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Rumi, the best selling poet in America today, was a practicing Muslim and a Sufi master who lived nearly eight hundred years ago. His poetry and lyrical verses exalting his desire for the Divine, as well as describing his ecstatic pain and yearning for his \u201cbeloved\u201d continue to inspire lovers to this day. <\/p>\n
Due to mass commercialization and weak translations of Rumi\u2019s poetry, Sufism has unfortunately become synonymous with a saccharine, Hallmark card, Deepak Chopra\u2019d simplification of Islam\u2019s most profound spiritual science. Even within the global Muslim community, significant controversies and acrimonious debates have arisen around the validity of Sufism within the theological framework of the religion. <\/p>\n
Many, such as Seyyed Hossein Nasr, one of the most prolific and well known Muslim American scholars, argue that Sufism represents the spiritual engine and heart of Islam, which is rooted within the core of its scholastic traditions, and is capable of revitalizing modern day Islam rooted in literalism and political extremism. In discussing his latest work, \u201cThe Garden of Truth: The Vision and Promise of Sufism, Islam\u2019s Mystical Tradition,\u201d we spoke to Nasr about Rumi\u2019s spiritual influence on the modern world, the role of Sufism in Islamic history and tradition, and the critique of Sufism as an antiquated model of esotericism.<\/p>\n
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Let\u2019s talk about Rumi. I\u2019m sure you know Coleman Barks [\u201ctranslator\u201d of countless Rumi poetry books], correct?<\/b><\/p>\n
NASR: Yes.<\/p>\n
Even though Coleman Barks and others try to divorce Rumi from his God consciousness, it nonetheless emanates in his poetry. Rumi is the best selling poet in America today. What is it about his work, which is thoroughly rooted in Islam and Islamic sciences, that appeals to mainstream audiences?<\/b><\/p>\n
The question I think should be put the other way around. First of all, Jalaluddin Rumi is completely rooted in Islamic teachings of the Quran. He was a great scholar, he belonged to a madrassa, and he knew Islamic theology and jurisprudence very well. He knew Persian, Arabic and Turkish, which was coming into Anatolia at that time, very well. He was a remarkable, remarkable scholar, besides being a great saint. He was completely rooted in Islamic tradition. I\u2019m totally opposed to those who try to pull Rumi out of his Islamic foundations by ignoring that element. I have written about this quite a bit and in fact I have a recent book of poetry which is called \u201cLife is a pilgrimage: In conversation with Rumi\u201d in which I translated the first part of his Mathanvi [Rumi\u2019s most beloved work].<\/p>\n
It complements what I said about Rumi being rooted completely in the Sufi Islamic tradition. Now what is it that appeals universally of Rumi to the West today? Several things. First of all, Rumi is one of the great spokesmen for the Quranic instruction teaching that all prophets come from God and God does not create one religion, but many religions. The verse of the Quran that mentions we have created for each of you, for all of you, your own path, your own Sharia [Religious law], so that you will vie for each other in goodness and mindfulness of God. And a very famous Quranic verse: \u201cTo every people we have sent a messenger.\u201d And many of the verses of the Quran which represent a universal perspective of Islamic fiqh<\/i> (jurisprudence). Abraham is called a Muslim, Christ is called Muslim. Now, there were a large number of Muslims throughout history who brought out the meanings of this especially when it was necessary; when Islam met Hinduism in India and in Anatolia for example, and when Islam met Christianity and to an extent Judaism. But Rumi is one of the great masters who brought out this universal teaching. <\/p>\n
As of today, one of the greatest problems of humanity is how to live in a multi religious society without losing one\u2019s religion \u2013 without relativising everything. Which is why perhaps with the greatest spiritual problem of today, Rumi is a great master who is able to provide a way. Secondly, Rumi is also perhaps the greatest mystical poet who ever lived, one of the greatest poets of the Persian language. He was able to express practically all aspects of the spiritual life and our existential situation in the world today as human beings in beautiful Persian poetry.<\/p>\n
Now, Coleman Barks and these other translators who are very famous now, they do not know Persian. They work with a Persian speaker. The translations are not exact. They are not like the translations of Reynald A. Nicholson, who translated the whole of the Mathnavi, a remarkable feat; a few mistakes in it, but really a remarkable feat. These people have adapted the teachings of Rumi often based on the Nicholson translation often with the help of a Persian speaker to a kind of contemporary, American medium of poetry. This is quite an art, although it\u2019s not exact from the point of scholarship, it brings out something of the taste for this combination of truth and beauty that Rumi represents: an expression of the deepest truths of spiritual life in God and beauty.<\/p>\n
