Stephen Kinzer

Ataturk approved of the mevlevi dervish approach to God as being 'an expression of Turkish genius' that reclaimed Islam from what he saw as hide-bound, backward Arab tradition.

American Author

Scott Weiland

I want a performance style that's more cerebral and emotional than physical. I want to be a creative artist, not a whirling dervish.

American Musician

Mike Daniels

A lot of these defensive linemen, they're real whirling dervishes - they do all these fancy moves.

Kevin DeYoung

My life often feels like a whirling dervish of kids, writing, speaking, and pastoral ministry.

American Theologian

Understand that 'dervish' refers to Sufi Muslims, emphasizing the spiritual practices.

Sufi Origin

'Dervish' often relates to their distinctive form of worship involving dance and movement.

Whirling Rituals

Don't reduce dervishes to beggars; respect their religious and cultural significance.

Not Just Beggars

When used idiomatically, 'dervish' conveys high energy or uncontrolled motion.

Energetic Connotation

'Like a dervish' is an exaggeration to describe someone's extreme activity or movement.

Hyperbolic Expressions

The idiomatic use of 'dervish' removes the religious aspect, focusing on behavior.

No Religious Context

 The type of art that I make involves sound and it involves machinery. And I do both of those things together because I'm really fascinated by this experience where objects appear to have this inner life. The dervishes is the name for a musical instrument.

Sound Meets Sculpture...

 We should get out of our cultural ghetto and go visit the next one and the next. In the end, stories move like whirling dervishes, drawing circles beyond circles. They connect all humanity, regardless of identity politics, and that is the good news.

The politics of fiction...

 their beliefs a crowd urges them to spin they enter a state of trance believing in this way that they can span the divide between heaven and earth these are the legendary whirling dervishes