Although Tramway is best known for its adventurous programme of performance and visual arts, the upcoming Sufi Festival speaks to this venue’s eclectic and bracing curation, as well as expressing the vitality and creativity at the heart of a specific branch of Muslim spirituality. With events ranging from a qawwali concert (a form of devotional singing) to academic speakers and storytellers, the festival is a vibrant celebration of Sufism which, for its previous outing in 2019, had the character of a community gathering combined with a religious festival.

‘There’s a hadith [a saying by the prophet Muhammad] that “Allah is beautiful and loves beauty,”’ says Tariq Mahmood, chair of Sufi Festivals. ‘Sufism is very much about the kind of deeper aspirational and optimistic hopes that human beings aspire to and to be able to see the deeper meaning of existence in life... arts and artform expressions are a way of being able to manifest those ideas and ideals.’

One festival strand is the presence of female storytellers, lecturers and poets. ‘Islam has been portrayed as excluding women: actually, they absolutely play a significant role. We have an excellent combination of female contributors this year and I’m really proud of that,’ says Mahmood. ‘Sit down and listen to Jumana Moon, who we have returning to the festival for the third time, and you are totally in awe. She is absolutely amazing.’

Across the weekend, the breadth of Sufi spiritual creativity is thoroughly represented. On the Saturday evening, a panel of invited speakers explore the philosophy and concepts of Sufism, including a lecture from British Sufi slam-poetry queen Sukina Noor, who will also be performing the following day. On the Sunday night, the closing qawwali concert features Hamid Ali Naqeebi, while the Istanbul Sema Group (Turkey’s premier independent whirling dervishes) offer a ritual ceremony. 

‘One aspect of Sufism is around meditative states of artistic expression,’ explains Mahmood. ‘There’s something really hypnotic about qawwali and the whirling dervishes, so it draws audiences into that connection with beauty, the divine, the universal, or whatever you want to call it. But it’s real; you can feel it!’

Sufi Festival, Tramway and The Hidden Gardens, Glasgow, Saturday 19 & Sunday 20 July.