Music, Politics, and Violence

6. Pax Mevlana: Mevlevi Sufi Music and the Reconciliation of Islam and the West

150 chapter six Pax Mevlana Mevlevi Sufi Music and the Reconciliation of Islam and the West victor a. vicente A Call for Cooperation The best known and most commonly cited poem in the Islamic mystical tradition today can be translated from the Persian more or less as follows:1 Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, idolater,2 worshipper of fire,3 come even though you have broken your vows a thousand times, Come, and come yet again. Ours is not a caravan of despair. This quatrain is reprinted often in anthologies of Persian or sacred texts4 and is turned into living culture by its adornment of innumerable Internet blogs and websites as well as its frequent intoning over instrumental musical accompaniment at sacred and semi-sacred gatherings in many corners of the world. Popularly attributed to the thirteenth-century mystic Mevlana Celal ed-Din Rumi,5 even though it cannot be found in the earliest manuscripts of his writings, it has come to represent the philosophies not only of the great master, but also of Islamic mysticism, termed Sufism, as a whole. It is also popularly invoked, like so many other poems of its ilk, as an open invitation to confraternity, a call for cooperation in healing the wounds of cultural division, namely those of what is not unproblematically described as the increasing “rift” between the Muslim world and the West.6 In this chapter, I explore the roles that Sufi poetry, music, and ritual currently play in this mending of fences. My focus is specifically on how the music of Mevlana Rumi’s followers, especially that of the legally banned, Pax Mevlana: Mevlevi Sufi Music / 151 but furtively promoted Mevlevi Order from Turkey, serves as a locus where conflicting Western and Islamic cultural, religious, and political ideologies are negotiated and reconciled. After presenting the historical and contemporary contexts of the tensions between Islam and the West and describing the state of Sufism in Turkey, I examine the nature of reconciliation in three principal areas of Sufi music making: public state-sponsored sema whirling shows, private zikr ceremonies, and performances of popular music incorporating Sufi themes and sounds. Importantly, I am also careful to pinpoint moments when reconciliation is not fully possible and when the musical acts of reconciliation themselves create new tensions, not only between Islam and the West, but also within Sufism proper. Contexts for Conflict and Transcendence Tensions between Islam7 and the West long predate the tragic events of recent history; yet even in the darkest of times there has always been a strong compulsion to transcend difference and work toward peaceful coexistence. Indeed, the earliest traces of acrimony, as well as amity, date back to the first century of Islam when beginning in the early 630s Muslim Arab armies swept through Christian territories in West Asia, North Africa, and Western Europe. Many turned to Islam voluntarily, but there were also many who were forced into conversion despite the Qur’anic injunction stipulating that Jews and Christians be treated as “people of the covenant of protection ” (ahl al-dhimmi).8 As “people of the book” (ahl al-kitab), those who did not convert were nevertheless able to live in relative peace under Islamic rule and jurisprudence. Such tolerance would for centuries prove to be a cornerstone of Islamic civilization in the Mediterranean Basin. Themes of tolerance and coexistence were thus much in evidence, and even celebrated, in the music of al-Andalus (Medieval Iberia)9 as well as in the musical life of the Ottoman court;10 two contexts, incidentally, in which Sufism was, at times, exceptionally prominent. Be this as it may, Bernard Lewis does caution against conjuring up the image of “an interfaith, interracial utopia, in which men and women belonging to different races, professing different creeds, lived side by side in a golden age of unbroken harmony, enjoying equality of rights and of opportunities , and toiling together for the advancement of civilization.”11 He asserts that understanding Islam’s concept of tolerance necessitates comparison with other religions and civilizations and involves the consideration of such facets of coexistence as discrimination, persecution, and egalitarianism , among others.12 He points out that Islamic law in fact not only set out, but indeed managed basic inequalities between masters and slaves, violence and reconciliation / 152 men and women, and believers and unbelievers.13 The ways in which these relationships...