Customer Reviews

Sacred Drift: Essays on the Margins of Islam

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If you thought that Islam was just a bunch of fellows in white thobes and headdresses running anround oppressing people, this fun and educational little book will help expand your horizons! Another truely excellent title put out by City Lights Books, author Peter Lamborn Wilson covers some of the more...colorful patches in the tapestry of Islam. This book deals with Muslim Thinkers who for one reason or 'tother, are generally considered heretics by many of the larger sects of Islam. We are privalleged to meet Ibn Arabi and the Noble Drew Ali, and delve into subjects such as Satanism in Islam, sexuality and authority in Sufism, and more. The volume includes poems and enjoyable illustrations, photos, and calligraphy throughout.

As a note to anyone with a specific interest in African-American religious figures in U.S. history, the essay "Lost/Found Moorish Time Lines: In the Wilderness of North America", Wilson offers what may be the best essay to date in ANY publication, on the Noble Drew Ali and the Moorish Science Temple of America. Included is information about the relationship between the Moorish Science Temple, and Elijah Muhammed, who founded the Nation of Islam. Lots of NEW information in this essay alone, as with the others in this book...did you know about the connection between Islam, Masonry, Shriners, and Moorish Science? Wilson includes footnotes and references with his work, and there is a complete bibliography at the end of this volume.

The tone of this book is scholarly, it is by no means a sordid "tell all" work. You won't find proselytizing or propaganda in this volume. If you're tired of the same old repetitive drivel from the same old droning finger-wagging sources, give this book a read. I suspect you will appreciate the time you spend while journeying through its pages.

Contrary to much popular opinion of Islam as a monolithic giant, in its midst are the 'heretics' that put the fun back in religion. Considering that such figures as Jesus and Muhammad were considered 'heretics' in their day the title is actually a compliment.

I picked this book up in a second hand bookstore on a whim. I have revisited it several times and continue to do so often. At first it appeared dark, mysterious, foreign, pointless. But as I continued to explore it became more and more obvious that the light of the Divine makes its way through these pages and this Divine light I swear is grinning like the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland.

Islam is diverse, vast, deep and this book explores some of those areas in the remote regions of both the physical and the spiritual world with style and wit and just a bit of a knowing smile. Well worth the adventure.

A great book about the idea that it's the margins who mold the world, using as a parameter the history that has interested many: the history of the assassin, whose leader in the midle age declared himself God on Earth. Starting the book by telling all the story of how islamism has come to America, he draws a good picture of his ideas and life's contradictions.

A beautifully written and very important work on Islam: "It is the margins that determine the world's shape"

Peter Lamborn Wilson, often writing under the pseudonym `Hakim Bey' is a social theorist, essayist and poet, best known for first proposing the concept of the Temporary Autonomous Zone (the `TAZ'), based on his historical review of pirate society. After studying at Columbia University, he traveled extensively in the mideast, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nepal whilst studying Tantra in West Bengal and visiting many Sufi shrines and masters. In 1971 he undertook extensive research on the Nimatullahi Sufi order funded by the Marsden Foundation of New York. During 1974 and 1975 he was consultant in London and Tehran for the World of Islam Festival and in 1974 became director of English language publications at the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy in Tehran, and was editor of Sophia Perennis, the academy's journal.

His writings include "The Drunken Universe: An Anthology of Persian Sufi Poetry" and "Scandal: Essays in Islamic Heresy."

In "Sacred Drift: Essays on the Margins of Islam" ("SDEMI"), Wilson demolishes Islam's image as monolithic, reactionary, fundamentalist, puritanical, and superficial, postulating a collection of heresies, heterodox subsects, cultures of resistance, reform and renewal that exist, and have since the beginning existed, within Islam's ambit.

The reader is presented with the fascinating story of "Black Islam" in this country: readers interested in African-American religion will especially enjoy the essay "Lost/Found Moorish Time Lines: In the Wilderness of North America." The author offers what may be the best essay to date on Noble Drew Ali (and of his assassination at the hands of American law enforcement, the violent reward for his struggle for "love, truth, peace, freedom, and justice"), the Moorish Science Temple of America and the Moorish Orthodox Church, along with newly acquired information on the relationship between Moorish Science, Elijah Muhammed (founder the Nation of Islam) and Freemasonry.

One superbly written essay deals with the place of "Iblis" (Satan) and the role of Satanism in esoteric Islam while another offers a scathing critique of the nature of authority and the place of sexual oppression and misery in modern puritanical Islam. The title essay, "Sacred Drift," beautifully elaborates the history of Sufi peripateticism from Kabir to Ibn Khaldun and beyond. This work takes on a romantic view of Islam and that view is taken to exotic extremes, but it offers a much-needed relief from the usual academic propaganda and the banality of most Western views of Islam as elaborated in the media.

The tone of SDEMI is scholarly with copious footnotes and references and a complete bibliography, but it is far from an overly-technical or laborious read: it is, rather, a pure pleasure and Lamborn's writing style engages the reader thoroughly.

SDEMI is a great book and a very important one - one of several by a truly towering intellect and almost peerlessly talented writer: Peter Lamborn Wilson will surely distinguish himself as one of the `beautiful minds' of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. SDEMI holds fast to the author's notion that it is the margins that mold the shape of the world.

And well worth it!


From the mind of the philosopher Hakim Bey, this brilliant work. On the surface, a collection of essays on heresies of Islam, rebellious subcultures, from the Black Muslims to Sufism with a good bit of history from afar and near not commonly in history books. Under the surface...a jihad for a more powerful yet subtle Islam to reach the "West" but at the same time crack the foundations of the fanatics who are used to give it a bad name.


I'm paraphrasing a popular comedian as much as Hakim Bey. We make a sh-tty "Christian Nation" but we just might make a halfway decent "Liberal Muslim" nation.


Though just a collection of amusing reads speckled with interesting composite art and Rumic poetry, this book is ten times as subversive as "Steal this book!". I hope more people get it and that there is a second, updated printing...

Peter L. Wilson is amazing. this book touches on a subject that few have taken up, a seemingly homogenous religion (Islam) and its many "heretical" traditions. also important information on "fringe" movements w/in the U.S., the whole Noble Drew Ali. this book made me happy to be alive.

heresy is a sign that a tradition is growing, renewing itself...islam and christianity need a good dose for sure to rebalance their growing STATIC hegemony over those who would rather follow and think intravenously...


god is nothing outside yourself. but then who are you? that's the trick.

catch-33

s/he is all and no genders. gender and grammar actually have nothing to do with god...self...presence...ah, via the inadequacies of language, sweet moans and song issue, thus recreating the universe.