Episode Details

Kabir Helminski, one of the best-known names in American Sufism, discusses “Gaza: Witnessing for Justice” and  “What Would a Moral Israel Look Like?”

Kabir Helminski is co-director and co-founder — together with his wife Camille Helminski(also profiled in the Living Spiritual Teachers Project) — of The Threshold Society, a nonprofit educational foundation that has developed programs to provide a structure for practice and study within Sufism and spiritual psychology. He is a Shaikh of the Mevlevi Order of Sufis, which traces its inspiration to Jelaluddin Rumi, and has authored and translated numerous books. (more)

Excerpt from the first 15 minutes:

Welcome to the live edition of Truth Jihad Radio. I'm Kevin Barrett, waging the all-out struggle for truth from my new home in Saidia, Morocco. Well, it's not that new. I've been here since late July, and today is Friday, January 26, 2024. Just a few hours ago, the International Court of Justice ruled that South Africa has presented a plausible case that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The ICJ ruled that indeed it has jurisdiction, that it orders Israel to prevent acts of genocide and to take measures to prevent genocide and report back to it about what it has done in one month. It has ruled that Israel must prevent and punish incitement to genocide. Israel must allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. And the ICJ obliges Israel to protect Palestinian lives.

It does not order a ceasefire, but actually there are questions about whether the court can order a ceasefire, which is really a military term rather than ordering remedies for genocide, which is the current case. So this is a historic ruling and to discuss it on tonight's show I'm very pleased to bring on two great American spiritual leaders who in fact are both Muslim spiritual leaders.

Kabir Helminski is one of the great interpreters of Jalal ad-Din Rumi, and he has translated him. He and Coleman Barks are the two big names in Rumi's studies. He has done all kinds of amazing work that I was following long before I came to Islam, and it's great to have him on the show tonight.

And then in the second I will bring on John Andrew Morrow, another great American Muslim spiritual leader, who is the number one force alongside Charles Upton, of course, in pushing the Covenants Initiative, publicizing the Covenants of Prophet Muhammad, peace upon him, to protect other religions.

So let's talk about Gaza and other things, starting with Kabir Helminski. Welcome, Kabir.

How are you? Thank you, Kevin. Happy to be here for the first time.

…My own work is primarily in the field of what I might call applied spirituality. It's within a traditional Islamic framework. And at the same time, I believe it's we're sharing universal truths and training hearts and minds to know what a human being truly is and what the human being's relationship to reality, to the divine reality actually is.

And so this is really my focus and it's also within Rumi's tradition, a 700 year old tradition. And so when I speak today, I'm not speaking in the name of any organization, not in the name of my spiritual lineage, for the non-profit Threshold Society, where we do our work, but I'm speaking solely as an individual.