Speaking about Rumi and other Sufi poets, much of their poetry comes from a specific desire. There seems to be a fire and longing in their spirit that was ignited by a loss. For Rumi, it was the loss of his spiritual friend and guide Shams Tabris. Why do we see these extreme emotions: one of pain and longing and the other of love, both equally necessary in reaching and understanding the Divine Path? Why the marriage of pain and longing?<\/b><\/p>\n
Well, that\u2019s very obvious and let me give you a human example. If you\u2019re just a young man, like you are, and going about your business, you will think of this. Suppose you fall in love with a girl, now suddenly this element of love comes into your life and it disturbs you. The day before you fell in love, you got up in the morning, you said your prayers, you washed yourself, and you went to work and didn\u2019t think of these things. <\/p>\n
Then suddenly you\u2019ve fallen in love. Once you\u2019ve fallen in love, it\u2019s turned around your whole life. You keep thinking bout this girl all the time instead of thinking about other things. Since the object of love is that particular person, being separated brings about a longing and pain. Love is loss combined with pain; even in the West you have the famous, famous play, which Wagner put into opera, Tristan and Isolde<\/i>, which brings out the story of these great lovers, where their love leads to death. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s one of the most famous arias of Western music \u2013 The Love-Death Song of Wagner in German \u2013 which corresponds exactly on an external plane, because of course Wagner was not a mystic or a Sufi, but it was a medieval story that had this depth in it. The idea that love itself cannot be divorced from the suffering which comes from being separated from the object of love. The story of Layla and Majnoon, in Arabic and Persian and other Islamic languages, always leads them to death. It\u2019s like Romeo and Juliet: intense love. This is a human way for expressing something much more profound that is that love for God. <\/p>\n
And the Quran, of course, speaks about this explicitly: \u201cGod loves them, and they love Him.\u201d If God did not love us, we could not love him. And Sufis are those who have realized this love. It\u2019s like that second day that I mentioned about a young man, like yourself. The first day he was not in love and went about his business, and the second day suddenly the love came. There are people who realize this love for God in this life. Like falling in love with a beautiful woman, or from a female side, a man. Once this realization takes place, this love brings with it yearning. Yearning is inseparable from love, and since once doesn\u2019t have the object of love immediately, one has not fallen in the embrace of the beloved immediately, they are suffering. That\u2019s how they are related.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a criticism that many critics of spirituality ask: If the spiritual seeker must be like a subservient \u201ccorpse\u201d in the hand of his \u201cwasher\u201d, his spiritual guide, then doesn\u2019t Islam and the spiritual path rob one of their individuality? Isn\u2019t this proof Islam is a machine that requires assimilation and creates mindless automons? How is this a path towards individuality?<\/b><\/p>\n
I wish someone could get rid of individuality so easily; one never gets rid of one\u2019s individuality completely. One gets rid of one\u2019s egotism, which is a very different matter. In your room, you can have two paintings on your wall; one that is a Persian miniature and the other which is a Dutch painting by Rembrandt. They are very distinct characters, yet they have their own individual traits, but they are inanimate, they don\u2019t have a will of their own. When one talks about being like a dead corpse in the hands of a spiritual teacher it means being able to surrender one\u2019s will, specially one\u2019s nafs al ammarah, that is a part of our soul which is again a Quranic term, which commands us to evil \u2013 we must surrender that. That\u2019s what it means. It doesn\u2019t make you become part of a cog of a machine. <\/p>\n
In fact, the machine doesn\u2019t have the consciousness we have, the free will that we have, and to surrender one\u2019s free will, not in every matter but in spiritual matters, to a spiritual teacher is in a sense a lower level of surrendering one\u2019s will to God. Many people have criticized Islam for being just automatic, having no individuality, just surrendering your will to God, but we Muslims know very well that every moment of the day we have to practice the fact that to surrender one\u2019s self to God is an act of free will.<\/p>\n
Muslims look at the world right now, specifically the Muslim ummah<\/i> (community), and they see instability, suffering, authoritarian regimes, oppression and so forth. So, many Muslims ask what will all this fasting, this dhikr<\/i> (remembrance and invocation of God), this tazkiyat al nafs<\/i> (spiritual exercises in purification), and all this Sufi practice help? How do all these spiritual Sufi practices help the Muslims suffering in Palestine, Chechnya or Iraq? People say this is like Muslims who live in a bubble and put their heads in the sand, but in order to help people one must be more political. So, what\u2019s your take on that?<\/b><\/p>\n
