Sufi Mysticism into the West: Life and Leadership of Hazrat Inayat Khan's Brothers 1927-1967 (New Religious Identities in the Western World)

Hazrat Inayat Khan was an Indian Sufi mystic who came to the West in 1910. His teachings, The Sufi Message, emphasize the divinity of the soul and the experience of unity of being and unity of religious ideals. The teachings show how Sufism can harmonize eastern and western culture. The process of such harmonization is fairly complex and raises very fundamental questions about eastern values in western society, of Sufism in the West. The book examines the forty-year period after the passing away of Hazrat Inayat Khan in 1927, during which his brothers Maheboob Khan (1887-1948), Mohammed Ali Khan (1881-1958) and Musharaff Kahn (1895-1967) followed Hazrat Inayat Khan as leaders of his organization, the Sufi Movement. It studies how they maintained and spread the teachings and how each one of them influenced the organization, and its adherents, in their own way according to their own personality, education and mystical realization. At the same time, the book offers perspectives on leadership succession and issues pertaining to tensions between eastern and western culture and history, social discontinuity, e.g., the problem of hierarchy versus democracy, and the relationship between mysticism and psycho-spiritual development.