In Pakistan and India, rock star Salman Ahmad plays to crowds of hundreds of thousands, filling cricket stadiums with fans obsessed and screaming his name. The goateed, long-haired musician can’t walk the streets without being besieged for his autograph. His every move is tracked on blogs maintained by devotees.

The founder of Junoon, South Asia’s best-selling rock band, Ahmad, 41, has been called the founder of “Sufi rock,” a style that blends the traditional qawwali music of the region’s Sufi shrines with guitar riffs that someone the likes of Led Zeppelin or Santana might play. His band has sold more than 25 million albums – a number that places him in the realm of Janet Jackson and Nirvana and makes him no stranger to MTV India’s No. 1 spot.

Rocker Salman Ahmad jams at a recent reunion concert for his band Junoon in Dubai, Saudi Arabia. In Urdu, "Junoon" means obsessed. (Courtesy Salman Ahmad)

The glow of fame in New York, however, is a different story, and since Ahmad moved here three years ago, he has found himself playing to a bevy of smaller, more academic audiences. As if to explain, posters outside university lecture halls label him the “Muslim Rock Star.” He only sometimes finds his CDs buried in “World Music” bins at record stores. And the multicultural organizations that host his shows often request pre-concert talks so he can tell who he is and what he’s about to play.

It’s a contrast, but Ahmad was the one who chose it. He moved his family here not only to provide them some breathing space and anonymity, but because his heart told him he needed to come. He’s in America, he said, to build bridges after Sept. 11 and to add his Sufi-influenced tolerant outlook to the worldwide discussion on the future of Islam.

“It’s been a roller-coaster ride,” said Ahmad, reflecting. “But I can better see Pakistan and South Asia from this perspective. And I’m trying to get where more mainstream America can find out what I’m about.”

Ahmad’s approach to rock ’n’ roll has been compared to Bono, and his band’s to U2: Their lyrics aren’t about women or sex, but about greater matters of peace, health and healing. Banned in Pakistan for several years in the late 1990s because of songs challenging government corruption and the nuclear race with India, Ahmad was later appointed a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador. He has used his most recent releases – about AIDS prevention and reconciliation after India and Pakistan’s historic 1947 split – to raise money for victims of last fall’s earthquake in Kashmir.

The credit for that social-justice outlook, Ahmad said, goes to Sufism, the mystical tradition within Islam and the dominant form of Islam in South Asia. There, Sufis seek God or spiritual truth directly, through a wide range of beliefs and rituals – such as meditation, music, ecstatic dancing and poetry – and practitioners include not only Muslims but Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and most anyone else who wants to join in.

With love as a central theme, Ahmad said, peace and tolerance follow.

“It’s like all the time being inside and thinking about the beauty and truth in the universe,” he said. “You acquire an ability to see with the heart. Religion, color – they just melt.”

A visitor to any of the Sufi shrines that dot India and Pakistan’s landscape will hear, on Thursday or Friday evenings, the sounds of traditional Sufi qawwalis – Urdu or Punjabi praise music played on tablas, or hand drums, and harmonium, a hand-pumped organ. Decades ago, singers such as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Abida Parveen made qawwalis commercially famous; Ahmad took them one step further in the merge with rock ’n’ roll.

Ahmad’s Sufi leanings come not from growing up in a Sufi-following family. With much of his childhood spent in the United States – in Rockland County, N.Y., because his father worked for Pakistan International Airlines – Ahmad was turned on to Sufism only after returning to Pakistan for medical school. After completing his degree and joining a well-known Pakistani pop band called the Vital Signs, he found himself unfulfilled until he met Nusrat at a benefit concert about 15 years ago. Discovering the depth and meaning of Sufi tradition, he spent two years studying with Nusrat, learning to merge qawwalis with his Aerosmith-sounding guitar.

“The Sufi idea came through music and I was stung. Obviously there was something in me waiting to be wounded,” Ahmad said. “It kind of blew my mind. I had just associated Sufis with religion. Then I was so blown away by the poetry, by the voice.”

Describing himself as musically “born again,” Ahmad now uses the words of the Qur’an and Sufi poets Rumi and Bulleh Shah when he writes. While not a member of any particular Sufi order – the mystics are grouped together in certain lineages, almost like monastic orders in the Catholic Church – he describes the composing process in the same spiritual terms Sufis use to describe their zikr, or meditation.

“Once I got into music I had all these questions about where melodies come from, where inspiration comes from, where creativity comes from,” he said. “When I write, I get possessed. I get struck. I have no concept of time.”

