries. He's totally cool with it. He assumes she will pick the best possible match-- when the time is right.

The practice has many advantages, especially when the two engaged people have substantial opportunities to get to know each other first. People in those cultures typically do not have the high romantic expectations that modern love stories give people in the West. 

Many in the West are looking for a marriage partner but have unrealistically high expectations

Traditional cultures recognize that marriage requires many compromises. It takes a village to support a marriage, and parents usually mediate problems between married couples. Arranged Marriage can work out tolerably well, though it is not 'high romance.'

I can very much appreciate, in principle at least, that marriage is too important to be left to the bride and groom. Yet, I avoided telling my parents about my marriage until it was over.

The trouble was that Aisha and I didn't have a culture surrounding us to support our particular marriage, except the culture of Sidi's Fuqua. So, while we kept in contact with them, and Aisha always tried to recruit new members, everything depended on both of us staying loyal to Sidi and his methodologies.

As time went on, I also began to doubt the creaky foundations of our marriage. I had been set up by a flawed Manipulator with an agenda rather than a qualified Sufi Guide who understood who we were as individuals.