Eureka, CA
Aslan was born in Pennsylvania in 1946, and raised in rural Ohio, moving to California to attend medical school in 1968. He received his medical degree in 1973. After internship, he was guided (while hitchhiking) to Humboldt County where he served an unanticipated 8-year stint on the Hoopa Indian Reservation. He then joined a family practice medical group in Eureka and lived there until his passing. He and his wife Kathy raised two daughters and have three grandchildren.
In 1983, at the advice of a friend who had recently experienced the Dances, Aslan attended a Ruhaniat Easter retreat at Sami Mahal khankah in San Rafael, California and experienced a profound spiritual awakening. This led him to his first (of many) Mendocino Sufi Camps where he was drawn to Murshid Saul Barodofsky’s class on the spiritual aspects of healing. This connection proved to be life changing, both personally and professionally. Murshid Saul initiated him into the Dervish Healing Order, where he currently serves as an active Shafayat. In 1993 Murshida Asha Greer initiated Aslan into the Ruhaniat. He has been blessed to receive additional personal guidance from Joe Miller, Frida Waterhouse, Murshida Rabia Ana Perez-Chisti, Hazrat Haji Shemsuddin Ahmed, Murshid Hidayat Inayat-Khan, Murshida Ratan Witteveen, Rabbi Pamela Frydman and many others too numerous to mention.
On return to Eureka from that first Mendocino camp, Aslan connected with Arcata’s long-standing Garden of the Heart Sufi community. He became a mentor of the Dances of Universal Peace and later founded the Humboldt Sufi Choir. The absent healing ritual of Hazrat Inayat Khan has been held at his home weekly since 1985. He taught Sufism classes for the department of Religious Studies at Humboldt State University for over fifteen years.
In 1996, Murshid Saul invited Aslan to teach at his European DHO’s annual retreat in Schnede, Germany. This led him to form a Schnede Sufi choir. When the choir requested a CD so they could sing at home, he co-created the Inayati Quartet who recorded “The Echoes of the Heart” CD. It was well received and led to the eventual production of two more “Echoes” CDs. This conducting experience later led Aslan to organize a Humboldt Sufi Choir that eventually created a CD of its own. Subsequently the Inayati Quartet placed these four recordings onto a website that allows free downloading. The site recently added a digital copy of Allaudin Mathieu’s original Sufi Dance and Song Record and a collection of sung wazifa practices composed by Pir Hidayat Inayat-Khan, recent head of the International Sufi Movement. All this music is freely downloadable at www.theechoesproject.org
Aslan also served on the board of the Federation of the Sufi Message and traveled extensively, sharing the Dances and his eclectic musical attunement in the United States, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Guatemala, Mexico, India and The Netherlands. He was especially grateful to have served many years, at the kind invitation of Pir Hidayat Inayat-Khan, as choral director for the Sufi Movement’s International Summer School in Katwijk, Netherlands. He loved leading singing practices, bringing groups to Love, Harmony, and Beauty of breath and voice.
He journeyed to the Arms of the Beloved on Wednesday January 13 2021 with wife Kathy and daughters Amelia and Shanti by his side. His passing was showered with remembrances and prayers from the global community far and wide.