The band Ahmad pulled together in 1990 with Pakistani Ali Azmat and later Brian O’Connell, a boyhood friend from New York, drew its name from that concept – Junoon in Urdu means “obsessed” and its fans are called Junoonis, or “obsessed ones.” The group hit its stride in 1995 with a CD called “Inquilaab,” or revolution, and a song called “Ehtesaab,” or accountability, followed by a music video featuring a horse dining at a fancy hotel – a stab at then-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s husband, who owned polo ponies. A few years later the band toured both India and Pakistan with hits from their album “Azad,” which means freedom.

Parallel to the group’s rapid rise in success was an increase across India in the popularity of Sufi music, a trend both Swaminathan Kalidas, India Today magazine Arts Editor, and Sohail Hashmi, a documentary filmmaker, attribute to Muslim-Hindu violence in Ayodhya in 1992 and Gujarat in 2002. The nation was seeking calm in the midst of religious tumult and Sufi groups like Junoon – singing of harmony and acceptance – spread a message that soothed that need, the Delhi-based critics said.

The popularity of Sufi music continues today, but Junoon does not: The band decided to call it quits after more than a decade and after Ahmad and O’Connell each moved back to New York. Citing too many years together and needs to explore new avenues, Ahmad said one of the main reasons the group broke up was so he could get beyond that fame kept him from doing the work he likes most.

“I felt frustrated with what I was doing with Junoon. I was in this rock ’n’ roll circus. People were affected by my celebrity,” Ahmad said, so much so he felt he couldn’t get out his social-justice message.

Sept. 11 made him realize, more than ever, his role: “For most Muslims it was the lights being turned on, somebody asking the question, ‘Are Muslims inherently violent?’” he recalled.

He knew it was up to him to answer the question.

Living again in Rockland County, his boys enrolled in the same middle school he attended and his wife Samina, also trained as a doctor, serving as his manager, Ahmad has been at work on his solo album, “Infiniti,” released last year, and two documentaries for the BBC. The first show, “The Rock Star and the Mullahs,” tells the story of a tour Ahmad made of northwest Pakistan after increasingly fundamentalist Islamic leaders attempted to ban music in all forms. The second, “It’s My Country, Too,” features his interviews with Muslim Americans on life in post-Sept. 11 America.

In February, Ahmad performed at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar, and in March, he joined former Junoon members for a reunion concert in Dubai, Saudi Arabia. At the end of April he’ll be honored by the Muslim Public Affairs Council for his use of music to promote peace. He’s also slated this summer to perform in Central Park.

It’s a busy lineup, but the shows Ahmad most looks forward to, he said, are the ones on small university stages where only a few audience members may know his name.

“That’s where I find myself in my element,” he said. “Doing unplugged storytelling concerts, telling how the Sufi tradition and Sufi music translate into the 21st century.”

If a recent performance at Nassau Community College on Long Island is any example, Ahmad is talking about meeting crowds of 20-somethings who live lives far from Pakistan, far from understanding the complexity that is Islam. Students who, if they’re paying attention, will meet through music the Sufi outlook Ahmad hopes can open doors between East and West.

Backed by a tablas drummer who beats out rhythms on the floor, Ahmad – clad in stonewashed jeans, a black V-neck shirt, wooden necklace and backward baseball cap – will pluck out qawwali ecstasy on his guitar strings, his knee lifting and head shaking in pure rapture as the audience slowly rises to its feet. Students from the South Asia who already know his music may lead, but soon others will join in unabashed, full-arm, above-head hand-clapping and bangra-influenced fancy footwork. Cell phones will snap pictures, friends will ride friends’ shoulders, cries of “Pakistan Zindabad” (“Long live Pakistan”) may even be heard.

Ahmad plans to be here for the next 10 years at least – enough time, he hopes, to show that Islam, especially Sufi Islam, has more to offer the world than bloodshed and war.

“The world separates and polarizes, yet Sufism sees everyone as one,” he said. “Sufism is for me a long-lost bridge people have to find. It allows me to look at someone else – black, white, green, red, Jewish, Christian, Muslim – and see them as human.”

Junoon (.mp3)

Man Qunto Maula (.mp3)

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MUMBAI, INDIA -- On the bustling streets of Mumbai, journalist and activist Sameera Khan is an ordinary face in the cosmopolitan landscape and a contributing member of the city’s globally competitive workforce. Yet in the villages of India, she might find herself lacking the rights she enjoys here. Khan is a Muslim Indian woman.

The Indian legal system plays a balancing act. On the one hand, the world’s largest democracy has maintained a legal system that is secular. On the other, for a nation of millions of Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Sikhs, when it comes to the issue of family law, different religious groups have had a degree of autonomy. But the way justice is administered in the Muslim familial legal system is treating women unfairly, according to some Muslim women activists. And in Mumbai, and elsewhere in India, some of them are trying to change that.

