Our Master Jallaludin Rumi

Rumi is indeed a wonderful writer. I too went through his book of verses and enjoyed it thoroghly.
However, I must protest your veneration of Rumi. This is an unfortunate tradition among many backward muslims (veneration of other humans), and whereby they become less like men and more like unthinking morons.
Read Rumi as you would read any other great writer. Internalize some ideas from his works if you wish. But please dont become his ``follower`` of Rumi (as you proudly proclaim). Only pet dogs follow other men, not self-respecting men. And please do not give make a divine being out of an ordinary man (as you do with Shams). Be a follower of your own good senses.

Hey brother mbenzenglish Iqbal also said

``I am but as the spark that gleams for a moment,
His burning candle consumed me - the moth;
His wine overwhelmed my goblet,
The master of Rum transmuted my earth to gold
And set my ashes aflame.`` master of Rum is Rumi here. and heres more from Iqbal whom u have quoted so enthusiastically

In the heat of the fire of Rum is your remedy,
On your intellect the Franks have cast their spell;
My eye is illumined by his grace,
By his munificence Jaihun(river in turkistan) is contained in my ewer

The Saga of Rum, an enlightened mentor,
Leader of the caravan of Love and ecstasy.
In the company of the Saga of Rum have I learnt,
One fearless heart is worth a thousand wise heads muffled in a sack.

From the Flower beds of Ajam no new Rumi arose,
Though the soil and water of Iran is the same, Oh Saqi
, and so is Tabrez.
Of his desolate sowing field Iqbal shall not despair,
A little rain and the soil is most fertile, Oh Saqi.

AND about measuring Islam scientifically is the most impossible thing u can ever say. You got to understand that science is an objective and experimental study, how can you bring spirituality under a microscope? or for that matter God

And about Sufism, in order to learn about anyone you have to first remove all ure prejudices and all. That goes for all religions even when ure studying about Hinduism, u study it from a neutral point of view.
The question who spread Islam? From Africa to the Islands of Indonesia Sufi brotherhoods have played an immense role in it. BUT they arent the only ones ofcourse. Here is an article you can read, if u can get over wiht the prejudices
http://www.geocities.com/pak_history/sufi.html

u said that
``Sufism although is being practiced , but love for the prophet in the
sufism sense is forbidden to the extent that no one is allowed to bow
to the grave of the prophet``

This is as baseless as Pope Urban (during the crusades) calling Muslims pagans !

Peace

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The following article is v. interesting and shows how Rumi has often been completely mistranslated and the Islamic elements of his work removed to make him more palatable to a Western audience by his ``translators``.

THE POPULARIZATION OF RUMI

It is an astonishing fact that, after more than 700 years, Jalaluddin
Rumi is the most popular poet in America. This is largely due to
American authors, such as the poet Coleman Barks who has
rendered literal translations of Rumi into free verse ``American
spiritual poetry`` in a manner which has reached so many different
sectors of American society. One finds Rumi quotes following the
titles of newsletters, on the bottom lines of e-mails, and in many
different kinds of published articles. Many people have memorized
their favorite lines -- usually those rendered by Coleman Barks,
because his versions communicate far more successfully than
literal translations. The reasons for such a response are unclear, but
it likely has to do with a certain ``spiritual hunger`` in America
(perhaps due to an absence of a mystical and ecstatic dimension in
general American spirituality).

Yet this popularization has had a price, and the price is a frequent
distortion of Rumi`s words and teachings which permeate such
well-selling books. The English ``creative versions`` rarely sound
like Rumi to someone who can read the poems in the original
Persian, and they are often shockingly altered-- but few know this,
and the vast majority of readers cannot but believe that such
versions are faithful renderings into English of Rumi`s thoughts
and teachings when they are not.

