Youssef J. Carter, "The Vast Oceans: Remembering Allah and Self on the Mustafawiyya Sufi Path" (UNC Press, 2026)

New Books in African American Studies · Jun 19, 2026 · 1h 21m

Youssef J. Carter’s The Vast Oceans: Remembering Allah and Self on the Mustafawiyya Sufi Path (UNC Press, 2026) is a stunning meditation on Black Atlantic Sufism, specifically as it travels between South Carolina and Senegal via the Mustafawiyya Sufi community and Shaykh Arona Faye. The book orbits around Sufi conceptual frameworks which are translated through the register of Black and Africana Studies. For example, bay’a is rendered as “solidarity” or khidma as “labour”; such attunement of Sufi concepts presents capacious possibilities for Sufi studies at the intersection of Black and Muslim…