Speakers

• 

  Zuleikha
  

  Zuleikha

  Trained in music, movement and mysticism by Master teachers of eastern and western lineages, international Storydancer and educator, Zuleikha, is an ambassador for Unity in artistic and spiritual expression. As a Storydancer and performer, Zuleikha has been described as “a singular figure on the horizon of sacred theater and dance” (Edinburgh Guide). She is renowned for her collaborations in the Rumi Concert with the celebrated poet and translator of Rumi’s poetry, Coleman Barks, and with award-winning world musicians. Zuleikha loves Zikr. She is a conductor of this practice, leading groups of people through active Oneness meditation that often combines silence, sitting, melody and motion. zuleikha.com

• 

  Mehmet Soran
  

  Mehmet Soran

  Mehmet Soran was born in Montreal, Canada. His parents had immigrated from
  Turkiye in the 60’s and were deeply involved with Sufi studies as well as the
  Transcendental Meditation movement. His father was drawn to Pir Vilayat’s teachings and had visited the Abode of the Message a couple of times in the late 70’s. However, it wasn’t until 2011 that Mehmet’s destiny would reveal a reconnection with the Inayatiyya through Mehmet Kasim Hoja’s Sufi Center in Istanbul. This reconnection quickly led to intense study and practice of Murshid’s teachings, Turkish co-translation (with Zehra Müge Hoja) of Pir Vilayat’s book – Awakening, residence at The Abode of the Message as Khadim for several months, graduation from Suluk Academy’s Gulzar class and also Suluk Graduate studies; The Divine Art. Mehmet is currently a Representative in Training. He regularly translates Pir Zia’s online classes and programs for Turkish speaking students. He hopes to grow the Inayatiyya Center in Turkiye and is actively involved as a board member.

• 

  LatifaNoor Anderson
  

  LatifaNoor Anderson

  LatifaNoor Elizabeth Anderson is a graduate of the Na Koja Abad Global Suluk Academy class, Vice President of the Music Activity for Oceania and the Americas, a Representative in the Inner School, Musical Representative, spiritual guide, retreat guide, and center leader for the Light of Harmony Center, Inayatiyya of Dobbs Ferry. She is also a cellist and vocalist; her Indian raga studies inspired the CD LatifaNoor, a synthesis of Raga and Western classical music for cello, voice, and tampura. As a cellist she has toured China, Japan, Mexico, Italy, England, Germany, Finland, Australia, Israel, India, and the US with the Meliora and Cassatt String Quartets and with the New York City Opera. She has recorded for Telarc, Nonesuch, and RCA and her next recordings will feature sacred vocal music for retreat.
  When not traveling for concerts or leading alchemical singing retreats, LatifaNoor loves walking in nature with her basset hound Ruby, cooking for family and friends, and knitting socks.

• 

  Amir O’Loughlin
  

  Amir O’Loughlin

  Amir O’Loughlin has been a Representative and Guide in the The Inayatiyya for over 40 years. He is also a Siraj of the Universal Worship, and a Representative in the Music Activity. For many years, Amir was Canada’s National Representative for The Inayatiyya and served on its Board. Amir is a musician and recording artist whose albums “Merhaba” and “Opener of Wings” (Songs of Rumi) have garnered much praise in both North America and Europe. He was the founder & conductor of The Universal Gospel Choir, and has led hundreds of spiritual music events including the monthly “Universal Kirtan,” an interfaith approach to group chanting and song. In his professional life, Amir is a Psychotherapist.

• 

  Sitara Mitten-Lewis
  

  Sitara Mitten-Lewis

  Sitara Mitten-Lewis founded the first Sufi Order center in Sydney, Australia in the 1990’s and served as Regional Representative for Australia until 2010. As a Senior Teacher, she also serves as a Shafayat in the Healing Activity and a Mentor in the Dances of Universal Peace. She coordinated the Inayati Order Leaders Training Committee from 2010-15 and helped develop the training module on Sacred Sound. She guides murids and offers retreats and workshops on meditation, music and movement in the US, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.

