Sufi Communities in Secular Mexico

Abstract

The emergence of an organized presence of Sufi communities in Mexico dates to the last two decades of the 20th century. Sufis constitute a part of Mexico’s minority Muslim community. Their groups are mostly made of Mexican and other Latin American converts who follow the leadership of Western sheikhs, who themselves converted to Islam and were initiated into Sufi orders as adults. These characteristics shape many of the particularities of Mexican Sufi communities and their relationship to the Sufi orders from which they originated. The oldest and most established Sufi community in Mexico is the Nur Ashki Jerrahi order, an offshoot of the Turkish Halveti-Jerrahi order. The second community of Sufi Muslims to have been established in Mexico is the Murabitun community, a branch of the Murabitun World Movement that settled in the southern state of Chiapas in 1995. Apart from these two larger communities, other Sufi orders have representatives in Mexico who guide smaller groups of followers. Some Sufi groups in Mexico have combined traditional gatherings with commercial activities, especially in the form of workshops and alternative therapeutic services that are advertised as being based on Sufi concepts and ritual practices. These groups have also offered intellectual approaches to Sufism, such as reading circles and seminars. By considering groups whose Sufi dimension has been overlooked, either because they are secular communities or because they are organizations focused on social transformation with little or no mystical emphasis, scholars can query the conventional Western construal of Sufism as Islamic mysticism.