My mother's belief in spiritual healers grew stronger after our family went through a rough patch following my father's death. Sufi saint Karimullah Shah Kadri changed our lives, and all of us converted to Sufism. But it wasn't an instantaneous decision - it took us 10 years to convert. The change in religion was like washing away the past.
A. R. Rahman
I'm a Sufi Muslim, I would say. I believe in using the medium to create a good vibration because art is so important to society. Some projects I don't do because I feel that it's going to create a bad vibe. I don't do propaganda films that are anti another religion, anti-Muslim or anti-Hindu.
Sufis were always spreading love with their music, and if some kind of extremism is a threat to it, it is a threat to all humanity.
Adnan Sami
When I was a boy in Desuq, Egypt, a city on the Rosetta branch of the Nile, about 50 miles east of Alexandria, my family lived steps away from the local landmark, a mosque named for a 13th-century Sufi sheik.
Ahmed Zewail
The Marathi film 'Natrang' has amazing songs. I also like and have sufi and folk music.
Amruta Khanvilkar
Gonjasufi may sound at first like a rambling hip-hop crackpot, but there's more to the California rapper and singer than mere eccentricity: What appears messy and thrown together is anything but.
Anthony Fantano
As a teen, I enjoyed Sufi music and ghazals the most. But as my career began, I drifted off to playback and other streams over the years.
Chinmayi
I read, read enormously on all different fields of Islamic thought, from philosophy to Islamic literature, poetry, exegeses, knowledge of the Hadith, the teachings of the prophet. That's how I trained myself. And then I was appointed imam by a Sufi master from Istanbul, Turkey.
Feisal Abdul Rauf
Sufis teach that we first must battle and destroy the evil within ourselves by shining upon it the good within, and then we learn to battle the evil in others by helping their higher selves gain control of their lower selves.
I consider myself an ordinary Muslim who is constantly working to put himself in the framework established by the Koran and the tradition of the Prophet Mohammed. I study the works of experts of jurisprudence, Koranic commentary, hadith commentary, and Sufism.
Fethullah Gulen
The notion that Western religions are more rigid than those of Asia is overdrawn. Ours is the most permissive society history has ever known - almost the only thing that is forbidden now is to forbid - and Asian teachers and their progeny play up to this propensity by soft-pedaling Hinduism's, Buddhism's, Sufism's rules.
Huston Smith
There are many similarities between Sai Baba and me. He believed there is only one God, and so do I. He loved Sufi music; so do I.
Jackie Shroff
Sufi music talks about connecting people. It talks about connecting hearts and connecting man with God. Everything that talks about connection is Sufi.
Javed Ali
I have got a lot of appreciation from people and they really like my voice in Sufi songs, so I will continue with that, but I'm also experimenting with other types of songs.
Some of my fans tell me that my voice is more suited for romantic numbers, some others say I do Sufi songs better. But that just goes to say that people are more aware of the different genres now. More people are getting exposed to sufi music because of Bollywood, which is good.
When I talk of primordial innocence, I hear it in Sufi music with the nay flute. I see it in Coptic icons, in most traditional art, particularly art of the American Indian. I find the texts extraordinarily beautiful and very childlike and very simple. I've been particularly interested in American Indian texts.
John Tavener
Hildegard von Bingen conveys spiritual ecstasy, if we're talking of Western music. What bothers me about Western music is that it doesn't have an esoteric dimension in the way the music of the East has, whether it be Byzantine chant, the music of the Sufis, or Hindu music.
The thing the Buddhists and the Sufis have in common is a belief that religious certainties are destructive.
Luke Rhinehart
Sufi poetry is, in a sense, self-help poetry about how to live a decent life, how to deal with your mortality.
Mohsin Hamid
In Sufi terms, there are two very interesting notions of transcendence. One is to gaze out at the universe and to comprehend that what you see out there reflects what you are. The other one is to look inside yourself and recognise that the universe is present there.
I love Sufism as I love beautiful poetry, but it is not the answer. Sufism is like a mirage in the desert. It says to you, come and sit, relax and enjoy yourself for a while.
I reject any path which rejects life, but I can't help loving Sufism because it sounds so beautiful. It gives relief in the midst of battle.
It depends on my mood but classical music is what I am drawn towards. I also listen to Sufi music and bhajans too.
If you call yourself a singer, then you must have the ability to sing anything, whether it's pop, classical, rock, sufi, or folk.
I am not a Sufi, but I follow the Sufi.
There are two languages that I love: Farsi and Panjabi. Because the depth of Sufi thought in these two languages cannot be found in any other language.
I am a Sufi guy, so fame is maya for me, a worldly illusion.
Islam is, to be sure, a big tent, and the one and a half billion Muslims in the world run the gamut from mystical, moderate, pacific Sufis to Salafists.
My house was a guest house of many Jaina saints, Hindu monks, Sufi mystics, because my grandfather was interested in all of these people.
If people in Russia do not take the path of traditional, pure Sufi Islam, Russia will lose out. All the other denominations, like Wahhabism, are new inventions for our country - we have never had it, and we will never accept it.
Before I begin to write, I listen to music that inspires me. I listen to folk Punjabi music, sufi music.
In the district of Hizan, through the influence of Shaikh Abdurrahman Tagi, known as Seyda, so many students, teachers, and scholars emerged, I was sure all Kurdistan took pride in them and their scholarly debates and wide knowledge and Sufi way. These were the people who would conquer the face of the earth!
I started listening to Sufi music when I was 21.
Music, for me, is vital. Punjabi, Bollywood, Sufi, RnB... I listen to it all. When I'm not listening to music, you will find me chatting with friends. Off the field, I just let my instincts take over. I certainly don't think about batting, or which bowlers I'm going to face.
I think that Sufism fits all over the world. The concept is not anything that fits standard Western ideas - it's always related to culture, to music, to religion. It is a dominant religion in Senegal.