• 

  Sarmad Michael Harrison
  

  Sarmad Michael Harrison

  Sarmad Michael Harrison is a composer and pianist who forges a new approach to composition by blending classical music traditions of Europe and North India, and by utilizing just intonation (the ancient system of tuning based on pure harmonic proportions). He is a disciple of Pandit Pran Nath, Terry Riley, La Monte Young, and Ustad Mashkoor Ali Khan. Harrison received his Masters in Composition at the Manhattan School of Music and is the recipient of Guggenheim and NYFA Artist Fellowships. His music has been commissioned and recorded by leading performers including Grammy-winning vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth, Alarm Will Sound, and Cello Octet Amsterdam. Revelation, his critically acclaimed work for piano in his own tuning system, was selected among the Best Classical Recordings of the Year by The New York Times and Boston Globe. Harrison seeks expressions of universality via the physics of sound – music that brings one into a state of concentrated listening as a meditative and even mind-altering experience. His recent album Seven Sacred Names is based on the Sufi teachings of the Seven Leading Names. Harrison has been an initiate in the Inayatiyya since 1977.

• 

  Sarida Brown
  

  Sarida Brown

  Music has always been a core part of Sarida Brown’s life. She has been playing the violin since 1956. She was ordained by Pir Vilayat as a Conductor in the Sufi Healing Order in 1979, and asked to establish the Healing Order (now Inayatiyya Healing) activity in Europe. She helped to focus the Inayatiyya Healing activities worldwide, training members and conductors, guiding retreats, and creating two two-year international healing courses, and she has also served as faculty for Suluk Academy. She retired as Kefayat in 2021, and continues to teach in the Inner School.
  She founded, and for 20 years edited, the Caduceus Journal, an international magazine to which Pir Vilayat and Pir Zia contributed several articles, integrating themes of spiritual and scientific healing, psychotherapy, ecology and existential issues. She also completed the BodySoul Rhythms programme with Jungian analyst, Marion Woodman.  Sarida is an acupuncturist.

• 

  Amat-un-Nur Hayat
  

  Amat-un-Nur Hayat

  Amat-un-Nur Hayat has been walking the Sufi Path of the Inayatiyya since 2004. She serves as a Regional Representative of South-East Asia, National Representative for Pakistan, and a Guide in the Inner School of the Inayatiyya. Additionally she is a Shefayat in the Inayatiyya Healing Activity. She has represented Sufi teachings as part of many international conferences and has led Sufi inner training and healing retreats.
  She lives and works in Lahore, Pakistan.

• 

  Saki Lee
  

  Saki Lee

  Saki Lee is a senior teacher and guide in the Inayatiyya and is a long time practitioner and wellness coach in East Asian medicine. Sacred music is her joy and delight, and she is a dance leader and mentor for the Dances of Universal Peace. In the Netherlands she co-hosts regular Music of Life programs featuring world music concerts as a way to inspire and awaken awareness of humankind’s oneness beyond boundaries of race, culture and religion.

• 

  Gayatri Hull
  

  Gayatri Hull

  Gayatri Hull has been a leader in the Inayatiyya for 30 years. She is a certified spiritual and healing retreat guide, healer (Shafayat) in the Healing Activity, Cheraga in the Universal Worship and Representative and Guide in the Inner School and Music Activity. Gayatri’s work emphasizes the process of healing through tuning the body, heart, mind and soul. Her work awakens one to the deeper nature of one’s inner being, increases balance, self-care, restoration, rejuvenation, vitality, and an overall sense of wellbeing. Gayatri has a healing practice and retreat center in a beautiful nature setting in New Lebanon, NY. (www.GayatriHull.com)

• 

  Nizam un Nisa Ayeda Husain
  

  Nizam un Nisa Ayeda Husain

  Nizam un Nisa is a Shaykha, Cheraga, Guide, Representative and Facilitator of the Anjumani-Islam group in the Inayatiyya. A student of classical Chishti Sufism since 1988 and a devoted follower of the Inayatiyya since 2004, she has led Inayatiyya centers in Lahore, in Dubai and now in Oakville, Ontario where she lives. A journalist and editor by profession with an MA in Journalism/Near Eastern Studies from NYU, Nizam un Nisa is a graduate of the first European Suluk class, Knight of Purity, and mentor to the Naubahar Suluk class. She has led Sufi retreats, taught Sufi meditation to Buddhist monks in Tokyo and been invited to the UN as part of an international delegation of spiritual leaders. She is currently working on setting the Urdu poetry of Hazrat Inayat Khan to music.