The public has been deceived by the publishers of many of the
popular books, who proclaim their authors as ``translators`` of
Rumi-- when, in fact, very few of them can read Persian. Coleman
Barks, from the very beginning, called his renderings ``versions.``1
And he has consistently clarified, in both his books and poetry
readings, that he doesn`t know Persian and works from the literal
translations of others.2 However, subsequent book covers and title
pages proclaim, ``Translations by Coleman Barks.`` And he has
been (and allows himself to be) promoted as ``widely regarded as
the world`s premier translator of Rumi`s writings...``3 Sometimes
the title pages within his books give some further information
about the translators whose work he depended on: ``Translations by
Coleman Barks with John Moyne, A. J. Arberry, Reynold
Nicholson.``4 However, the general reader would tend to recognize
Barks as the ``translator`` and not pay attention to ``small print``
statements explaining that he used literal translations made by John
Abel Moyne (an Iranian formerly named Javaad Mo`een), Arberry
and Nicholson (both British scholars at Cambridge University).

Where did the idea come from that poets could ``translate`` spiritual
poetry into English without knowing the original language?
According to Professor Franklin Lewis, ``The idea that poets can
`translate` without knowing the source language seems to have
originated with Ezra Pound and his circle Pound took Ernest
Fenellosa`s scholarly translations of Li Po`s Chinese poems and
Japanese Noh plays and worked them into a startlingly new kind of
English poem.``5




THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN VERSIONS AND TRANSLATIONS

It is therefore necessary to clarify the difference between true
translations of Rumi`s verses (made directly from Persian) and
versions (falsely advertised or claimed as ``translations``).

Accurate translations of Rumi`s poetry have been made by such
scholars as R. A. Nicholson, A. J. Arberry, Annemarie Schimmel,
William Chittick, and Franklin Lewis. Iranian authors who have
made popular translations into English from Persian (which are of
variable reliability due to unfamiliarity with classical Persian,
religious terms and references, and compromises with
popularization) are Shahram Shiva and Nader Khalili. Translations
from secondary languages into English (of variable reliability)
have been made by Nevit Ergin (from translations into Turkish
from Persian by Golpinarli). And reliable translations have been
made by Simone Fattal (from translations into French from Persian
by Eva de Vitray-Meyerovitch) and Muriel Maufroy (from de
Vitray-Meyerovitch`s French translations).

Among version-makers, the most responsible are Kabir and
Camille Helminski (versions of Masnavi and Ghazals, based on
translations by Nicholson and Arberry, but only indirectly
acknowledged). Others are Coleman Barks (based on translations
by John Moyne, the translations of Nicholson, Arberry, and Nevit
Ergin); Daniel Liebert (no source translations mentioned, but some
are based on those by Nicholson); Andrew Harvey (no source
translations mentioned, but some are based on those by de Vitray-
Meyerovitch); James Cowan (based on translations by Nicholson,
but not acknowledged); Jonathan Star (based on translations by
Shahram Shiva); Muriel Maufroy (based on the French translations
by de Vitray-Meyerovitch); Deepak Chopra (based on translations
by Fereydoun Kia in his first book, no sources listed in his recent
book); Azima Melita Kolin (based on translations by Maryam
Mafi); Raficq Abdulla (based on translations by Arberry, but not
acknowledged); Kabir and Camille Helminski (quatrain versions
based on translations by Lida Saedian).

One would think that, in the case of collaboration between a gifted
American poet and a competent translator of Persian, that the two
would work together in such a way that the poet would render
Persian idioms into suitable American ones, soften overly literal
translation words into more pleasant-sounding equivalents, etc. and
that the Persian translator would review such renderings and be
responsible for overall faithfulness to the original by pointing out
instances where the English renderings had gone seriously astray
from the original text. Unfortunately, this rarely seems to have
been the case, and one can only conclude that the version-makers
used literal translations with a ``free hand`` to interpret however
they wished (often according to how they imagined they would
like Rumi to speak) and that their ``creative`` renderings were the
final ones.