Until the mid-1980s, a Muslim woman did not have the right to maintenance (similar to alimony) in a divorce. When the Supreme Court granted Muslim women that right, the Indian government passed a law yielding more autonomy to Muslim family law, making the Supreme Court decision weaker. In villages around India, Muslim men have the right to marry more than one woman, said Khan, and that according to Islamic law a husband can divorce his wife just by saying divorce three times. The wife, however, does not have similar rights.

This, Khan believes, is what marginalizes Muslim women in a state that is ostensibly a secular democracy. But she thinks that Muslim women can spark a change.

Khan’s current work involves the study of the Indian public space and how it affects women, and she looks to the future optimistically as there are Muslim women’s groups in Mumbai that want to challenge this inequality. Hasina Khan is the coordinator of Aawaaz-e-Niswaan (Voice of the Women) and her group strives to make polygamy illegal in India. Noorjehan Safia Niaz of the Women’s Research and Action Group (WRAG) also works to secure more rights for women in India’s Muslim family law. In 2005, Niaz reportedly protested loudly against the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, which had stated that Muslim law made the wife subservient to her husband.

“Islam gives more rights to women than any other religion,” said Sona Khan, a Muslim women’s rights attorney in Delhi. “But politically, Islam has dropped gender protection rights.” Khan was an attorney for Shah Bano, whose mid-1980s Indian Supreme Court case ended in a ruling that a Muslim woman in a divorce could be granted maintenance, or alimony, which was different from the Muslim law. Today, Muslim communities can still control how divorces are administered.

Sona Khan dismisses the radical Muslim leaders throughout the world who want to cut back on women’s rights as “political vendors.” The stories people in the West hear about women being punished unfairly in the Muslim world is not consistent with the teachings of the Koran. These political regimes, she said, are “man-made.”

Even though Khan, the attorney, considers herself a practicing Muslim, she believes that India’s democracy is weakened by what she calls “regionalism.” Religious pluralism is something that benefits the nation, but nevertheless, it needs a universal legal system, she believes.

“[Muslims] can’t run a parallel system of the administration of justice,” she said.

In the future, she said, she would like to work on cases in Indian courts that would challenge Islamic clerics’ ability to dictate how Muslim communities govern themselves.

Meanwhile, Sameera Khan laments that Muslim women in India have long been stuck in a political bind. During British occupation, she said, Muslims were fighting the mighty colonial force, so women who may have felt slighted by inequality were discouraged from calling for change in their community so that the independence movement would not be splintered. Today, she finds Muslims in a similar situation. In India, Muslims are the largest minority religion, and the opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) continues to promote a political platform that stands against the “appeasement” of the Muslim minority. In March 2006, BJP leader L.K. Advani announced that he would embark on a yatra—or a journey throughout the country—the following month in order to raise Hindu political consciousness in the wake of the terrorist bombings in Varanasi, Hinduism’s holiest city, believed to be carried out by Muslim extremists. Advani said that he wanted the theme of his campaign to be “justice for all, appeasement for none.”

And on the world stage, she believes that Muslims feel confronted by Europe and by the United States. Thus, Muslim women feel that their religion is fighting for equality with other religions, so now is not the time to rock the proverbial boat. “When do we fight for our rights?” she asked rhetorically. “The woman’s question is to be answered later.”

According to her own social research in Mumbai, public space is built to the advantage of Indian men in general. While women of all religions in India have progress to be made, she feels that she is in a position of double jeopardy.

“It’s tough being Muslim,” said Khan. “It’s even tougher to be a Muslim woman.”

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Stacey Samuel leapt before the Taj. (Carolyn Slutsky)

Wobbly toy cobras in cheap bamboo baskets. Peacock feathers tied into fans. Snow globes swirling glitter around a two-inch Taj Mahal.

“I give you cheap. Just take a look,” insisted one of some two dozen vendors who thrust a bazaar’s worth of kitsch into the faces of student journalists this morning. We were making our way through the streets surrounding the majestic Taj, India’s most-visited tourist site.

“You want postcards?” said one determined man who trailed the pack with a ratty set of torn-from-a-book paper rectangles. “200 rupees? 100 rupees? OK? OK? OK?”

Not yet a full day into our stay in Agra, we found ourselves sucked into the swirling chaos of a place that stakes itself on profits made from those who live afar. Home to both the Taj Mahal and the majestic Agra Fort, Agra is abuzz with tourists – a situation that gives the place a more commercial veneer than the temples, mosques and churches we’ve visited thus far. Our tour guide estimated that the Taj complex receives 5,000 visitors a day.

