The commodification of mysticism

The 800-year-old poetry of Sufi saint, Rumi, who was born in Afghanistan, lived in Turkey and wrote in Persian is being used today for geopolitical propaganda

Mehru Jaffer Vienna

Displayed on the same shelf as Tarot cards and books promising five steps to health and only three steps to wealth, the poetry of Rumi is said to make mystics out of millionaires. Now, Oliver Stone wants to film him, Material Girl likes to sing him, academics teach him, and publishers continue to print him.

“New age non-Islamic interpretation of Rumi's mysticism has given rise to a readership of strange bedfellows. Read both by Madonna and Muslims, ayatollahs and Americans, scholars and soccer moms, Rumi has sold more than half-a-million copies, dazzling the publishing industry and setting a 'Rumi phenomenon' that has spread like wildfire,” says Sheila Sheeren Akbar of Indiana University, USA.

Speaking at 'Wondrous Words: The Poetic Mastery of Jalal al-din Rumi', a conference hosted by the Iran Heritage Foundation in London last month, Akbar discussed Coleman Barks, the West's most prolific translator of Rumi, and his spiritual alignment with the work of the Persian poet who has always been precious to the Sufi tradition of the East ever since his birth 800 years ago.

The popularity of Rumi in the United States is recent and it is largely due to Barks whose The Essential Rumi was the first spark to light up hearts in America when it was published in 1995. Today, the interest in Rumi is varied. It ranges from genuine mysticism to the commercial and political. Quoting from Rumi: Past and Present, East and West, by Frank Lewis, Akbar says the West has a history of interpreting and using Rumi to different ends.

However, this behaviour is not confined to the West or to the past. UNESCO's participation in this year's celebration of Rumi's 800th birthday inspired a tug of war between Afghanistan, Turkey and Iran regarding Rumi's cultural and national affiliations.  “For purely political motives, each country has laid claim to Rumi using a logic that is faulty for several reasons, not least of which is that Rumi lived at a time before any of these countries existed and, moreover, at a time that pre-dated the idea of a nation-state or a corresponding national identity,” says Akbar.

In 2005, Barks travelled at the expense of the US State Department to Afghanistan as part of a public outreach speaker programme. In the birthplace of Rumi, Barks read his version in English. This was translated and followed by recitations of the original Rumi. In the following year, Barks was invited to Iran to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Tehran for spreading Rumi to the West. The three countries, otherwise at such odds with each other, agreed that Barks is their best cultural ambassador.

The 'essentialisation' and 'commoditisation' of Rumi, both in the West and the East, by people who differ politically, culturally and religiously, is a problem for some. What many imagine they know as Rumi is often only one interpretation of the poet. The Rumi that Americans enjoy through Barks, for example, is said to be different from the Rumi of the Muslim world.

Poetry does not play the same role in other cultures as it does in the USA. To many Muslims, Rumi does not offer poetry for enjoyment at leisure time but spiritual guidance to be practised at all times.   Of the ideal man of God, Rumi has this to say:

He is drunk without wine,

He is full without roast meat.

He is all confused, distraught,

He needs neither food nor sleep.

He is a king in a dervish frock,

He is a treasure in the dust.

He is not of air nor earth,

He is not of water, nor fire.

He is a boundless sea,