It\u2019s total nonsense. There are many, many answers to this question. The main answer is that the Islamic world is suffering not only because of external oppression but also because of the loss of its own dignity, of its own heritage, of its own practice of Islam, of its weakening of its own ethics, and many things which are internal to Islam not just external. Now, Sufism has always had the function of purifying Islamic ethics and that fasting and tazkiya is like lighting a lamp. What does a lamp do? The lamp is like a horse that is running but stays put. But by virtue of being a lamp it illuminates the space around it. Therefore, the practice of purifying one\u2019s soul, of living virtuously, has tremendous impacts upon the ethics of the surrounding society. <\/p>\n
The Islamic world is not only suffering from the American occupation of Palestine and Iraq, it\u2019s also suffering from the unbelievable corruption in Afghanistan by Afghans themselves and also in Iraq \u2013 I\u2019m just giving these 2 examples of countries which are under direct occupation; I do not mean at all to negate the terrible events that led to this or what\u2019s going on with the foreign occupation there. But I\u2019m saying that it is not the only problem and Sufis have always been those that have tried to purify the ethics of Islam and society. <\/p>\n
And they don\u2019t have their hands cut off from the external action at all. For example, the bazaar in which the Sufis were very strong always dominated economic life in Islamic world. They could give a much more sane and Islamic form of activity when the economic life of Islam moved out of the bazaar to new parts of Islamic cities with modernized Muslims, who took it in another light and it became very, very anti Islamic, and much against many of the most profound practices of Islamic societies. <\/p>\n
There is no way throughout Islamic society for Islam as a society, as a civilization, to revive itself without this inner spiritual vitality that came to it. And also militarily, the great movements of resistance against colonial powers in the 18th and 19th century were almost all from Sufis: Imam Shamil in Caucasia, Amir Abd al Qadir in Algeria, The Barelvi family in the modern province of India, today which is Pakistan, and you can go down the line. What is tragic today is that there is a number of Muslims who think that all the solutions are to be found simply by external actions. They don\u2019t have to do anything within themselves. This is a deeply Western idea \u2013 modern, Western idea, where you try to improve the world without improving yourself. And this is what the Muslims who talk about others putting their heads in the sand and that \u201cWe are doing jihad and we are political\u201d and so forth, they are emulating a very important mistake of modernism. <\/p>\n
Prophet Muhammad\u2019s personality and name are exalted as habiballah, beloved of God, and he who is beloved by Muslims as a criterion model of conduct. His sunnah<\/i> (Prophetic etiquette and conduct) yields men like Rumi and leads to acts of selfless charity, but also at the same inspires jihadists and extremists in the modern world. Many people blame this latter type of behavior on the personality of Prophet Muhammad. Let\u2019s talk about this remarkably complex personality, which can produce such varying fruits and results in its followers. You have the Sufis on one hand and the Bin Ladens on the other.<\/b><\/p>\n
First of all, The Bin Ladens must not be confused with authentic jihad \u2013 it\u2019s quite something else. If you want an example of external jihad, you should cite Amir Abd al Qadir who fought against the French in the 19th century, which was quite something else. But putting that aside, the Prophet, peace be on him, presents all the possibilities of the human state in perfection. Now, a part of that of course is love of God. And the word habib<\/i> in Arabic means both lover and beloved. At the heart of it is that he loves God, God loves him. <\/p>\n
But God designated him to be also the founder of a new world order of a civilization of a society. He was therefore, first of all, a Prophet of course, a beloved and lover of God, a father, an army commander, a judge, a ruler of a community, the King of Medina and later of Arabia, and all of these were combined in him and his destiny, the reason God brought him on earth, was to show how each of the functions which human beings have in life have the perfect form in the prophet. <\/p>\n
He sets the model for all of them. He sets the model for being a good statesman. He also sets the model for being a good warrior, for chivalry, of nobility, of all the things which the Quran and hadith<\/i> (the recorded collections of the sayings and traditions of the Prophet) says of treating your enemy with dignity and kindness. The Quran explicitly opposes the killing of innocent people and the Prophet was always careful in doing that. If they had to fight a war, he was always on the side of peace as soon as it was possible to make peace because that\u2019s what the Quran says also. <\/p>\n