"Come, come, whoever you are.
Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.
It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow a thousand times.
Come, yet again, come, come."
-Jalaluddin Rumi, 13th century Persian poet
An 800-year-old mystical Islamic tradition came to be performed at Texas Tech on Tuesday, courtesy of interfaith group Dialogue Institute of the Southwest, which aims to foster discussion and cross-religious conversations.
That tradition, the Turkish whirling dervishes, has been performed in the central Turkish city of Konya since the lifetime of Islamic poet Jalaluddin Rumi, a 13th-century scholar and theologian. A prayer as much as it is a performance, the whirling dervishes - members of the Mevlevi Order, who began the practice of dancing as a form of prayer - spin, eyes closed and arms raised, clad in long white robes.
Atilla Hafizoglu, the West Texas representative for the Dialogue Institute, said the tradition - rarely performed outside of Turkey - is a recitation of the name of God, as well as a chance to showcase Islamic and Turkish culture in the region.
"When they whirl, you know, [they are] reciting the name of God. It’s a very old tradition, it’s from the 13th century."
The dervishes are, according to Mark Webb, who is the head of the Department of Philosophy at Texas Tech, Sufi mystics who consider the sema, or ritual dance, a way to communicate with God.
"Dervishes are kind of like Sufi monks," Webb said. "They’re Islamic mystics who sort of withdraw from the world and they live in communities together and pray and try to get closer to God and purify themselves."
Hafizoglu said the dervishes' spinning is also a trancelike state that the mystics use to draw themselves closer to God.
"It’s all about love and tolerance, just learning from each other, and mutual understanding that we need more," Hafizoglu said. "And the way that they whirl, as you have seen, it’s like, right-hand side to the sky and left-hand side to the [ground], it’s like kind of getting information from God to the people."
Webb and Hafizoglu said that an important tenet of the Islamic faith – communication between people and God, as well as communication between people of different faiths – is a large part of why the Dialogue Institute sponsors events like the dervishes’ performance and “friendship dinners.”
“And so the Dialogue Institute’s mission is to try to do that,” Webb said. “To try to help Americans, in particular, to understand Islam and to understand Turkey as well, Turkish culture. And also to understand us better, to learn about each other.”
The Dialogue Institute of the Southwest’s creation came as an attempt to heal national wounds.
“They were founded by Turkish-American businessmen and students and academics right after 9/11,” Webb said. “Because the idea was that they wanted to stand up with other Muslims and say, ‘We condemn this. We don’t think this is right, appropriate, or ever justified.’”
The Dialogue Institute has continued that solidarity, Webb said, by sharing Islamic culture and arts with those who attend their events, like the dervishes' ancient performance.
The dervishes began whirling 800 years ago, after the Rumi’s death and the subsequent creation of the Mevlevi Order, the Sufi brotherhood that worships and prays through spinning. The dervishes, a common term for any member of the Mevlevi, all come from Konya a town in central Turkey, where Rumi is buried and Sufism began.
The performance, which drew a sizable crowd to Texas Tech’s Allen Theatre, included Turkish folk music and performers accompanying the dervishes as they whirled.
The attire of the dervishes was significant as well – their white robes are first covered under a black cloak as they emerge, arms crossed over their shoulders. The transition from black to white represents the dervishes’ journey from dark into light, and their tall brown hats are symbolic as the “tombstone of man’s ego.”
The sema begins with the dervishes facing one another, and they bow deeply and remove their cloaks. They begin to spin, uncrossing their arms and raising them, a single hand downturned. The dervishes spin and rotate around each other, imitating planetary movements.
“The master of the group will stand in the center,” Webb said, “and the disciples will spin around, they’ll sort of rotate and also revolve around the master, like planets around the sun.”
The ritual’s roots can be hard to put into terms, Webb said, but the very nature of mysticism isn’t a concept that requires many words.
“Mysticism is hard to define, which is not too surprising, I guess,” Webb said. “Because it’s all about moving away from language. Mystics sort of think of language and texts and doctrines and rituals or something like that is something that gets between people and also gets between people and God.
“In the Abrahamic religions – Christianity, Islam and Judaism – the mystical idea there is to try to draw so close to God that you experience him directly.”
Despite the rarity of the sema taking place outside of Konya, Webb said the performance at Tech and other locations throughout the other states served by the Dialogue Institute is a way of finding common ground between differing faiths.
“That’s the heritage,” Webb said. “They’re coming here partly to say, ‘we welcome you, and we are glad you welcome us, and we’re all brothers and sisters in the human family.’”
Hafizoglu agreed by quoting Rumi himself.
“And he says, ‘come, come whoever you are’, and our door is open to everybody.”
