A Speech Delivered by Alireza Nurbakhsh at a Memorial Ceremony for Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh in London on October 19, 2008
In memory of my dear father, Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh, Master of the Nimatullahi Sufi Order
I would like to welcome everyone to this gathering to commemorate the death of my dear father, Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh, who passed away last Friday on the 10th of
October 2008.
I am not here to talk about my father’s worldly achievements, since I assume most of you are already familiar with his life. In any event a short biography is available for everyone here, which I understand has been published by several newspapers across the globe.
My father spent the last 29 years of his life in exile away from his homeland. However, he cared a great deal about Iran and its culture, which according to him is nothing other than Sufism.
In his youth, when he was only 16, he was drawn to Sufism and began his spiritual journey under his master, Mr. Dhu’r-Riyasatayn at the same time that he was attending medical school at Tehran University. After World War II, Iran, like most traditional societies of the East, was undergoing fundamental cultural changes towards modernity. Science and technology were being actively promoted among the youth as the only direction for the country. Iranian intellectuals at the time tended to look down on Sufism, which they saw as backward and incompatible with a progressive, scientific outlook. For them Sufism was associated with idleness, begging, seclusion and in general being parasitic to society. And I must admit that from a historical perspective such a perception of Sufism at the time was not far from the truth.
