ABSTRACT
Sufism has often been characterized as a force for bringing Islam to new nations under the processes of Islamicization due to colonial expansionism from the medieval to the early modern period. This is true of South Asia, for example (Eaton 1993), but what has not been addressed thoroughly is how South Asian Sufism has been a vehicle for another wave of expansionism that has brought Sufism to the so-called West (Genn 2007). It was primarily during the decolonization that occurred in the modern period that Sufism began its dissemination into the former colonizing nations. This chapter explores one specific case study of that dissemination, for I am interested in the role of Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (ral.), a Tamil Sufi from Sri Lanka, who moved to the United States in 1971. This case is interesting in and of itself because he was a virtually unknown holy man who managed to establish a headquarters in the United States despite his virtual anonymity. Indeed, it was his charisma (Korom 2011) that allowed him to sway people’s hearts upon arrival in Philadelphia. Bawa, as he is better known to his admirers and the world at large, died in Philadelphia in 1986, and is buried on the outskirts of a small, now-distressed former mining town in rural Pennsylvania near the city where he first arrived from his homeland in South Asia. His is the first Sufi shrine (mazār) in North America, and it figures prominently in the propagation and dissemination of his peculiar brand of Sufism in North America and beyond today.