“Folks, we’ve got to hurry. The sun is rising,” Prof. Sree Sreenivasan repeated to coffee-seeking stragglers as we boarded a bus marked “TOURIST” about a half-hour before light was to take hold. Outside the windows, men squatted by small fires and women swept leftover pink Holi dust from streets as we proceeded in receding darkness to see the Taj at the most striking time of morning.

Built by Moghul emperor Shah Jahan following his favorite wife’s death in 1631, the Taj Mahal houses the tombs of both wife and husband and took 22 years to complete. The Muslim ruler employed a slew of elephants and some 20,000 workers – both Muslim and Hindu – from all over India and the Middle East to work its stone and exquisite carvings. Many descendents of those first builders still work at the Taj and live in Taj Ganj, the neighborhood that borders the complex grounds.

We ended a long line of security checks and pat-downs near a small swarm of entrepreneurs who take the photographs that the Taj is known for – the gimmick angles that make a person appear to be holding the building’s base with his bare hands, or pinching its tip with her forefinger and thumb.

“OK, madam, jump,” one cameraman told student Amanda Millner-Fairbanks as she attempted a different pose, a leap off a bench captured to look as if she’d bounced all the way to the top of the famous dome. “Like this, like this,” he said, demonstrating, hopping like a frog.

The next hour and a half were spent traipsing the Taj grounds while wearing white shower cap-like booties on our shoes – an innovation introduced complex-wide last year for foreign tourists whose feet are unaccustomed to the Indian tradition of shedding footwear while trodding stone walkways. Wearing the booties means you can keep your shoes on but cover their dirt – making it possible to both keep feet clean and show respect for the tombs at the same time.

The cost for the booties is included, along with a bottled water, on the “foreigner ticket” – a cost of 750 rupees, or about $17. Admission for an Indian citizen is much less – 20 rupees, or less than 50 cents.

“When Indians from villages come here, they have 10 to 12 people in their families and cannot spend more than this,” our guide for the day, Akshay Jain, 27, explained. “They charge 750 rupees for foreigners because they can pay it. In Agra, the only source of revenue is the Taj.”

Until a little over a decade ago, Agra had a bustling leather industry, but it was banned in 1994 after it was discovered that acid rain from the pollution was ruining the Taj’s inlaid stones. Since then, the town has relied even more on the tourist draw to support the guides, guards, gardeners, travel agents, restauranteurs and autorickshaw drivers who make their livings off the crowds.

One of those dependents is Bishamber Singh, 44, a fourth-generation groundskeeper we met as he swept the garden pathways. Singh, a Hindu, has done the same work for nearly 30 years and said it’s his destiny as a member of the Banwari caste to continue. Were he not cleaning the Taj, he’d be cleaning somewhere else, he reasoned.

That the caste system influences present-day tourism operations may come as a surprise to those from outside India, but Singh said his work does have its benefits day in and day out – namely, the stunning view he encounters each day on the job.

For Singh, the best Taj sighting has less to do with the time of day or angle of sun, but when the complex remains sparkling after visits by the masses.

“That’s what makes me happy,” Singh said.

***

It is said in Hindi that each grain of rice is inscribed with the name of the person who will eat it. It must be the case, then, that the jasmine and basmati chawal waiting in our group’s final stops – Varanasi, Sarnath and Mumbai – lacks the names of Prof. Ari Goldman and his 17-year-old daughter, Emma.

Goldman, now known to students and Indians alike as “Ari-ji” (appropriate not only because it sounds like “Ari G.,” but because "ji" is a Hindi honorific), tonight announced that he and Emma will part ways with the group and remain in Agra while Emma recovers from a stomach bug.

Prof. Sreenivasan and students will continue on to Varanasi and fly to the United States on Tuesday. The Goldmans now plan to return home on Sunday, two days earlier than scheduled.

“In Jewish tradition we have a saying – daiyenu – ‘it would have been enough,’” Goldman told students over their last meal together before the group departed to catch an overnight train. It would have been enough for him, he said, to have had the first half of the semester together in New York. And it would have been enough to have simply gotten everyone to India safe and sound.

The fact that eight days passed with no sickness and a vast amount of learning is something he said he’s thankful for.

The group also bid a temporary farewell earlier in the afternoon to student reporters Shira Schoenberg and Greg Gilderman as the two departed in a car bound for Mumbai. Schoenberg, an Orthodox Jew, needed to travel early to prepare for Shabbat on Friday and to begin reporting in Mumbai’s Jewish community.

