Sufi Women, Embodiment, and the ‘Self’: Gender in Islamic Ritual

185 Pages·2022·2.861 MB·English

by  Jamila Rodrigues

Sufi Women, Embodiment, and the ‘Self’
This book is an ethnographic case study of Sufi ritual practice and embodied
experience amongst female members of the Naqshbandi community.
Drawing on fieldwork in Cape Town, South Africa, and Lefke, Cyprus
(2013/2014), the author examines women’s experiences within a particular
performance of Sufi tradition. The focus is on the ritual named hadra,
involving the recital of sacred texts, music, and body movement, where
the goal is for the individual to reach a state of intimacy with God. The
volume considers Sufi practice as a form of embodied cultural behaviour,
religious identity, and selfhood construction. It explains how Muslim
women’s participation in hadra ritual life reflects religious and cultural ideas
about the body, the body’s movement, and embodied selfhood expression
within the ritual experience. Sufi Women, Ritual Embodiment, and the ‘Self’
engages with studies in Sufism, symbolic anthropology, ethnography, dance,
and somatic studies. Contributing to discussions of religion, gender, and the
body, the book will be of interest to scholars from anthropology, sociology,
religious ritual studies, Sufism and gender studies, and performance studies.
Jamila Rodrigues is a dance anthropologist currently working in Japan. She
was awarded a JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) fellowship
to conduct research on Japanese women and well-being during times of
crisis hosted by the International Research Centre in Kyoto (Nichibunken).

