DERYL DAVIS: It's best known in the West for the dance of the whirling dervishes. Sufism, which flowered within Islam more than a thousand years ago, is gaining new followers today in America. Its central ideas -- universal love, mystical union with God, and openness to different spiritual paths -- are being spread by teachers, musicians, and poets from around the world.
COLEMAN BARKS (Poet and translator, reading): What is the soul? Consciousness. The more awareness, the deeper the soul. And when such essence overflows, you feel a sacredness around.DAVIS: For many Americans, Sufism is synonymous with Rumi, the 13th-century Islamic poet and philosopher whose writings have become best-sellers in translations by Coleman Barks.
Mr. BARKS: The mystery of the interior life, that's what he's talking about. Something as simple as love -- and as mysterious.
DAVIS: The universal themes of Rumi's poetry -- love of God, compassion, and tolerance for others -- are also what attract people to Sufism. It has no creed, liturgy, or specific theology.Pir ZIA KHAN (Hereditary Leader, Sufi Order of North America): Sufism is fundamentally experiential. It is not based on intellectual premises. It is based on direct, personal experience.
DAVIS: Pir Zia Khan is hereditary leader of a Sufi group, or order, originating in India. His grandfather is credited with bringing Sufism to the West.
Pir ZIA: He presented the Sufi message as an essential awareness that could be discovered in the essence of all of the major world religions.DAVIS: While Sufism has attracted new followers in the West, some scholars believe its influence has declined in the Muslim world. Carl Ernst says Sufism was integral to Islam up until about 200 years ago.
Dr. CARL ERNST (Chair of Islamic Studies, University of North Carolina): Sufism was part of the normal fabric of life in any Muslim city or country, and if you had visited Mecca a little before 1800, you would have found most of the Islamic teachers in the principal institutions in Mecca and Medina belonged to Sufi orders. But changes have taken place.
DAVIS: One of several changes is the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. Scholar Akbar Ahmed says there's an inherent clash between the pluralistic vision of the Sufis and the strict doctrine of figures like Osama bin Laden, for whom Sufism is heresy.
AKBAR AHMED (Islamic Scholar, American University): The central message of the Sufi is "sole cul," peace with all, and the message of the Sufi resonates outside Islam itself. And that is why there's a confrontation, a tension, between the orthodox who would want to interpret Islam in a literal way and the Sufis, who would want to expand the boundaries of Islam to include all humanity.
Dr. ERNST: The master-disciple relationship is basic to the entire enterprise of Sufism, and there's an astute psychological wisdom here in that it's impossible to overcome your own ego, and so you need someone who has moved to a higher level to be able to do that.
LUA HIGHTOWER (Sufi musician): It's a way of being mindful of the presence of God -- by focusing on a particular attribute, you can access a certain state, or sort of develop a certain quality in yourself by invoking that name over and over again.
RUPA COUSINS (Sufi dancer): It is a moving prayer and a moving meditation that's, the idea is to dissolve into the energy of God, into the energy of prayer. The right hand in this dance reaches up to God, to the divine. The left hand reaches out to give, so we're giving a blessing to the world as we turn.
Mr. AHMED: If Islam can strengthen the Sufi message, then Islam has a very positive role to play in the 21st century. If it doesn't, then those people like Osama bin Laden who have hijacked Islam, I'm afraid will be setting the agenda.
