Hanging out with Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya

It was a Thursday night so I could have gone to the movies or to a nice restaurant, but instead I spent the evening with Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya, the fourteenth-century Sufi saint. Every Thursday there is a performance of qawwali music in front of the dargah [shrine]. The musicians sit facing the dargah because technically they're not playing for the spectators but for the saint himself.

Hazrat Nizamuddin was the head of the Chishti order of Sufis in India and was a friend of the great poet Amir Khusrau, whose tomb is nearby in the same complex. Although in the West Islam has an aura of being against music (and against fun in general), Sufis have long embraced musical performance as part of their worship. It plays a role in zikr, the meditative remembrance of God. In South Asia, the act of remembering God often turns into a rollicking good time.