The Sufi order Qādiriyya al-Būdshīshiyya has developed a geography of varied groups that extend across the globe, from Morocco and West Africa to Western Europe, Latin America, the United States and Canada. The ṭarīqa originated in the Moroccan region of l’Oriental, in the Berber-dominated north-eastern province of Berkane, a region that still contains the majority of its devotees. However, in recent decades the ṭarīqa has transformed itself into a transnational organization incorporating members from urban milieux in Morocco and abroad. In this transformation it has surpassed its traditional ethnic boundaries, coming to accept members from a variety of backgrounds.

This is a comparative study of the array of religious identities existing in the Būdshīshiyya order in Morocco and beyond. In addition to the Berber peasantry, the diversity of followers (fuqarā’/faqīrāt; sing. faqīr/a) that this study considers includes Arab populations from the Moroccan metropolis, Moroccan labour migrants who have settled in France, Belgium and Spain, European converts to Islam, and European sons and grandsons of Muslims who have seen, in this religious group, their way back to practising Islam.

This research deals with the transnational dimension of this ṭarīqa, focusing on the religious identities of the fuqarā’ in Western Europe and in Morocco. I am particularly interested in examining those developments by which religious meanings, symbols and institutions are reinterpreted and modified to accommodate new social realities. Thus the book analyses the ways in which Muslim followers of the current Būdshīshiyya shaykh, Sīdī Hamza,² participate in the supra-local discourses of the Islamic Sufi tradition, and also how their local realities and regional milieux shape the ways in which they participate in these discourses. I aim to approach this order as an holistic entity with a comparative perspective in which the rural enclaves of the Moroccan countryside, the urban groups in Morocco and some of the strands which exist in Western Europe (in France and Spain mainly, but also in Belgium and the United Kingdom) are considered and contrasted. The study understands the Būdshīshiyya order as affected by the internal dynamics of this ṭarīqa and by the contextual factors of the social milieux in which it has settled.

Of relevance to this study, also, have been the testimonies of individuals who have never been Būdshīshiyya members but live in places in which this Sufi order plays an important social role. For example, I have spoken to youngsters of the Moroccan diaspora in Europe who, despite not being Būdshīshiyya devotees, may have family and friends who are members of this order, and are familiar with their activities and know their leaders – on occasion better than some of those who, although they have formalized their allegiance, have done so very recently. In Morocco, in particular, this ṭarīqa holds an overt public profile with a very clear political agenda. The Būdshīshiyya has been a relevant political actor in north-eastern Morocco, with members of the Būdshīshiyya lineage having long held key positions in public administration and local government.

A jump into public acknowledgement of the political role this organization plays at the national level came in 2012 with the appointment by King Muḥammad VI of Aḥmad Tawfīq, a devotee of the order, as Minister for Habus (religious endowments) and Islamic Affairs, a move that has to be related to the active involvement of the ṭarīqa in supporting the monarchy nationwide. In Morocco, thus, there are many that have direct and prolonged contact with the organization, its leaders and/or members, although they may not consider themselves devotees of Hamza Būdshīsh. In particular, the inhabitants of the northern towns of Berkane, Nador, Ahfir and Saidia, as well as those from the neighbouring smaller villages, have been crucial in informing this research.

I have also gathered data by participating in activities and meetings held by various groups of the Būdshīshiyya in Morocco and in Europe and in the central lodge of the order in Madāgh. Some relevant data collected among rural members of this ṭarīqa was obtained during two trips to the region, the first in March 2008 when I attended the Būdshīshiyya’s major celebration (the Mawlid)⁴ – and the second during the summer of 2008. An international gathering held in Paris in spring 2008 was also a good place to meet devotees. I have collected opinions, perceptions, ideas and views on this Sufi organization over a prolonged period of time, from November 2006 to July 2012, by meeting people from a variety of enclaves and from the social milieux in which they exist. Even though I have also used written sources (articles, journals, booklets and books written by members of the order), as well as audiovisual (voice and image recordings) and digital (web pages, blogs, forums and official sites) materials, the main source of information used for this research has been personal narratives. These have been collected mostly through casual conversation and interaction in ritual gatherings and social meet-ups, mostly with women. Instead of following a reduced group of followers over a lengthy period of time, I have preferred to focus on trying to obtain a many-sided portrait, by gathering as many views and experiences on and about the order as possible – at times, conflicting views on particular issues appeared as a result of the array of informants to which I had access.⁵

