It is not often you meet a Sufi. Nor conclude the evening with him and his interpreter dossing on your floor. With last Friday a national holiday, and Kamakura booked to the brim, it was a case of back to my pad or sleep on the beach. And I could hardly leave Sheikh Ingo Taleb Rashid to such a fate; these days he's more accustomed to the comforts of southern Germany than war-torn Iraq, where he was born.
Rashid learned the Naqshbandi-Rashidiya Sufi tradition from his father and grandfather. In his own bloodline it dates from 1750, but as a Muslim philosophical and literary movement Sufism is far older. Some members stress ascetic practices, others whirl. "Personally I've created my own technology, which combines movement, singing, dancing as well as specific techniques from the martial arts."
A dancer, actor and founder of the trademarked Movement Concept, with a school in Integrative Bodywork in Bavaria, he will be applying this knowledge next month in two workshops to be held at the Kokuritsu Josei Kyoiku Kaikan (Saitama Women's Center) in Ranzan City, an hour from Tokyo's Ikebukuro station.