Thread by @ostadjaan

Today’s public service announcement: When you see a poem or saying attributed to #Rumi in which he is reported as saying: “I am not a Muslim”, or “I belong to no religion”, it’s probably fake.
A short thread on fake Rumi poems.
#mevlana #mawlana #masnavi #sufi #sufism #fakeRumi

One of the popular fake poems attributed to Rumi is the one that starts:
“What is to be done, O Muslims? for I do not know myself.
I am neither Christian, nor Jew, nor Magian, nor Muslim.”
چه تدبیر ای مسلمانان که من خود را نمیدانم
نه ترسا و یهودیم نه گبرم نه مسلمانم

The same poem has become so popular through its further re-translations:
[I am] “Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu
Buddhist, Sufi, or Zen.
Not any religion or cultural system.”

Even Iranian musicians have produced the poem in fairly attractive versions:

There are some really beautiful Persian calligraphies of this poem as well. Even the noted Iranian diplomat, @JZarif, has shared the poem on his Twitter feed:
bit.ly/2Xpo9E0

Needless to say, Rumi has nothing to say about Zen Buddhism, and the whole idea of a “cultural system” would be odd to find in a 13th century Persian speaking Muslim thinker. That, like the idea of an essentialized "religious system" is quite modern.

That "what is to be done, O Muslims" poem came up in the 1898 R. A. Nicholson translation of Rumi’s poetry. Problem: Nicholson himself admits that the poem is not to be found in any of the early manuscripts of Rumi’s poetry.

Translation: someone later on made it up. They liked it, and made it sound Rumi-ish, and put it, as it were, in Rumi’s mouth. Nicholson includes it in his book, and since then as the cool kids say, it has gone viral.

The late Bernard Lewis, Orientalist turned Neo-con Islamophobe, who should've known better, took this poem as a reason why “Sunni ulama” viewed Sufis with suspicion… conveniently overlooking that a) the poem is a forgery and b) Rumi himself was a member of the Sunni ulama.

So how about some caveat?
We can do caveat. Sure we can. Even on Twitter.
Buckle up.
1) The idea that you find God in your heart, that is a classic Sufi idea and frequently found. One of the loveliest expressions is that of the 20th century South Asian Sufi, Hazrat Inayat Khan.

2) The idea that one has to look beyond common, literal religion and “realize” God (tahqiq), is a classic Sufi idea. Often what the Sufis critique is not the external form of religion, but literalism and attachment to that external dimension. Not Zahir, but Zahir-parasti.

3) The idea that God looks beyond external forms, and beyond the external performance of forms of religion and looks instead into your heart, that too is as old as the Prophet and classic Sufis.

4a) Here is a subtle caveat. There *is* a beautiful notion in the Path of Radical Love that says that there is a Love that takes you beyond Metaphorical Islam (islam-e majazi), the faith that you have simply followed through inheritance, through mindless level of forms & rituals

4b) & takes you through Real Infidelity (kufr-e haqiqi), where you end up rejecting that same metaphorical Islam, & you end up with a faith that is grounded & rooted in Real love. Love that is filled with certainty, love, personal experience. That is part of the Sufi tradition.

5) There is a beautiful book by Leonard Lewisohn on that same concept through the teachings of a later Sufi, Shabestari. ‘Attar also has many poems on that same teaching. So does Rumi.

So you see, that’s the problem with many of these kinds of quotes. They take something that has a certain merit, and you can surely find expressions of it in other Sufi teachings, and instead take it to rip Rumi out of his Muslim, Persianate context.

Yes, Rumi was both a Muslim grounded and rooted in his own particular religion context *and* someone whose universalist outlook led him to see the One light, One guidance, One God shining through all the manifestations and forms.

But to get to that universal, we don’t erase the particular. Especially when erasing the particular means erasing the Muslim-ness of this great sage. There is a colonial arrogance & appropriation in this erasure that has to be resisted. It leads to inaccurate readings of Rumi.

This is all part of my forthcoming book on reading histories of Rumi for @PrincetonUPress. :-)

If this is the kind of insight that interests you, please join us for more on the online courses I teach, such as “Heart of Rumi’s Poetry”: illuminatedcourses.com/theheartofrumi… It’s open to everyone, and you can follow it at your own pace and time. You can join us now!