Inayatiyya Forum on Race, Justice & Love
On May 31st, 2020, in response to the death of George Floyd and resulting global protests, we held our first Inayatiyya Forum on Race, Justice & Love. Pir Zia offered remarks leading into our discussion. His written text may be found below.
Pir Zia was joined by Fatima Hafiz-Muid, Onaje Muid, and Omid Safi. All remarks may be listened to via Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/inayatiyya/remarks-from-the-inayatiyya-forum-on-race-justice-love
We will convene follow-up forums on Sundays, June 14th & 21st, 2020, from 3-4:30 pm EDT. Please check our Events Calendar for details which will be posted the week of June 8th.
Pir Zia Inayat Khan Remarks, May 31, 2020
Dear Friends,
Thank you for coming together today. Over the last weeks, during these Sunday gatherings we have been studying Hazrat Inayat Khan’s teachings on Healing and the Mind World. These teachings emphasize how healthy habits of body and mind support lifelong good health. We are reminded, for instance, of the importance of repose, time in nature, pure water, and deep, slow breaths.
Perhaps these teachings have reminded us to slow down, to spend time in the garden and the woods, to drink a glass of water first thing in the morning, and to breathe mindfully as often as possible.
But these options are not equally available to all.
What if repose is elusive because the long days of back-breaking work never seem to end? For some communities, employment barriers doom workers to lives of exhausting drudgery.
Nature, we know, is healing. But what if your community has been systematically estranged from natural spaces? Here in the U.S., until 1964 non-whites were banned from public recreation sites.
Pure water, Murshid reminds us, is a tonic. But polluted water is pervasive in economically deprived neighborhoods and on reservations. What tonic is there to be had if you live in Flint, Michigan?
Breath is the essence of life. Shaykh al-Akbar Ibn ‘Arabi says, “Breath is a movement of yearning toward the object of love.” But what if the air is clogged with particulate? African American and Latino communities produce less air pollution than others, but are exposed to far more.
And what if your very breath is choked out of you by violence? What if a callous and belligerent element entrenched within law enforcement will not let you breathe? That was the tragic fate of Eric Garner six years ago, and of George Floyd last week. God bless and keep their souls, and the souls of all whose lives have similarly been taken unjustly.
When I heard George Floyd utter the cry “Mama,” his face pressed against the concrete, his whole body under assault, I thought of my aunt Pirzadi-Sahida Noor. Her final word as she knelt before here executioner—Liberté—echoes in the voice of George Floyd. Liberté and Mama are one and the same call, the invocation of the Infinite Love and the Infinite Justice on lips crushed by tyranny.
The cry cannot be ignored. What wall could be high enough to sequester us from the misery of the oppressed in this world that we are creating together? We are all implicated in all that happens to everyone.
Khwaja Mu‘in ad-Din Chishti said, “On the Day of Resurrection God will command the angels to extract hell from the mouths of snakes. Then will flare up such a hellfire that in an instant the whole world will be roiled in smoke. Whoever would be safe from the turmoil of that day should perform the service regarded by God as the ultimate service. [Which service is that?] To answer the cries of the oppressed, to fulfill the needs of the needy, and to fill the stomachs of the hungry.”
Paradise lies in service. Answering cries, meeting needs, offering food: these are the ways of heaven. Salvation is in togetherness.
What is more: we must ask, why are the oppressed oppressed, why are the needy in need, and why are the hungry hungry? Is there an unheeded link between my gain and their loss?
The fifth of the Ten Sufi Thoughts says, “There is One Law, the law of reciprocity, which can be observed by a selfless conscience together with a sense of awakened justice.” Reciprocity is a level playing field and equality in giving and taking. Awakened justice is the constant vigilance and self-reflection that is required in the pursuit of fairness.
The sixth Sufi Thought says, “There is One Brotherhood and Sisterhood, the human brotherhood and sisterhood, which unites the children of earth indiscriminately in the Parenthood of God.” We are all one family. God does not discriminate, and when we do we are far from the knowledge of God.
Humanity is not yet one family. Witness, across the world, people in concentration camps, people forced from their homes, people deprived of ancestral lands and fenced in with barbed wire, people hunted and hounded for no reason than the color of their skin or the faith they profess, or for their gender or sexual orientation. Everything hurts. None of us will be free until all of us are free. The work to be done is enormous.
Dear friends, our hearts are raw. There have been too many senseless deaths, too many wrongs. It is time—past time—to do the work of building the human family. It’s time to build love and justice in the spaces between us.
I speak to you today from Richmond, Virginia, once the hub of the North Atlantic slave trade and capital of the Confederacy. The James River that flows through this city was sacred to the Powhattan, a tribe, like so many, destroyed in the founding of this country.
Down the street, the river flows. I remember Murshid’s words, “The water that washes the heart is the continual running of the love-stream.”
How many tears are mingled in the currents of the James as it wends its course to the ocean’s vastness?
“Deep river … Oh don’t you want to go to that gospel feast, that promised land, where all is peace.”
For George Floyd, for Breonna Taylor, for Ahmaud Arbery, for Eric Garner, for Amadou Diallo, and for so many other African Americans and Native Americans whose lives have been taken from them, let us pray:
O Thou, the Cause and Effect of the whole Universe, the Source from whence we have come and the Goal toward which we are all bound: lift them from the denseness of the earth, surround them with the light of Thine own Spirit. Raise them up to heaven, which is their true dwelling place. We pray Thee grant them the blessing of Thy most exalted Presence. Let their thirsting eyes behold the glorious vision of Thy Sunshine. Amin.
Thank you for joining this important conversation. Let’s listen to each other in the understanding that we are parts of each other.
I would like to introduce the facilitators of our forum: Dr. Fatima Hafiz-Muid, Onaje Muid, Dr. Omid Safi, and Jennifer Alia Wittman.
Dr. Fatima Hafiz is CEO of The TEA Group, which stands for Transformative Education Associates, and which offers Continuing Education Options for professionals in urban settings through seminars, webinars and coaching. Her core work also includes Leadership development in the facilitation of community conversations that inspire, engage and cultivate actions to address familial and community violence and trauma. Fatima’s spiritual journey and study of the message of Hazrat Inayat Khan has been in process for nearly 40 years.
Onaje Muid is a transformative Sufi social worker and activist whose thirty-year career combines human services, human rights, and spirituality, especially for descendants of formerly enslaved Africans and indigenous peoples in the Western Hemisphere. His United Nations work culminated in the declaration of the Transatlantic Slave Trade as a crime against humanity at a seminal United Nations World Conference. Onaje has focused his life’s work on researching and understanding historical trauma in the oppressed communities and creating the healing modalities, policies, and structures to alleviate it.
Omid Safi is a professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University. He specializes in the study of Islamic mysticism and contemporary Islam and frequently writes on liberationist traditions of Dr. King, Malcolm X, and is committed to traditions that link together love and justice. He has delivered the keynote for the annual Martin Luther King commemoration at the National Civil Rights Museum. His most recent book is Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition.
Jennifer Alia Wittman is the Executive Director of the Inayatiyya, North America. Shas been a leader in the Inayatiyya for over 20 years and has an extensive background founding, stabilizing, growing and advancing nonprofit organizations. Prior to her work with the Inayatiyya, Alia was extensively involved in the youth service movement, being appointed to numerous state commissions and national projects, including AmeriCorps and Hands On Baltimore.
