Moving through Dhikr: From Struggling with to Being in the Body, 52. CHAPTER
154 pages
601 KB – 154 Pages
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THE BODY IN REMEMBRANCE DHIKR IN MOROCCAN SUFISM Lindsay Rosenfeld A Senior Honors Thesis University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Submitted in partial fulfillment for Honors in Global Studies April 2013 Approved by: ___________________________ Dr. Della Pollock (Advisor) ____________________________ Dr. William Lachicotte (Reader)
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2 Acknowledg ements , 3 A Note on Translation , 5 Preface , 6 INTRODUCTION: Struggling with Amina , 7 CHAPTER ONE: Body Beginnings, 18 1. Methodology, 23 CHAPTER TWO: Setting the Stage Ð What is Dhikr ?, 27 CHAPTER THREE: Ascetic Body in Practice, 36 2. Struggling with the Body, 44 3. Moving through Dhikr : From Struggling with to Being in th e Body , 52 CHAPTER FOUR: E mbodied History and C ulture , 59 4. Remembrance Extended , 59 5. Rachida : The Child of the Z!wiya , 61 6. Seen Unseen: Looking Good, Looking Right , 72 CONCLUSION: Moving with Dhikr , 83 References , 92 Appendix A : Glos sary, 98 Appendix B: Transcripts , 102 7. Dr. Saqi , 103 8. Mu stapha , 119 9. Farah , 126 10. Mohamed , 132 11. Rachida , 136 12. Youssef , 14 4 Appendix C: Institutional Review Board Documents , 149 13. Consent Forms , 150 14. Interview Sample Que stions , 153 CONTENTS
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3 acknowledgements In ÒInterbe ing,Ó Thich Nhat Hanh writes: ÒIf you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow: and without trees, we cannot make paper.Ó In much the same way, this work could not exist without the ideas and encouragement of many ot hers: my friends in the field, advisers and reade rs, interpreters, fellow thesis writers and classmates, professors, family, friends, and teachers of new and old who have opened the paths before us . And many whose names remain unknown: the Boutchichiyya brothers and sisters, librarians, taxi driver s, medina dwellers, gas pumpers and paper printers , helpful strangers, and oh -so many more. Their words and their bodies move through each line of this work, dancing across the blurry boundaries between one workÕs end and anotherÕs beginning. I am perhaps most indebted to Ghassan, my Moroccan inte rpreter and dear friend, for his unwavering willingness to fumble through the many unknowns of this research by my side. This work would not have been po ssible without his involvement: as interlocutor, interpreter , critic, historian, chauffeur, and partner -in-crime. Thank you, Ghassan, for you r commitment and curiosity. There are no words to fully express what this thesis owes to Della Pollock . For your endless support and encouragement, unwavering patie nce, and warm critiques ; for your handle -less mugs; for your guidance and your friendship; and for graciously imagining this work with me : thank you! I would gladly begin again if it meant trudging through the thickness of these questions with you, coffee in hand a nd laughter close . To all of those who gave time and patience to the interviews on which this thesis is based: the beauty of your stories and your bodies continue to leave me in awe. My deepest hope is that this work is a testimony to your kindness and pas sion, and to my gratitude. At inception, there was Khalid Saqi, who first introduced me to the vastness of Sufism, filled me with much more than prayer and tea, and welcomed me to ask and think with him. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: many thanks to my professor
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4 and reader, William Lachicotte , for giving me embodiment and for of fering endless pati ence and care; M ichal Osterweil, for her constant push for fullness, openness, and complexity; Kelsey Jost -Creegan, for the burdens of Òthesis buddy,Ó fo r FosterÕs, for friendship; my fellow Global Studies thesis writers , for your curios ity and diligent editing; and to the Morehead -Cain Foundation Discovery Fund and the Dunlevie Honors Undergraduate Research Fund, my in-country research would not have been possible without your generous financial support. And to the countless others who have contributed to this work in ways I could never proper ly name, thank you! Thank you for you r time, your words, stories, bodies, movements, hopes, thoughts, and smiles . at last, you will say (maybe without speaking) (there are mountains inside your skull garden and chaos, ocean and hurricane; certain corners of rooms, portraits of great grandmothers, curtains of a particular shade; your deserts; your private dinosaurs; the first woman) Margaret Atwood
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5 a note on translation The Arabic names and terms that appear in this thesis have been translated and transliterated in accordance with John RenardÕs work in The A to Z of Sufism . While names of cities appear in the Latinized spelling (e.g., ÒT”touanÓ for “itw ! n), Arabic words a re accentuated in italics throughout , defined in -text, and assembled in Appendix A: Glossary. Exceptions include ÒQurÕan Ó and the names of institutions , individuals, and Sufi orders, such as Dar al -Hadith al -Hassania Institute , Amina, and the Boutchichiyya Order respectively . Ghassan, a Moroccan student from Al -Akhawayn Universi ty in Ifrane , collaborated with me during my three -week research period in May of 2012 as an interpreter. Not only did he help in the logistical p lanning and actualization of this research, but he also created a truly remarkable interview space Ð one in which the participant could speak in his/her language of comfort ( English, Arabic, and/ or French ). He frequently asked follow -up questions of his own, reading the words and bodies of our friends fro m the field in ways that were beyond my ability to do so. Ghassan was present during all of the inte rviews conducted in Arabi c and/or French and, thus, only attended the interviews with men, mo st of whom spoke in Arabic/French. All of the wo men expressed their ability and desire to speak in English. For interviews in Arabic/French, Ghassan created t ranscriptions in English for each. Transcripts are assemb led in Appendix B: Transcripts.
