Voices from the International Congress

TT Culture Desk - Tehran Times - Tehran, Iran
Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Speaking at the International Congress held to commemorate the 800th birth anniversary of Molana Jalal ad-Din Rumi at the IRIB International Conference Hall on Sunday, Mohammad H. Faghfoory, professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University, talked about how the poetry of Rumi is popular in the West.

And this, despite the fact that translations often inadequately convey the great spiritual treasure which lies buried in the original verses.

He remarked, “In the United States the works of Rumi are reviewed from three points of view -- academic studies are performed by poets and literary figures, research is undertaken by certain groups which support the mystical heritage of Rumi and there also exists a commercial approach towards his works”.

“The academic circles of Western society have been familiar with Rumi’s poetry for the past century. However, the various translations that exist are totally different from each other,” he explained.

He went on to say that the depth of mystical meaning in Rumi’s poems renders translation of their concepts extremely difficult which results in the spiritual ideas contained in the original works being inadequately conveyed.

“In addition, most of the translators were either unfamiliar with the Persian language or made use of other translations together with the help of Persian-speaking assistants,” Faghfoory remarked.

He named the works of Coleman Barks to be the best translations of Rumi’s poetry currently existing. Barks has translated a large quantity of Rumi’s work and has been a student of Sufism since 1977.

Rumi believed holism achieves true wisdom
Scholar Professor of Philosophy from the University of Isfahan Mehdi Dehbashi made a speech on the second day of the Rumi congress.

Speaking during the “Wisdom and Philosophy” session, he discussed the theory of the unity of contradictions in Rumi’s ontology.

He remarked that in the thinking of Rumi, true wisdom is obtained through holism. He noted also that Rumi believed pluralism to be essential for unity.

American expert discusses satire in Rumi’s works
American Rumi expert Walter Stone, participating in the Rumi congress, discussed satire in the works of Rumi.

He noted that satire is the major technique used by Rumi in his poetry.

Rumi was highly interested in music
Iranian scholar Professor of the University of Tehran Tofiq Sobhani made a speech on poetry and music in sama performances.

He said that Rumi was extremely interested in music, adding “Rumi’s interest in music led to the filling of the entire city of Konya with melodies, the pleasing sound of which reverberated everywhere.”

Man finds true image in Rumi’s works
Tajik expert Tajik expert on Rumi Mirza Mirahmad made a speech about the perfect man in Rumi’s Masnavi Manavi.

He said that even if the perfect man is mentioned in the poetry of other masters, man can only find his true image in the works of Rumi.

He explained that the major theme of Rumi’s masterpiece, the Masnavi Manavi, is the relationship between man and God.

Rumi’s unfavorable view towards philosophy
“Molana Jalal ad-Din Rumi had a limited knowledge of philosophy,” Nasrollah Purjavadi, philosophy professor at the University of Tehran said during the session on wisdom and philosophy held on the sidelines of the congress.

Studies reveal that Sufis, including Rumi, harbored a chronic dislike for philosophy since the 11th century AD, when a division arose between Greek philosophy and the wisdom of the Quran.

Although Rumi alludes to some philosophical notions in his works, he condemned philosophy in “Fihi Ma Fih” he concluded.

Resemblance between the thoughts of Rumi and those of Eckhart
Shiraz University’s philosophy professor Qasem Kakaii made a speech on the similarity between Rumi’s ideas and the thoughts of Meister Eckhart (1260– 1328), the German theologian, philosopher and mystic.

He remarked that the Nothingness Theory is highlighted in their thoughts and ideology. He went on to say that some scholars consider this theory to be a play on words.

Kakaii mentioned that others believe that the Nothingness Theory originated from the philosophy of Parmenides and led to the contemporary philosophy of Existentialism and Nihilism.

Rumi is a proficient spiritual advisor
German professor Irmgard Payne professor of sociology at RWTN Aachen University made a speech elaborating on the fondness of non-Muslim Germans for Islamic mysticism.

Payne mentioned that Rumi opposed political dogmatism and advocated that love and spirituality should have dominion over all countries and therefore he is a proficient spiritual advisor for all countries in the modern world.

The professor also highlighted the necessity of dialogue between civilizations, particularly between the West and Islam.

Art embodied in the poetry of Rumi Rumi’s works are intimately linked with art
The secretary of the Iranian Academy of Arts Bahman Namvar-Motlaq said in a speech during the second day of the congress on Monday.

“Rumi has utilized artistic emblems and symbols in his poetry in order to convey his ideas. Thus it can be observed that he had a close relationship with art,” he explained.

“To comprehend this affiliation, it’s sufficient to know that his most important work, the Masnavi, begins and ends with art i.e. it commences with ‘The Song of the Reed’ and comes to an end with a poem about a painting,” he noted.

Resurgence of Rumi and Hegelian philosophy
Ali-Asghar Mosleh professor at Tehran’s Allameh Tabatabai University, participating in the congress, delivered a lecture on the theme “The Resurgence of Rumi and the End of Hegelian History”.

“According to Hegel, humans have experienced all cultural and ideological developments and events in the course of European civilization and elements belonging to premodernist cultures are no longer perceptible. Consequently, the world will never again witness the revival of traditions and elements observable in the premodernist eras” he said.

Mosleh rejected Hegel’s ideas by referring to the rise of global interest in the thoughts of Rumi and the abundance of commemoration ceremonies which are now underway in the world for this Persian poet and Muslim mystic.

Exquisite Rumi and Shams artworks unveiled in Tehran

TT Art Desk - Tehran Times - Tehran, Iran
Tuesday, October 30, 2007

A collection of exquisite illustrations of Rumi’s poems from the Divan of Shams and also portraits on the themes of Molana Jalal ad-Din Rumi and Shams of Tabriz was unveiled at Tehran’s Palestine Museum of Contemporary Arts on October 28.

Held to run concurrently with Tehran’s International Congress on Rumi, the exhibit includes 50 illustrations and 16 portraits, Curator of Tehran’s Museum of Contemporary Art Habibollah Sadeqi told IRNA.

The majority of Iran’s renowned painters and illustrators have contributed to the display.
Many of the works depict Rumi’s poetry, he added.

Sadeqi, pointing out Mahmud Farshchian’s latest miniature work “Shams and Rumi”, which has been showcased for the display, referred to it as a unique work of art.

Artworks by Aidin Aghdashlu, Kurosh Shishegaran, Kazem Chalipa, Sedaqat Ejbari, Zahra Rahnavard, Habibollah Sadeqi and Morteza Heidari are amongst the collection.

The 50 illustrations are compiled in a book entitled “Shams of Iran’s Academy of Art” by Mehdi Hosseini; the book was also unveiled during the inauguration ceremony.

This illustration project was initiated two years ago by the secretary of the academy Bahman Namvar-Motlaq, who invited artists to participate in the task; Sedaqat Jabbari undertook the calligraphy.

The book contains a combination of modern paintings with traditional calligraphy; previously such works had only been compiled using traditional methods.

The exhibit will run until late November at the venue which is located on Mozaffar St., Taleqani Ave near Palestine Square, Tehran.

Molana is always alive

IRNA Islamic Republic News Agency - Iran
Sunday, October 28, 2007

Tehran: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said here Sunday that the renowned Iranian mystic poet, Molana, does not belong to a specific time, place or ethnic group.

Addressing the International Congress on the 800th birth anniversary of Molana Jalaleddin Molavi Balkhi, he said, "Today and every day, the human community is in need of thought and exalted spirit of Molana more than before".

"Molana is always alive because he is connected to Allah and the reality of existence. He belongs to the entire humanity."

The Iranian president added that particularly in the today's world when material and corrupted cultures and thoughts have targeted human values and principles, the human beings are in dire need of Molana's thought.

He further referred to Molana as one of the most lasting poets of the world.

Philosophy, mysticism and religion, Molana and contemporary world, understanding among cultures and religions in Molana's thoughts, art and aesthetics, story writing, and language and literature are among subjects of the congress.

Also, to commemorate Molana, a stamp has been designed by Maestro Mahmoud Farshchian who has drawn 16 precious miniatures on Molana.

Playing national Iranian music will be among other programs of the Congress which is being held at the Organization of Islamic Conference's auditorium in northern Tehran.

[Picture: Shams and Molana. Miniature by Maestro Mahmoud Farshchian ]

Iran-Rumi Anniversary

IRNA Islamic Republic News Agency - Iran
Saturday, October 27, 2007

Tehran: International Conference to commemorate the 800th birthday anniversary of Persian renowned Poet Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi kicks off here Sunday.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Mohammad-Hossein Saffar-Harandi will deliver speeches in the inauguration ceremony.

After the opening ceremony, the 2-day meeting will start its work in seven specialized sessions.

The participants will continue their work in Tabriz, capital of Eastern Azerbaijan province, for another 2 days and on the final day, the attendants will move to Khoy city, 165 kilometers west of Tabriz, for groundbreaking ceremony of the construction of a building on the grave of Shams-e-Tabrizi, mentor of Rumi.

Majlis Speaker Gholam Ali Haddad-Adel is the Secretary General of the International Conference.

450 articles from 29 countries have reached the Conference secretariat.

Bells in all schools around the country will toll on Sunday to commemorate Rumi.

[Picture: Sun Path diagram of the city of Khoy. Image from http://www.gaisma.com/en/]

They could be produced in our country as well, but...

By Ekrem Aytas - Today's Zaman - Istanbul, Turkey
Thursday, October 25, 2007

Chinese revel in Mevlana product profits

Konya: The Chinese have managed to turn the Year of Mevlana, declared by UNESCO to honor the 800th anniversary of Mevlana Jelaleddin Rumi’s birth, into an economic windfall by manufacturing several souvenir items bearing images of Mevlana and whirling dervishes.

The statuettes, tableaus, plates, prayer beads and T-shirts of whirling dervishes produced by Chinese manufacturers are among the best-selling souvenirs in Konya.

China, which has recently received negative press related to the production of toys containing lead, has found a new economic avenue in the production of toys and souvenirs commemorating Mevlana -- the great humanist, philosopher and mystic of Islam.

China faced an economic deadlock when its trade partners raised questions about the safety and quality of its products; however, the country has moved on and re-entered the competitive world market with brand new low-priced items bearing the images of Mevlana and the whirling dervishes.

Yet the enthusiasm for Chinese-made souvenir items has turned into an issue of debate among merchants and domestic producers in the central province of Konya.

Merchants and shopkeepers in the province have expressed their satisfaction with a significant rise in their sales figures.

“We are happy to sell visitors all manner of souvenir items with images of whirling dervishes. There has been a great increase in sales; the tourists visiting the Konya Mevlana Museum flock to the souvenir shops and ask for items bearing images of whirling dervishes,” said shopkeepers.

Domestic producers, on the other hand, indicate that the companies importing cheap Chinese products into the country are a threat to domestic manufacturers.

“Such souvenir items could be produced in our country as well. But we cannot compete with cheap Chinese standards, and we will be faced with big challenges if necessary measures are not taken,” stated one producer.

A new 25 million dollar film on Rumi emerges from 'The Business Street' of Rome

AKI ADN Kronos International - Rome, Italy
Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Rumi, the famous 13th century Islamic poet and mystic, will be featured in a new 25 million dollar film production to be produced in a joint venture between Italy and the United Arab Emirates.

It's one of the major deals to have emerged in 'The Business Street', the space set aside for international film producers and others at this year's Rome Film Festival.

In the last few years, several proposals have been considered for a movie about the life of the much beloved Sufi poet, who is well known in Europe and the US.

More than 800 years after his death, his Persian poetry remains popular from Turkey to India. Now a new Italian company, Istar Production, has reached an agreement with Dubai's D-Seven Motion Pictures to make the film.

The choice of the Dubai company is part of a strategy which aims to make the Emirates a hot new location for movie production in the Persian Gulf, offering capital and infrastructure for international filmmakers.

D-Seven Motion Pictures is headed by Nayla al Khaja, UAE's first independent female film director and producer.

Muzaffar Ali, a famous Indian filmmaker will direct the film. Igor Uboldi from Istar said the choice of an Indian director was appropriate because it was one of the countries where the 'cult' of Rumi survived. It also coincided with the Rome Film Festival's focus on Indian movies this year.

The film project appears to be connected with UNESCO's Rumi Year, declared to commemorate the poet's 800th birthday.

The film has been presented to Turkish institutions with a view to shooting in Turkey and has received formal support from UNESCO.

"It will be an international production to tell the story of a poet that after 8 centuries still inspires us," said Uboldi.

And he adds: "At a time when Islam is at the centre of turmoil and misconceptions, Rumi opens the doors of a world where Islam always means love, never hatred".

Crescent Live Internet TV

Crescent Network - U.K.
Thursday, October 25, 2007

New Muslim TV Station Designed for Internet

In a sitting room in Rochdale, two friends were lamenting over the plight of Muslims around the world and in their home country, the UK.

There seemed to be a vast amount of misunderstanding about Muslims and a fear from Extremism.

They were already operating various forms of media to help dispel the stereotypes and misinformation being propagated about Muslims.

Wanting to accurately portray the colourful, positive, productive and diverse spectrum of Muslims to a wider audience they envisaged a bigger medium.

Following two years of planning, research, interviews and brainstorming sessions into the early hours they formed a company called Crescent Network and from that two initiatives emerged: Crescent Life, a Lifestyle magazine [http://www.crescentlife.co.uk/] and Crescent Live.

Crescent Live (Net TV) is a revolutionary new channel that is specifically designed for the Internet. It is the first to focus on Lifestyle issues from a Muslim Perspective that can be enjoyed by all – Muslim and Non Muslim.

Crescent Live will revolutionise Internet TV for Muslims and non-Muslims, bringing to its viewers a wide area of programming, including culture, arts, debate, food, travel, films, comedy, cartoons and history, from a Muslim cultural perspective.

Also Crescent Live will act as a key player in helping to rebuild bridges of tolerance, understanding, acceptance, and promote harmony between people of different faiths, at a time that it is needed most.

The key aims of Crescent Live are :

To help people to live as Practicing Muslims, whilst at the same time live as positive contributing members of society in the Muslim/ non Muslim countries that they have decided to live in.

