Giving the dervish a whirl

Guardian and Rumi.............. you can judge

It was a highly unlikely bestseller: a book of poems written by a 13th century Islamic mystic. But Jallaludin Rumi is big business in the US, and the bandwagon that has been gathering speed over there is about to roll into Britain Peter CulshawSaturday December 1, 2001The Guardian

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What goes round...

The popularity in the US of Rumi, a 13th-century Turkish poet, is a tragic irony, as the order of Sufi dervishes he founded is banned at home, writes William Dalrymple Saturday November 5, 2005The Guardian.

It seems almost unbelievable in the world of 9/11, Bin Laden and the Clash of Civilisations, but the bestselling poet in the US in the 1990s was not any of the giants of American letters - Robert Frost, Robert Lowell, Wallace Stevens or Sylvia Plath; nor was it Shakespeare or Homer or Dante or any European poet. Instead, remarkably, it was a classically trained Muslim cleric who taught sharia law in a madrasa in what is now Turkey.

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The spirit moves in Tehran Caught between Islam and western aspirations, some younger Iranians have turned to mystic poetry for guidance. Christopher de Bellaigue joins a class of truth-seekers Saturday October 9, 2004The Guardian
About a year ago, I decided to join a class on the mystical poems of Jalal al-Din Rumi. Years before, studying Persian at Cambridge, I had read some of Rumi's 13th-century poems and remember warming to his harmonious view of the cosmos and his benevolent, highly personal Islamic faith. I told friends in Tehran, where I live, that I was looking for a teacher.
A friend, Maryam, promised to introduce me to Mr B, her Rumi teacher for the past five years. A few days later, she reported that Mr B was reluctant to have a British journalist in his class. I was dismayed but not surprised. Many Iranians regard journalists as unreliable, and resent the British for their history of meddling, spying and otherwise obnoxious behaviour in Iran. It took several months before Maryam convinced Mr B to relent.


http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1322209,00.html