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6 preface The body in dhikr moves beyond the borders and boundaries of consciousness, of language, of dualistic thinking, of convention , twisting and turning, expressing, moving, telling, thinking, becoming, performing, and remembering Ð the body remembers itself to itself and its place in divinity and history . The bodies of this work are alive with agency, refusing silence a nd stillness. I have been blessed to learn from them and in learning, write and remember with them. This thesis is about the Ritual of Remembrance, or dhikr . It is about a small collection of Moroccans for whom Remembrance is life, for whom the body remembers , for whom the body is a critical site of spiritual life. Thus, the body in dhikr has to be about mysticism and asceticism, history and culture. And the ethnographic process h as led me to realize that it is about so much more than all of this . I have had the pleasure of learning from Morocco and her people on two occasions Ð first as a student abroad in the Fall of 2011 and then again for a few short weeks in May of 2012, during which time I focused on the great many questions of the body in dhikr . I have since returned more times than I could possibly remember Ð walking through the medina Õs streets in slumber, rocking with the performers of dhikr in writing, feeling the same frustrated excitement of my interviews dance across my skin in transcription. To write about the body, much less the body in Sufism, or Islamic mysticism, is, for me, about shifting registers, about opening to a great many possibilities. In writing, I am attempting to embody what Lena Hammergren calls Òkinesthetic discourse,Ó which privileges the body as subject and author (54). I am trying to reach into memory in writing, and remember my own body and the bodies of my friends in the Òfield. Ó In rememb ering and in writing , I am clinging to the hope that the words and bodies of this piece, the embodied narrators, can and do flow freely within and beyond these margins. I fear, as Marta E. Savigliano, Òbodies colonized by words, especially when conjured, d ancing, from the past Ð since they cannot move/talk back Ó (199). Just so , this thesis Òlooms open Ó (Foster, xiii), reveling in beautiful uncertainty, in incomplet eness .
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8 brought her to the Sufi lodge or z! wiya Òjust to be th ere.Ó Her schooling extended far beyond her classes in the French primary school to the ways of the z! wiya itself . Though she lacks an official title, AminaÕs leadership in the Boutchichiyya commu nity is both subtle and palpable, a quiet importance. One of her peers likened her role to the significance of the oldest child in the functioning of a family Ð fundamental and yet too often overlooked. It was this comment of praise and others that necessi tated my meeting with Amina, for she was someone so clearly revered by those surrounding her. Though Amina and I met with the intention of discussing dhikr and, quite specifically, the body in dhikr , only a small portion of our conversation was clearly ded icated to either topic. Even though I had entered the interview with a predetermined set of questions, I quickly found that they led to seemingly unrelated discussions that I had not anticipated. Instead of responding to my questions about the history and significance of movements in dhikr Ð both her own and those of her peers Ð Amina kept returning to Sufism broadly, and on a few occasions, the understandings and practices surrounding the body in this mystical tradition. She kept doubling back to Òher great sadnessÓ that other Muslims and ÒyouÓ1 do not understand the ways of Sufism, an ignorance that she associated with ÒyourÓ obsessions with veils and saint worship. The narrow focus on female covering and saint traditions makes it impossible t o engage with the beauty and depth of her faith, she said. At first I was frustrated with these frequent digressions Ð often lasting for ten minutes at a time Ð and what seemed like an instinctive grouping of ÒyouÓ and other Muslims. All at once , I seemed to represent this colossal Other Ð an Other who has, thus far, proven to be incapable of understanding; an Other so saturated in ignorance that it comes as no surprise that shrines continue to be burned and believers beaten. It is the ÒI,Ó the ÒyouÓ that seems 1 I interpreted her use of ÒyouÓ to signify North Americans collectively, myself included.
