Sufis in Fez combine poetry, melody and movement in order to reach a state of annihilation in God, where individual consciousness dissolves and tawḥīd (the oneness or unity of God) may be truly realized. This occurs during a portion of private Sufi ritual called ḥaḍra, which literally translates to presence, and has connotations of Divine presence accessed during the ritual. Although this private ritual activity is alive, today the ḥaḍra is no longer strictly moored to private gatherings in Sufi lodges. Due to official government support, new media, and transnational interest, Sufi ritual circulates through public performances and appears in a variety of contexts. In this paper I demonstrate how dynamic private rituals and public performances inform one another and carry diverse meanings such as a path to annihilation in God, and a way to celebrate at a party. These may seem to be extremely polarized goals. I argue that they are not necessarily so. More specifically I present Sufi ḥaḍra as an embodied ritual and performance that is used to express and realize both Sufi and non-Sufi understandings of the Islamic concept of tawḥīd. I draw on recent scholarship and my own fieldwork in Fez to demonstrate how religious rituals and sacred performances exist in a circulatory system where they continuously inform one another. Boundaries between ritual, performance, entertainment, and everyday acts are dissolved as Sufism circulates in novel ways and spaces and impacts everyday worship and public displays of piety for Sufis and non-Sufi Muslims in Fez.

The Kasnazani Qadiris are ecstatic Sufis. They pierce, cut, stab themselves, and eat glass in order to prove their shaykh’s baraka (divine blessing or saintly beneficence). “With God’s and the shaykh’s permission, nothing happens to us and the wounds heal right away,” explains Calipha Abd al-Rahman, who is Shaykh Muhammad Abd al-Karim al-Kasnazani’s representative in Sulaymaniyya, which is located in the Kurdish region of Iraq. While Sulaymaniyya currently hosts the largest Kasnazani Sufi lodge in Iraq, the shaykh who hails from the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk lives in Jordan. Hence, it is in the shaykh’s physical absence that the Kasnazani Sufis perform self-mortification rituals embodying his metaphysical authority. Unlike his father, the shaykh’s son and successor Nehro Muhammad Abd al-Karim al-Kasnazani lives in Iraq. Yet despite the fact that he is poised to take over the leadership of the Sufi order, Nehro rarely appears at the Kasnazani lodge in Sulaymaniyya. Instead, his followers are more likely to see him on television as he is currently running for a political office in Baghdad. Moreover, he is widely rumored to have less than pious habits. For instance, non-Sufi residents of Sulaymaniyya accuse Nehro of drinking alcohol in public. Because of the ecstatic and transgressive nature of Kasnazani practices, as well as the impious behavior of Nehro, the residents of Sulaymaniyya and even some followers of the Kasnazani Sufi order question the authority of the shaykh. Contesting the shaykh’s authority is not a new phenomenon. Some residents of Sulaymaniyya critique Muhammad Abd al-Karim al-Kasnazani for having cooperated with Saddam Hussein and for calling upon his followers to vote for Jalal Talabani. In other words, the Kasnazani shaykh may promote antinomian and ecstatic rituals inside the Sufi lodge. Outside of the lodge, he supports the authority of the political status-quo. Based on interviews with both Kasnazani Sufis and non-Sufi residents of Sulaymaniyya, this paper examines how both followers, as well as non-Sufi residents in Sulaymaniyya, contest and consolidate shaykh Muhammad Abd al-Karim al-Kasnazani’s charismatic authority. It traces these debates from the late 1970s, when shaykh Kasnazani began cooperating with Saddam Hussein. It argues that by emphasizing the miraculous and the irrational, Kasnazanis uphold the shaykh’s charismatic authority in opposition to outsiders’ and even insiders’ critiques of the shaykh’s political pragmatism.