The following critique of version-makers is not intended to utterly
``dismiss`` their work. After all, it is almost entirely due to their
books that Rumi has become so extraordinarily popular-- and they
deserve much gratitude for this. Rather, the intent of giving
examples of defective interpretations (which include some of their
most glaring errors) is to show how badly Rumi`s verses have been
mangled by well-meaning individuals who tried to make dry,
academic, and old-fashioned-sounding literal translations more
poetic and attractive. Many readers who are devoted to the
versions care little for what has been distorted or left out. Others
become shocked to find out how badly the poems have been
altered and feel that the ``magic`` of the versions is completely gone
for them. Of these, the ones who remain ``lovers of Rumi`` are those
who become seriously interested in studying accurate translations
of Rumi and exploring his teachings at a greater depth. They find
that authentic translations provide a vastly more rich, wise, and
profound understanding of Rumi`s greatness as a mystic than did
the versions.

In the sections below, it is highly recommended that the reader
read the first footnotes immediately following each selected
version This is because the footnote contains explanations about
how the versioner made the particular mistaken interpretation.
These footnotes are easily accessed online by clicking on the
particular footnote number (and if this number is remembered, then
it is easy to return to where one has left off in the main text).

The second footnotes (following accurate translations of the
particular passages) may be of interest to the general reader who
has access to the books mentioned as having alternative
translations and versions to a particular quatrain. The listings in
this section refer to the original Persian text involved (using ghazal
and quatrain numbers from Foruzanfar`s authentic 10-volume
edition-- not those from the one-volume commercial edition), plus
a transliteration of the original Persian words.


FEXAMPLES OF DISTORTED VERSIONS AND TRANSLATIONS



FROM VERSIONS BY COLEMAN BARKS

``Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.``6
[accurate translation: ``There are a hundred kinds of prayer,
bowing, and prostration For the one whose prayer-niche is the
beauty of the Beloved.``]7

``Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu,
Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion
or cultural system.``8
[This is not an authentic Rumi poem. This version was based on
Nicholson`s translation: ``What is to be done, O Moslems? for I do
not recognise myself. I am neither Christian nor Jew, nor Gabr, nor
Moslem.``]9

``You say you have no sexual longing any more.
You`re one with the one you love.``10
[accurate translation: ``You say, `With the body, I am far and with
the heart, with the Beloved```].11

``Love puts away the instruments, and takes off the silk robes. Our
nakedness together changes me completely``12
[accurate translation: ``He put harp and (strings of) silk on (his) lap,
(and) kept playing this song: `I am happy and ecstatic```].13

``They try to say what you are, spiritual or sexual? They wonder
about Solomon and all his wives``14
[accurate translation: ``O Love, you are known by the fairies and
humans. You are more known than the seal-ring of Solomon``].15

``This night . . . is not a night but a marriage, a couple whispering
in bed in unison the same words. Darkness simply lets down a
curtain for that``16
[accurate translation: ``Tonight . . . is not a `night,` Rather, it is a
wedding (festival) for those who seek God. It is an elegant
companion for those who testify to (God`s) Unity. Tonight is a
lovely veil of happiness for those with beautiful faces``].17

``I know it`s tempting to stay and meet those blonde women. I know
it`s even more sensible to spend the night here with them, but I
want to be home. . . . Let`s leave grazing to cows and go where we
know what everyone really intends, where we can walk around
without clothes on``18
[based on Arberry`s accurate translation: ``Bright-hearted
companions, haste, despite all the blond (sic) [= typographical
error for ``blind ones``] ones, to home, to home! You reasonable,
sober, full of sorrow, do not disturb our hearts! To home, to home!
.... Make not how and why; friend, leave grazing to cattle, to home,
to home: In that house is the concert of the circumcision feast, with
the ritually pure, to home, to home! Shams-al-dîn-é Tabrîz has
built a home for the naked; to home, to home!``].19

``You must wait until you and I are living together. In the
conversation we`ll have then. . . be patient. . . then``20
[based on Arberry`s mostly accurate rhymed translation: ``Wait,
then, wait patiently/ Until the time shall be/ We will together
dwell,/ Thou hearken, the while I tell.``21

``Listen and obey the hushed language./ Go naked``22
[based on Arberry`s rhymed translation: ``Unto his hushed lament/
Attend thou obedient;/ `Go not without the veil`--/So runs his
whispered tale``]23

