Birthdate: April 1, 1939 URS: April 30, 2025
- Musawwir was born on April 1, 1939, and died on April 30, 2025 – He had just reached his 86th year. Musawwir had been diagnosed with Parkinsons Disease and Lewy Bodies Dementia in 2015, but he also had two serious heart conditions as well as two kinds of cancer. He transformed over the ten years of his illness from the “smartest mind in the room” wherever he was, to a glowing, sweet heart with white hair, confused, with old man’s transparent hands, and an occasional glimpse of the brilliant wit he demonstrated throughout his long life. When you finally caught the subtle joke he just made, you saw the gleam in his eye! It was a shared trait that he had picked up from Wali Ali and Murshid SAM, two brilliant men who were his Spiritual Teachers.
- Musawwir would tell you that he never wanted to be anything other than a lawyer when he grew up – this from the age of five, when his father would drive him around Brooklynn on a weekend morning and Sidney would tell him about the injustices of the world. This particularly included the way that the autocrats like Hitler and Stalin had taken over their governments and were arresting citizens whom they disagreed with and putting them in prison, then executing them with no due process. That was it! Musawwir had his marching orders! He graduated high school early and started college at Columbia University at 16. He then went to law school at Tufts, again in the top tiers of his class. His mother and father spent a lot to put their brilliant son through school and wanted the bragging rights for having an attorney in the family. Musawwir started his legal career on Wall Street in a Tax firm. He said it was “interesting”. However, after the first year one summer changed all that – he went to Mississippi and did legal work for the Freedom Riders. He came home, quit his job and started working for the Public Defender’s Office doing criminal trial work. For the rest of his life he worked with common people, mostly disadvantaged poor, and only wore a suit when he argued his cases in trial court, or later before the California Courts of Appeal, or the California Supreme Court. Because his mother was disappointed in his work uniform of corduroy jeans and casual shirts, whenever he went to court or we went to a wedding, we would take a picture so that she could see her son looking like a “real lawyer!”
- Musawwir loved California and was never happier than when he drove his VW Bugs, or his big white Van along the “highways and byways”. Hitch hiking was a hall mark of the Hippie lifestyle in the late 60’s and early 70’s. He picked up a woman one afternoon and was intrigued by her beautiful necklace with a Sufi Symbol. He asked her if it had any special meaning. She said, “This is the Sufi Symbol of Love, Harmony and Beauty”. That was IT for him. Within a few weeks he had encountered the Sufi Choir, gone to a Sufi camp, met his spiritual teacher, Wali Ali, and charted the course of the rest of his life.
- Musawwir incorporated the Sufi Islamia Ruhaniat (Now Ruhaniat International) as a 501(c)(3) Corporation, as well as advising them on their legal issues. When Pir Vilayat Khan sent out the word that he wanted to start a community, Musawwir began meeting with the other interested mureeds to discuss ideas and projects. The Abode of the Message was inaugurated in May of 1975, with Musawwir once again setting up the legal status of 501(c)(3). His daughter, Eva Rachel, (who was 6 years old at the time), remembers that they both hated the adzuki beans, which were served monotonously for meals and that they would hide ice cream in the bakery freezer. Her room was the closet in his room, and her Dad drove people to vote for Carter in the 1976 Presidential Election.
- But, Musawwir missed the West Coast, Murshid SAM’S easy, loving, dancing disciples, and particularly Wali Ali. When there was a leadership gathering at the Abode in July of 1976, he met his future wife, Yasmin, when someone pointed her out as “Wali Ali’s” representative”. He rushed over and surprised her with a “shit eating grin and a 6’4” huge HUG! On his birthday – April 1, 1977 – (he always loved his birthday!) – he and Eva drove the white Van back across the country to Khankah S.A.M. In San Francisco, where Musawwir and Yasmin re-met, and married in 1978.
- Musawwir got his dream job with the California State Public Defender doing death penalty appeals. He moved his family, now consisting of himself and Eva, Yasmin and Malik (her son, whom he adopted), to Davis in 1979. He lived there until his death on April 30, 2025.
- In 2003, following in the path of the Unity of Religious Ideals established by Hazrat Inayat Khan and Murshid S.A.M., Musawwir and Yasmin became students of Vajrayana Buddhism, and studied with Pema Chodron in the Chogyam Trungpa, Shambhala tradition. They felt the comfort and support of the Buddhist Sangha throughout his long illness. When he died the Davis Shambhala Sangha held a Sukavity Ceremony presided over by Musawwir’s close friend, Lyle Larson, a Buddhist teacher. But true to Sufi form, Yasmin recited the “Dua of Light” a Sura of the Quran, and Pir Shabda Kahn of the Ruhaniat International led the assembly in the Dali Lama’s Dream, which has been put to music, “Every day think when you wake up: Today I am fortunate to have woken up. I am alive! I have a precious human life! And I’m not gonna waste it! No ohhhh!
- Love and Blessings to you, Big Heart Guy! May we hear your laughter in the chirping birds and the rising sun! We know you will be back to clean up the mess that tyrants make of our beautiful world! You just got started!
- Lovingly, Yasmin
