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This chapter describes and explains how from the early 20th
century until the present, Sufi movements in America evolved from
offering universalist teachings that emphasized private personal spiritual
development, to increasingly Islamic and public organizations.
Causes for this shift include demographic changes in the American
population ranging from the immigration of Muslim Sufi teachers from
the Middle East in the 1980s, to the rise of a current generation of young
Muslim Americans, many of whose parents were immigrants. The pursuit
of authentic Islamic knowledge, often identified with both fiqh (expertise
in Islamic law) and adab (proper Islamic conduct), among this cohort of
American Muslim youth, has evolved in a direction that increasingly
embraces emotion and affect as factors that unite and mobilize Sufiinfluenced
Muslims who may be post-tariqa, but espouse many elements
of Sufi teaching, vocabulary, and comportment.
The final section of the chapter explores the recent turn towards emotion
and affect on the part of several Sufi-influenced movements based in
America such as CelebrateMercy and the Ta'leef Connection. These
groups emerged from the embrace of Islamic authenticity grounded in
knowledge and performance of Islamic legal norms promoted by Sufioriented
Muslim scholars popular among youth in the West and such
as Hamza Yusuf Hanson, Abdal Hakim Murad, Umar Faruq Abdullah,
and Habib Umar Jifri. While these emotive Sufi movements have some
characteristics of counter-publics, they find increasing acceptance,
integration, and even public influence within major American Muslim
organizations, including the Islamic Society of North America.
