Translating culture, transcending difference? Cosmopolitan consciousness and Sufi sensibilities in New York City after 2001¹

This article focuses on Muslims for whom tasawwuf (Sufism) was the most authentic practice of Islam, the key to authentic Americanness after 2001, and necessary for creating harmonious communities worldwide. Like many other Muslims, the New York Sufis discussed here saw distinguishing between religious universals (“authentic Islam”) and particular ethnic and national traditions (“culture”) as part of multicultural and cosmopolitan practice. Like other religious Americans, most practitioners did not see how economic disparity was central to, but rarely addressed in, debates about culture. Emphasizing individual striving (jihad) and/as responsibility to others (adab), Sufi practitioners attended to some disparities within the diaspora and enacted appropriate Muslim Americanness in diverse ways. Practitioners from different socio‐economic locations and histories of marginalization made similar distinctions between culture and Islam, and similarly juxtaposed responsible individualism to problematic “cultures.” However, while less affluent Sufis saw their cultures as social and economic resources, affluent practitioners often viewed themselves as transcending culture. These differences affected how Sufis understood responsibility and, thus, authentic Muslim Americanness.