#037: The Life & Legacy of Bawa Muhaiyaddeen w/ Shobhana Xavier

Path & Present w/Baraka Blue

Dr. Xavier is a professor of Religious Studies at Queens University in Ontario Canada. She works on contemporary global Islam and Sufism, with particular regional interests in North America (United States and Canada) and South Asia(Sri Lanka). She broadly examines how Sufism transforms and/or maintains continuity as it is transmitted to new regions, such as through migration, diaspora, literature, and popular culture (i.e., Rumi). In doing so, she engages sacred spaces (Sufi shrines), rituals, practices, and memory, in addition to gender dynamics. She is the author of Sacred Spaces and Transnational Networks in American Sufism: Bawa Muhaiyaddeen and Contemporary Shrine Cultures (2018), and the co-author of Contemporary Sufism: Piety, Politics and Popular Culture (2017). She is currently work on two book projects. The first is a case study on the development of Sufism in Toronto. For her second project, she is documenting Sufi shrines in Sri Lanka and its contemporary legacy, amidst growing anti-Sufism on the island.