• 

  Shams al Haqq
  

  Shams al Haqq

  Shams al Haqq is classically trained in Sama. He has extensively studied the turn, sama meditation, as well as mysticism and Persian mystical poetry of Sufism and Irfan. He curated and has taken part in many spiritual music Ceremonies and sama presentations. He serves the Sufi communities in Canada, presenting some of their work through Rumi Canada. He is also a student within the Inayatiyya & graduate of Suluk Academy. He currently lives in Vancouver, Canada & holds monthly sessions for Sama / inner listening meditation.

• 

  Ophiel Maarten van Leer
  

  Ophiel Maarten van Leer

  Ophiel Maarten van Leer is a conductor, singer and music teacher with many years of experience in the fields of music and meditation. He is the Vice-President for Europe for the new Inayatiyya Music Activity. He comes from a musical family; His mother introduced him to the Sufi message. At 17, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan became his inspiring teacher. He studied conducting and school music-teaching in Utrecht. For many years he has led seminars in ensemble singing, musical improvisation and meditation. He teaches music at a Rudolf Steiner School and directs various choirs in the Rhine-Main area around Frankfurt, Germany.

• 

  Devi Tide
  

  Devi Tide

  Devi Tide is the Kefayat (Head) and Vice President of the Sufi Healing Order in North America, New Zealand and Australia. She has over thirty years of experience as a teacher of healing and the esoteric sciences, bringing the qualities of wisdom, heart, subtlety, humor, and intelligence to her role. Devi has contributed to and offered programs in India, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and North America. In her seminars, public speaking, and individual sessions and retreats, Devi represents the inner vitality and harmony of the body, mind and spirit, the vitality of our interconnected world, as well as personal transformation. 

• 

  Stephanie Nuria Sabato
  

  Stephanie Nuria Sabato

  Professor Emeritus Stephanie Nuria Sabato’s studies of world religions have taken her on spiritual pilgrimages throughout Europe, the Middle East, Morocco, Turkey and India. Her first journey to India was in 1990 when she personally met Mother Teresa and His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama. She has been a Sufi initiate for over three decades, and has dedicated herself to a Path of inner study and outward service to the Sufi Message. Murshida Nuria is a former General Representative (Pir) for the International Sufi Movement. She resigned this function in 2018. 

• 

  Siddiq Juan Tavella
  

  Siddiq Juan Tavella

  Siddiq Juan Tavella is an illustrator and musician from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He has studied Indian classical music on sitar for more than ten years, and Murshid’s teachings have been a deep influence in his life, helping join his musical path with his spiritual search. He lives in a small cabin in the countryside, where he is inspired by nature, learning to cultivate a vegetable garden, practice music and, at the moment, working with two other murids on the translation into Spanish of The Mysticism of Sound and Music.

• 

  Yavuz Akbar Bilgin
  

  Yavuz Akbar Bilgin

  Yavuz Akbar Bilgin graduated from Yıldız Technical University, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. He worked in dozens of projects in the private sector, both within Turkey and abroad, as a project manager in the field of production. He joined the Inayatiyya path in 2013, became a Coordinator in 2021, graduated from Suluk in 2022, and is currently in training as a Representative of Inayatiyya Türkiye. He has studied the Rebab, and recently completed ‘Dubbing and Vocal Training’ at Topkapı University.

