Ian Dallas

Actor

Born October 30, 1930 (95 years)

Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

After a brief career in acting, Ian Dallas, a native-born Scotsman, later reverted to Islam and joined the Shadhili-Darqawi Order of Sufis in Morocco. Upon the death of his Shaykh, Shaykh Muhammad Ibn al-Habib, Dallas became the Shaykh of the Order under the name Shaykh Abdulqadir as-Sufi, the name he was given by his Shaykh. He is still active today (2004) as the leader of the worldwide Murabitun movement of Sufis. He wrote a fictionalized account of his journey into Sufism in a novel, "The Book of Strangers." It is also said that, while living in London in the 1960s, he was friends with Eric Clapton, and gave Clapton a copy of the ancient Persian Sufi parable "Layla and Majnun," which later became the basis for Clapton's song "Layla" about his own ill-fated romance.