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9 unable to grasp the beautiful peace that is Sufism. I must be clear that I never felt unwelcome by Amina. If anything, her kindness overwhelmed me, constantly and without fail. And yet her criticisms stung in the way that only the truest truths can Ð sharply, deeply. Part of me expected to be lauded for my efforts here, given a valiant pat of the back and a nod of approval by those about whom I planned to write, those to whom I hoped to write. After all, I was intending to dive into, to crawl through a set of questions that have been largely unconsidered in previous scholarship. But then here was Amina, firmly stating the opposite. No. You do not understand. You cannot understand. AminaÕs dismissal continues to haunt me. In just one breath she rejecte d not only my efforts in this work but n early all academic endeavors. And I am becoming more and more content with the truth of her statement. I am incapable of fully grasping Sufism and its dimensions because it is not something that is known to me in the ÒIÕve experienced thisÓ kind of way. Amina later referred to this way of knowing as Òtasting.Ó Sufism must be tasted, she said. For when is a berryÕs sweetness so real, so true as when it breaks upon the tongue? The vast majority of my informants were in agreement with Amina and the handful remaining did not share an opinion one way or the other Ð one even paraphrased the Iranian philosopher , Ab ! Hamid Al -Ghazali, in saying that Ò the distinctive aspect of mysticism is something that cannot be understood b y study, but only by dhawq [tasting / immediate experience]É There is a big difference between knowing the meaning and the causes of health and satiety, and being healthy and satisfiedÓ (qtd. in “Abu Hamid Al -Ghazali”). But then why do we ask? What do we h ope to gain and to give in askin g, in not-knowing? As my conversation with Amina progressed, it seemed increasingly important to understand this ÒyouÓ she was addressing Ð the ÒyouÓ that was sitting directly across from her, the ÒyouÓ that encompassed Americans and other Muslims. The ÒyouÓ was distant and separate and yet, did not seem to be the source of resentment or anger. It just was. It is.
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10 Amina seemed to speak to this ÒyouÓ with both her words and her body, for she leaned into its use Ð shoulders followed by hips. It was clothed in her doubt in m y ab ility not only to understand but also appreciate what she was saying about Sufism broadly and the body specifically. For how could I? How could Òyou ?Ó From my position across from her, there was a driving sense that Amina was speaking to and through me to other Ame ricans and Muslims and in doing so , setting a framework from which to talk about Sufism, the body, and dhikr . And here again is a foreshadowing Ð how many Americans have come before me, singing songs of understanding, and how many more will follow ? How many other Muslims Ð to no avail? Herein lies the beauty of the body. Within c orporeality there is commonality, and while I hardly believe that every personÕs corporeal experience is the same, there is a magnificence in recognizing that there is some thing fundamentally human in being Òof the flesh,Ó that so much of the human experience is an experience of and through and with and as body. It threads through us, connecting. Thus, even though I have not experienced the corporea lity of dhikr in an authen tically Sufi way as a believer , I did experience it as body . Here in lies a knowledge, a point of understanding itself (OÕNeil 3 -5). And it is this body, this understanding from which I write. My own use of the body is embedded within every dot of ink, ever y piece of this research: my culture and my history have given me the body as a site upon which to consider the existence of a role and the supposed meanings that can be derived from it .2 I sat in the Boutchichiyya z! wiya during dhikr as my own body, just as I walked the streets and later typed these words. There is a whole collection of bodies connected through 2 From the earliest stages of this research, I struggled with the use of the language Òthe body,Ó especially in a work that aims to move away from stark dualisms and immovable categories. And yet, I have chosen to quite pointedly use Òthe bodyÓ Ð as a phras e, as a point of possibility, as a subject and an object Ð in writing this work. Its use serves as a launching pad, a starting point for (re)considering the cluster of scholarship that has adhered to dualisms and abstractions in researching and writing Òth e body.Ó Its use signals an opening into the vast possibility of bodies in dhikr .
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11 the ink of this research, leaving footsteps and fingerprints Ð from Descartes to Merleau -Ponty to my Moroccan friends to you as reader. Though Amina certainly did recognize this corporeal commonality Ð Amina, after all, encouraged me to attend and participate in as many dhikr gatherings as possible Ð in responding to my questions about dhikr and the body, she engaged with concerns that wer e at once more basic and complex. For one, our conversation relied heavily on our ability to discuss dhikr linguistically, a limitation that was consistent with AminaÕs insistence that a true understanding of Sufism and dhikr clings to taste. In addition, she questioned how she could possibly help me understand the role of the body in dhikr if I was unable to first understand the framework from which dhikr and the body were derived. Her concerns were evident from the first moments of our exchange and bec ame the underlying premises from which we spoke . She had just returned the silver teapot to its position on the edge of the table, leaned back into the cushions and sighed, smiling as the last wisp of air escaped her lips. ÒYullah [Lets go!] ,Ó she said, ÒI he ar you want to talk of Sufism.Ó I nodded. ÒAnd the body, yes?Ó I nodded again, leaning closer. ÒYes, and the body in dhikr specifically.Ó ÒYou must first know that we are concerned with the spirit above all else. The QurÕan tells us that Allah created us and breathed His Spirit into us. [It] is interesting [that] you ask about the body because we do not talk about it with our words. Our interest is in having a clean spirit.Ó Months of distance from my original conversation with Amina compel a p ause here, a brief interlude of reflection to think with Amina in a way that the propulsion of our conversation did not permit at the time. Her first full sentence Ð ÒYou must first know that we are concerned with the spirit above all elseÓ Ð is enfolded i n first principles. Amina is
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