Gilderman hopes to recover from the stomach illness that seemed to make its rounds among group members as the rest toured today’s sites. Both will reunite with fellow students when the rest reach Mumbai on Saturday evening.

Despite depleted numbers and a few queasy stomachs, however, the Columbia assembly traveled on tonight, piling into the bus for a ride to the train station 40 kilometers away. There, hired porters stacked carts high with New York suitcases and led the way – extra bags balanced carefully on their heads – for the walk, lit by a full moon, to the next train.

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Indians join in an impromtu dance during the flag lowering ceremony at the border with Pakistan. (Aili McConnon)

After putting our bags down in our hotel in Amristar and feeling rested from a five-hour train ride from Delhi, our group drove to Wagah to observe the ceremonial closing of the border with Pakistan.

In the last several years, the border between these two rival nations has been opened up; transnational train service was launched this year and people pass through the border crossing here on a daily basis.

On Sunday, the gathering of several thousand Indians to watch soldiers from both countries lower their respective flags, was a moment of celebration. The ceremony has become more of a tourist attraction in recent years rather an epicenter of international hostility.

Nirmal Singh Bishad drew cheers from the crowd when he ran back and forth down the road leading to the border with an Indian flag larger than his adolescent body. But his act of joyous patriotism was not an act of aggression toward Pakistan, he insisted.

“They are our friends,” he said, “not our enemies.”

As the Indian troops prepared to approach the gate, the crowd chanted “Hindustan Zindabad,” which in Hindi means, “Long live India.” The Pakistani crowd just yards away chanted in Urdu, “Pakistan Zindabad,” or “Long Live Pakistan.”

Men danced in the path leading up to the border to Indian music before the flags were pulled down just before sunset. The Indian troops stomped with such ferocity and marched with such exaggerated exuberance it drew chuckles from the crowd.

“It is fake aggression,” Delhi-based journalist Mannika Chopra said in reference to the stern faces the Indian troops give to their Pakistani counterparts. “It’s a tourist thing.”

The arbitrary border between the two countries was designed by the same colonial force, Britain, which exploited the subcontinent for its resources. The two countries inherited these borders when they gained independence from Britain in August 1947. The riots that resulted from partition ended in nearly 2 million deaths in this part in India.

While many people on both sides of the border today came to celebrate their countries rather than to show aggression toward one another, Chopra explained that there are deeper tensions. Pakistani President Pervez Musharaff and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have both worked to open up this border due to the post-9/11 political climate and international pressure, but both have to appease important constituents to maintain their political power. Musharaf must play to the interests of Islamic extremists and Singh must recognize the interests of right wing, Hindu nationalists.

That is why there are two faces of the ceremony on the border. For the Indian tourists coming from as far away as the capital of New Delhi and the southern city of Chennai, the meeting of green clad Indian soldiers with black clad Pakistani soldiers is a source of both entertainment and national pride. But with India’s new nuclear deal with the United States there is the possibility for a rise in tension that would give the soldiers seemingly acted hostile nature a little bit of sincerity.

"It’s bizarre,” Chopra said.

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Students of ultra-traditional Sunni Islam bid their visitors goodbye by quietly lining the staircase of their Deoband madrassa. (Erik Wander)

This is it.

We're in a classroom in the infamous town of Deoband, 100 miles north of New Delhi. This is, according to some, the point of origin of the radical form of Sunni Islam whose sphere of influence ranges from the Wahabists of Saudi Arabia to the ousted Taliban regime of Afghanistan.

We have been anticipating this day since we first learned it was on our schedule, way back in January, when we were in America, a lifetime ago.

Before us is a sea of faces. They belong to bearded young men in white outfits wearing white knitted skull caps. We entered the room and there they were. It's hot. We're on display. No one prepared us for this. We sit quietly.

A young man stands. He's in the front row. He's speaking in Urdu. There is fire in his voice. What could he be saying?

Farooq Quasim, a senior lecturer at the school, translates. He is bespectacled, around 50 years old. He utters his halting, careful English through the microphone.

"He is wanting to know why it is in the West that Muslims are humiliated," he says.

There is a pause. The eyes are upon our tiny group.

No one speaks. The ceiling fans whirl.

"Go ahead."

It's Sree, our indefatigable leader, whispering to me. I'm no spokesperson, but it is my assigned day to report. More importantly, I suppose, I happen to be sitting closest to him.

So I stand. And I can't help thinking, as the microphone is turned toward my mouth, and the heads tilt back and all those eyes wait patiently, that a man who has been known to screw up jokes, wedding toasts, and restroom directions is perhaps not the ideal choice representing his nation in a Q&A.

