22:01 - X is Y for that person...
In Mountain View, just off Castro Street, is a tiny shop called the Sufi Coffee Shop. The coffee is good (and strong); the music is Middle-Eastern; he has books and magazines for sale; but people visit mostly to meet the owner.
Parviz Rasti, the owner, is intelligent, and he's as opinionated as Rush Limbaugh or Harlan Ellison. I've only been inside his shop three times. Each time, he's left an impression on me -- rarely in the way that he intended.
Last week, we had a long conversation that sparked from an idle observation that I made. On his menu were (pre-made) pierogis. I asked him about them.
C: I'm confused. You're selling ham and cheese pierogis.
P: I am.
C: But I thought that Muslims could not eat ham?
P: What makes you think that I am Muslim?
C: Well, the name of the shop is Sufi Cafe.
P pointed me to a sign on the wall, which read something like, "Sufism is the truth underlying all religions. It is not tied to any religion. It pre-dates Judaism by 3,000 years."
We talked on about his metaphysical beliefs (God can only be found when you step outside "common sense"), but his description "Sufi are not Muslims" reminded me of a truth: What a person believes, to that person, is true.
It doesn't matter that the books on his shelf explicitly talk about how Sufism arose from Islam. It doesn't matter that most Sufis are very careful to know the province of their beliefs: how the esoteric parts of their beliefs come, ultimately, from Mohammed. To him, Sufism is independent of Islam.
It's an example of a mental map: people represent their views of themselves and the world through words -- but different people give different meanings to the words. Rarely are people kind enough to put a poster on the wall explaining their world-view!
No matter. The coffee was good. The conversation was excellent.
815 W. El Camino Real, Mountain View, CA, 94040
(650) 962-9923, email: suficulturalcenter@gmail.com
UPDATE: I was wrong. Parviz was right.
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eselgeist pointed me toward Universal Sufism, a branch of Sufism that HAS split from Islam and spreads a universal message.
*read*
I was wrong.
Thank you.
And, yeah -- a lot of Sufism grew up in Asia Minor (Turkey), which has ALWAYS been a place where cultures collide. (I absolutely adore Rumi's poetry, partly because he brings in Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Chinese religions. And because his writing is so explicitly sensual.)
Been there, enjoyed that
I only went there a few times because I'm not really a Javacrucian. It's located maybe 3 blocks from my old apt there in Mountain View.
*hugs and snuggles my favorite Unicorn*
Re: Been there, enjoyed that
I will have to do some more reading now, it sounds like Sufi and Unitarian Universalism come from similar philosophies.
Next time the wyfe and I come up, we'll have to go to coffee there.
Let me know when you and your wyfe come up, and I'll meet you there!
Exactly. That's a big problem in linguistic semantic studies. Show a set of people a series of shirts from the blue-green range, and many people will strongly disagree with each other about whether a shirt counts as blue or as green.
(the problem goes away if you consider the purpose of language to be personal categorization rather than communication, but that's anti-Chomskyism, hence verboten in many linguistic circles)