The Cultural Products of Global Sufism

Because of this cultural and geographical transplantation it is legitimate to call global Sufism a 'new religion'. It has migrated a great distance from the Islamic mainstream, and continues to undergo radical changes in terms of its very definition. In Western culture, the East is often presented as a source of mysticism and undiscovered knowledge (Rawlinson 1997). This facilitates the consumption of its spiritual and cultural products, including Sufism. The commercial impact of Orientalism in the twenty-first century is substantial, fuelled by New Age spiritual seekership and the rise of World Music, among other phenomena. Paul M. Hirsch describes a cultural product as something that "embodies a live, one-of-a-kind performance and/or contains a unique set of ideas" (Hirsch 1972: 642). Although his examples include films and football games, this same concept may be applied to religious movements. Hirsch's case study focuses on commercial organisations as the filters for cultural products. This chapter will expand upon his definition to include religions as cultural filters and specific arts and crafts as their products. This chapter notes, for example, the traditional Iranian singers, Shajarian and Shahram Nazeri, who actively promote the egalitarian spirit of the Sufi poets, Hafiz and Rumi, in the West. This is achieved through the non-Islamic medium of classical Persian poetry and music (Taylor 2010). Interest in Sufism will also be connected to its ability to create space for individual expression, a pervasive requirement of modern Western culture.