• 

  Mehrunnisa Dilek Ekşi Bilgin
  

  Mehrunnisa Dilek Ekşi Bilgin

  Mehrunnisa Dilek Ekşi Bilgin was active in software and system design projects in IT departments in the private sector (financial institutions, insurances, and human resources), and worked as a project manager and a team leader for many years. She wrote the illustrated children’s book ‘The Soul Tells a Story to the Souls’, which was supported by Seferihisar Municipality, Turkey’s first slow city (cittaslow), and distributed to children as a report card gift. She translated the special book titled ‘Twenty Jàtaka Tales’ as retold by Noor Inayat Khan into Turkish. She loves to share the wisdom of fairy tales with children and adults. As a Kundalini Yoga instructor, her special interest is human body intelligence, body kinetics and sound healing. Mehrunnisa is a graduate of both Suluk’s Zindarud Class (2015) and the Graduate course ‘The Divine Art: The Alchemy of Human Transformation’ (2022).

• 

  Dr Tomek Regulski
  

  Dr Tomek Regulski

  Dr. Tomek Regulski (D.M.A) is a composer, sitarist, and rudra veena student living in New York City. As a sitarist, Tomek received his foundational training in the style of the Maihar Gharana from the late Acharya Roop Verma, and has since received additional guidance in this tradition from Arjun Verma and Pandit Krishna Bhatt. Aadditionally, Tomek is a student of the Dagarbhani tradition of Dhrupad, studying rudra veena with Jeff Lewis and Ustad Bahauddin Dagar. Outside of his efforts in Hindustani music, Tomek has written music for electronics and small ensembles under a unified goal of creating abstract soundscapes for sensitive listening. His compositions have been performed throughout the United States as well as in Europe and Mexico; and his sitar playing can be heard on Adam Bauer’s record “Shyam Lila”.

• 

  Ali Babahan
  

  Ali Babahan

  Ali Babahan has been a scholar in the field of sociology in Turkey for more than fifteen years. He holds a B.Sc. degree in Political Science and International Relations, an M.A. degree in the field of Anthropology and Sociology of the Middle East, and a Ph.D. in Sociology. However, if he is to be given a title, he prefers to be called a seeker of the Truth/Absolute. He graduated from the Na-Koja-Abad class of the Suluk Academy in Inayatiyya in 2022 and is now continuing his journey as a student in the Leadership and Coordinatorship training at the Inner School of Inayatiyya. He also believes that music, for which he has had an aptitude since early childhood, is an essential part of this mystical journey, although he does not have a professional career in this field.

• 

  Moussa Afia Bayfall Mbaye
  

  Moussa Afia Bayfall Mbaye

  Moussa Afia Bayfall Mbaye comes from a griot-family closely connected and devoted to Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba himself and his descendents. Among his ancestors are King Demba War Sall, religious scholars and holy men as Mame Limamou Laye and Mame Mor Diara Mbaye. Moussa’s grandfather, Mame Cheikh Ndiaye, lived near Bamba until the age of 18 sitting on Bamba’s knees as a child. Moussa made Jebulu to Serigne Afia, Bamba’s grandson, and Serigne Afia’s son, Serigne Bara, is married to one of Moussa’s nieces. Moussa learned Djembe, the five different Sabar-drums (invented by one of his ancestors) and other drums. From the age of five he played with his brothers in their father’s griot drumming group at family celebrations. He was engaged as a soloist in the Groupe National Senegal and went on tour in Europe for years. Moussa dedicates his life to the service of Bamba and Islam.

• 

  Angela Feyerlein
  

  Angela Feyerlein

  Divine vibrations of universal love and unity reach Angela Feyerlein’s heart and fill her soul in many ways: through the joy of listening, singing and playing the Sehtar; Ilahis and Tasavvuf Music in the Bektashi- and the Mevlevi-Tradition (thanks to Hosh Neva and Tümata), church music (thanks to Dorothea and the Lutherana, her local church choir in Karlsruhe), the b-minor-mass (thanks to Ophiel and Tarana). And now she feels blessed with the experience of the Thiant of the Bayfal of Touba carrying the amazing power of Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba and Mame Cheikh Ibrahima Fall (thanks to Moussa). W-al-hamdu li-llah!