In the United States Sufi orders range from universal or New Age movements whose membership is largely Euro-American to transplanted communities of recent Muslim immigrants. Other American Sufi orders are hybrids of traditional Islamic and modern Western attitudes, practices, and individuals.

To the degree that Sharīʿa-based rituals are incorporated by a particular Sufi order, gender distinctions become visibly operative in its functioning in America. In the more strictly Islamic Sufi movements such as the Naqshbandī-Ḥaqqānī order led …