Portray the true Islamic values to non Muslims and the rest of the world

Tackle day to day issues that are facing communities

Rebuild bridges of tolerance, acceptance and understanding between communities, through respect for each others points of view.

Do this via enjoyable methods by providing knowledge, instruction, guidance, education and moral support to all people through the most actively used media

We will also encourage positive debate and provide guidance to all communities (social and organisational) that are affected by extremism, through the promotion of tolerance and understanding of the community differences.

To visit Crescent Life TV Net and/or to log on, click the title of this article or the following link: http://www.crescentlive.tv/

...As quoted in *The Sufi Path of Love*

By Maswood Alam Khan - The New Nation - Bangladesh
Thursday, October 25, 2007

Doris Lessing has shown to the world the convenience of searching the truth concealed in nature by her gifted education instead of wasting time digesting texts in schools.

Energy and time she invested of her own free will since her young life in comprehending tomes of Dickens, Scott, Stevenson or Kipling could have earned her many certificates that she could nicely laminate to treasure in a showcase if she instead did invest under compulsion the same in schools and universities, but would have missed her bijou moments to write "The Grass Is Singing" or "The Golden Note Book" or dozens of other volumes that has crowned her with this year's Nobel Prize in literature.

God does not endow anybody or every graduate with a gift of power to converse with nature and then weave the dialogues in the literary or scientific equivalence of a garland. A handful of gifted geniuses---Bengali Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore is one of them---stepped on this earth to leave behind their immense contributions in the fields of science, art and literature.

Gifted students ironically are often frustrated with the 'education as usual' systems, which, while it may suit the majority of students, do not suit their needs. Doris is one of those talented prodigies who found committing passages of textbooks to memory shelves and vomiting those words in exam halls a caricature of an idiot storing his/her mind with a million facts and still remaining entirely uneducated.

(...)

A prolific writer Lessing once described writing as a kind of 'wool-gathering'---a slow, tedious and difficult process. Still she could manage to raise a child alone, be so involved with politics and still find time to write.

Her involvement though with politics was perfunctory. She attended not more than 10 meetings as a member of the communist party writers' group in Rhodesia. Lessing believes that she was freer than most people because she became a writer.

Readers of Lessing became her followers largely because of her odysseys in inner space of human mind and outer space of the cosmos and her commitment to major issues, such as communism, feminism and Sufism.

In her struggle to prove or disprove existentialism she continued writing one fiction after another constructing characters acquiescent with ephemeral matters, pleasures and pains of life as if she were tirelessly climbing a tall flight of stairs with books considered her steppingstones in quest of a truth fleeting and missing for ages before her arrival at the theatre of this planet.

Not before reflecting her interests on Sufi mysticism could she climb high enough to tryst with the truth of spirituality.

Her science fiction in series probing higher planes of existence (Canopus in Argos: Archives, 1979-1983) was greatly influenced by the Muslim scholar Idries Shah whose writings on mysticism stress the evolution of consciousness and the belief that individual liberation comes about only if people understand the link between their own fates and the fate of the society.

Sufism's universality in source, scope and relevance persuaded Doris Lessing to ornament her writings with sequins of Sufism.

Lessing viewed her space-fiction series of Canopus as a platform where she extrapolated fates of the living from the fate of cosmic evolution---raising humankind to a higher plane of existence-which is a basic tenet of Sufi philosophy, the latest of three major influences on her thinking.

The first was communism that lasted from 1944 till 1956, the second was feminism that began in 1950s and lasted through the 1960s when she turned to Sufism.

Most readers, however, felt dismayed at the sudden veering of the writer from her steadfast position as an archeologist of human relations to the smog of mystification. She was dubbed an African writer, a Communist writer, a feminist writer, a psychological writer, a science-fiction writer and lastly a mystic writer.

Her pilgrimage progressed from Communism to Sufism covering three continents and a world war.

(...)

According to the statutes of Nobel Foundation framed in strict compliance of what was mentioned in the will Alfred Nobel wrote in 1895, the Swedish Academy had chosen Doris Lessing from among hundreds of candidates nominated by thousands of registered nominators all over the world---nominators like members of academics, university professors, writers and poets from numerous countries, previous Nobel Laureates, members of parliamentary assemblies and others.

Anybody from anywhere in the world did cast votes---through SMS or Emails---to make Nolak the best (or the most popular) 2006 singer in Bangladesh through Close-up One competition sponsored by NTV and also did put weights of votes on Time magazine's Editorial Board to choose their 'Person' of the yester century.

But Tom, Dick or Harry like you and me cannot voice to the Swedish Academy our supports or recommendations for a writer who touched our souls by his/her writings composed in our own mother tongue and styled in our own lore and tradition.

Had Alfred Nobel had the slightest inkling on the possibility of a global referendum through instant messaging he would perhaps added a clause in his will to take into account a percentile weight for global opinion of the masses in addition to votes from think tanks of the world to decide for the best of the year and in that scenario we could perhaps find among the Nobel Laureates many other new faces from China or Bangladesh whose labor pains in giving birth to literary flowers and fruits were more excruciating than those withstood by Doris Lessing.

Nevertheless, we are looking forward to a Monday on 10 December of this year when Doris Lessing attired in her best evening gown will be receiving the Nobel Prize Medal, Diploma and Pay Order for US$ 1.54 million from His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden and shaking hands with Her Majesty Queen Silvia reciprocating measured bows and smiles in regal style. We are also eager what message she would convey to us in her Nobel Lecture Lessing will have to deliver as a Nobel Laureate a day or two before the Award ceremony.

In the most coveted banquet following the Award ceremony, a rare partying arranged in the most splendid settings adorned with the best thinkable culinary protocols from flower arrangements to food, wine, dessert and divertissement---everything minutely orchestrated to make the banquet unforgettable---as Doris Lessing would be sipping soup or picking dessert her mind would be traveling back to a variety of panoramas that molded her pen to spill inks in composing parables of life and living that has earned her a space in the glittering world of the noblest.

Maybe at one poignant moment, during her exchanging pleasantries with a few known faces amid the murmuring of 1300 VIP guests who would be gathering in the banquet at the Blue Hall of the Stockholm City Hall, Doris will overhear a ventriloquial whisper reminding her a mystical advice: "Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much s/he has polished it", as quoted in 'The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi' by William C. Chittick.

[The portrait of Doris Lessing comes from Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, her Italian Publishing House http://www.feltrinellieditore.it/SchedaAutore?id_autore=233301]

Developing Dialogue

By Hina Farooq - The Daily Times - Lahore, Pakistan
Friday, October 26, 2007

A Pakistani troupe has gone to India from the Wagah Border to celebrate the fourth Saanjh Festival, a Lahore-Amritsar Festival organised by Rafi Peer Theatre in collaboration with the Spring Will Education Society in India.

The troupe consists of 27 people, including musicians Surayya Khanum, Arif Lahori, Akmal Qadri and Waris Ali Ballo.

The festival aims at bridging the gap between the Pakistani and Indian Punjabs by providing a platform for artists from both sides to interact and is committed to the development of Punjabi language and literature.

The annual Saanjh Festival, which started in 2004, takes place in two phases, the first in Lahore and the second one in Amritsar. It showcases a diverse range of Punjabi performing arts including Sufi, folk and classical music.

Indian artists will present theatre plays and dances whereas Pakistani artists will present classical and folk music.

The Pakistani troupe is led by Usman Peerzada, Sohrab Khan, Riaz Khan Jillani, Usman Fazal and Anum Peerzada.

Team manager Sohrab Khan told Daily Times that the purpose of the festival was to promote harmony and solidarity by interaction of people through culture and festival.

He said the Punjabis on both sides of the border wanted to know about their shared past. They also wanted to interact with each other.

The festival has aimed to strengthen peaceful relations and dialogue between individuals.

Media coordinator Rizwan Khan said another troupe was performing on Sufism in Canada and would return on November 8.

[Visit Rafi Peer website: http://www.peerfestivals.com/]

A global symbol of Altruism

MNA - Mehr News - Tehran, Iran

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

The exhibit, “Iran, Spiritual Manifestation in Art” was inaugurated during a ceremony on October 22 at the venue of Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma in Italy.

Iran’s ambassador to the Vatican Mohammad-Javad Faridzadeh, the cultural deputy of the mayor of Shiraz Mohammad Ali Moein, Iran’s cultural attaché in Italy Alireza Esmaeili and other Iranian and Italian officials attended the event.

The works on display have been created over the last two years by 18 artists from Shiraz in a collaborative effort. The collection consists of 73 artworks including calligraphy-painting, illumination, miniatures and calligraphy on the theme of Rumi, Moin mentioned during the ceremony.

Esmaeili went on to say that Rumi has become a global symbol of altruism, honesty and spiritualism. The cultural attaché’s office is holding this exhibit in Italy during Iran’s cultural week in honor of the 800th birth anniversary of Rumi.

Four artists from Shiraz will be holding workshops on Iranian miniatures, calligraphy and contemporary art on the sidelines of the event.

[Picture from: http://www.exibart.com/profilo/eventiV2.asp/idelemento/46815]

Translating the letters of Rumi

The Hindu - Chennai, India

Monday, October 22, 2007

Nevit O.Ergin plans to get the entire 22 volumes of the Sufi mystic published in India and make it inexpensive

Hyderabad: Literature lovers in the country are in for a feast if the plans of Nevit O. Ergin, translator of works of the 13th century Sufi mystic, scholar and poet Mevlana Jalal al-Din Rumi, materialise.

Dr. Ergin, who won laurels for translating over 44,000 verses of Rumi’s works popularly known as Divan, is planning to get the entire 22 volumes published in India and ‘make it very inexpensive.’

Dr. Ergin is convinced that Rumi’s philosophy is much closer to the tradition in India than any other religion.

On the verge of completing the translation of 1736 verses of Rumi’s Rubaiyat, he said Rumi’s works were probably better than those of Omar Khayyam in that the latter’s works don’t have glamour.

“There is a unity in the whole form of Rumi’s Rubaiyat while every verse of others’ work is independent of each other,” he said.

After Divan and Rubaiyat, the 81-year-old author is now gearing up translate the 150-odd letters of Rumi that are “very valuable” to understand him, his environment and family.

Iran's Rumi week begins with school bells

Mehr News - Tehran, Iran
Monday, October 22/23/24, 2007

Iranian school bells will be rung in honor of Molana Jalal ad-Din Rumi on October 28 marking the inauguration of the international Rumi convention.

Iran’s Rumi week will be held from October 26 to November 2 to commemorate his 800th birth anniversary. The international Rumi convention will also be hosted in Tehran, Khoy, and Tabriz.

***

Eighty Rumi scholars from 29 countries will present academic papers at the upcoming international Rumi convention.

The convention will be held in Tabriz, Khoy, and Tehran during Iran’s Rumi Week.

***

The United Nations and the Niavaran Cultural Center are to hold a ceremony named “A Night with Molana Rumi” on October 27.

Representatives of the United Nations and UNESCO will also pay tribute to Ahmad Jalali, Iran’s former UNESCO ambassador in Paris. Jalali recently received the Rumi Medal for the effort he has made to introduce the world to the thoughts and beliefs of Rumi.

Literary figures Jalaleddin Kazzazi, Gholamreza A’vani, and Hossein Elahi Qomsheii will give talks on Rumi’s philosophy of peace as depicted in his poetry.

***

The son of Pakistani poet and philosopher Muhammad Iqbal Lahori, Javid Iqbal, is to participate in an international congress commemorating the 800th birth anniversary of Molana Jalal ad-Din Rumi which will take place in Tehran, Tabriz and Khoy from October 28 to November 1.

Javid Iqbal, eminent scholar, former Chief Justice of the Lahore High Court and a retired judge of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, will be speaking on the first day of the congress.

***

A two-day international conference on Rumi’s storytelling will open on October 28 at IRIB’s International Conference Hall in Tehran.

The place of Rumi in Persian storytelling, the structure of stories in Rumi’s works, and the concepts of Rumi’s stories will be discussed at the conference.

The best submitted theses will be awarded.

"Hafez"

[From the Italian language press]:
Il tempo è indefinito, il luogo l'Iran centrale, il film, una coproduzione della Repubblica Islamica dell'Iran con il Giappone, il regista, Abolfazl Jalili.

Zabriskie Point - Italia - di Teresa D'Anna - lunedì 22 ottobre 2007

The time is indefinite, the place is Central Iran, the movie, a co-production of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Japan, the director, Abolfazl Salili.

In competition at the Rome Film Fest II (October 18 - 27) "Hafez" has collected many applauses.

A story about the quest for the divine, the love for the Creator and for the creature; with the Word of God intertwined with the words of the 14th century Sufi poet.

And two contemporary men whose name is also Hafez, in love with Nabat (Japanese actress Kumiko Aso).

Beautiful. Those familiar with Sufi symbols and the meaning of the mirror will appreciate this movie even more.

Exploring the human condition

By Stacy Vanek Smith - The Christian Science Monitor - Boston, MA, U.S.A.
Monday, October 22, 2007

Doris Lessing is a difficult author to define – and she likes it that way.

Ms. Lessing writes with the political passion of Karl Marx and the unflinching eye of Henry James. She chronicles the woman's experience the way Virginia Woolf did and has even explored other planets and dimensions, à la Ray Bradbury.

The recent Nobel Laureate has published roughly a book a year for more than half a century.

And as she celebrates her 88th birthday, Lessing is at work on a new novel. Her best-known work, "The Golden Notebook," published in 1962, is considered a watershed text for the women's movement.

But Lessing, who has always bridled at being categorized as a feminist or anything else, has called "The Golden Notebook" her albatross because it labeled her as a feminist writer. Even "Nobel Prize winner" seems uncomfortable for her. Her response on learning of the award: "I couldn't care less."

Lessing's refusal to remain a known quantity has taken something of a toll, both critically and with readers. Many of Lessing's biggest fans from the 1960s and '70s stopped reading her as she began to transition from traditional fiction to sci-fi.

