Shaykh Nazim... was a follower of the Baha’i faith?

At the time of Cypriot independence from Great Britain in 1960, Shaykh Nazim emerged as a vocal opponent of the secular coalition government headed by president Archbishop Makarios (d. 1977) and vice-president Dr Fazil Küçük. The Cypriot press attacked Shaykh Nazim and denounced him as an anti-reformist and reactionary agent of foreign interests. It was even suggested that he was a follower of the Baha’i faith. Shaykh Nazim’s critiques continued unchecked, and the Turkish Cypriot administration expelled him in 1965. By most accounts Shaykh Nazim returned to Syria and Lebanon, where he continued his preaching and his rigorous mystical discipline.

Shaykh Nazim’s pir Shaykh Daghestani died in 1973, and that same year Shaykh Nazim received permission ‘from the Prophet (Muhammad) to spread the light of Islam into the European countries’. He travelled to London in 1974 and, warmly welcomed by followers of Gurdjieff protégé John G. Bennett (d. 1974), established a centre there. Starting that same year, Shaykh Nazim established an annual regular travel routine, spending each Ramadan in London before returning to Turkey overland and visiting various Muslim and non-Muslim European communities en route. Over the next two decades he continually expanded his proselytizing mission beyond Europe to include South and Southeast Asia; by the late 1980s he claimed to have followers all over Asia, including ‘thousands’ in Pakistan and over 20,000 disciples in Sri Lanka alone. He also retained his deep-rooted ties to prominent families in Lebanon, notably the Kabbani family in Tripoli. Shaykh Nazim further cultivated personal relationships with various political figures who were sympathetic to his teachings and willing to help fund the activities of the order.

(Sufism in the West, p. 117, Edited by Jamal Malik and John Hinnells, First published 2006 by Routledge)