But then the words start coming out…

*

The building is a part of Darul Uloom Wakf, a madrassa, or Islamic school. Its students are as young as 14-years-old and appear to be as old as 30. Its curriculum is a part of the "Deobondi tradition."

This combination of theology and politics was forged in the middle and late 19th century in opposition to both British colonial rule and a perceived laxness in the prevailing interpretations of Islam.

But in the late 20th the literalist interpretations of Islam coming from this part of the world have become known for something else. In the West, fairly or unfairly, fundamentalist Islam of this sort has become associated with a violent antagonism toward American influence in the Middle East, restrictions against women, and, of course, the attacks of September 11, 2001.

You won't find much in the way of positive comment about madrassas in many quarters of American and Indian political thought. Indian BJP leader L.K. Advani, speaking to us several days prior, said madrassas fail their students because they don't give them the requisite skills for getting employment in the Indian civil service.

Some Americans have argued that these schools are breeding grounds for terrorism.

The students and instructors we interviewed at Darul Uloom Wakf denied these claims, often with great passion.

So it was a bit jarring to later hear a student ask a question with a sincerity so total it bordered on the benign: "My learned teacher says the media in the West is under the total Jewish control. What will you tell them about us when you return to them?"

*

In front of the microphone, I can only come up with a short answer about why Muslims are humiliated in America. It doesn't really answer his question, but if an American is given an opportunity to offer some words at a moment like this, I'd like to think one could come up with worse ones than these:

"I think in any country, and in any religion, there are extremists. It's that extremism that most of us oppose. So when people from America mistreat anyone based on their religion, it wounds us all."

It's a far cry from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream," or Lou Gehrig's farewell speech at Yankee Stadium, but on hot day in a tense situation, perhaps it was something we could, for a moment, agree on.

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Bicycle rickshaws squeeze through the narrow Delhi road leading to the Jama Masjid. (Mariana Martinez Estens)

Delhi is a city in perpetual motion. Early in the morning, monkeys parade along the walls of government buildings like people, and young children dressed in rags handspring and somersault across the sidewalks as nimble as little monkeys. Bicycle driven rickshaws compete for space on the roads with honking motorcycles.

India’s capital city was built eight times and destroyed six, leaving Old and New Delhi as the two surviving remnants of the many dynasties come and gone. As tour guide Muzaffar Shah said, the city holds a curse: No one will own Delhi forever. The one constant in the city’s history, its streets and its culture, is that it never seems to stand still.

After arriving at the hotel at 2 a.m. the previous morning, the group of jet lagged Columbia journalism students began our first day in India with a tour of New Delhi. Having been warned of overcrowding, we were pleasantly surprised to see the spacious yards and manicured gardens that surrounded the diplomats’ bungalows and the former viceroy’s palace, a benefit of the eight million trees bequeathed to Delhi by the British colonizers. But even at the India Gate war memorial, where army officers in orange and gold turbans formally laid a garland to commemorate the country’s fallen soldiers, there were signs of the other, poorer side of the city. A little beggar girl twisted herself into a human pretzel. Elsewhere, men and women swept the streets with brooms; a man tried to sell slingshots propelling whirling plastic toys.

L.K. Advani, the controversial leader of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), spoke to the group at his home about the intersection of politics and religion in India’s secular democracy.

But, like so much else in Delhi, politics and religion shift depending on who is speaking. Explaining Advani’s remarks, journalist and member of parliament Chandan Mitra talked about the Muslims as a voting bloc, often economically disadvantaged, who comprise 16 to 17 percent of India’s population. Later in the day, Sohail Hashmi, a Delhi-based documentarian, expert on Islam and our guide at Old Delhi’s principle mosque, Jama Masjid, stressed that Muslims are far from a monolithic group-they have class and cultural distinctions that outweigh their religious commonality. “If the Imam said vote for this candidate, I’d be surprised if anyone pays attention,” he said.

After Advani’s talk, the group headed to Old Delhi and finally found the bustling city streets about which we had been warned. Motorcycles cut off rickshaws, which formed lanes in each direction. Smells of food and spice from local shops filled the air. Children pushed carts of cardboard boxes and begged at the windows of the bus.

Even in Jama Masjid, a 1,200-square-meter courtyard with majestic domes, archways and minarets, it was hard to find a still spot. Worshippers waiting on the red sandstone terrace for prayers overlooked a bustling bazaar, as pigeons flew around eating the seed left for them by tourists and devotees.

In the area around the mosque stands the Red Fort. With its red sandstone wall 2.4 kilometers in circumference, the fort, visible from Jama Masjid, is a power center. Whichever empire’s flag flew from the fort controlled the city. Its story of kings, saints and violence, retold by Hashmi, are a reminder of the power struggles that have caused Delhi to rise and fall over the centuries. The Fort is a testimony to the story of this ever-changing city, a story that continues to unfold each and every day.