``If you don`t have a woman that lives with you,
why aren`t you looking? If you have one, why aren`t you
satisfied?``24
[based on Arberry`s accurate translation: ``If you have no beloved,
why do you not seek one. And if you have attained the Beloved,
why do you not rejoice?]25

``If anyone asks you
how the perfect satisfaction
of all our sexual wanting
will look, lift your face
and say,
Like this.``26

[based on Arberry`s accurate translation: ``Whoever asks you about
the Houris [= the virgins of Paradise], show (your) face (and say)
`Like this`; if any man speaks to you of the moon, get up onto the
roof-- `Like this.```27

``During the day I was singing with you.
At night we slept in the same bed.
I wasn`t conscious day or night.
I thought I knew who I was,
But I was you.``28
[This is not an authentic Rumi poem. A more accurate translation:
``I was praising You during the day, and I didn`t know (it). I was
sleeping next to You at night, and I didn`t know (it). I had held the
opinion about myself that I was me. (But) I was entirely You, and I
didn`t know (it).``]29

``Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I`ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase `each other`
doesn`t make any sense.``30
[accurate translation: ``Beyond Islam and unbelief there is a `desert
plain.` For us, there is a `passion` in the midst of that expanse. The
knower [of God] who reaches there will prostrate [in prayer],/
(For) there is neither Islam nor unbelief, nor any `where` (in) that
place.``]31

``My love wanders the rooms, melodious
flute notes, plucked wires,
full of a wine the Magi drank
on the way to Bethlehem.

We are three. The moon comes
from its quiet corner, puts a pitcher of water
down in the center.
. . . . . . .
One watches the gathering,

and says to any cold onlookers,

`This dance is the joy of existence.```32
[accurate translation by Arberry: ``I saw my sweetheart wandering
about the house; he had taken a rebec and was playing a melody.
With a plectrum like fire he was playing a sweet melody, drunken
and dissolute and charming from the Magian wine. He was
invoking the sâqî in the air of Iraq; the wine was his object, the
sâqî was his excuse. The moonfaced sâqî, pitcher in his hand,
entered from a corner and set it in the middle....
He was beholding his own beauty, and saying to the evil eye,
`Never has there been, nor shall there come in this age, another like
me.```]33


(copied from http://www.dar-al-masnavi.org/corrections_popular.html where you can read the rest of this important article.)

Excellent news for lovers of Mawlana:

Read his entire work Fihi Ma Fihi ``Discourse of Rumi`` (lit. In it what is in it) online as an ebook athttp://www.omphaloskepsis.com/ebooks/intro/discour.html

where you can also read selections from his Masnavi Sharif

:-)

Excllent choice of subject Talha! Our Master Jalaluddin is a brilliant topic to write on! I enjoyed your article immensely although I would caution you against interpreting Hazrat Rumi in a perrenialist fashion: I have read/studied Mawlana a lot and he is no doubt full of love towards all--as a Saint he radiated Love--but he never ever abandoned or left his traditional Sunni Islam either; even at the height of his ecstasies he never gave up saying his prayers or fasting. Indeed he became a wali because of the extent of his austerities and nawaafil worships.


He said:
I am the servant of the Qur’an, for as long as I have a soul.
I am the dust on the road of Muhammad, the Chosen One.
If someone interprets my words in any other way,
That person I deplore, and I deplore his words.’ --Maulana Rumi


I do agree with you 100% that it is his type of Islam which we have to return to: not many of us can become Rumi but we can at least try! He was a wali and we must love and follow him. There are so many wonderful anecdotes from his life it could fill volumes!

As Allah says: Verily, upon the Saints (awliya) there is no fear and nor do they grieve (Quran)

He said:

Yak zamaana ba sohbat e awliya
Behtar ast az hazaar saal-haa taa`at e bay-riya

One moment in the company of the Friends of Allah
Is better than a thousand years of sincere worship!

