(1) It had taken me a week to track down the underground dervish scene in Istanbul - the only dervish contact I had in the city was a carpet-seller called Abdullah deep in the bazaar.
(2) Photographs can't prepare you for the disorienting feeling that the dervishes are defying gravity.
(3) The dervishes are all Sufis, seekers on the mystical path to God, and are members of different Brotherhoods, chief among them Mevlevis, the school founded by the mystic poet Rumi 700 years ago.
(4) Although no one could compare to Nusrat, the group remain formidable, and can be seen next month as part of the Barbican Centre's Ramadan Nights, which also features Sufi street singer Sain Zahoor, a more classical Arabic Sufi group, the al-Kindi Ensemble with Sheikh Habboush, and whirling dervishes from Syria.
(5) To keep cinemagoers happy, Abrams must deliver a dose of cosmic joy so pure and unfettered that it sets the midi-chlorians whirling like star-swept dervishes caught in the half-light of a departing X-Wing.
(6) The dervishes are meditation in movement, prayer as dance.
(7) 1979: Them Heavy People (the radio cut from the On Stage EP), which namedropped the Russian mystic Gurdjieff and Sufi whirling dervishes, a celebration of being intellectually-emotionally expanded: "it's nearly killing me … what a lovely feeling".
(8) Like much of Sufism, the performance of the whirling dervishes works on many levels and is charged with symbolism.
(9) Walking in the night air along the Bosphorus where the city light scintillated on the water, I envied the dervishes their passion, their longing and their faith.
(10) At the same time, at the instigation of the Chancellor, it is rushing about like a dervish in an attempt to head off every Labour stunt that comes along.
(11) Every comment on the Games repeats this line, as if Olympic spirit was a subset of whirling-dervish fundamentalism.
(12) In casting this off the dervishes discard all worldly ties.
(13) Finally I found myself at a zikr (a remembrance) among 80 or so dervishes in a hidden tekke (religious house), and they began to chant, rhythmically, the name of Allah.
(14) The abuse hits other religious minorities, too – the Yarsan Kurds; Gonabadi Dervishes, who are Shia Muslims; and Christians.
(15) Many European writers have been fascinated by Sufism - Richard Burton, the translator of the Kama Sutra, was initiated as a dervish, and Doris Lessing and Ted Hughes shared his interest ('the Sufis are the most sensible collection of people on the planet', Hughes once said).
(16) Still, there's no getting around it: Pakistan is beset with problems that no amount of jolly beer stories or whirling dervishes can remedy.
(17) However much time Oliver has spent in "poor communities", he is but a tourist there, looking at fire walkers and whirling dervishes and wondering "why on earth would they choose to do that?
(18) There was none of the passion I'd seen among the Istanbul dervishes.
(19) In any case, it is not surprising that Sufis and dervishes have had a tough time in many Islamic countries.
(20) When the tension was close to unbearable, 12 dervishes filed into the adjoining room and, in unison, took off their black cloaks - as if it were a holy fashion show - revealing white robes.
Sufism
Definition:
(n.) A refined mysticism among certain classes of Mohammedans, particularly in Persia, who hold to a kind of pantheism and practice extreme asceticism in their lives.
Example Sentences:
(1) My Wahabi guide, Sayeed, tried to tell me that hardly anyone followed Sufism any more.
(2) She was spiritual as well, exploring the limits and pitfalls that came with being human, especially after she became an adherent of Sufism.
(3) In Turkey too, Sufism is frowned upon - although in the city of Konya, there are celebrations on the anniversary of Rumi's death every year.
(4) Like much of Sufism, the performance of the whirling dervishes works on many levels and is charged with symbolism.
(5) Thus sufism would be an adaptation from Chinese Shamanism.
(6) Tempting though it is to dismiss Parveen's claims that she can see Sufi saints among the audience, Sufism has a tradition of female mystics, notably the eighth century's Rabia al-Basri, who ran through the streets of Basra in Iraq with a blazing torch in one hand and a container of water in the other.
(7) Sufism, on the other hand, is a tradition devoted to the development of the higher intuitive capacity needed to deal with this issue.
(8) She continues to lend her name to local campaigns, however, for better reading in schools, for the preservation of the trees in Hampstead Heath, and, revealingly, to pursue a faith in Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam which she studied for years under the tutelage of Idries Shah.
(9) Its origins are in seventh-century aesthetics and followers of Sufism aim to achieve direct union with God.
(10) Many European writers have been fascinated by Sufism - Richard Burton, the translator of the Kama Sutra, was initiated as a dervish, and Doris Lessing and Ted Hughes shared his interest ('the Sufis are the most sensible collection of people on the planet', Hughes once said).
(11) One, two, sufi... 204 The number of countries in which Sufism is practised 1.3 The number, in billions, of Muslims worldwide 20 The percentage of Muslims who class themselves as Sufis 10 The number of Sufi adherents, in millions, in Turkey 10 Number of Sufi adherents, in thousands, in Germany 195 Number of practising Sufis in New Zealand 125 Number of albums recorded by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan · Ramadam Nights, featuring the al-Kindi Ensemble, is at the Barbican, London EC1 from 4 November.
(12) It was the latest such attack on devotees of Sufism, a mystical and generally moderate form of Islam despised by radical fundamentalists.
(13) It's the kind of sentiment echoed by most students of Sufism, such as Coleman Barks, whose translations of Rumi propelled the 13th century mystic into, bizarrely, becoming the bestselling poet in America in the Nineties (Madonna was a fan).
(14) They were selling manuscripts by Arab scholars on everything from astronomy and arithmetic to Islamic law, as well as mystical texts on Sufism, the otherworldly, saintly style of faith that the al-Qaida-affiliated Ansar Dine finds so offensive.
(15) Nusrat's family (originally from Afghanistan, a traditional centre of Sufism) have an unbroken tradition of singing qawwali for 600 years, yet you felt, somehow, as if you were plugging into something utterly modern.
(16) But Isis believes Yazidism, one of the world’s oldest religions, fusing elements of Zoroastrianism, Sufism, early Islam and Christianity, is godless.
(17) Everything that doesn’t conform to the most strict Wahhabi standards of acceptability, anything that is beloved by people that Isis doesn’t like, anything that represents non-Isis interpretations of Islam such as Shiism or Sufism, and anything from before the time of Muhammad.” Sanhareb Barsom, an official with the Syriac Union party across the border in Syria’s Hassakeh province, where the Assyrian community has also come under assault by Isis, told the Guardian: “These are not Assyrian artefacts, these are artefacts for all of humanity.” Isis kidnapped more than 200 Assyrians in a sweep through villages south of the Khabur river last month, where members of the community had settled after the Simele massacre in the 1930s by the then-kingdom of Iraq.