"Lessing's probably the most politically incorrect of all writers," says Margaret Moan Rowe, a professor of English at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., who has written extensively on Lessing. "She's offended almost every group, including feminists. Something's high art, something's pulp…. These are categories she just rejects."

If Lessing's work is difficult to pigeon-hole, her life is even more so. She spent much of her childhood on a farm in what is now Zimbabwe, where she witnessed the brutal realities of apartheid. She dropped out of school at age 14 and became impressively self-educated, reading everything from D.H. Lawrence to Dostoevsky.

She eventually moved to England, married twice, joined and dropped out of the Communist Party, and embraced Sufism.

Sandra Singer, who teaches Lessing at the University of Guelph in Ontario, says the writer's life is an essential part of her ­oeuvre. "Because she has such a range built into her own biography, it's brought a tremendous complexity to her writing."

But whatever she writes about, says Singer, "There are constant sources of insight about the color bar, male-female relationships, settler-servant relationships. Those are always there."

Rowe says, in part, it was a desire to really explore these issues that led Lessing to science fiction. "She fantasizes about the perfect city where different races live together in harmony," says Rowe. "She looks at all of these political issues…. Sci-fi gives her a chance to really stretch all of that."

In "The Golden Notebook," Lessing writes about the many sides of protagonist Anna Wulf. Many said the book exposed the contradictions of what it meant to be a woman in the early '60s. Reader Joan Toohey Wesman remembers the impression the book made on her in college.

"At the time, there were not books that really talked about a woman's experience, a woman's body, about sex and relationships," says Wesman. "And it did it in this really unromanticized way." Hers was "a really different voice in the culture."

Lessing has made one concession to the Nobel: She says it might encourage more people to read her books. Although she's remained a prolific writer, many younger readers have never heard of her.
Despite the density of her work, Lessing could win a solid new audience, predicts Rowe. Her work will always resonate, Rowe says, because Lessing explores themes inherent to the human condition.

"Lessing is always challenging dogma, and she has a willingness to look at herself and her own ideas. That's in short supply. Lessing's questioning … I don't just find interesting, I find it heroic."

Gujarat dargah in controversy

The Times of India - India
Monday, October 22, 2007

Ahmedabad: The 500-year-old historical dargah of Sufi Saint Pir Sheikh Makhdum Rahmatullah in Mithakhali area of Ahmedabad has become a matter of dispute between two parties and the issue is pending in the courts.

Controversy surrounds this supposed tomb built in 1472 AD on the grave of Sufi Makhdum Sheikh, constructed by the then ruler of Gujarat, Gazi Mehmud Begda.

The petitioner, Gujarati poet Jalan Matri, has claimed before the high court that the disputed dargah is in Navjeevan Kalyan Society in Mithakali area.

Every year, followers of Sufi Rahmatullah gathered at the dargah on his death anniversary. Jalan contended that in 1998, residents of the society reportedly denied the followers access to the shrine.

Navjeevan society in 1998 filed a civil suit against Matri and two others and it was prayed before the court to deny the poet entry into the dargah. Consequently, Matri filed an appeal in the Gujarat High Court in July 1998.

Sanjay Mehta, advocate for Navjeenvan Kalyan society, in a counter-affidavit denied the existence of the shrine saying, "The matter is sub-judice and the court is yet to pronounce its judgment. There is no grave inside the tomb and the structure is the sole property of the society".

"Both, the housing society and the dargah are on the ‘Wakf land’*. This has been proved through various documentary evidences and the same has been mentioned in our letter to the Supreme Court seeking speedy justice," Matri said.

The high court in 1998 had directed the lower court to dispose of the case within three months from the date of court’s order, however, the hearing pertaining to the matter concluded in 2006.

The case has been adjourned for now. Matri came to know about this dargah in 1995 through historical books while he was writing on the forgotten shrines of Ahmedabad.

[For Wakf or Waqf: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waqf]

The Hall of Sufi and Shrines

Associated Press of Pakistan - Pakistan
Sunday, October 21, 2007

Islamabad: Pakistan National Museum of Ethnology, Lok Virsa is attracting a large number of local and foreign visitors, featuring the history and living traditions.

The location of the Heritage Museum enriches the Capital and add to its attractions, said an official of Lok Virsa here Sunday while talking to APP.

Most museums in Pakistan are archeological which are a throwback from colonial times while the Heritage Museum is the first state museum of ethnology that presents the history and living traditions of the people of Pakistan both from the mainstream and the remot regions of the country, he remarked.

“The museum is a treasure house for the nation more valuable than the vault of any bank in the world,” said a foreign visitor.

From Northern Areas to the borders, the museum encourages and sponsors research in the regional languages, cultural history, arts, crafts and all related aspects of folklore including folk romances, folktales, ethnotechnology, ethnomusicology, ethnological data, history of folk literature and oral traditions of the country.

The museum reflects the culture and traditions of Pakistan which would help in preserving and promoting the ancient cultural heritage among the new generation, said Arsilan, a Karachi-based student.

Maryam Javed, a regular visitor said that such places are a source of creating awareness to the youngsters and foreigners about “our rich culture and traditions”.

The hall of “Antiquity and Continuity” is the major attraction which portrays Mehrgarh 8000 BC, Moenjodaro 2500 BC, Harappa 2500 BC, Gandhara 250 BC and the continuity of these ancient civilizations in present times.

The corridor of Musical Heritage includes the best documented display of musical instruments of Pakistan with educational expose of musical traditions while the Hall of Sufi and Shrines depicts the Sufi traditions of contemplations, shrine architecture, sufilore, Urs celebrations, rituals and Sufi practices.

The museum remains open from 9:30 am to 8:00 pm for general public.

[Picture from Lok Virsa Museum' website: http://lokvirsa.net/Index.htm]

A five-letter word with twenty-six meanings

By Leslie Scrivener - Toronto Star - Toronto, Canada
Sunday, October 21, 2007

For seven years Laleh Bakhtiar laboured over her English translation of the Qur'an, a version that is written from a woman's point of view and is also welcoming to non-Muslim readers.

Of all the 90,000 words she translated, there is just one, in chapter four, verse 34, that led to sharp criticism and controversy. It's from the section on women and describes how to deal with one who is "disobedient."

Most translations of the Qur'an, which Muslims believe to be the word of God revealed to Muhammad, say the woman should first be admonished, then left alone in her bed and then beaten, albeit lightly.

"When I got to chapter four I had to really look at this carefully," says Bakhtiar, a Chicago Islamic scholar who is the featured speaker at the 25th annual conference of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women, which opens on Saturday at Toronto's Noor Cultural Centre. "It took a lot of research time to see what it means.

"It's a command in the Qur'an, an imperative and the point is the Prophet never did it, it meant something else to him," continues Bakhtiar, 68, one of seven children of an American nurse and Iranian doctor.

She concluded that the word idrib, which she found could have 26 different meanings, was best translated as "to go away" or "to leave," not some form of "to beat."

"Why choose the word to harm somebody, when that's not what the Prophet did? He was a model for humanity."

This new understanding was particularly important to Bakhtiar, who was trained as an educational psychologist and has worked as a counsellor with young Muslim women who were abused by their families.

A practitioner of Sufism, the mystical stream in Islam, she looked on her interpretation as a "blessing" and welcomes, even encourages, the debate that comes with it.

"I just hope we keep the dialogue going so that one less Muslim woman is beaten in the name of God," she says. "That's my prayer, to get more women aware that there is an alternative. This has not been sanctioned by God; it's a criminal act."

Born in Tehran and raised in Washington, D.C., Bakhtiar returned to Iran with her husband, an Iranian architect, where she ran a publishing company and learned classical Arabic. (Raised a Christian, she converted to Islam in 1964.)

A mother of three, she returned to the U.S. in 1988 and earned a doctorate at the University of New Mexico. She has since written 20 books on Islam and translated 25 books about the faith.

Besides giving the text a female perspective, another strong motivator was her desire to offer a new English translation for non-Muslims and new Muslims. Instead of Allah, she uses God; instead of Isa, she uses the more familiar Jesus.

Non-Muslims are not infidels or disbelievers, words she says are "loaded," but instead are those who are "ungrateful to God for his blessings."

"I tried to develop an inclusive translation so people from other faiths may read it and feel like it speaks to them as well, as a sacred text."

Some of her critics have cited her lack of fluency in modern Arabic as a shortcoming, a criticism that has not been applied to other translators who also are not native speakers, she maintains.

"It's not a valid criticism, because the Qur'an is written in classical Arabic ... If you go through all the criticisms, when it comes down to it, the only difference is because I'm a woman. Obviously."
Some who study the Qur'an, including Nevin Reda, a University of Toronto doctoral student, have welcomed Bakhtiar's translation for the consistency of her language.

Bakhtiar translated each Arabic word into an English equivalent and then stuck with that translation throughout the text as long as it worked in context. "That's something new and for me, it's really outstanding," said Reda.

Meanwhile, the head of one of Canada's leading Muslim organizations said he would not permit Bahktiar's book, The Sublime Quran, to be sold in the bookstore of the Islamic Society of North America (Canada).

"Our bookstore would not allow this kind of translation," says Mohammad Ashraf, ISNA's secretary general. "I will consider banning it."

His objection is not that Bakhtiar is a female scholar, but that she was not trained at an academic institution accredited in the Muslim world – he cites the University of Medina in Saudi Arabia as such a place.

"This woman-friendly translation will be out of line and will not fly too far," he says. "Women have been given a very good place in Islam."

Walid Saleh, an associate professor of religion at the University of Toronto, notes that Bakhtiar's work is not unique, but is one of many attempts on the part of Muslims living in a changing world to come to terms with a text they still hold dear.

"She belongs to a long line of Muslim feminists, since the late 19th century, who have been attempting to make the Qur'an and Islam far more, in a sense, gender-equal than people think it is."

Critics of her work may say she has a "feminist" outlook, says Saleh. "But who doesn't have an outlook?"

Bakhtiar makes clear that this book is a translation, not a commentary, and has not addressed other potentially divisive issues such as women's dress and modesty, male dominance and polygamy.

[Read also (click on the link and scroll down): http://sufinews.blogspot.com/search?q=idrib]

[Buy Dr. Bakhtiar's translation of the Holy Qur'an at The Sufi Bookstore http://astore.amazon.com/wilderwri-20]

Joint investigation

By Govind Chouhan - Meri News - New Delhi, India
Sunday, October 21, 2007

The Ajmer Police is likely to visit Jammu and Kashmir in the next two days in connection with the blast at the Sufi shrine of Khwaja Mohiuddin Chisti on 11 October.

Police has also asked the Jammu police for joint investigation in the bomb blast case.

Sources said that after the interrogation of a Rajouri based youth, Ajmer police got many clues about the incident.

The police contacted senior officers of Jammu and Kashmir Police (JKP) and told them that they were likely to visit their state in two days time. On the directions of Ajmer police, Jammu police has also collected records of some people, who are working with the arrested person.

(...)

Here it is to be mentioned that the Harkat-u-Ul-Jehadi Islamic militant outfit was suspected to be behind the blast at the shrine.

The militants used a mixture of Tri- Nitro Toluene (TNT) as the explosive material, in which two pilgrims died on the spot and many others got serious injuries.

Let the beauty we love be what we do

By Valerie Payton - Honolulu Star - Honolulu, HI, U.S.A.
Saturday, October 20, 2007

The Mevlevi Order of America will produce a celebration of the Year of Rumi with the traditional Whirling Ceremony Dec. 7 on Oahu and Dec. 10 on Maui.

Famed Turkish musicians are coming to lend their talents along with whirlers and musicians from Turkey, the United States, Mexico and Palestine.

Jelaluddin Loras, who lives on Maui and in Turkey and is founder of the Mevlevi Order of America, has spent the last quarter-century bringing the teachings of Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi to the West.

When asked to distill the modern relevance of Sufism, the Islamic mystical tradition into which Rumi was born, Loras said, "Whatever religion you belong to, whatever color you are, whether man or woman, young or old, rich or poor, you are the most precious diamond of God."

Honolulu Rumi fans quietly celebrated Rumi's birthday Sept. 30 in small gatherings or alone savoring lines like these: "Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."

Rumi shows us the "inner secret" of Islam, an experience of Divine Presence that is transcendent, all-pervading and also imminent.

Public celebrations are traditionally held in December, the month of Rumi's death, to celebrate the anniversary of his return to the "Divine Beloved" -- God.

Rumi's poetry has already found a home on our bookshelves, speaking to us in images of love with freshness and immediacy. The Year of Rumi's Whirling Ceremonies in Hawaii, with authentic music and sacred dance, may bring true flavor and aroma to our Western understanding of Rumi.

Valerie Noor Karima Payton is a board member of The All Believers Network, a Honolulu-based interfaith organization. She leads Dances of Universal Peace (also known as Sufi dancing) and with her husband acts as center leader for Honolulu's chapter of the Mevlevi Order of America.

[Picture: Sunset in Hawaii. Photo from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii]

Celebrations planned for Nasreddin Hodja in 2008

Today's Zaman - Istanbul, Turkey
Saturday, October 20, 2007

2008 will mark the 800th anniversary of the birth of Nasreddin Hodja, the patriarch of Turkish humorists.

But he was not just a joker. He was a wise man who had an answer to every question and was up to every trick.

Taner Serin, the president of the Nasreddin Hodja and Tourism Association, said that this figure, whose tomb is in the Akşehir district of Konya, is one of the most important Turkish-Islamic personalities of the 13th century and one of Turkey’s most famous cultural figures, like Mevlana Muhammed Jelaluddin Rumi, Yunus Emre and Hacı Bektaş-ı Veli.

This significant anniversary of his birth will come one year after the “Year of Mevlana,” as 2007 has been declared by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Serin said, “We are preparing to celebrate the 800th anniversary of the birth of Nasreddin Hodja, who was born in 1208, a year after Mevlana’s birth.”

Pointing out that the life, message and works of Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi have been celebrated around the world with comprehensive publicity campaigns corresponding to UNESCO’s 2007 designation, Serin added, “We would like similar campaigns to be held for Nasreddin Hodja.”