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Islamic Cultural Center (photo courtesy of www.nyc-architecture.com)

The first thing young Muslim students learn when they walk into the Islamic Cultural Center in the upper east side of New York city is how to greet people.

“Assalam alaikum,” said Imam Shamsi-Ali, a youthful teacher in a dark gray suit and checkered white and blue shirt. He explained that the traditional greeting exchanged between Muslims means “peace be upon you.” Unlike good morning and hello, assalam alaikum is more than just a casual saying. “It’s a prayer and it’s our unique way of wishing goodness on someone every time we see them,” said Shamsi-Ali.

With a degree in comparative religions, the imam teaches both children’s classes and seminars for recently converted devotees to Islam at the Islamic Cultural Center on the corner of 3rd Avenue and 96th Street.

Whether it’s 6-year-olds or 66-year-olds that he’s instructing in the complexities of his religion, Shamsi-Ali uses the same approach. “I’m educating them in terms of character and behavior, not just in religion.” His voice is steady and pleasant. The greeting is a perfect introduction to Islam because it demonstrates how a person should behave towards others – with respect and good will. It is also indicative of how important prayers are in a Muslim’s daily life. Followers are required to pray five times a day, said Shamsi-Ali, who comes from Indonesia.

“There are five pillars of Islam,” he continued in his accented but elegant English. “Five practices a Muslim must follow during his lifetime.” In addition to daily prayers, they are: affirming that there is only one God and Muhammad is his prophet, giving charity to the poor, fasting during the holy month of Ramadan, and journeying to the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

In addition to these five pillars, there are an additional six pillars of faith that a Muslim must accept into his heart – faith in the oneness of God, faith in the angels, faith in the holy books, faith in the prophets, faith in the day of judgment and faith in divine destiny.

“Islam is not only six plus five,” cautioned the soft-spoken teacher. “It’s a way of life. We live our lives according to the teachings of the Quran and they touch every aspect of our day. For instance, we eat only food prepared a certain way – Halal it’s called. We don’t drink alcohol. That’s to respect our minds.” He paused as if allowing his listener to digest all that he was teaching.

“Islam is about morality. It’s a way to treat people.” Shamsi-Ali began teaching after September 11th when he realized how little people knew about Islam. He began his seminar for curious non-Muslims with a simple lesson about Islam that had been all but forgotten.

“Assalam alaikum.” Peace be upon you.

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It’s nearly midnight on a cold, blustery Thursday, but none of the worshippers at Masjid al-Farah seem to be missing the warmth of their beds. They are in another zone of comfort – the warmth that a night of Sufi chanting brings.

Darkness veils the world outdoors. Gusts of wind whip the building. Yet inside the mosque – an unassuming three-story in Tribeca – the circle of Sufi believers attempt to work their way closer to God.

The room is long and narrow. Shadows from high ceilings drape the white-brick walls; lights are low. Red Turkish carpets run the length of the room, layer upon layer meeting at edges where they tend to wrinkle up and require flattening out.

For tonight, someone has arranged a circle of sheepskins at the center of the space. Thirty-some participants sit on top, cross-legged, their feet and bottoms absorbing the furry warmth of wool as an occasional draft works its chill through the air.

Sheikha Fariha al-Jerrahi takes the lead. “La ilaha Ilallah,” she begins, her toboggan-covered head nodding deeply and turning from the right shoulder to the left. Those around her repeat the mantra and soon the circle is a mass of nodding, chanting and swaying.

“La ilaha Ilallah” – or “there is no God but He” – is just the first phrase of praise the group will invoke tonight. Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam, encourages followers to seek unity with the divine through meditation and ecstatic experience. In the service called zhikr, or “remembrance,” participants focus on the 99 names Muslims ascribe to God, repeating the words over and over until they sometimes work themselves into religious frenzy.

Many Americans know the Sufis for their most famous order, the Mevlevi, whose spinning dance earned them the title “whirling dervishes” of Turkey. All Sufis are called “dervishes” – the word simply means “poor person” – but there will be no whirling in Tribeca tonight. Like monastic orders in Christianity, each Sufi order has different traditions, and the Nur Ashki Jerrahi order, the group that meets here, is doing “seated zhikr,” a service in which legs keep stationary but upper bodies twist and turn.