Given the degree of geographical dispersion, cultural and ideological diversity that characterizes this organization, undertaking multi-sited field-work turned out to be a necessity. Applying a ‘dislocating’ method in defining the scope of the field has brought about questions on how notions of place, space and locality are to be perceived in this study. Dislocated fields like that of the transnational Būdshīshiyya impose a rethinking of the nature of the relationship between culture and territory and help us to problematize in more nuanced ways the idea that communities develop identities as manifestations of their relationship to bounded milieux – a criticism of the conventional ethnographic method originally advanced by Appadurai (1995) and Marcus (1995). Instead, this study places great attention on the interconnectedness of sites, on the limitless nature of social spaces and on mobility:

By conducting multi-sited fieldwork, my study identifies a ṭarīqa constituted of the characteristic eclectic religiosities typical of glocalized religious hybridity. Likewise, it has found that devotees not only develop particular ways of construing their religious identities in accordance with their personal life trajectories and cultural frames, but also that each group redefines, in accordance with its members’ religious stances, the ways in which it relates to the other groups in the order and to social and political events that are well known to all members (e.g. the Arab Spring, the 9/11 attacks, issues related to Islamophobia, mass migration and so on).

Something that became apparent during the preparatory stages of fieldwork was the gender divide among members of this ṭarīqa. The Būdshīshiyya is a gendered organization, which means that men and women carry out their activities separately; ritual practices are always performed under these circumstances and in most locations men and women only relate to each other in quite exceptional instances. Some of the female members I met had entered the ṭarīqa without knowing any male devotees; and some months later they still didn’t know any. This divide limited the scope of the research I was planning to undertake, the result being that the fieldwork data I collected was voiced almost exclusively by women. Access to male devotees was only occasional, so although their accounts were sometimes considered, there was not a sufficient number of them to facilitate a comprehensive study of both male and female religiosities within the ṭarīqa.

So the research is confined to an analysis of the religious identities of female followers of the Būdshīshiyya. As a female researcher I had access to women’s groups and congregational meetings, but I was not allowed to attend the men’s. The fact that my subjectivity informs this research is nowhere more evident than in this issue of gender. Meeting male members of the order was more difficult in some enclaves than in others, and as a result most of the subjects in the study are women, and most of the experiences, beliefs and ideas analysed are feminine.⁶ Yet the focus on gender in this study is not only the result of an acknowledged limitation deriving from the field conditions; the pervasiveness of gendering in religious praxis and its pivotal role in shaping people’s understanding of morality and normativity makes of gender an elucidating analytical tool in the study of religious life. Notably, as gender is mainly a cultural construct, this study contends it is an insightful tool for scrutinizing the cultural variances that occur transnationally within this order.⁷

Multi-sited fieldwork also makes us look at categories often used in the ‘Study of Religion’ in new ways. One of those, ‘the insider/outsider problem’,⁸ needs to be specially reconsidered here. This ṭarīqa displays a significant degree of fluidity when it comes to membership. Thus, informants who were once members, are no longer; some others want to be tagged neither as members nor as non-members; some are considering becoming members; yet others do not understand devotion to Hamza Būdshīsh in terms of formal discipleship to a religious organization. These are some of the ambiguities typical of an order with a quite young average devotee age, a juvenile character that may contribute to determining mobility in religious commitment. In any case, the issue of intermittence in adherence transforms the terms in which we must think of the insider/outsider antithesis.

Also of importance in rethinking the insider/outsider terms is the notion of locality. Given the geographical dispersion of the organization, most devotees do only know a reduced number of fuqarā’, mostly from their own group, and often treat Būdshīshiyya members from other enclaves as ‘outsiders’ (they perceive each other as cultural strangers); this is especially, although not only, how Moroccan followers perceive non-Moroccan devotees. There seems to be a trend of scholars who are converts to Islam working on Sufism. I have always clearly stated that my interest in the order was academic, but devotees, especially Europeans, often thought that my ‘academic’ interest would end up being a personal journey of religious transformation. These particular circumstances also meant that I was never really treated either as an outsider or as an insider. In terms of my ‘journey’, they were somehow right; I was deeply transformed by the experience of this fieldwork, although not in the way in which many had expected. In this regard, I consider having immersed myself in so many Būdshīshī worlds to have been fascinating, morally educational and as moving as very few other experiences in life can be. I am aware, however, that while some will see the fact I never became part of the organization as an advantage for the rigour of the research, others will view it as having been an obstacle to attaining the ‘True Knowledge’ they believe only comes with discipleship and religious devotion.

I have never understood how, in the post-9/11 world, any researcher has managed to collect genuine accounts of experiences and opinions on Islam in a fairly relaxed atmosphere with a recorder in hand. I asked for permission to record conversations with my first informants, but most people refused to be recorded – even when I provided evidence of my academic credentials (business cards as well as the document provided by my un...