Speakers

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  Alia Sura Arnesen
  

  Alia Sura Arnesen

  Alia Sura Arnesen is a musician and spiritual guide. Together with Shams Uwais, she welcomes spiritual seekers at Shamali nature- and retreat center at the north-west coast of Norway. She also regularly offers musical attunements and meditations online open to all.

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  Sara Tarana Jobin
  

  Sara Tarana Jobin

  Sara Tarana Jobin is the Inayatiyya’s Music Director and Emeritus Vice President of its Music Activity. Professionally, she has a long career as an opera conductor and continues to freelance professionally. As a student of Sufism since 2010, and graduate of Sulūk Academy, she is dedicated to reviving and sharing the musical legacy of Hazrat Inayat Khan with all who find a home in his teachings.

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  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.

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  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.

• Deepa Gulrukh Patel
  Deepa Gulrukh Patel

  Deepa Gulrukh Patel is an activist and facilitator with a special interest in the arts, interdisciplinary collaboration, contemplation, diversity, and equality. She has worked with organisations such as the BBC, ActionAid, and the Arts Council of England. She is currently working with the University of Sheffield, UNCHR, and other partners on a number of projects with refugees in Jordan at the Zaatari refugee camp. She is also working with the Fetzer Foundation on a project around Virtual Sacred Spaces. Voluntary work is an important part of her life and in the UK she is Chair of Tamasha Theatre Company and The Loss Foundation, a charity for the bereaved of those who have died of cancer. Deepa has been involved with the inner life since she was a teenager and is the director of a summer meditation camp in the Swiss Alps. She is a teacher and guide in the Inayatiyya, a Sufi lineage founded by Hazrat Inayat Khan and the Vice-Chair of the Inayatiyya International Board.

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  Srinivas Reddy
  

  Srinivas Reddy

  Srinivas Reddy is a scholar, translator and musician. He studied classical South Asian languages and literatures at UC Berkeley and currently teaches at Brown University and IIT Gandhinagar. Srinivas is also a concert sitarist who trained in the traditional guru-shishya parampara in the lineage of late maestro Pandit Nilkhil Banerjee. He spends his time performing, teaching and conducting research around the world.  His latest book is Raya: Krishnadevaraya of Vijayanagara (2020). www.srinivasreddy.org

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  LatifaNoor Elizabeth Anderson
  

  LatifaNoor Elizabeth 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.

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  Ashoka Robert Johnson
  

  Ashoka Robert Johnson

  Ashoka Robert Johnson has had an international career as a symphonic musician holding titled positions in the Chicago Lyric Opera Orchestra and Grant Park Orchestra, Orchestra Ciutat de Barcelona, La Orquesta Filarmonica de Santiago (Chile) and the Singapore Symphony. He is a Representative, Healing Conductor and Retreat Guide in the Inayatiyya and has served as a Mentor for Suluk Academy.

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  Nirtana Vivienne Robertson
  

  Nirtana Vivienne Robertson

  Nirtana Vivienne Robertson is a Representative, Guide and Retreat Guide in the Inner School, a Healing Conductor, Sahabat as-Safa and leader of Dances of Universal Peace. She is dedicated to exploring the collaboration between Sufi and Indigenous ways, and co-leads Sufi/Indigenous retreats in the West Australian desert. She is also passionate about the arts, and creative director of Reclaim the Void: weaving country whole, which draws together Sufi, Indigenous and artistic threads in a collaborative act of apology to country (and its custodians) that has been impacted by mining.

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  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.

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  Kainat Felicia Norton
  

  Kainat Felicia Norton

  Kainat Felicia Norton served as Vice President of the Inayatiyya’s Ziraat Activity for
  eighteen years and is now Emeritus. She is a senior teacher, retreat guide, a mentor for leaders in training for the Inner School, and served on the faculty of Suluk Academy. She teaches and performs internationally. She has toured solo dance theater works in Europe, the US, Canada, Central America, and Asia. Felicia performed the one woman show Noor, based on the life of Noor Inayat Khan, in Edinburgh, London, UK, NYC, and France. Felicia teaches at the United Nations International School in NYC. She is co -author with Charles Muinuddin Smith, of the book An Emerald Earth recently translated into French Une Terre & Émeraude. They co-lead the Inayatiyya Center in New York City and offer retreats and programs worldwide.

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  Hadi Yves Saint-Pierre
  

  Hadi Yves Saint-Pierre

  Hadi Yves Saint-Pierre was drawn to Sufism through music and in retrospect, there were a lot of signs pointing to this meeting in the years prior to when he met his first Sufi guide and the Inayatiyya in Ottawa in 1997. His musical practice has included jazz, slavic folk and Indian classical vocal as well as accompanying the Dances of Universal Peace. Among the many threads in the Inayatiyya, besides music, Hadi is particularly drawn to the contemplation of nature and has recently been working in a small farm practicing regenerative agriculture. Hadi is also interested in the heritage of various religions in Sufism. Indeed, he translated the Unity of Religious Ideals in 1998-1999 and Pir Zia’s book Mingled Waters, whose translation is in its final stage of revision. He lives in Canada, in Ottawa and has also spent ten years in Montreal. Hadi was a salik in the first cohort of the Suluk Academy. He speaks French and English, and is studying Chinese and Spanish.

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  Fereshta Heidelind Bechtloff
  

  Fereshta Heidelind Bechtloff

  For Fereshta Heidelind Bechtloff, one of the most beautiful paths to the One is music, and she loves being led on her path by these sounds that come from the source of the eternal being. She plays the piano, sang in various choirs, and was introduced to Indian classical singing by Sri Karunamayee Abrol in Delhi, where she was able to immerse in a whole new universe of music. Currently, she loves to improvise freely out of silence together with another musician. In the Inayatiyya she is initiated as a cherag and representative, and she is a member of the German Message Council for the Music Activity. In her professional life she works as a psychotherapeutic doctor in an psychosomatic clinic in southern Germany.