Serin explained that Mevlana and Nasreddin Hodja lived in the same time period, in the same city in Konya, and also took lessons from the same teacher, Seyyit Mahmut Hayrani, another famous Islamic scholar of the time.

“Although Nasreddin Hodja is not as famous as Mevlana, he is another essential part of our culture about whom there are many scholars studying. On the other hand, in our country everybody knows at least one of Nasreddin Hodja’s funny stories.

He was a good observer; he could analyze events with wisdom. He got across his messages in unconventional yet effective methods with profound simplicity. He wanted people to draw a lesson from his funny stories. Every year we organize international festivals to remember him,” he said.

Serin concluded: “Nowadays, we are sending messages from Konya for peace and brotherhood. Next year we will once again send messages of peace and self-criticism with Nasreddin Hodja’s funny stories to a world that has been scarred by war and pain.”

[Books about Nasreddin (or Nasrudin) stories available at
The Sufi Bookstore http://astore.amazon.com/wilderwri-20]

On Lovers and Wine

TT Culture Desk - Tehran Times - Tehran, Iran

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Chinese scholar Mu-hong Yan is slated to deliver lectures at a congress to be hosted jointly by Tehran and Tabriz from October 28 until 30 to commemorate Rumi’s 800th birth anniversary.

A Persian language graduate from the University of Peking, Mu-hong, 41, works for the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

This prominent Chinese scholar has translated a number of chapters of Rumi’s Masnavi and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam into Chinese and has also authored over 30 articles on Persian classical literature.

One of Mu-hong’s articles examines the concepts of “lover” and “wine” in Persian poetry.

Modern Persian literary works including Sadeq Hedayat’s “Blind Owl” and Hushang Golshiri’s “Prince Ehtejab” have also been rendered into Chinese by this prolific translator.

[Picture: The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) http://bic.cass.cn/English/InfoShow/Arcitle_Show_Cass.asp?BigClassID=1&Title=CASS ]

CD release: The Passion Of Rumi

By Richard Marcus - Blogcritics Magazine - Aurora, OH, U.S.A.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Sharam and Hafez Nazeri are father and son who have followed in the footsteps of generations of Persian and Iranian musicians in attempting to interpret the work of Sufi mystics through music.

But it was Shahram, 35 years ago, who first set the words of Rumi to music and has gained a huge international following because of his amazing voice and the passion he brings to his work.

Hafez began his musical education at the age of three and hasn't stopped since then. In an attempt to broaden his horizons, he left Iran to study musical composition in the West. In the year 2000, he assembled a group of young musicians to perform his father's compositions based on the poetry of Rumi.

The Rumi Ensemble toured 20 cities in Iran. Their concerts in Tehran alone drew 140,000 people setting attendance records for the Middle East. In 2005, he put together a new Rumi Ensemble for a highly successful tour of the United States.

The music from the first concert series has now released as the CD, The Passion Of Rumi. The CD features the vocal harmonies and melodies written by Shahram that made him famous, and music composed by Hafez that compliments and honors those songs.

Hafez refers to the program of music as a duet between instruments and voice.

Although some versions of the ensemble have seen the inclusion of Western instruments like cello and violin, this version taken from the tapes of the original Iranian tour utilizes only the Mid Eastern stringed instruments; Keammanche alto, Barbat, and Setar with percussion accompaniment supplied by Daf, Tombak, and Damams.

While this set up might appear skimpy to our eyes used to far more instruments from a group referred to as an ensemble, once you begin listening to the music you won't be aware of any deficiency in sound.

Various reviewers have tried to describe Shahram Nazeri's voice and I'll now join the ranks of those who fail miserably to do him justice.

How do you describe something that manages to transcend being merely physically present and that manages to communicate on a spiritual level? I could tell you technical details about how amazing his control and range are; that he can sing in a near whisper that will carry for miles, each individual note is so crisp and clean.

Or that he can sing notes of such depth that they cause your sternum to vibrate and then takes his voice to places that are almost beyond our capacity to hear they are so clean and high.

Would it make more sense if I said that when he sang he reached down inside himself and opened his heart the better to reach out to every single person living.

How about, that it feels like when he sings the secrets of the universe can be heard and the wonders of creation are no longer a mystery. A passion for life that is tangible suffuses each phrase and sends ripples through his voice in the form of tremolos that sends a shiver through your spirit.

Lyrics become immaterial, and at times he is vocalizing sounds in the same manner as a Jazz musician improvising. It's when he releases his hold on lyrics and sets out on these vocal runs with the music swirling around him like leafs cycling in an autumn wind, that you remember that not only was Rumi a Sufi but also the inspiration for the Dervish sects as well.

However, instead of just a select few dancers immersing in the words and splendor of Rumi, all who listen to Nazeri are given the opportunity to travel the road of musical meditation.

I don't know if anyone but Hafez Nazeri could have composed music that was appropriate for his father's songs. Not only did it require a thorough understanding of the music, but an awareness of the connection his father had to the songs in order to create the perfect balance between the needs of the overall piece and the vocalist's extraordinary abilities.

The rich diversity of devotional expressions in Islam

The South Asian Post - Richmond, B.C., Canada
Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Over sixty artists from different parts of the Muslim world did take audiences on an inspirational and unforgettable journey, A Mystical Journey, through various musical pieces, rock songs, and performances of whirling Sufi dancers in Canada.

The performances did feature music, dance, and poetry performed by world-renowned artists from North Africa, the Balkans, the Middle East, and South and Central Asia, expressing the rich diversity of devotional expressions in Islam, across different geographies, languages, and traditions.

Though different in form, these musical acts of devotion are common in their peaceful search for the divine.

Two shows, one a matinee, were held on Oct 14 at The Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts. The performers did then move to Edmonton (Oct 17), Calgary, Toronto and Montreal.

“The event is a demonstration of musical pluralism--and an example of the benefits that can be produced when diverse individuals bring their talents and distinctions together to build a superior product,” says Ismaili community spokesman Farid Damji. “It’s the essence of pluralism itself.”

The Ismaili Muslims are a community of ethnically and culturally diverse people living in over 25 countries around the world, united in their allegiance to the Aga Khan as the 49th hereditary Imam and direct descendant of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh).

This event is being held as part of the international Golden Jubilee commemoration of His Highness the Aga Khan’s enthronement as spiritual leader of the Shia Ismaili Muslims.

[The performance A Mystical Journey held in Edmonton (Alberta, Canada) on 17 October 2007 was attended by H. H. Prince Hussain Aga Khan and his wife, Princess Khaliya. Read more on the Ismaili official website: http://www.theismaili.org/ne1.htm]

[Picture from A Mystical Journey:
"The Sufi and other esoteric traditions of Islam manifest their beliefs through diverse forms of devotion ranging from ecstatic movements in dance to meditative exercises in quiet solitude.

These acts of devotion seek the promise of enlightenment which offers a divinely-graced vision, moral clarity and all encompassing love.

Enlightenment in these esoteric traditions speaks of a dissolution of the very self in a union with the divine that words cannot easily convey and thus music, poetry and dance become critical forms of expression". http://www.theismaili.org/he2.htm]

Like an infinite large Umbrella

By Ishita Yadav - Delhi Newsline - Delhi, India
Thursday, October 18, 2007

To commemorate the 800th birth anniversary of Sufi saint Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi, Rumi Foundation of India launched today [Oct. 18th] the second issue of its journal, Hu The Sufi Way.

The first issue, launched six months ago, was dedicated to another great Sufi saint and poet, Amir Khusro.

The event, which was held at Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit’s official residence, was presided over by Dr. Karan Singh, president of the Rumi Foundation. Renowned filmmaker and painter Muzaffar Ali, himself a keen Rumi enthusiast, also graced the occasion.

“In a world that is torn apart by hatred and violence, Rumi provides peace and harmony that runs through all the religions of the world,” said Dr. Singh. “We’re in danger of either rejecting religion altogether or becoming fundamental or fanatical — both of which are disastrous”.

“The journal of Rumi should be propagated throughout the country to spread the message of peace and harmony,” he added.

Muzaffar Ali, who is the editor-in-chief of the journal, said:
“If I have to render my service to Rumi, I must touch people all over the world and they must touch me. If you go to Konya in Turkey you see the reflection of Rumi on every face. I want to show that expression of peace and happiness”.

He said Rumi was an illustrious milestone in his long journey as a filmmaker.

Ali’s paintings were on display at the event and he was very excited about his movie project. “I have nothing more to do than to share its fruits when they are ready to be shared. The process is long, yet the journey is deeply enjoyable and engrossing,” he said.

“Rumi was born in Afghanistan but his works prevail all over the world. He is like an infinite large umbrella that covers the entire world,” said Nevit O Ergin, world-renowned Rumi scholar and translator.

Ergin read out a few Rumi verses to the audience which was followed by ghazals by Malini Awasthi and a qawwali.

[Muzaffar Ali about painting: http://www.muzaffarali.com/html/paintings.htm]

A unique collection of its kind

TT Art Desk - Tehran Times - Tehran, Iran
Thursday, October 18, 2007

Iranian artists illustrate Rumi’s Divan of Shams

The Iranian Academy of Arts is to publish a version of Rumi’s Divan of Shams illustrated by Iranian artists.

The book contains 50 illustrations by contemporary artists compiled by Mehdi Hosseini and will be published to commemorate the 800th birth anniversary of Rumi.

According to Hosseini, the project was initiated two years ago by the secretary of the Academy, Bahman Namvar-Motlaq, who invited artists to participate in the task.

On the process of the work, he said, “We provided the artists a copy of literature professor Mohammadreza Shafiei Kadkani’s version of the Divan of Shams, and each artist began the illustration work based on personal preference.”

Hosseini went on to say that the book will be a unique collection of its kind, adding, “This is the first time that the Divan of Shams is being both calligraphed and illustrated. This was only done for other great poets of the past”.

“The book contains a combination of modern painting with traditional calligraphy. Illustration and calligraphy works in the past were only created using traditional methods,” he explained.

Sedaqat Jabbari will do the calligraphy for the book, which will also feature English and French translations.

A sense of protection, under His wings

By Hanns-Peter Schmidt - Press TV - Tehran, Iran
Thursday, October 18, 2007

Simorgh is a mythical Persian bird, which can be seen in numerous Persian literary works from Pahlavi texts to contemporary stories.

The name is derived from the Avestan bird 'Saêna', which was originally a raptor, either an eagle or a falcon.

Just like the deity of victory wraps worshippers in fortune by giving them wealth in the form of cattle, the selfless Simorgh showers rain from watery clouds, bringing prosperity to farmers. (Avesta, the Zoroastrian holy book).

Avesta also refers to the Simorgh's tree as being an all-healing medicine, which holds the seeds of all plants.

In Pahlavi stories, the Simorgh makes his/her nest in the forest at the time of resurrection when the earth becomes flat and waters stand still and finally retires from the task of distributing plant seeds.

Simorgh has an evil bird counterpart named Kamak, which acts in the exact opposite manner of Simorgh.

Kamak spreads his wings over the world so that all the rain in the world falls on his wings. Then he abandons the living and goes back to the sea, leaving springs, rivers and wells dry. Kamak devours men and animals as a bird pecks grain.

Simorgh also has its presence in folktales, mystical literature and post-Sassanid epics like Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, in which Simorgh is the savior, tutor and guardian of Zal, the son of Sam.

After Zal was born as an albino, his father exposed him in the Alborz Mountains because he believed his son had a demonic origin.

The albino boy was found by the female bird Simorgh when she was searching for food for her young. The bird developed a feeling of love for the boy and took him to her nest to rear him with her own young.

When Zal grew up, Simorgh returned the young man to his father and gave him one of her feathers to burn whenever he needed help.

Simorgh is similar to the deity of victory as it conveys a sense of protection by helping those who are in need. There are similar Kurdish and Armenian Simorgh myths, which have their roots in Iranian Simorgh stories.

The mythical bird has also been mentioned in classical and modern Persian literature, especially in Sufi mysticism, standing as a metaphor for God.

The Sufi Simorgh is believed to be male. The most famous Sufi literary work is Mantiq al-Tayr, translated by Peter Avery as 'the Speech of the Birds'. The masterpiece of Farid al-Din Attar recounts the story of thirty birds (si morgh) that survive a hard and perilous journey to reach their king, Simorgh.

According to Attar, Simorgh lives in an inaccessible dwelling behind Qaf mountains, and gives light to the earth with its Sun-like radiance.

When the thirty birds of the outer world reach their king and face his majesty, the birds realize they are actually one with the Simorgh of the inner world.

Although the Simorgh portrayed by Ferdowsi, Attar and other Islamic authors may be a myth, this unique bird remains to be a source of inspiration in Persian literature.

[Pictures: Simorgh, a mythical Phoenix-like bird; Ferdowsi, Iran's great epic poet; Iran's mystic poet Attar; Simorgh printed on a silk Sassanid textile.]

Whirling Pittsburgh

By William Loeffler - Pittsburgh Tribune - Pittsburg, PA, U.S.A.
Thursday, October 18, 2007

Before there were raves, there were the whirling dervishes, Sufi Muslims who lived lives of monkish poverty in the ancient Middle East and spun themselves into a trance in a ritualistic homage to Allah.

Pittsburghers will get a rare opportunity to see a live performance by the Whirling Dervishes Rumi, who perform Tuesday [October 23rd] at Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland.

They'll perform the traditional sema, a dance inspired by the mystical poetry of Rumi, a 13th-century Sufi poet who lived and taught in modern-day Turkey.

The society was founded in 1990 under the Ministry of Culture in Turkey for the purpose of performing, exploring and introducing Turkish Sufi Music.

The concert is sponsored by the Pittsburgh Dialogue Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promote intercultural and interfaith dialogue and to encourage cultural exchange through social, art and educational events.

Tickets to the 8 p.m. show are $65.
Details: 412-394-3353 or www.proartstickets.org.

Sufismo - an Italian quarterly

Sufi News review - October 2007

The Italian branch of the Sufi Halveti Jerrahi Brotherhood has published its second issue, totally devoted to the great master Jalâl âlDin Rûmi.

Rich in articles and beautifully illustrated, this quarterly is a feast for the darvish.

