Murshid’s Healing Order: An Introduction To Our History
‘The present is the reflection of the past, and the future is the re‑echo of the present.’ In these words, Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan reminds us how different stages of our lives and organisations are infolded in their weaving of experience and values.
Now, in the second quarter of the 21st century, we have the opportunity to honour our history of the past hundred years since Murshid created the Healing Order, and to celebrate a few of those who have dedicated themselves to its evolution ‑ with wonder at the treasure that each generation is creating for generations to come.
We offer here the testimonies of six deeply respected contributors to healing in the organisations carrying Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan’s teaching from its origin in the 1920s: Shaykh ul‑Mashaykh Mahmoud Khan and Ratan Witteveen from the Sufi Movement, Murshida Sitara Brutnell from the Sufi Way, Latifa Peggie Phillips, Sharif Graham, and Sarida Brown from the Sufi Order. The name of the Sufi Order was later changed to Inayatiyya Healing.
These contributions were written between 1994 and 2010 and presented for the Healing Order International Retreat in March 2010, the year of Hejrat, the centenary of Murshid’s arrival in the west in 1910. This was a very special retreat, in that the Sufi Movement, Sufi Way and Sufi Order came together in Katwijk to celebrate unity in diversity.
This collection is offered as a small beginning. We have not tried to be comprehensive and represent a full history of Murshid’s Sufi Order: as Sharif Graham writes, a fuller history is needed. And while the love and blessings or our contributors continue as a perfume on our paths, in some details they may be less than historically accurate. This collection is also graced by the historical knowledge and recollections of Shaykh ul‑Mashaykh Mahmood Khan, whom Sharif Graham describes as ‘certainly the most knowledgeable person alive about Pir‑o‑Murshid Inayat Khan’.
Our wish is that we may find inspiration as we are reminded of how many dedicated souls over the past 100 years have contributed to our healing inheritance from Murshid, and derive hope and joy from imagining this procession moving forward into the future ‑ with each one of us a light in the unity of lights.
Sarida Brown
