"Sitting with Sufis" provides a brief (109 pages) account of Mary Blye Howe's journey from fundamentalist Christianity to the syncretistic Sufism of Hazrat Inayat Khan's "Sufi Order of the West." Khan's Sufism is broad enough to allow Howe to retain elements of her Christian belief along with bits and pieces of Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism.

However, as the title indicates, this book is primarily about Howe's introduction to Sufism, specifically the Sufi practices of zikr (group chanting of the "Names of God"), sema (the ecstatic whirling dances usually associated with the Mevlevi Sufi Order), and sohbet (the informal spiritual discourses of a Sufi master in the presence of his disciples). This is not a "how to" book, and the treatment of these topics is largely anecdotal.

Those already familiar with Sufism will find little that is new here, other than the details of Howe's personal quest. But this quest is described in rather sketchy form and lacks the romanticism and drama of the accounts written by Reshad Feild and O. M. Burk. Howe's approach is unapologetically "gushy," and readers of a more reserved, intellectual bent will possibly find themselves slightly put-off by her enthusiasms. Paradoxically, despite her gushiness, I found her writing style to be rather flat and boring.

Readers new to Sufism should be aware that Howe's brand of Sufism is an atypical, highly-Westernized and syncretistic form of Sufism with an almost New Age quality. (Howe briefly describes a visit to an unnamed traditional Islamic Sufi order; put-off by its "sexist" attitudes, she never went back.) Most Sufi orders remain much more committed to the religious and ethical framework of Islam, and it would be difficult to penetrate very far into most forms of Sufism without a strong affinity for the prophet Mohammed. In the Sufism of Mary Blye Howe, Mohammed almost disappears.

Readers sympathetic to the syncretistic and "universalist" Sufism of the "Sufi Order of the West" (or one of its offshoots) will perhaps find what they are looking for in these pages. Those interested in a Sufism closer to its Islamic roots will have to look elsewhere.