I have only just become aware that last year a most interesting book was published; Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green. I have ordered it and shall provide a full review in due course.
For now, the Amazon page states:
“In the highbrow literary circles of the mid-twentieth century, a father and son spread seductive accounts of a mystical Middle East. Claiming to come from Afghanistan, Ikbal and Idries Shah parlayed their assumed identities into careers full of drama and celebrity, writing dozens of books that influenced the political and cultural elite. Pitching themselves as the authentic voice of the Muslim world, they penned picaresque travelogues and exotic potboilers alongside weighty tomes on Islam and politics. Above all, father and son told Western readers what they wanted to hear: audacious yarns of eastern adventure and harmless Sufi mystics-myths that, as the century wore on and the Taliban seized power, became increasingly detached from reality.”
“Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan follows the Shahs from their origins in colonial India to literary London, wartime Oxford, and counterculture California via the Levant, the League of Nations, and Latin America. Nile Green unravels the conspiracies and pseudonyms, fantastical pasts and self-aggrandizing anecdotes, high stakes and bold schemes that for nearly a century painted the defining portrait of Afghanistan. Ikbal and Idries convinced poets, spies, orientalists, diplomats, occultists, hippies, and even a prime minister that they held the key to understanding the Islamic world. From George Orwell directing Muslim propaganda to Robert Graves translating a fake manuscript of Omar Khayyam and Doris Lessing supporting jihad, Green tells the fascinating tale of how the book world was beguiled by the dream of an Afghan Shangri-La that never existed.”
“Gambling with the currency of cultural authenticity, Ikbal and Idries became master players of the great game of empire and its aftermath. Part detective story, part intellectual folly, Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan reveals the divergence between representation and reality, between what we want to believe and the more complex truth.”
Of course, I am not the only one who has exposed Idries Shah. The ongoing question is how people can even now be so identified with him that they cannot see they have been deceived? Obviously, they do not wish to – or more precisely, they are in the grips of something which cannot. When Gurdjieff was asked how one can discern a fraud, he said one must first learn to discern the true. Reality. In the age of “trans-gender” it is to be more valued than ever.
In 1967, when I was 12, my mother (previous to her marriage a Discalced Carmelite novitiate and a woman of great spiritual discernment) was working alongside Finley Peter Dunne, Jr in development of The Temple of Understanding. I attended that year a commencement conference The Temple held where a number of World Religious leaders were in attendance. Amongst them were the Dalai Lama, Thomas Merton’s spiritual companion David Stendl-Rast, Pir Vilyat Inyat Khan and the Most Venerable Madihe Pannasiha Mahanayaka Thera (Those last two men I loved especially dearly right on the spot) There were two uninvited others who got wind of the conference and took great pains to insist that they be recognized in attendance: one Siri Singh Sahib (then known as Yogi Bhajan) and Idries Shah. I knew about none of this backstage drama when I spent a weekend in the same conference facility with all of them. But interestingly, when Shah inclined towards smaller me and extended his hand, I felt his vibe “off” and refused his handshake offer while fixing a defensive look on him instead. Several weeks later, my extraordinary mother who knew seduction when she witnessed it, turned Yogi Bhajan out of our house.
Shah’s disgraceful behaviour vis -a-vis Bennett should have been a red flag to anyone willing to look.
Thank you for this discovering of material exposing those who purport to form a part of Sufi lineage.
Thanks for posting this. Funny that your post was so recent since I haven’t thought about Idries Shah in years and just thought about asking AI out of the blue if Shah was a fraud. I was really into him in the 90’s, read all his books several times over, volunteered at his book company, ISHK, donated money to that, then came to the conclusion that he was a fraud. I later came to the same conclusion about his brother Omar Ali. He had a website about 15 years ago called “The Tradition” that you could join, so I did. This involved a weekly email from one of Shah’s acolytes containing a screed that was supposedly one of Omar’s oral lectures. I wrote him back my reactions. These lectures were non-stop West bashing, nothing more. Heaven’s in Afghanistan, don’t ya know? Anyway, after months of this the dude emailing me asked if I could fly to California to volunteer to build a Sufi meeting place. I told him I couldn’t because I’d just lost my job, and I never heard back from him again. No more weekly emails and I suppose no forthcoming Baraka from the Qutub of the Age!
I have now read Green’s book. I hope to have the review up today or tomorrow. Suffice to say, his research supports mine and reveals, sad to say, that Idries and Omar were taught by their father how to be a fraud. It is an unfortunate story in many ways, but there is a real value in understanding what happened and some of the contributing causes.