Italian cultural figures collaborated on the collection and translation of the articles which include Mistic poetry by Laleh Bakhtiar; Letter of greetings by Tahir Akyurek (Mayor of Konya); Rumi, the universal master by Halil Cin (Dean of Konya State University) and many others.

The issue includes illustrations by Prof. Gabriele Mandel Khan and Antonella Procopio's paintings.

We highly recommend it to every Italian-speaking reader.

Sufismo - Rivista trimestrale di cultura e spiritualità
Anno 1 n° 2 - settembre 2007 - Euro 6,00

Inquiries at http://www.rivistasufismo.it/

December celebrations to crown Year of Mevlana

Today's Taman - Istanbul, Turkey
Wednesday, October 17, 2007

The growing interest in Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi, the Sufi saint who advocated tolerance, reason and access to knowledge through love, continues to bring thousands together.

More than 80,000 people will attend the Remembrance of Mevlana Program on Dec.1-17, where for the first time 33 sema (whirling ceremonies) will take place.

Yaşar Sarıcan, acting director of the Konya City Culture and Tourism Directorship, speaking with the Anatolia news agency, said: “So many programs were organized as part of year-round festivities for 2007 Year of Mevlana, declared by UNESCO.

The most attractive of these was the program arranged on Sept. 10 for the 800th anniversary of the birth of Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi at the Konya City Stadium. It was the greatest organized celebration ever held for Mevlana.”

He highlighted that they have also been working to hold another event marking the 734th anniversary of Mevlana’s death, which is considered in Sufism to be his reunion with God.

Sarıcan added: “As this year was declared the year of Mevlana, activities planned for this year have been of more importance. During the preparation process, we sent many pamphlets to various destinations abroad written in 17 different languages; Spanish, German, Arabic, Chinese, Persian, Italian and Urdu to name a few.

Turkish society has also been informed via many advertisements. All of this has yielded good results. More than 80,000 people will attend the sema ceremonies this year.”

Sarıcan said that the Remembrance of Mevlana Activities was first organized on Dec. 1-17 last year, where 23 sema were performed and almost 60,000 people were in attendance.

“Last year sema took place only on the weekends. However, this year shows will be performed every day between Dec. 1 and 17. Only the Dec. 17 sema will be take place in the evening, because Dec. 17 is Şeb-i Arus (the day of reunion with God).

We have been accepting reservations since January 2007. The number of reservations has surpassed 100,000, so we will have to reject thousands.”

He added: “Although the Mevlana Culture Center has a 2,500-person capacity, the demand has surpassed 6,000 for Şeb-i Arus. This intensive interest is a joyful event for our country’s tourism.”

Keeping the Sufi faith

By Firoz Bakht Ahmed - DNA Daily News and Analysis - Mumbai, India
Tuesday, October 16, 2007

No adequate history of Islam can be written until the activity and influence of the Sufi saints, studied with scholarly integrity, is recorded. Hazrat Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti Rehmatullah Alaih is the most revered Sufi saint on the globe.

His khanqah has long been a place of pilgrimage for millions of people of all castes and creeds. In his day, teeming crowds flocked to him to find spiritual solace. A calm atmosphere pervaded his dwelling, and the tormented found the refreshing breeze of a world altogether different.

He inspired whoever came in contact with him. It is a great tragedy that even this shrine hasn’t been spared by terrorists.

Sufism or tasawwuf (as the mystic consciousness is known in Persian), advocates peaceful coexistence of all faiths and has been variously defined. Some call it the purification of thought, while others take it to be a way to accept truth by renouncing everything other than God.

But the ambition and effort to aim at the communion of the self with the eternal reality remains common in all its definitions.

It is quite difficult to pinpoint the exact historical background of Sufism, but sufficeth to say — in spite of the protestations of the Orientalists to the contrary — that in the lives of Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) and his companions, there was clear evidence of Sufism and many believe that he started the tradition.

Sufism, one of the most important cultural links between Iran and India and the true form of Islam, is a synthesis of Islam, Vedanta and Buddhist thought and our great Sufis and saints have created unity out of diversity through pantheism.

For the first three centuries after its rise in Islam, Sufism was practised individually or in small groups. It had no congregational features. In India, the very existence of Sufis was a revolt against unequal distribution of wealth and unjust actions of tyrants.

The true essence of Sufism can be found in the words of the Sufi woman saint Rabiah-al-Adawiyah from Basra in Iraq:

“O my Lord, if I worship Thee from fear of hell, burn me in hell
and if I worship Thee in hope of Paradise, exclude me thence,
But if I worship Thee for Thine own sake,
then withhold not from me Thine eternal beauty!”

The first great Sufi to visit India was Sheikh Ali-bin-Usmani, popularly known as Data Ganj Bakhsh who died in 1081 AD. It was after him that the Chishtiya chain of Sufis began, with Hazrat Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti of Ajmer.

It is said of him that he fasted through the day and kept vigil at night all his life and his daily meal at the iftar (breaking of fast) did not exceed 1.5 tolas. He was liberal like the ocean, kind like the sun and humble like a river.

He showed opulence in poverty, satisfaction in hunger, joy in sorrow and loved his enemies — all characteristics he believed were of paramount importance to be a Sufi.

At his shrine, the flowers come from the Hindu flower dealers of Pushkar and most of the chadars to be placed at the shrine are made by non-Muslim artisans. Besides, care is taken by the authorities that the food prepared for the pilgrims is vegetarian, as many Hindus also visit.

Phillip K. Hitti in his Islam: A Way of Life makes a special mention of the Sufi thought in India and considers the country most gifted in all walks of spiritual life, be it Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Jainism or Buddhism.

Phillip writes that Sufi mysticism came to India in the 12th century. His research showed that most of the concepts of Sufism had already been enunciated in the Upanishads. Sufism also follows the concept of Atma and Paramatma.

The early Sufis were ascetics who openly denounced the display of pomp and pursuit of pleasure of the feudal aristocracy of the Khiljis and Tughlaqs. They never bothered about the decrees of the Sultans of the day.

With their humility, selfless devotion and identification with the poor and, much more so, with their stress on the brotherhood of man, the oneness of God and the all pervading love of God, they brought more to the fold of Islam than the sultans.

Urdu poet Salim Siddiqui’s words make it clear:

“Un mominon se mera kufr-e-ishq achha,
Jin mominon ne apney imaan bech daley!”

(I am far better than those hypocrite preachers who have sold their souls for material gains).

[From the column "Opinion"]

The writer is a commentator on social issues

Terrorists don’t have a religion

By Antara Dev Sen - Sify News - Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Tuesday, October 16, 2007

The celebrations for Navaratri and Eid were on. This was the festive season, a time for dressing up and celebrating life, a time for fasting and feasting for both Hindus and Muslims.

But terrorists excel in destroying the festive spirit. On October 14, the evening of Eid and a Sunday, a bomb killed seven and injured 32 in a Ludhiana film theatre.

Just a couple of days earlier, on October 8, a bomb had ripped through Ajmer Sharif, the dargah of Sufi saint Moinuddin Chisti, just as tired and hungry devotees had sat down for their iftaar, to break their ramzaan fast. Three died and about 30 were injured, many of them maimed for life.

The spirit of Eid and Navaratri was broken. And for the first time in almost 800 years, the drums that had hailed the festive Eid moon at the historic Sufi shrine remained silent.

Terrorism is not new for us in India. We are used to hidden bombs, lobbed grenades, ambushes, kidnappings, even direct attacks by gunmen.

We don’t travel in buses without checking under the seat, we raise a hue and cry if we see a bag without a clear and present owner at railway stations, we submit to meticulous security measures and checks at airports, culminating in the clamour to identify our checked-in baggage right before boarding the plane.

We routinely walk through metal detectors in shopping centres, offices, movie halls, theatres, weddings and even book releases. We are used to being frisked at every step.

Yes, we are used to terrorism and senseless killing. We have faced the terrorism of Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus, Maoists and even tribal warriors. But we haven’t yet got used to the idea of murder during worship.

So when bombs rip through a mosque or a temple, we are unnerved. In real terms, bombing devotees praying at a temple or mosque is not that different from killing innocents by planting a bomb in any crowded place. But it has a psychological edge – the violation of sacred space.

It is not just targeting faceless, nameless masses in a train compartment or marketplace, it is targeting a community, a religious belief, it is attacking our gods. Or it seems that way.

Which is why we are so eager to jump to conclusions about the attackers. If it’s a mosque that has been attacked, it must be a Hindu terrorist. If it’s a temple, it must be a Muslim terrorist. But in our incredibly complex matrix of fanaticism and hate spanning across South Asia, the obvious is not always true.

We must guard against being manipulated. All too often we are whipped into a frenzy by vested interests and pounce upon each other in murderous assaults. Playing right into the hands of those depraved individuals who launch these despicable attacks.

Terrorists don’t have a religion. They just try to appropriate one. Look around you. On October 12, the day after the Ajmer Sharif blast and the holy Friday before Eid, a bomb exploded near a mosque in Helmand, Afghanistan. At least two people were killed and several injured.

Also last week, gunmen opened fire in a mosque near Kabul, killing and wounding several. Muslim terrorists – mostly Al-Qaeda and the Taliban – regularly attack mosques in Afghanistan, killing devotees at prayer.

And the bloodshed in Pakistan’s Lal Masjid in July, including the suicide bombing, was also perpetrated by Muslims on Muslims.

But we cannot call these killers true believers of any faith. Because the religious – whatever their faith – cannot plot to kill devotees at prayer. And most of the attacks on our temples and mosques are planned for maximum damage, aiming at the most crowded congregations. Take a look at the recent attacks on religious places.

All these bombings happened around the time of the main prayers on a particularly holy day. Ajmer Sharif was attacked during iftaar, when hundreds had gathered to break their fast.

The attack on Hyderabad’s Mecca Mosque in May this year was launched during the special Friday prayers, leaving 16 devotees dead and scores wounded.

Last year’s serial bombing in Malegaon, Maharashtra, included a blast during the Friday prayers in the local mosque and graveyard during the special shab-e-barat service for the dead. The three bombs killed 38 and injured more than 100.

The bomb blasts in Delhi’s Jama Masjid last year also took place at the time of the Friday prayers, injuring several.

(...)

Besides, terrorist attacks especially on Ajmer Sharif cannot destroy the all-enveloping love that the dargah signifies. As the shrine of Sufi Saint Moinuddin Chisti – originally built by Humayun and developed in stages by Akbar, Jehangir and Shahjahan – it blesses not just Muslims, but anyone who prays there.

We have nurtured Chisti’s faith in the unity of humanity – cutting across religion, gender, nationality and caste – for eight centuries. It has helped make India this vibrant land of pluralism and diversity, which cannot be fractured by faithless terrorists.

Even then, in this season of goodwill and worship, let us call upon whatever we hold sacred, and pray for peace.

Antara Dev Sen is the editor of The Little Magazine, an independent publication devoted to essays, fiction and criticism on themes that are ignored by the mainstream media. Sen also writes for the Open Democracy Movement and is an advisor for Words Without Borders [http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/]. She can be contacted at sen@littlemag.com

A natural inclination towards God

Tehran Times - Tehran, Iran
Monday, October 15, 2007

Iran’s cultural attaché’s office in Germany held a seminar on the philosophy of Persian mystic and poet Molana Jalal ad-Din Rumi on October 11 on the sidelines of the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Iran’s ambassador Homayun Hemmati made a speech at the event in which he described how Rumi believed that the human soul has a natural inclination towards God and that this tendency is a source of comfort to mankind.

He said that Rumi likens humanity to a reed which has been separated from its reedbed, a symbol used by Rumi to convey man’s feeling of loss of proximity to God.

Head of Iran’s Institute of Philosophy Gholam Reza Avani also made a speech concerning Rumi’s worldview. He went on to talk about philosophers in general, categorizing them according to their ideologies concerning the essence of mankind.

Iranian scholar Shahram Pazuki reviewed a passage from Rumi’s Masnavi and described Rumi’s spiritual view of war and peace with reference to this great opus.

Art in Tehran

Tehran Times - Tehran, Iran
Tuesday, October 16, 2007

An exhibition of Persian miniatures by Ardeshir Takestani is to open on October 26 at hall number one of the Honar Cultural Center in Tehran.

The central theme of the works is the poetry of Molana Jalal ad-Din Rumi.

The exhibit will run until November 2 at the center which is located on Arasbaran St., Seyyed Khandan neighborhood.

The venue’s number two hall is also hosting a week-long exhibition of paintings by Zohreh Qaderi opening on October 26.

"Rumi, the Dance of Love" in theaters on Dec. 21

By Ali Pektas - Today's Zaman - Istanbul, Turkey
Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Every event imaginable, from Sufi whirling shows and international symposia to celebration ceremonies and "Mesnevi" readings regarding 13th century Sufi saint Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi has been held since UNESCO pronounced 2007 the Year of Mevlana.

Yet the lack of a successful movie depicting the life and teachings of the saint has been a real disappointment for most of his followers, however soon audiences will be able to watch a comprehensive documentary about Mevlana.

The new documentary, titled "Rumi, the Dance of Love," directed by young filmmaker Kürşat Kızbaz, will hit movie theaters on Dec. 21.

International audiences will hear world stars lending their voices to the English and French-language dubbing of the documentary. The film's English version will feature the voice of famous Hollywood actor Morgan Freeman, whereas revered French actor Gérard Depardieu will do the voice-overs for the French version.

As for the Turkish version, stars of stage and screen Müşfik and Yıldız Kenter, Cüneyt Türel, Meltem Cumbul and Özcan Deniz are in the voice cast.

Having been filmed in six different countries, the movie features interviews with around 40 experts on Mevlana and Sufism.

The documentary got under way in 2005, although its roots date back to 2002 -- the year director Kızbaz recorded a 30-minute documentary titled "Rumi Ahlaf," screened at over 200 international festivals along with international channels like Discovery and the recipient of six awards.

Another documentary he shot in 2005, the "Çanakkale Epic," was screened in more than 60 countries, bringing experience and courage to the director. Kızbaz then set out to produce a comprehensive documentary on Mevlana.

