Episode 3: The Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship
Hosted by Michael J. Ernst
Release date: December 2, 2021
The Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship is a Sufi Muslim community located just outside of Philadelphia. The Fellowship, named after its Sri Lankan founder, was established in the 1970s after he visited the United States. The community is distinctive in that it is vegetarian, draws from Vedic spirituality, and encourages women to take central leadership positions. Producer Michael Ernst meets with Sheikha Maryam Kabeer, the public face of the Fellowship, and Muhammad Abdur-Razzaq, the imam of the mosque. A visit to the Fellowship reveals that the real monument to Bawa Muhaiyaddeen is not the building that houses the community’s various activities, but in fact the community itself.
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About this episode of Monument Biography
About the host:
Michael J. Ernst is a Ph.D. student studying Islamic Art History at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture. His primary research area is the modern and contemporary Islamic visual culture of the former Soviet Union, in particular that of Azerbaijan and the Greater Caspian Region. Intersecting with this area is an interest in digital images, video games, affect theory, affective computing, the learning sciences, semiotics, quotidian art, nationalism, and national identity formation. Ernst holds a B.A. in History, a M.L.A. in Middle East & Islamic Studies, and a M.S.Ed. in the Learning Sciences & Technologies from the University of Pennsylvania.
About the guests:
Sheikha Maryam was born to a liberal Jewish family in California. In search of the liberating truth, she was led to live in India and Nepal as well as several monasteries in Europe, and was finally guided to embrace Islam. She then studied intensively with Sufi masters around the world, including Sheikh Bawa Muhaiyadeen in Sri Lanka and Philadelphia. She has described her deep journey of transformation in a book entitled: Journey through Ten Thousand Veils: The Alchemy of Transformation on the Sufi Path.
Muhammad Abdur-Razzak Miller is the Head Imam at the Mosque of Shaikh M. R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen in Philadelphia.
Issa Kabeer is an instructor at TECH Freire Charter High School in Philadelphia.
Want to learn more about the topics covered in this episode?
Website of the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship.
Maryam Kabeer Faye, Journey through Ten Thousand Veils: The Alchemy of Transformation on the Sufi Path. Clifton, N.J.: Tughra Books, 2009.
Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, Islam & World Peace: Explanations of a Sufi. Philadelphia: Fellowship Press, 1987.
Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, The Resonance of Allah. Philadelphia: Fellowship Press, 2001.
M. Shobhana Xavier, "An American Sufi Shrine, Bawa’s Mazar in Coatesville, Pennsylvania," Conversations: An Online Journal of the Center for the Study of Material and Visual Cultures of Religion, 2016.
Music credits for this episode of Monument Biography:
“Song for Ramanujan (Saraswati Devi)” by Siddhartha Corsus