Maybe 10 minutes into the incantation – it’s hard to tell time, as the repetition makes minutes stand still – al-Jerrahi senses the need for change and transitions the group seamlessly to its next phrase, “ya Allah,” or “name of power.” Most of those present are white and middle-aged, and that group follows her. A heavyset Jordanian man, the same one who set out trays of dates and almonds for guests three hours before, takes off in a different direction, his Arabic song providing light counterpoint to the others’ heavy chant.

A woman two down from him in the circle adds a third strain of sound: forceful breath that moves in her nose and out her mouth, faster and faster as the group repeats the words more quickly. “Hu,” al-Jerrahi leads, “Hu. Hu.” In translation, “hu” is the breath Allah blew into Adam, the first man.

The swaying becomes more intense. Al-Jerrahi adopts a different pattern and worshippers now move their torsos not only side to side but in a larger orbit all the way around their seated base. The concept of time has lost all meaning. Upstairs, a pot of stew bubbles on a stovetop, but no one downstairs seems to have the upcoming communal meal on their minds.

“Sheikha, I’m thirsty,” one goateed young man had told al-Jerrahi before the service began. Not for water, he’d said, but for God.

“It’s good to be thirsty,” al-Jerrahi replied, touching her heart. Repeating the names of God, she explained, is the way to drink in the love and goodness penetrating the universe.

“All we have to do is accept the invitation,” she said. “May it be that we say ‘yes.’”

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Imam Al-Hajj Talib ‘Abdur-Rashid is a tall man with a round face and full cheeks when he smiles. Last Sunday afternoon, he tucked his large, round hands inside the pockets of his loose-fitting indigo pants as he explained why he would be leading this class at Harlem’s Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood, Inc., for the next three months. He jiggled the coins in his pockets, and light radiated from his warm, dark eyes. It was that light and warmth which he hoped to pass on to the seven followers of Allah seated in folding chairs before him.

The Nafs, ‘Abdur-Rashid told the sisters and brothers of this mosque at West 113th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue, are a “body of knowledge” within Islam. They are not the central tenets of the faith, but knowing them will strengthen a believer’s relationship with Allah. If you look through a lens that is “dirty or cracked or covered over somehow, then your perception of what you’re looking at is going to be less than complete,” he began. “Well, the Nafs is our looking glass for perceiving the almighty Allah.”

But before introducing the six stages of this ancient and mystical body of knowledge, the veteran leader of this Harlem spiritual landmark gave his students an etymology lesson. “Arabic is a multi-dimensional language,” ‘Abdur-Rashid said, picking up a piece of tangerine-colored chalk. To understand Islam’s religious concepts, it is first necessary to understand where they come from, he continued, and scrawled the word “Rūh” on the chalkboard behind him.

He then turned back to his students. The men were physically separated from women by a small aisle, but all leaned forward in their seats, and enthusiasm was plain on their faces. “What does it mean when Allah says, ‘my rūh’?” ‘Abdur-Rashid asked. “Sister Maryam?”

Looking up from her notebook, the middle-aged woman with the mustard colored headscarf answered, “My consciousness, my essence.”

‘Abdur-Rashid smiled and nodded. “It’s that life force, that animated life energy created by almighty Allah that comes into being at his command,” the imam’s voice gaining volume and speed as he delved deeper into his lesson. Rūh comes from the same Arabic root as rīh, or “wind.”

“The wind has no physical or material form or substance, just a moving force,” he said. His excitement for the subject was palpable and, as if to hold himself up amid all his enthusiasm, ‘Abdur-Rashid leaned against the wall. “The wind can be a lovely breeze on a summer day or it can be a hurricane. It can be light or extreme—as is the rūh inside the human being.”

Circling back to the topic at hand, ‘Abdur-Rashid then picked up the chalk. He turned to the board and wrote, “nafasa.” The word that gives the name to The Nafs means, “to be precious,” and, “to breathe.”

But the breath in nafasa differs from that in rūh—in both intensity and intent. “Rūh communicates an image of this,” said ‘Abdur-Rashid, and exhaled wholly and hastily. He then inhaled and added, “Nafasa, the image is this—” And he breathed in and out, calmly and steadily. Rūh gives humans life; nafasa sustains it and makes each person’s spirit unique.

Recognizing that every human being has a different breath within will help you understand one another better, ‘Abdur-Rashid told his students. And understanding one another better will lead to increased patience and acceptance. “This is essential in the practice of brotherhood and sisterhood,” he said to the brothers and sisters seated before him. “It’s essential to the cultivation of good character and a soft heart.”

‘Abdur-Rashid paused a moment. Almost as an after thought, he then added, “Only the person with a soft heart gets into paradise.”

And from the small cluster of women seated in folding chairs swelled a hushed but warm, “Mhmm.”

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