Sufi Women, Embodiment,
and the ‘Self’
Gender in Islamic Ritual
Jamila Rodrigues
First published 2023
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Jamila Rodrigues
The right of Jamila Rodrigues to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent
to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 9780367374006 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781032430737 (pbk)
ISBN: 9780429353574 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9780429353574
Typeset in Sabon
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction vii
1 The Salikun journey begins 1
2 From theory to practice 26
3 The inner Islam: An overview of Sufism and Sufi notions
of the body 45
4 Dancing with God: Hadra as sacred dance and cultural
embodiment 67
5 ‘De-code’ hadra: Body movement analysis of the ritual
practice 78
6 Symbolic embodied practice: The Sufi ‘mystical body’
and women’s religious identity 94
7 ‘Let the bird fly’ … somatic practice and hadra
performance, the embodied experience 114
8 The salikun journey ends 139
Bibliography 149
Glossary of terms 167
Index 169
Acknowledgements
This book was possible due to the financial support provided by a full Vice
Chancellor scholarship. I am truly thankful to the Graduate School at the
University of Roehampton for conceding this award and to my supervisors
Stacey Prickett and Ann R. David at the Department of Dance for support-
ing my project.
I am thankful to the Centre for Contemporary Islam at Cape Town
University and to Prof Tayob and Prof Sadi’yya Shaikk for their support
and allowing me to access other sources of literature material that helped
with this research.
I owe my deepest gratitude to the Naqshbandi Tariqa and the Sufi women
in Cape Town and in Cyprus who made part of this research project. Their
patience, kindness, generosity, and willingness to answer my questions ena-
bled the conclusion of this investigation. I would like to express my very
special thanks to the following people:
To Melina Scialom for her friendship, to help see through my stubborn-
ness, and for helping me in many aspects of my academic life. To Stacey
Prickett who motivated me to apply for a scholarship and pursue this
research. Without her initial support, I would have not been able to succeed.
To Johanna Higgs for her help with editing. Without her input, this book
would have been much narrower.
I would like to thank the kind reader who opens the pages of this book.
Thanks for giving me the chance to share my thoughts with you.
Introduction
I will begin this Introduction by positioning my personal interest in Islam,
Sufism, and Muslim women’s bodies. My name is Jamila Rodrigues. I was
given the first name in Arabic, but my surname is Portuguese. I was born in
Portugal, and in my early twenties I moved to South Africa. My ancestry is
Moroccan (from my mother’s side) and Portuguese (from my father’s side).
I was raised based on Christian rules, mainly to do with the predominant
Christian side of my family and social integration in the Portuguese main-
stream community. By the age of 14, I went to Morocco for the first time
with my parents and felt emotionally connected to a part of my familial
ancestry that I knew little about. My interest in Islam was formulated not
only due to my family background but also due to the socio-political con-
text of the country where I was raised, and my professional life as a dancer.
Let me unpack this idea.
In current times, Islam in Portugal is still often regarded as socially
closed, violent patriarchal, and oppressive towards women, and receives lit-
tle attention from mainstream Portuguese society. I see this idea of ‘Islamic
extremism’ as an expression of a modern political movement, particularly
influenced after the aftermath of the terrorist attack of 11 September or
the Paris attacks in 2015, for example. Muslims in many parts of the West
still face discrimination, which is portrayed in Western media, and mostly
connected to negative propaganda. Thus, what resonated most with me in
confronting this distorted reality was the fact that Islam spoke to human-
kind that wanted human agency in the quest for social justice and women
play an important role within Muslim communities. I had trouble accepting
that many societies, particularly Western societies, saw Muslims as socially
marginalised, and assumed that all Muslim women were submissive and
uneducated.
However, the focus of this book is not on Islamic feminism, neither on
patriarchy notions within Islamic or Sufi tradition as I will discuss later.
Rather, I am interested to unpack and explore concepts of gendered embod-
ied selfhood and body movement expression in Sufi rituals.
As a dancer I was trained to use my body as a tool of expression and
learned how to analyse body movement and interpret it in several contexts,
viii Introduction
i.e. in a dance performance, or a dance therapy session, with my dance
students, watching a ritual practice that involves movement and so on. I
wanted to apply my dance skills in the context of Sufism ritual practice, par-
ticularly in the ritual of hadra. I wanted to know how the body movement
in ritual practice is meaningful or valid, according to the Sufi women who
chose to discuss this practice.
My academic, dance, and personal interest in Muslim women and embod-
ied ritual practice aims to understand the faithfulness of the relationship
between cultural and social awareness, and spiritual commitments. This is
in part the reason why I decided to write a book about Sufism, gender, body,
and embodied ritual practice.
With this said, there are significant terms, which need to be defined. The
terms are Islam, Sufism, selfhood, and culture. Here, I begin by discussing
the term Islam, the term Sufism, and selfhood. Chapter 2 addresses the term
culture within the methodology and framework contexts that shaped this
book.
Islam. Islam is a complex and multifaceted religion that calls for submis-
sion, surrender, and being docile to one God, and Muhammad – peace be
upon him – is their prophet. It is important for the reader to understand
that the term ‘Muslim’ refers to Islamic religious identity and the term ‘Sufi’
refers to a Muslim who follows Sufism, meaning, whereas a Sufi is Muslim,
not every Muslim is Sufi.
The name of God is Allah, which simply means ‘the God’. The word Allah
is derived from al-ilah, abbreviate to Allah by frequent use. The Qur’an is
the book followed by Muslims, which is seen as the literal word of God. The
first fundamental belief in Islam is the belief in the unity of God. Muslims
believe that the core out of which everything is derived in Islam is the unity
of God, based on the Qur’an text God has not partners (Q. 6:163), God
is not born, nor does God give birth (Q. 122:3). This idea is formalised in
the first and core section of the faith, the shahad: There is no god but God.
The second core is the belief in angels. Qur’an stories when God created
Adam to a status in some ways higher than angels (Q.7: 11–28). In Islam,
angels like Gabriel (jibril) and Michael (mikal) are created from light; others
like Iblis was created by fire and seen as an evil angel.
The third core is the belief in prior revelations and prophets. Muslims
acknowledge the holy status of prophets prior to Muhammad. In fact, the
Qur’an refers to 25 prophets, covering Adam, Moses, Isaac, Ibrahim, Jacob,
David, Solomon, and Jesus, for example. Yet, Islam teaches that Muhammad
was the last in line with these inspired prophets.
The fourth is the belief in the final judgment. The Qur’an mentions that
all creatures will be brought to a final judgment, which will determine eter-
nity in paradise or sentence to hell. Examples are shown in verses of the
Qur’an that mentions only God knows when the judgment will occur, either
very soon (Q. 21:1) or suddenly (Q. 6:31). The last and fifth core is the
belief in predestination and the divine decree. Muslims refer to it as the issue
Introduction ix
of God’s power and decree. According to the Qur’an, God controls time
and thus determines the length of the night and day (Q. 73:20) and stresses
the unconditional power of God. In other words, the fate of all occurrences,
good and bad, has been determined to the extent that all has been written
in a primordial book even before creation (Q. 57:22) that says, ‘The keys of
the unseen are with Him’.
The five Pillars of Islam that resume Islamic faith and practice are known
as witnessing (shahadatayn) which testifies that there is but one divinity that
created the Universe and has absolute power and that Muhammad – may
peace be upon him – is the prophet of God. This idea is resumed in the
phrase there is no god but God or in Arabic la ilaha illallah umuhammadun
rasulullah.
The second is the prayer or salat, which consists of five daily prayers,
obligatory to all Muslims. This is different from du’a, which is a personal
additional prayer, not required but encouraged. The third pillar is known as
required giving; (zakat) is the giving of alms to the poor and needy, and it is
obligatory upon every Muslim of sound mind and financial means.
The fourth is fasting, or sawn, which is well known to non-Muslims and
lasts for a month. From dawn to sunset Muslim refrain to eat, drink, smoke,
and have marital relations; this is an exception for pregnant women, women
during menstruation, sick people, and children. The last pillar is called Hajj,
the Pilgrimage to Mecca, which is required once in a lifetime for Muslims
who have the physical and financial means to do this. This pilgrimage is to
Muslims the most important spiritual ritual act of Islamic faith. While the
focus of this book is on Sufism rather than general Islam, still, the two are
closely associated because Sufism emerged out of Islam’s theological, geo-
graphical, historical, social, and cultural contexts.
Sufism. The term Sufism refers to the mystical dimensions of Islam, in
both Sunni and Shi’i versions. The followers of Sufism are called Sufis. Here
I am reminded of anthropologist Gabriel Marranci who maintains, ‘It is
not Islam that shapes Muslim, but rather Muslim who, through discourses,
parties, beliefs, and actions, makes Islam’ (Marranci 2008: 15). With this
in mind, a Sufi is, therefore, a Muslim that follows a discourse, a practice,
belief, and behaviour that goes according to Sufism’s theological thinking
and practice.
Sufism is not a monolithic religious system. It consists of various ritual
praxis and Sufi ‘orders’ (tariqa), comprising a multiplicity of understandings
and local expressions. There are several Sufi groups around the world. Sufi
orders like Yassaviya, or the well-known Turkish-originated Mawlaviyya,
the Kubraviyya, and the Chistiyya that spread towards India and is now
the largest Sufi community in the world are just a few examples (Sultanova
2011).
A Sufi community can be seen as a group of people who define their
religious identities through their affiliation to different expressions of
Sufi praxis and whose interpersonal connections are based on religious,