Dear David, Nuria, and whomever else this is distributed to.

I am the treasurer of the Sufi Movement in Canada and David has asked me to comment on our official structure.

We have an unusual history because SMIC was originally set up when Fazal was head of the ISM by mureeds of his who lived in North Vancouver. SMIC is a Canadian non-profit society under the designation of religious organizations. The original bylaws were very convoluted and referenced the Pir-O-Murshid of the ISM as being the top Sufi in the world among other things which were a bit odd.

When Lake O’Hara Sufi Camp was first organized it was done by a group of friends without any official structure. Early on Hidayat stared coming as it’s leader and most people involved in the early years became official mureeds and sometimes Centre leaders etc. without an organization being formed. Fazal was gone and his Canadian mureeds didn’t continue with SMIC so the organization was “offered” to the informal group of Sufis who were studying under Hidayat by the ISM. There are others who know this history better than I do.The organization was in danger of losing it’s status so Sufia Sill, Nawab and others took it over.

I’m writing about this history because I think it still has a lot of influence on how things continue to unfold in Canada.

SMIC wasn’t universally popular to the group of free thinking individuals who organized Lake O’Hara camp and local Centres. It sort of existed parallel to the informal organization. The Lake O’Hara camps were organized outside of SMIC but SMIC was a supporter of these events. Not everyone became members and to this day there are active Sufis in Canada with ISM background who are official mureeds but are not members.

I took over as treasurer after Padmani died. At that time her husband Maharaj was still National Rep and I had worked closely with him as registrar of some of the O’Hara Camps in the 90’s and we had tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to establish policies for SMIC.

When Jelaluddin and I organized The Mysticism of Sound Conference in 2007 Padmani was still with us and I ran the conference as a SMIC event with her help. This was the first time that revenues and expenses for the entire event were submitted to the government. Nowadays most workshops or retreats are run this way with all expenses and revenue accounted for and reported but the odd one is still run as an independent event with official contributions from SMIC as in the old days. This decision depends on who is organizing the event.

The Canadian regulations for societies are very similar to what Nuria outlined for the USA and if anyone wants I can send our bylaws. We have a Board of six people at the moment with president, secretary and treasurer. Our National Rep acts as the president but there is no requirement for him or her to do so. The National Rep is regarded as a position of the ISM rather than of SMIC. Our three officers act as an executive committee which has been most active in all the international discussions in the last couple of years. We file annual society reports on our activities, our Board is officially registered, and we file taxes and hold an AGM. In Canada we have been able to waive the requirement for an audit through an annual motion to waive the audit. Three years ago the Canadian Government revised the regulations regarding corporate reporting and all Societies had to submit revised bylaws. We were able to drop some of the arcane clauses we had inherited from Fazal and are now allowed unaudited financial statements.

Where we differ from the USA is we are not allowed to receive or give money to affiliated organizations outside Canada. Thus we are not able to send donations to Holland through SMIC. This is a very strictly monitored regulation to do with money laundering. The Canadian Government regards us as an independent Canadian Society not as a branch of an international organization.When I first became treasurer I corresponded with Siddhartha about the impression which persists in Holland that we don’t “pay our dues”. We have informally gathered money to donate to the Dargah, the Temple in Katwijk etc. and in the Lake O’Hara era there was a hefty contribution to Holland built into the Retreat budget which was possible because it wasn’t an official SMIC event. My hope has always been to have some sort of official agreement about how Canadians contribute financially to the ISM but to date this has not happened and I notice that our donations are sporadic rather than organized as a result.

In the past few years our organization has strengthened. We don’t have a lot of members but those we do have are quite active. Jelaluddin has built and maintains our excellent website and we hold regional retreats and regular weekly or by-weekly meetings in several Centres. Next year we will have a larger retreat in Alberta.

in the spirit of our original coming into being we have in Canada SMIC members who are quite active but are not official mureeds, mureeds who are active but have little or nothing to do with SMIC, and mureeds from “the old days” who aren’t active at all but come out of the woodwork from time to time with strong opinions about what is happening, especially with the ISM leadership. All are good hearts and hold the Sufi Message reverently in their own way.

Respectfully submitted
Fazalunissa
Treasurer