He said:

Dast e pir az ghaibaaN kotaH neest
Dast e U juz qabza e Allah neest!

The hand of the saint (pir) can reach near and far!
His hand is naught but the grasp of Allah!

This poem and others are loved and sung in the mehfils of the Sunni Barelvis all the time!





The best online source for Rumi is http://www.dar-al-masnavi.org and the best books are those by Schimmel, Chittick, Afzaal Iqbal and S H Nasr. Avoid those of Barks etc.

In his biographical note on Rumi in the Nafaahat al Uns min Hadarat al Quds, Mawlana Jami, another great wali, writes that Rumi was a saint even from birth and as a young boy he exhibited signs of sainthood! He loved fasting even when young and was always of a cheerful mien...it is a remarkable entry which I might translate insha Allah as it is not too long...


His whole life was spent in the Love of Allah and he desired nothing else but He! Thus it was that he went to His Beloved, smiling!
The ephemereal nature of this life and the reality of the Next life and the worthlessness of both of them compared to the Reality of Allah are the themes of his works!

May Allah perfume his resting place, sanctify his secret and forgive us for his sake! ameen!

``Plan in the way of Service, untill you achieve Prophethood among the Ummah.`` - Rumi (Masnavi, Part 1, Page 53)

According to the article 260 of the Constitution of Pakistan, the above belief renders Rumi a Kafir

*Rolling on the floor, laughing!*

To call Rumi a Maulana today would be difficult.

To seek the divine/truth is a journey that few embark on armed with the

mastery of poetry that Rumi posessed.

Rumi`s journey is probably the most artfully described one in the West.

A True Master.

Ras

#1
well said `Islam was quite boring` - that`s the semi-wahabi face of Islam presented to the world in this age. This sternness of creed has done us more harm than good, despite all the Saudi petro-dollars spent in promoting it. Btw..for us shiites there`s plenty of `non-boring` stuff in our tradition, so atleast our kids don`t feel left out in the matters of culture ;-)

Faisaluno:
Thank you for the post.
Since this part got left out--and it is an important intro---I reprint it here.

How Muhammad Migrated to America
On Translating Mythologies
By OMAR AL-QATTAN

Vilified by the now-predictably rabid Daniel Pipes, criticised by Time Magazine and the New York Times as too soft on its subject, Muhammad ­ Legacy of a Prophet, shown on December 18th on PBS, was nonetheless widely praised by most commentators and has attracted huge support from the US public. In the essay below, Palestinian-British director Omar Al-Qattan offers his own account of the making of the film.
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cultural islam vs. religious islam. will probably offend both islamist as well secularist. (background to pbs documentary on islam)

http://www.counterpunch.org/qattan01112003.html

_ _ _Then there was my father`s hero, a brilliant, eloquent and brave businessman turned political and religious leader of the Arabs, the Prophet Muhammad. My father never prayed or fasted but he clung and still clings to a Muslim identity that is less to do with ritual or belief and more to do with language, history and political example. A successful businessman and exile himself, living in an Arab world in conflict and turmoil, and having lost his homeland as a young man, it is easy to understand why a practical and secular man like him identifies so closely with Muhammad`s successful political career, much more so I suspect than with Muhammad`s spiritual message.

My mother always jokes that Muhammad must invariably crop up at their dinner parties, usually after the meal. There are my father`s set pieces ­ how Muhammad dealt with the skeptical Bedouins, how he neutralized the Jewish tribes, how he always made the right strategic decisions and so on. She sits silently through these anecdotes ­ sometimes relishing his story-telling talents, sometimes betraying her skepticism with a wry smile.

But unfortunately, political circumstances in the Middle East in the last thirty years were to force Muhammad and Islam out of the imaginary world of my father`s stories to a much harsher, more complex and turbulent reality. First, there was the Lebanese Civil War, which was to explode both my happy childhood in Beirut and to dispel any illusions of secular co-existence in the region. Then the Iranian Revolution, which suddenly pitted religious and secular groups and regimes against each other and culminated in the deadly Iran-Iraq War and the rise of modern political Islam all over the Middle East.