The film, which is currently undergoing editing, was shot in six different countries, making it the first documentary of its kind that has been produced in such a vast area. The most prominent Sufism experts in the world were interviewed for "Rumi, the Dance of Love."

The film also features footage depicting sema (whirling dervishes) shows organized outside of Turkey by the Culture and Tourism Ministry.

The documentary's producers have chosen Freeman and Depardieu in a bid to attract more interest from the international audience. Spanish dubbing is also being considered although the question of who would narrate the documentary is yet to be decided.

Director Kızbaz says the film has already received invitations from international film festivals during its production period, adding that it might also be aired on international channels like the Discovery Channel.

The 54-minute documentary consists of three episodes, with the first focusing on Mevlana's life, recounting his move from Balkh (in present-day Afghanistan) to Konya in Turkey with his family and the hardships of the 13th century, through animation. Also touching on the birth of the Mevlevi order, the film links Mevlana's time to the current day.

The second episode focuses on how Mevlana influenced distinctive geographies, featuring the views of about 40 scholars and experts specializing in the teachings of Mevlana. Also in this section we learn how prominent people such as Goethe, Rembrandt, Spinoza and Hegel were influenced by Mevlana through samples from their masterpieces.

"You can learn about the life of a person by reading books about him. However in this film we will endeavor to tell how this great person's ideas influenced millions," said the director.

Kızbaz, who made significant observations while filming the documentary, says he found out that Mevlana is largely known as a poet in the US, just like Shakespeare, while in the East he is revered for his mystical side.

"…Europe knows him for his philosophical side. People perceive Mevlana from their own perspectives. When you pass beyond the Kapıkule border gate [the frontier between Bulgaria and Turkey] you see that people recognize you for a few aspects; one and the most widely known among them is Mevlana," said Kızbaz.

[Photo: Kürşat Kızbaz (top), Morgan Freeman (center), Gérard Depardieu (bottom)]

Ustad's Birthday Cake

By Ravinder Singh Robin - Daily India - Jacksonville, FL, U.S.A.
Sunday, October 14, 2007

Hundreds of fans of late legendry Sufi singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan celebrated the Pakistani singer's birthday amidst a big gathering in Punjab's Moga District.

On Saturday, Nusrat's fans cut a birthday cake and sang his Sufi numbers as a gesture to pay their heartfelt tributes to the erstwhile 'King of Sufi Music'.

Congregating in various groups, the fans dedicated the day remembering the maestro singer by singing his famous Qawwalis. Sandeep Singh, one of Fateh Ali Khan's fans, said that it took him a long time to understand the maestro's message that he gave in his rendition.

"In 1995, I had a collection of over 50 cassettes of the maestro and shopkeepers used to come to me for cassettes. I thought that there must be something special about him. Then onwards, I started collecting his compositions, and till date, I have over 300 cassettes. I have his complete collection of over 400 versions. I invested nearly one-and-a-half lakh rupees [USD 3,816.-] for this collection," said Sandeep Singh.

The fans said the late Sufi singer had put his soul in all of his compositions. Despite the legendary singer being no more alive to please his millions of fans, lovers of classical and devotional music still remember him.

Another fan recalled that even after his death, Fateh Ali Khan continues to be an inspiration for the young generation with his soulful voice very much in contrast to the cacophonic music of the present days.

"The new generation is going far from the Sufi singing. This singing had a lot of peace and soul. The music today is not of much use and decreased to a great extent, in terms of quality and content. He remains an inspiration for all of us," said Baljinder Singh, another fan.

Born in Faisalabad, Pakistan on October 13, 1948 to Ustad Fateh Ali Khan, a distinguished musicologist, vocalist, instrumentalist, and Qawwali performer, Nusart Fateh Ali Khan showed an aptitude and interest in Qawwali.

Initially, his family members did not want him to take up the music profession and wanted him to become a doctor. But his keenness for music made his family relent.

[Links for more, for listening and lyrics: http://nusrat.info/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nusrat_Fateh_Ali_Khan
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/nusratfatehalikhannfakclub/
Picture from: http://tinyurl.com/38zvyk ]

'Don't be hasty in blaming Muslim groups for Ajmer blast'

The Hindu - Chennai, India
Sunday, October 14, 2007

New York (PTI): The Indian Muslim Council-USA has condemned the Ajmer Dargah bomb blast, but cautioned authorities against drawing "hasty conclusions" in blaming any particular group for the attack.

"Paradoxically, the law enforcement authorities that were clueless till these blasts happened didn't take much time after the blasts to pinpoint the blame on specific Muslim outfits in an attempt to hide their intelligence failure," the group's President Rasheed Ahmed said.

Intelligence sources had said that Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islami outfit of Bangladesh was suspected to be behind the blast at the sufi shrine of Khwaja Mohiuddin Chisti.
Pilgrims of Bangladeshi origin were also questioned by security agencies.

"We hope that the police will do a full and honest investigation and nail down the actual culprits behind this heinous crime, rather than scapegoat poor and innocent civilians and extract fake confessions," said Ahmed.

IMC-USA also urged the National Human Rights Commission to intervene immediately in the investigations to ensure that due process of the law is followed and the true culprits are brought to book.

The NRIs for Secular and Harmonious India also condemned the bomb blast at the "holiest interfaith shrine".

All Indian communities putting up a united fight is the only answer to terrorism, its spokesperson Najma Sultana said.

"We are hopeful the government will hunt down the goons and punish them," she said.

It will be a real Id

By Mir Ehsan - The Indian Express - New Delhi, India
Saturday, October 13, 2007

For thousands of residents of Chrar-e-Sharief and lakhs of devotees of Sheikh-ul-Alam Sheikh Noor-ud-din Noorani, this will be an Id with a difference.

The people here will get an opportunity to offer Id prayers at the grand mosque adjacent to the 600-year-old shrine after a gap of 12 long years, when the Sufi shrine and its adjacent old Khanqah-i-Faiz was razed in a long gunbattle between the militants and the Army.

The damage to the shrine left thousands of devotees heartbroken.

“For us it will be a real Id. After 12 years thousands of people will again get together to offer Id prayer in the grand mosque — Khanqah-i-Faiz,” said Mirwaiz Molvi Amir-uddin who will lead the prayers either on Saturday or Sunday.

The mosque is not completely ready, “But keeping in mind the sentiment of the people, the local Auqaf has decided to open the Khanqah on the Id day,” the Mirwaiz said.

The Auqaf Committee had already finalised the arrangement and created sufficient space to accommodate thousands of devotees.

“The first floor of the Khanqah and the adjacent garden had already been spruced. We expect some 50,000 people to come and offer Id prayers here,” he added.

The locals are eagerly waiting for the moment. “This Id, the people will also celebrate the opening of the shrine,” said Mohammad Naseem, a government employee, who lives close to the shrine.

“This is the Khanqah, where our Sufi saint prayed for years,” Naseem said.

[Picture from http://www.flickr.com/photos/gps1/1524766987/]

Is the prayer of the drunken valid?

By Syed Rezaul Karim - The Daily Star - Dhaka, Bangladesh
Friday, October 12, 2007

Hazrat Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi (b 1207), hailed as "the greatest mystic poet of the world" by the German poet philosopher Wolfgang Von Goethe for his Mathnawi and Divan-e-Kabir, was surprisingly depreciative of writing poetry.

He made a remark in his Discourses (Fihi-Mafihi) that he spouts verses for entertaining his friends, "as if someone was to put his hand into tripe to wash it because his guests want to eat tripe.

Hence it has become necessary for me to recite poems since others have wished for this."

But the Mathnawi, his magnum opus, comes up with this remarkable preface: "This is the book of the Mathnawi, which is the roots of the roots of the (Islamic) religion in respect of its unveiling the mysteries of attainment (of the truth) and of certainty; and which is the greatest science of God and the clearest (religious) way of God and the most manifest evidence of God" (translation -- Nicholson).

The late Harvard Professor of Indo-Muslim Culture, Anne Marie Schimmel remarked, "Mawlana's poetry and prose are an attempt to circumambulate Him whose work is so evident in the universe and who has promised mankind that He will hear his prayers (Sura 60/42 Koran)."

Could it be otherwise? Did not the venerable Mawlana declare in unequivocal terms, "I am the servant of the Koran as long as I have life. I am the dust on the path of Mohammad The Chosen One."

For Rumi, God is the living, self-subsisting, the supporter of all, as revealed in the Koranic verse, Ayatul Kursi.

Is it possible to know God? There is a divine Hadith, God, the Almighty says: "I was a hidden Treasure and I loved that I be known, so I created the creation so that I may be known."

Rumi says: "Whatever notion you have of God, He must be something like that because He is the Creator of all of your notions." God's creatures are not like Him in any way yet they cannot be other than Him either, says Rumi.

Mawlana also explains that one can only know a thing through its opposite, and since it is unthinkable in terms of "Towhid" -- "Unity of Being" -- for God to have an opposite in substance, He remains unknowable.

It is possible to acknowledge God through His manifestations -- the created world. "The believer manifests the attributes of faith and positive testimony to God's existence, the unbeliever also manifests God by his denial of God's existence; which provides the opposite against which faith becomes knowable" (Introduction to Fihi-Ma-Fihi-by Thackston).

How to comprehend God? God manifests Himself in hundreds of ways, but no two are the same. Mawlana quotes the Koranic verse Ar Rahman: "Everyday in (new) splendour doth He shine" (Translated by Yusuf Ali).

In time of joy there is one manifestation, in time of sorrow another, in time of fear another, and in time of hope another. As God's acts, and the manifestation of His acts, are varied, so are the manifestations of his essence. He further says: "You too, who are God's power, appear in a thousand different ways every moment and never remain fixed in one fashion."

"Reason is that which is ever restless and without peace day and night from thinking and worrying and trying to comprehend God, though God is incomprehensible and beyond our understanding."

Mawlana here imagines "reason" as a "moth" and "beloved" as "candle." A true moth will ever immolate itself and burn in pain in the fire of the candle; therwise it will not be a true moth. The candle, in order to be true to its fire, must burn the moth. So is the dance of the reason circling around the essence of God, the Beloved.

"Before God brought this cosmos into existence by His fiat, undifferentiated souls of the potential mankind slumbered as an idea within God." Rumi tells us why we have been journeying from God to this guest house of this world by using a beautiful pun on the Arabic word "bala" (meaning "yes" in one sense and 'suffering misfortune' in another).

He asked: "Am I not your Lord?" And you responded "Bala" (Yes)! How can one thank Him for that "bala" (Yes)? By "bala" (suffering misfortune)."

The soul that was separated from its source suffers pain for a human being's innate covenant in his conscience as well as in his quest for God after being sent to the world.

Hence, the Mawlana's metaphor of a reed-flute's plaintive note to travel back to its source, The Reed Bed -- which was so beautifully penned by Rumi at the beginning of Mathnawi -- says:Listen to the reed, how it tells a tale complaining of separation saying "ever since I was parted from the reed bed my lament has caused man and woman to moan" (translated by Nicholson).

One has to set out and travel on the path of finding God; he or she may not know the exact destination or station but will be rewarded with the achievement of covering a distance, "whoever labours for the glory of God is never lost, though he shut both his eyes."

Here, the Mawlana quotes the Koranic verse, "whoso doeth a particle of good shall see it."

"You are veiled," says Mawlana, to see how far one has progressed, and at the end you will see this world as a seedbed of hereafter.

Man has the capability for spiritual development as God has breathed His "Spirit" into him, even though he shares animality with beasts and materiality with inorganic things.

He, the Almighty, brought man from non existence into being, then from being into the state of minerality, and from the state of minerality into a state of vegetation, and from the state of vegetation into the state of animality, and from animality into the state of humanity, and from humanity into the state of angelicity -- ad infinitum.

Cries Mawlana Rumi, "At what stage I was less in my development?" "The man," says Rumi, "is the donkey into which angel's feathers were stuck in the hope of his becoming angelic." Man must, therefore, shed his animal nature in order to sharpen and perfect his spiritual awareness.

"One must abandon the ego and be born again to the spirit."

Prayer occupies a special feature in Mawlana's work. There is no way to approach God other than prayer. Koran reveals that God created humans and jins to worship Him. But outward ritualistic prayer is just a "shell."

Its "soul" is, however, unqualifiable and infinite, without beginning and without end. It is a state of total absorption and unconsciousness during which these external forms remain outside.

Mawlana sings in one of his ecstatic ghazals: "My ablution is with weeping/ thus my prayer will be fiery/And I burn the mosque's doorway when my call to prayer strike it/Is the prayer of the drunken, tell me, is this prayer valid?/For he does not know the timing and is not aware of places" (Translated by Anne Marie Schimmel).

[Photo: www.greenspirit.org.uk.]

The highest form of worship

By Praveen Swami - The Hindu - Chennai, India
Friday, October 12, 2007

The war against popular Islam: Islamist groups have made no secret of their loathing for the Ajmer Sharif shrine

New Delhi: The highest form of worship, wrote saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, is “to redress the misery of those in distress, to fulfil the needs of the helpless and to feed the hungry.”

Thursday’s bombing of the saint’s shrine at Ajmer — the third in a series of attacks on Muslim religious institutions after the 2006 bombing of a Sufi shrine in Malegaon and this summer’s strike at the Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad — have been characterised as attempts to provoke a pan-India communal war.

But the bombings also reflect another less-understood project: the war of Islamist neoconservatives against the syncretic traditions and beliefs that characterise popular Islam in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti is, almost without dispute, the most venerated Sufi saint of South Asia. Born in 1141 C.E., Chishti is believed to have studied at the great seminaries of Samarkand and Bukhara before travelling to India.

Ajmer emerged as an important centre of pilgrimage during the sixteenth century, after Emperor Akbar undertook a pilgrimage on foot to the saint’s grave.

Chishti’s order laid stress on seven principles, notably the renunciation of material goods, financial reliance on farming or alms, independence from economic patronage from the established political order, the sharing of wealth, and respect for religious differences.

