Dr. Rory Dickson

Title: Associate Professor; Chair
Phone: 204-786-9202
Office: 4M32
Email: w.dickson@uwinnipeg.ca

Biography:

Dr. Dickson completed a Joint-PhD in Religious Studies (2012) at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Waterloo, with a specialization in Islamic Studies. As a SSHRC Doctoral Fellow (2010-2011) Dickson attended the University of Toronto and the University of Copenhagen’s Graduate Research School in Damascus, Syria. His research focuses on contemporary Islam in general, and on Islamic spirituality (Sufism) in particular. His first book Living Sufism in North America: Between Tradition and Transformation (State University of New York Press, 2015) explores how Sufi leaders in North America understand Islam, authority, and gender. He has coauthored an introduction to Sufism with Meena Sharify-Funk, Unveiling Sufism: From Manhattan to Mecca(Equinox, 2017), and a study of contemporary Sufism with Meena Sharify-Funk and Merin Shobhana Xavier, Contemporary Sufism: Piety, Politics, and Popular Culture (Routledge, 2018).

Courses:

Classical Islam (REL-2710)
Contemporary Islam (REL-2711)
Gender and Sexuality in Muslim Societies (REL-2714)
Issues in the Interpretation of the Qur'an (REL-3/4701)
Islamic Law (REL 3/4703)
Sufism: Islamic Spirituality and Philosophy (REL 3/4702)

Publications:

Sufism in North America: Between Tradition and Transformation. Albany: State University of New York Press (2015).

Unveiling Sufism: From Manhattan to Mecca. Co-authored with Meena Sharify-Funk. Sheffield: Equinox (2017).

Contemporary Sufism: Piety, Politics, and Popular Culture. New York: Routledge (2018).

Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters:

(2020). “The Golden Sufi Center: A Non-Islamic Branch of the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya.” In Varieties of American Sufism. Edited by Elliott Bazzano and Marcia Hermansen. Albany: State University of New York Press.

(2019). “Disordering and Reordering Sufism: North American Sufi Teachers and the Tariqa Model.” Co-authored with Merin Shobhana Xavier. In Global Sufism: Boundaries, Structures, and Politics. Edited by Mark Sedgwick and Francesco Piraino. London: Hurst Publishers.

(2015). “Négociation du sacré à Philadelphie: soufismes concurrents au sanctuaire de Bawa Muhaiyaddeen.” Co-authored with Merin Shobhana Xavier. Social Compass 62(4): 584-597.

(2014). “An American Sufism: The Naqshbandi-Haqqani Order as a Public Religion.” Studies in Religion 43(3): 411-424.

(2014). “Traces of Panentheism in Islam: Ibn al-‘Arabi and the Kaleidoscope of Being.” In Panentheism Across the World’s Religious Traditions. Co-authored with Meena Sharify-Funk. Edited by Loriliai Biernacki and Philip Clayton, 142-160. New York: Oxford University Press.

(2010). “Religion as Phantasmagoria: Islam in Sam Harris’s The End of Faith.” In Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal. Edited by Amarnath Amarasingam, 37-54. Leiden: Brill.

(2009). “The Tablighi Jama‘at in Southwestern Ontario: Making Muslim Identities and Communities in Canadian Urban Spaces.” Journal of Contemporary Islam 2(3): 99-112.