Diary 1963 - Murshid Sam's Living Stream

Diaries 196358 Harriet St.,San Francisco 3, Calif.October 11, 1963Major Jacquemart,Headquarters Building,Fort Mason, Calif.In re: The Dervishes & CounterintelligenceDear Major Jacquemart:Argument: Sir Richard Burton and after him Gertrude Bell were of tremendous services totheir country, Great Britain, because of their studies of Islamic and Asian cultures in situ, theirknowledge not only of languages but of the people and institutions. Burton’s life was most complexand need not be alluded to further. Gertrude Bell made possible the founding of Iraq because of herclose cooperation with and the mutual sympathy between herself and the Dervish Orders especiallyas exemplified by the Gilani family of Iraq.Lack of Cultural Exchange is the course of more apathy than we can realize. There is not apeoples in all Asia favoring our policy in Cuba because there is not a peoples in Asia among whomone can circulate and learn that in America their nationals are teaching their culture to us. Even inthe ease of China, we have at times permitted non-American, non-Chinese to “instruct” us and offerdegrees covering their “philosophy” and culture. In the case of other countries it is worse, muchworse. Even the Peace Corps receives, in some places, instructions in Asiatics from non-American,non-Asians, a policy which does not appear in any other land ever heard of. One does not knowwho started this trend, or why it is continued.The Dervishes number presumably about 40,000,000-50,000,000. The number is hard to estimatebecause the summation of members in Sudan—the country to be used as a “guinea pig” here,showed about 10,000,000 persons and this was, at the time, more than the total population. It wasfound that manor persons belonged to more than one Order and so were reported. But so far asAmerica is concerned, this mistake was of no concern for there is not an institution in the UnitedStaten which teaches about them objectively.J. P. Brown, a member of our Foreign Service, wrote a book called The Dervishes while in Turkey.It is an excellent work and excepting for the expulsion of the Dervishes from that country stillholds today. Actually while in this region the instructors in Islamics include a number of non-American,non-Muslims—most of whom deny even the existence of Dervishes today. Dr. Mehlevi thedirector of the Arab Cultural Bureau in the Ferry Building is a scion of one of the most important ofthe families mentioned by Brown but not mentioned by the Englishmen, Canadians, Germans andother Europeans whom we have taken as our mentors.