Chishti’s doctrine on the “highest form of worship” led to the saint often being described as the Garib Nawaz, or emperor of the poor. Several of the most famous Sufi shrines in South Asia – notably that of Fariduddin Ganj-i Shakar at Pakpattan in Pakistan, and that of Nizamuddin Awliya in New Delhi – were born of Chisti’s teachings.

Over the centuries, they have come to command a massive multi-faith following, attracting Muslims, Hindus and Christians alike. For that precise reason, they have long been under attack from religious neoconservatives.

(...)

Despite these attacks, popular Islam in Jammu and Kashmir has held its own – as it is likely to do elsewhere in India, too.

[Picture: The spot where the bomb blast took place in Ajmer dargah. Photo by Rajasthan Patrika]

A message for the end of Ramadan

The Holy See - www.vatican.va
'Id al-Fitr 1428 H. /2007 a.d.

Christians and Muslims: called to promote a culture of peace

[From the Pontificial Council of Interreligious Dialogue, a message for the end of Ramadan]:

Dear Muslim Friends,
1. It gives me special pleasure to send you for the first time friendly and warmest greetings from the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue on the occasion of your joyful feast of ‘Id al-Fitr, with which the month-long fasting and prayer of Ramadan ends.

This month is always an important time for the Muslim community and gives to each individual member a new strength for their personal, family and social existence.

It matters that all of us witness to our religious beliefs with a life increasingly integrated and in conformity with the Creator’s plan, a life concerned with serving our brothers and sisters in ever increasing solidarity and fraternity with members of other religions and all men of good will, in the desire to work together for the common good.

(...)

Read the full message in English by clicking on the title of this article. To read it in other languages, namely Albanian, Arabic, Bangla, Bulgarian, Cebuano, Dutch, English, Farsi, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Kiswahili, Malayalam, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, Tamil, Turkish, Wolof click on the desired language or here: http://www.vatican.va/latest/latest_en.htm]

Joyous show with spinning coconut

By John Lusk - The Guardian - London, U.K.
Friday, October 12, 2007

Sufi group Sidi Goma finish their joyous shows with a display of mind over matter

Nothing quite prepares you for the stunt that rounds off a typical show by Sidi Goma. The 12-piece Sufi group from Gujarat begin their ritualistic performance with a sedate a cappella azan (Muslim call to prayer), followed by hypnotic percussive workouts, with most of them sitting down as they play.

Smouldering incense sends plumes of smoke billowing into the air. Rousing chants charge the atmosphere, and as tempos build and the cross-rhythms start to kick, one by one the drummers rise with ecstatic cries and gestures.

Shoulders swivel and heads roll as they circle the stage in their long white kurta robes with small trance-like moves.

They disappear almost unnoticed, leaving a sole musician twanging on the malunga, a one-stringed musical bow that could almost be a Brazilian berimbau, except that this is a group from India.

Then they slink back onstage daubed with masks of paint, in peacock feather skirts and headdresses that quiver with every step. Now their dances are wilder and far more expressive, as they playfully mimic animals and birds.

When the drumming and singing reach a crescendo, a coconut goes spinning into the air and a dancer leaps forward as it falls, bashing it open on his forehead to send a shower of milk over the stage.

By the time they leave a few minutes later, the stage is a slippery but fragrant mess, littered with shattered husks and rose petals.

It's just one of a wide range of fearsome-looking feats that Sufi Muslims such as the Sidis of Gujarat are expected to do to demonstrate the strength of their faith: "With all the music and song, we feel really powerful, so sometimes we even do a fire-walking dance.

But here that's not possible because it takes a long time to prepare the coals by burning the wood and so on, and also there's the problem of fire alarms," smiles Hamid. "So we only do the coconuts."

"It's basically a way of getting across that idea of mind over matter," observes their tour manager, Andi Langford-Woods. "And with the coconuts, it's a very spectacular way of expressing the way that they can concentrate, better than walking on broken glass or on coals."

Fans of the late great Pakistani qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan will recognise Sidi Goma having a crack at his signature piece, Mustt Mustt, on their one and only album, Black Sufis of Gujarat, which was released in 2005.

But much of the rest of their music points firmly to their roots in Africa, as the Sidis are descended from slaves and traders who arrived in India over centuries, probably from several different areas.

"I'm always trying to find out where, but nobody knows in the whole of my Sidi community," explains Hamid. He enthuses about visiting Africa for the first time in 2003. "It was a really good experience. It felt like all the people there were Sidis. All [the people] in my village look the same as they do!"

Sidi Goma's songs are mostly zikrs (prayers) celebrating their saint, Bava Gor, who is said to have travelled to India some time in or before the 15th century from either Ethiopia, Nubia or somewhere in east Africa, via the Middle East.

Conservative traditions of caste and tribe in India have largely prevented intermarriage, so to this day, the Sidis have recognisably African features, and their music incorporates distinctly African dance moves, call-and-response vocals and polyrhythms, as well as several instruments clearly derived from African models.

"We use some Swahili words in our zikrs and we have a big drum we call mugarman. These days, we make it out of metal for travelling, but we have the original one at our shrine, and it's the same height and design, made out of wood like the ones we saw in Nairobi."

Then there is the malunga - a dead ringer for the Angolan ungu, which became the berimbau in Brazil - and a now-disused lyre similar to Ethiopian instruments which Hamid was amazed to see in the British Museum.

All their music is based on 125 ancient songs passed on entirely by the oral tradition.

Travelling the world may have broadened their horizons, but it hasn't diluted their music, as Hamid insists: "We didn't change anything."

Sidi Goma perform in a double bill with Omar Faruk Tekbilek as part of the Barbican's Ramadan Nights tomorrow. Box office: 020-7638 8891

[Picture from: http://www.sidigoma.com/]

A blast at the Shrine

IT News Network - The Times of India - India
Friday, October 12, 2007

A bomb blast just outside the sanctum sanctorum of India's best known Sufi shrine at Ajmer was triggered just ahead of the Eid-ul-Fitr weekend.

The strike came days after Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil had warned of a possible attack during this year's festive season.

The bomb was hidden inside a tiffin box and placed in the main courtyard called Aasthan-e-Noor , just outside the 750-year-old mausoleum of Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti, the Sufi shrine revered not only by Muslims in South Asia but people of all faiths.

Two persons were killed and 17 others injured when a low-intensity blast took place at the shrine of the 13th century Sufi shrine in Ajmer on Thursday evening.

Police has detained 3-4 people for questioning in its probe into the Ajmer dargah blasts, Times Now reported. According to the channel, police is also working upon the sketches of the suspects.

Muslim scholars reach out to Pope

BBC News - London, U.K.
Thursday, October 11, 2007

More than 130 Muslim scholars have written to Pope Benedict XVI and other Christian leaders urging greater understanding between the two faiths.

The letter says that world peace could depend on improved relations between Muslims and Christians.

It identifies the principles of accepting only one god and living in peace with one's neighbours as common ground between the two religions.

The letter coincides with the Eid al-Fitr celebrations to mark the end of Ramadan.

(...)

One of the signatories, Dr. Aref Ali Nayed, a senior adviser at the Cambridge Inter-faith Programme at Cambridge University, told the BBC that the document should be seen as a landmark.

"There are Sunnis, Shias, Ibadis, Ismailian and Jaafari schools, so it's a consensus," he said.

Professor David Ford, director of the programme, said the letter was unprecedented.

"If sufficient people and groups heed this statement and act on it then the atmosphere will be changed into one in which violent extremists cannot flourish," he said in a statement.

The letter was signed by prominent Muslim leaders, politicians and academics, including the Grand Muftis of Bosnia and Hercegovina, Russia, Croatia, Kosovo and Syria, the Secretary-General of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the former Grand Mufti of Egypt and the founder of the Ulema Organisation in Iraq.

To read the Letter:
Open letter to Pope Benedict XVI [227KB]

[picture: Lake Mapourika, New Zealand. Photo from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace]

To go to the official site, read more, read the letter in English or in its translations (Arabic, French and Italian), and to endorse the letter, click here: http://www.acommonword.com/

A taste of this state

By T. Ballard Lesemann - Charleston City Paper - Charleston, SC, U.S.A.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Rumi: Festival of the Soul Benefit Concert
Old-Fashioned Love Songs: Coleman Barks and company celebrate the poetry of 13th century mystic Jelaluddin Rumi

"All of Rumi's poems were meant to be a part of his community," says author, teacher, and orator Coleman Barks, one of several featured performers at this weekend's Rumi: Festival of the Soul event at the Sottile Theatre.

"The work going on there was the work of opening the heart, whatever that means. His poems and music are meant to do that ... sort of like country music, you know? It's all love poetry. We're going to speak it and tell the stories of it and tell the background of it."

It's a big weekend for Charleston's Sophia Institute as they present a special reading and performance at the Sottile on Saturday. Musicians David Whetstone (sitar) and Marcus Wise (tablas) accompany Barks as part of the Saturday event from 7-9 p.m. The trio have been performing Rumi's works on stage together for decades.

"I've tried it both ways, with and without music," says Barks. "After you've been reading things with music — with the feeling of how the music takes you deeper into the heart — when you try it without it, something different happens. It's almost a bare, sort of naked vulnerability."

(...)

Born and raised in Chattanooga, Tenn., Barks studied poetry and literature at the University of North Carolina and the University of California at Berkeley. He's taught poetry and creative writing at the University of Georgia in Athens for over 30 years. He is the author of numerous Rumi translations.

His work with Rumi was the subject of an hour-long segment in Bill Moyers's Language of Life series on PBS, and he is a featured poet and translator in Bill Moyers's poetry special, Fooling with Words.

The author first felt a genuine connection to Rumi as a student in the 1970s through guidance of the late Sufi teacher Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, from the island of Sri Lanka. Muhaiyaddeen belonged to the Qadri order of Sufism. He came to the United States in 1971 and established The Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship of North America in Philadelphia.

"A feeling of being in the region of the poetry that felt very free, with something new and familiar at the same time," he remembers. "It was something I wanted to explore.

As I began doing this work, I met a Sufi teacher. He told me I should do this work. That's the only credential I have of being able to work on the great poet of the Islamic world. It's just a huge presumption for a Chattanooga Presbyterian to do this [laughs]. It's almost ridiculous."

While he jokes about his unorthodox craft, Barks' body of work is seriously impressive. He's spent decades translating and recasting the poems of Rumi in fluid American English. His translations have sold more than a quarter of a million copies. He admits the toughest challenge of translating the words, tone, and spirituality of Rumi's poems (originally written in Farsi) involves plenty of guess work.

"The spiritual information is a challenge," he says. "Whatever it means to be enlightened — that is a state of consciousness, and I'm not in it. Rumi and Shams of Tabriz are in it. Jesus is in it, and Buddha is in it.

The discrepancy of not being in the state of what these poems come out of is the ... embarrassing thing about working on this. I'm trying to speak with words about a state of awareness that I'm not in. The possibility for distortion is there.

Of course, we all have a taste of this state, but unless you're living within, you don't produce the poems or the translations of the poems. We have to fail and produce translations that don't quite bring it all over into English and then try it again."

Rumi: Festival of the Soul Benefit Concert w/Coleman Barks, Marcus Wise, David Whetstone Sat. Oct. 13 7 p.m. $100 (orchestra seating, includes Persian soiree), $45 (reserved seating), $30 (general admission) Sottile Theatre 44 George St. (843) 953-5623 www.thesophiainstitute.org

Till time without end

PT Wire Services - Pakistan Times - Islamabad, Pakistan
Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Renowned spiritualist, religious scholar and author A’ala Hazrat Sufi Sikandar Ghani Sheikh died in Islamabad on Friday. He was 87.

He was laid to rest in main graveyard of Islamabad – with thousands of his followers attending the funeral with each eye – filled with tears.

The venerated and much-respected religious scholar leaves behind widow and two daughters – with thousands of devotees and disciples – not only in Pakistan but also in several countries around the world.

Born in Lahore in 1920, the illustrious Sufi Sahib attained his early education in Central Model School, where after he sought higher education as well as religious tutoring from renowned spiritualists of that time.

The ancestors of Sufi Sahib who belonged to Sahiwal in southern Punjab, later shifted to Pak Patan as they were great admirers of the great saint of all times, Hazrat Baba Farid-ud-Din Ganj Shakar (RA).

Eventually, they made Lahore as their abode by initiating modest business. At the end of his academics, Sufi Sikandar Ghani Sheikh joined government service at Simla in India.

Soon after the establishment of Pakistan, he left the job and came to Lahore with a fresh mission – to disseminate the message of Islam with focus on the teachings of the Holy Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) – with sincerest devotion, dedication by his pen and faithful perceptions.

As a sincerest follower of the great saint Hazrat Bari Imam (RA), he shifted his residence from Lahore to Rawalpindi – and eventually to Islamabad where not only that he made the service of humanity as his mission, the late Sufi Sahib – also inked booklets in thousands.

As a true and sincerest admirer of the great illustrious religious personalities of the sub-continent, he wrote numerous articles in the daily newspapers of Pakistan – especially at the time of the Urs of the distinguished saints.

Besides serving his aficionados – he also paid regular visits to the shrine of Hazrat Bari Imam (RA) for several years and also got renovation with silver sheets at the doors and magnificent marble work at the entrance of the shrine of the globally acclaimed saint of all times.

Sufi Sikandar Ghani Sheikh was also a true follower of Sultan al-Hind Hazrat Khawaja Moeen-ud-Din (RA) [popularly known as Khawaja Ghareeb Nawaz RA], Hazrat Data Ganj Bakhsh (RA), Hazrat Baba Fard-ud-Din Ganj Shakar (RA), Hazrat Khawaja Nizam-ud-Din Aoulia Mehboob (RA), Hazrat Qutb-ud-Din Bakhtiar Kaki (RA) and other saints of the sub-continent.

He used to visit all the shrines – including that of his religious educator Hazrat Sufi Maqbool (RA) popularly known as Sufi Sahib Mason Road Walay – whose shrine was got rebuilt and renovated by Sufi Sikandar Ghani Sheikh Sahib – at Graveyard Miani Sahib in Lahore, a few years ago.

