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| A Spirit of Tolerance |
| This site includes A Spirit of Tolerance’s pictures, online articles, reviews, and more. |
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Click cover for larger image.
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Author(s):
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Subjects(s):
Islam
Sufism
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Price: $19.95
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ISBN: 978-1-933316-47-5
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Book Size: 6 x 9
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# of Pages: 260
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Language: English
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Description
The story of remarkable individuals should belong to the world, as well as to a specific time and place. In a world where religious faiths are often at odds with each other, the story of Tierno Bokar should be shared. Tierno Bokar (1875–1939) was an African mystic and Muslim spiritual teacher of the early twentieth century. This is the first full English translation of Amadou Hampaté Bâ’s book (Vie et enseignement de Tierno Bokar: Le sage de Bandiagara) on his spiritual guide Tierno Bokar, which introduced him to the non-African world.
Tierno Bokar was remarkable for the drama of his life story (which was made into a recent play directed by Peter Brook) and his message of religious tolerance and universal love as essential aspects of all religion.
This volume includes an introduction by Dr. Louis Brenner, perhaps the world’s most renowned authority on Tierno Bokar.
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AWARDS
- Silver Midwest Book Award for “Culture”
- Finalist for the 2008 Foreword Reviews INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award in the category “Biography”
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The story of remarkable individuals should belong to the world, as well as to a specific time and place. In a world where religious faiths are often at odds with each other, the story of Tierno Bokar should be shared. Tierno Bokar (1875–1939) was an African mystic and Muslim spiritual teacher of the early twentieth century. This is the first full English translation of Amadou Hampaté Bâ’s book (Vie et enseignement de Tierno Bokar: Le sage de Bandiagara) on his spiritual guide Tierno Bokar, which introduced him to the non-African world.
Tierno Bokar was remarkable for the drama of his life story (which was made into a recent play directed by Peter Brook) and his message of religious tolerance and universal love as essential aspects of all religion.
This volume includes an introduction by Dr. Louis Brenner, perhaps the world’s most renowned authority on Tierno Bokar..
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AWARDS
- Silver Midwest Book Award for “Culture”
- Finalist for the 2008 Foreword Reviews INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award in the category “Biography”
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Amadou Hampâté Bâ (c. 1900-1991) was a well-known Malian diplomat and author of the last half of the twentieth century. His fiction and non-fiction books in French are widely respected as sources of information and insight on West African history, religion, literature and culture, and life.
From the time of his youth, Mr. Bâ was a student and disciple of an extraordinary Malian Sufi master, Tierno Bokar. Shaykh Bokar has become known as "the sage of Bandiagara," the town in Mali where he lived for most of his life. Tierno Bokar was remarkable for his universalist attitudes and tolerance towards orthodox religions, for his parables and aphorisms, for his teaching methods, for the trials of his difficult life, and, finally, for the love and light that seemed to emanate from his person. All of this is known to us thanks to Amadou Hampâté Bâ's testimonial to his teacher, Vie et enseignement de Tierno Bokar: Le sage de Bandiagara, which has finally been translated into English and published by World Wisdom as A Spirit of Tolerance: The Inspiring Life of Tierno Bokar.
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Roger Gaetani is an editor, educator, and student of world religions who lives in Bloomington, Indiana. He has co-edited, with Jean-Louis Michon , the World Wisdom anthology on Sufism, Sufism: Love and Wisdom . He directed and produced the DVD compilation of highlights of the 2006 conference on Traditionalism, Tradition in the Modern World: Sacred Web 2006 Conference , and has edited the book A Spirit of Tolerance: The Inspiring Life of Tierno Bokar by Amadou Hampâté Bâ. Roger Gaetani translated (from the original French) and edited the book Introduction to Sufism: The Inner Path of Islam, by Eric Geoffroy. Mr. Gaetani’s most recent contribution to World Wisdom is Universal Aspects of the Kabbalah and Judaism by Leo Schaya, which he edited and for which he wrote the “Editor’s Preface.”
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“This is an extraordinary book. It should be more widely available for more students and interested persons of all backgrounds.”
—David H Anthony III (Ph.D), Department of History, University of California, Santa Cruz
“This book stands out as a traditional testimony to the universal spiritual heritage of all people qua the life of a twentieth-century African saint, Tierno Bokar. In addressing the diverse readership we hope that this testimony may be instrumental in leading more people, especially the younger generations, to reconnect to their own spiritual traditions. “The sage of Bandiagara” provides this astute aphorism for the modern world: ‘Do not go seeking fortune by begging in far-off places, you who are seated upon a sack of gold. Make use of this fortune, make it grow by trading in it with others’ (p. 155). Readers will find that Tierno Bokar, like his fellow Sufi companion Ibn `Arabi, affirms the religion of the heart.”
—Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society
“The compelling truth of Bokar’s life as a spiritual leader is this: he refused the temptations of intolerance and rigid doctrine. Religion was a process, he believed. One did not dictate or exclude; one examined and questioned.”
—The New York Times, article written by Margo Jefferson
“This easy-to-read book tells the story of Tierno Bokar (1875-1939), a devoted Muslim spiritual teacher who lived and died in what is now Mali. He spent his life teaching others about Islam and God, and yet was brought down by his countrymen’s jealousy, tribalism, and deliberate refusal to understand what was really important in a Muslim’s life.”
—Islamic Horizons, January/February 2008 issue
“Their [two factions in the Tijani Sufi sect] disagreement seems absurd, like all religious disagreements, and it was over whether a certain prayer, the Pearl of Perfection, should be said eleven times or twelve times. And for a few decades people lived in harmony, saying the prayer both ways, and then something happened and it became violent.… Tierno was a man who said, ‘This can’t be right. God can’t want us to kill each other over the question of how we worship God. That can’t be right. So I think we should stop killing each other.’ And he found that—as many people who have done something like this found—that this earned him no friends, that the elevens didn’t like him, and the twelves didn’t like him, and the French didn’t like him, and his family didn’t like him. And he died alone in 1940. And he would’ve died unremembered probably except that the great, great French African writer Amadou Hampaté Bâ wrote a book about his life with Tierno Bokar.”
—Gregory Mosher, Columbia Arts Initiative director
“Above all Tierno Bokar taught—and demonstrated by his own openness—tolerance. Religious quarrels were of no interest to him. He had a horror of ostentation. For him there was only one religion open and common to all, crossing the world, in a diversity of forms, but always unique.”
—Marie-Hélène Estienne, playwright and screenwriter, including The Mahabharata
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