In 1975, I was sent to boarding school in England following the outbreak of civil war in Lebanon. In my newly adopted culture, I could of course have gradually shed my cultural inheritance and disengaged from the Arab and Muslim world. Indeed, as a teenager in a London school, I did, for a while, turn my back on all things from back home. I wanted to be nothing but a normal English public school boy, whatever that notion meant. But somehow ­ I still don`t really know why ­ I left school and spent my year off studying Arabic and the Qur`an with a sympathetic sheikh in Cairo. It was 1982 ­ the year of General Sharon`s invasion and devastation of my home town, Beirut, the year also when the Sabra and Shatilla massacres made it impossible for anyone with the most tenuous bond to the Arab world to turn away from its people`s predicaments.

At home, Muhammad seemed to loom ever larger. Indeed, never more did we all seem so desperate for the kind of leadership that Muhammad provided to his people in the 7th century. At the same time, the prospect of an Iranian or Afghani-imported political Islam horrified us, stripped, as it seemed to us at the time, of its cultural or linguistic heritage. But we were wrong: this had less to do with Iran and Afghanistan, more to do with the modern world, oil politics and the Cold War. Muhammad was now an Afghani mujahid, an Iranian mystic, an Egyptian soldier foolhardy enough to assassinate Anwar Sadat ­ no longer my childhood hero, but a firmly modern and determined contemporary. In my mind, he had now entered history as I knew it.

Around us in Europe, another phenomenon also began to appear ­ the immigrant mujahid or radical. My first encounter with one was through an Algerian girl friend in Paris, in reality a liberated French woman who nonetheless did not find it strange that her uncle had left France to join the mujahideen in Afghanistan. I had always found immigrant Islam uncomfortable. American Muslim converts, even today, are often looked upon by many Arabs as endearing eccentrics though this is changing rapidly with the overwhelming majority of them now originating from the Muslim world. I would call this a kind of cultural territorialism: if you were not culturally Muslim, then you could not be Muslim at all. I still marvel at London girls who wear mini-skirts, speak nothing but English, drink wine and sleep with men, yet observe the fast during Ramadan, or their equally promiscuous male counterparts who perform their Friday prayers and insist on marrying virgins!

_ _ _ This alliance of puritanical Wahabism and liberal American imperialism should, with hindsight, not be surprising. Anthropologically, the strongest common element is perhaps to be found in their attitude to history and popular culture ­ in the case of the Wahabis, a one-dimensional, moralistic vision of their religious heritage and in the case of Islam as it is exported to America, a desire to ignore the history and ethnographic manifestations of alien cultures in order to better absorb them into the American way of life. There is also the tendency of all empires to penetrate and overwhelm the cultures of those countries which they either invade or with which they have unequal alliances

_ _ _Of course, the Muhammad of my father`s imagination also virtually disappears in the film. I am left wondering whether this is really such a bad thing, though I try to imagine the feelings of those Palestinian or Egyptian peasants who saw their Christian heritage absorbed by the Byzantine Empire in the 4th century and changed beyond recognition! But I am nonetheless left with a strong feeling of cultural bereavement, and the need to fight for an alternative historical scholarship of Islam and its history ­ based on research, excavation and proper enquiry, rather than the abstract, telescopic and soulless rigor of the Wahabi-American version.

It is good to be reminded of Rumi now. My own discovery was a bit circuitous. Envious of seeing the Hindu gods (at least the celluloid versions) shown performing magical tricks, I once told my mother that Islam was quite boring. She asked me to find out about Shams Tabrez. And that is how I found Rumi.

To call Sufism a religion would not be quite right, for the god it seeks can be ephemeral, not the omnipotent, omniscient one we are supposed to seek. Sufi poets, and Bhakti poets like Meerabai, Surdas and Kabir, were essentially seekers, not finders. All these chicken soup for the soul wallas probably learned their lessons from them. People like Kahlil Gibran and Omar Khayyam celebrated the small lessons of life, which is what made them all big people.