Sufi Sikandar Ghani Sheikh was an exceptional kind, caring and considerate personality – who shall be remembered by his followers till time without end.

Chairman of TIMES Group of Publications and Pakistan’s first ISSN-certified independent daily E-Newspaper, ‘Pakistan Times’, Editor, Mumtaz Hamid Rao, who has written biography of A’ala Hazrat Sufi Sikandar Ghani Sheikh Sahib titled *‘Ik Mard-e-Haq, Ik Mard-e-Momin’ * said:

‘I have had a lot of blessed opportunities of having meetings with A’ala Hazrat Sufi Sikandar Ghani Sheikh Sahib and every time, every word, said by him came to me as a great source of inspiration and strength.’

'May Allah Almighty bless the departed soul eternal peace in Heavens and give courage to his followers and the bereaved family to bear this colossal loss with optimal fortitude. Ameen'.

"Mevlana and Mevlevilik"

Dogan News Agency - Turkish Daily News - London, U.K.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007

London played host to a Rumi event within the framework of what has been declared by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as the ''2007 Year of Mevlana.''

On the night of the opening ceremony, Oct. 6, there was a video screening on Turkey.

Following a brief keynote speech by Professor Dr. Mahmud Erol Kılıç, whirling dervishes put on a performance.

An exhibition about Rumi was launched and photos from an exhibition in Istanbul's Hagia Sophia, which were displayed from July to August, were put on display for visitors.

The exhibition, "Mevlana and Mevlevilik," will visit other cities as well.

The Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism supported the event. Turkey's Ambassador to London Yiğit Alpogan and his wife, Undersecretary Atılay Ersan from the Embassy and Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus' Representative to London Dilek Yavuz Yanık were among the guests.

The events will later head to Spain, Chile, Singapore, Indonesia, Switzerland, Germany and Syria.

Sufis in Tunis

By Mona Aoun - Magharebia - Tunis, Tunisia
Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Ramadan in Tunis is marked by festivals focusing on Sufi and other religious music.

In the ancient city, processions called kharja are organised by a group of different Sufi denominations who walk out of a holy man's mosque and make a slow tour through the city, chanting religious praises and azkar.

Ramadan festivals that feature artistic shows also dedicate a certain space to Sufi music. The Ministry of Culture supports the genre, and urges festival planners to include it in their activities.

"The Spiritual Music Festival is a cultural demonstration in essence and is directed towards a certain class who is fond of this type of music," said festival director Lotfi Mraihi, who expressed his satisfaction with the support the festival receives, and the value it adds to the musical scene in Tunisia.

Sufi music attracts all kinds of Tunisians, regardless of whether they are young and unfamiliar with the style or the artists inspired by it.

"I take advantage of the month of Ramadan to get to know a significant aspect of our civilisation and culture. Each time I discover new things," said student Na'imah Hassan.

In Tunis, three festivals specialise in Sufi music and are devoted to three themes: religious recitation, instrumental music and spiritual music.

Asked about the significance of such music in spreading Islamic thought that is contrary to radical Islam, Mraihi said, "This music, whether Sufi, religious or spiritual, can represent a cheerful Islam that encompasses listening and tolerance but not one of strict worship."

"In Tunis, this type of music is found in several festivals, but the only one that includes a dedicated programme is the Spiritual Music Festival," he said.

Hatem Ferchichi, a prominent chanter in Tunis, considers Ramadan a legacy month and spiritual in essence. As such, he claims, more attention should be given to Sufi music and approaches (Tariqa), particularly the 'Salamist' approach. "Salamism, well-known in Tunisia, is a Sufi approach that is deeply founded in our Arab-Islamic roots," he said.

Salamism was founded by Libya's Abd Salam Asmar. Chanters of the tradition recite songs and poems from the "Ship of Oceans" [Safinat al-Buhur] volume, which contains all the teachings and stories of Sufi Abd Salam Asmar.

There are a number of Sufi schools in Tunisia, such as Kadrism, Salamism and Jilanism- each is related to the region where it originated.

"Sufi schools are more related to locality than to Sufi thought. So, practices differ between the countryside and cities," said Mraihi.

Tunisian musician Fathi Zaghda says in his study, entitled "Recitation in the Islamic Approach: a Musical Reading", that Sufi approaches represent a significant part of the Tunisian musical heritage.

He called the body of Sufi work "earnest work" as opposed to "comical work", which denotes worldly, secular music or singing.

Sufi chanting in Tunis witnessed a remarkable boom in the fifteenth century, a time when Sufi movements gained support.

According to experts, the Shazli approach is considered the primary reference for Sufis in Tunis. It is attributed to Abi el Hassan Chedli, who played a major role in establishing the Sufi tradition in Tunisia.

He found Shams in himself, radiant like the moon

By Waliya Inayat Perkins - TAM The American Muslim - Bridgeton, MO, U.S.A.
Monday, October 8, 2007

Annually on December 17th the Whirling Dervishes celebrate the “Wedding Night” of the great mystic poet Mevlana Jalaluddin Muhammad Rumi’s passing from the circle of time—through their legendary whirling prayer-dance, one of the world’s most beautiful and stirring sacred rituals.

This year Southern Californians have a rare opportunity to enter this circle of love as the Mevlevi Order of America presents the prayer-dance (sema) of Rumi at UCLA’s Royce Hall.

To the accompaniment of stately yet impassioned Turkish classical music (with verses sung in Farsi, Arabic, and Turkish), the dervish dancers turn in prayerful surrender, to become vessels for bringing divine blessings to earth.

There is truly no way to convey in words the moving and spiritually potent ceremony.

The whirling prayer-dance will be led by Postneshin Jelaleddin Loras, who comes from Konya where Rumi lived, and who has followed in the footsteps of his visionary father, Hz. Haji Suleyman Hayati Dede, by teaching both men and women the traditional practices of the Mevlevi Sufis.

Joining MOA musicians are master Turkish musicians Necati Celik (oud and middle eastern lute), Timucin Cevikoglu (vocalist), and Celaleddin Biçer (ney). Celaleddin tours internationally as a Turkish musician, performing in the United States, Bulgaria, Malta, Italy, Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

He was educated at the University of Ankara in Sinology, and speaks English, Flemish, French, and Chinese, in addition to his native Turkish. Since 1990 he has performed with the Hacettepe University Chorus as a Saz artisan, and in 1991 he joined Ankara Radio as a Saz & Ney musician.

In addition to his work at Ankara Radio, he teaches nazariiyat, solfeggio, and Ney at Middle East Technical School. His previous international tours have been with the Mavera Turkish Young Musicians Group and the Turkish government’s Promotions Department.

(...)

This relationship between Shams and Rumi was to serve as a mirror for the two mystics; they found in experiencing the other, they found themselves.

Sura al-Hashr (59:19) reveals the power of remembering Allah Tallah “And be ye not like those who forgot Allah; and He made them forget their own souls! Such are the rebellious transgressors!”

In Me and Rumi: The Autobiography of Shams-I Tabrizi by Annemarie Schimmel, Shams speaks of his relationship with Rumi like this, “From the day I saw your beauty, inclination and love for you sat in my heart.”

Shams continued, “There are many great ones whom I love inwardly. There’s affection, but I don’t make it manifest. Once or twice when I made it manifest, I did something while keeping company with them, and they didn’t know and recognize their duty in companionship. I took it upon myself not to let the affection become cold. When I made it manifest with Mevlana, it increased and did not lessen.”

Rumi emerged from this sohbet [spiritual conversation] with Shams transformed in a state of fana, or, of annihilation of the nafs [Nafs-i-ammara, ego-centered identity] in the One.

Rumi’s son, Muhammad Baha’u-’d-Din Sultan Veled, wrote about his father after he had stopped searching for Shams in Syria, “he found Shams in himself, radiant like the moon.”

Jealousy over this mystical friendship rose up with Rumi’s students and some of his family members and they drove Shams away. Rumi sent Sultan Veled to Damascus to find Shams and bring him back to Konya but the situation escalated once more.

The final chapter of Shams’ life is unwritten as no one is certain of the story. One legend explains how at the same exact time on the day of his disappearance witnesses spotted Shams leaving the city at each of its four gates.

An outpouring of verse commenced and in the Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi Rumi expresses deep mystical states of realization in the voice of his teacher. These lyric poems and quatrains speak to the relationship between Sun and Moon, Lover and Beloved, between servant and the One.

(...)

Rumi described the Mathnawi as beyond form and, “the root of the root of the Root of all religion.”

However, that does not discount the fact, as the following lines clearly show, that Rumi was an observant Muslim:

I am the servant of the Qur’an as long as I have life.
I am the dust on the path of Muhammad, the Chosen one.
If anyone quotes anything except this from my sayings,
I am quit of him and outraged by these words.

[man banda-yé qur’an-am, agar jan dar-am man khak-é rah-é muHammad-e mukhtar-am gar naql kon-ad joz in, kas az goftar-am bezar-am az-o, w-az-in sokhan bezar-am] (Rumi’s Quatrain no. 1173, translated by Ibrahim Gamard and Ravan Farhadi (in “The Quatrains of Rumi,” an unpublished manuscript).

This quatrain may cause some modern day enthusiasts to scratch their heads since many who offer renditions of Rumi’s poetry streamline them until Islamic references seem to disappear.

Per Rumi scholar Dr. Ibrahim Gamard [http://www.dar-al-masnavi.org/], these oft-quoted lines are not to be found anywhere in Rumi’s original manuscripts: “Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi, or Zen. Not any religion or cultural system.”

The good news is that Rumi is universal in his approach and this is founded in Qur’an and hadith where humanity is informed of the Divine intention for different authentic paths and that we should not hold one prophet above another.

Reading in Sura al-Baqara Ayat 62 and then from Ayat 285 [translations by Laleh Bakhtiar]: “ Truly those who have believed, and those who have become Jews, and the Christians and the Sabaeans, whoever has believed in God and the Last Day, and is one who has acted in accord with morality, then for them, their compensation is with their Lord; there is neither fear in them nor shall they feel remorse.”

“The Messenger has believed in what has been sent forth to him from his Lord as do the ones who believe; all have believed in God, His angels, His Books and His Messengers: We separate and divide not among anyone of His Messengers; and they said: We heard and we obeyed; so grant Your forgiveness, Our Lord! To You is the Homecoming.”

The injunction Sura al-Baqara 256 [translation by Yusuf Ali]: offers is clear, “Let there be no compulsion in religion.”

Encouragement to respect others and to engage in dialogue to overcome differences is clear. Hadith points the way: “Whoever of you sees an evil action, let him change it with his hands; and if he is not able to do so, then with his tongue; and if he is not able to do so, then with his heart- and that is the weakest of faith.” [Muslim quoted in An-Nawawi’s Forty Hadith, tr. Ezzedin Ibrahim and Denys Johnson-Davies, Holy Quran Publishing House, Damascus, 1977, p110].

On December 17, 1273, Rumi was called home by his Beloved Allah and laid to rest beside his father in Yesil Turbe or, “the green Tomb.” A calligraphy near his tomb reads: “after my death, don’t seek my tomb in the earth, for my grave is in the hearts of the men of mystical knowledge.” [Ibrahim Gamard translation].

The sema or, whirling ceremony, of the Mevlevi Sufis is held each year in honor of Shebi Arus, or, Rumi’s great return.

The ceremony portrays humankind’s spiritual unfoldment towards a state of perfection, or kemal. The lessons in taming the nafs [the greater jihad or struggle] bring one to the love and service of all creation for, as the Whirling Dervish knows, “wherever you turn is the face of God.”
December 17, 2007 at 8:00 p.m.
UCLA’s Royce Hall 340 Royce Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90095

For more information, you may contact Waliya Perkins at 310-575-1972 or or go to the Mevlevi Order of America website at: www.hayatidede.org

Tickets go on sale October 1, 2007

If hunger were sold in the market...

By Dr Mohd Sani Badron - The Star Online - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Tuesday, October 9, 2007 /Ramadan 27, 1428

Islam requires mankind to be humble servants of Allah, who are gracious in character, who always strive to purify their heart and control their bestial faculties of anger and desire.

Now, specifically pertaining to the appetitive desire, while animals generally know their limits for food and drink, mankind may more often than not expose himself to appetitive imbalance in the direction of two extremes, being either gluttonous or starving oneself.

As far as gluttony is concerned, in order to rid the pangs of hunger, animals instinctively feed themselves only with food necessary for life and growth; in other words, only that which is beneficial and useful to support physical well-being.

In contrast, human beings have a tendency to eat more, with greater frequency than what is really necessary for their benefit and well-being. This condition gives rise thus to dietetic imbalance and nutritional disorder.

It is in order that we dominate this specific, bestial desire for food and drink that Allah has prescribed for us to savour the taste of hunger by fasting throughout the month of Ramadan and during other months throughout the year.

Allah says in the Quran (al-Baqarah, verse 155), “and most certainly shall We try you by means of fear (of danger), and hunger, and loss of worldly goods, of lives and of labour’s fruits. But give glad tidings unto those who are patient.”

Although all fundamental, obligatory rituals such as zakat and haj, as well as jihad, in one way or another involve spending one’s property, being fearful of the danger, loss of the fruits of one’s labour, sacrificing one’s own life or the lives of those dearest to one, fasting, in particular, defines hunger.

Indeed, in Sufi tradition related in Abu Talib al-Makki’s (d. 386/996) influential Qut al-Qulub, hunger is regarded as one of the four pillars of spiritual struggle (al-mujahadah).

It is in none other than hunger that “the wellspring of Wisdom (yanabi’ al-Hikmah) is found” – so says the Sufi master Abul Qasim al-Qushayri (d. 465/1072) in his Risalah.

In the same vein, one of many fine aphorisms found in works of an earlier Sufi leader and commentator of the Quran, Sahl al-Tustari (d. 283/896), “hunger is the provenance of knowledge and wisdom, while satiety is the root of ignorance and disobedience to God.”

Abu Zakariyya Yahya b. Mu’adh al-Razi remarked: “If hunger were sold in the market, then seekers of Hereafter must purchase no other things there.”

We can thus know the experience of hunger, by fasting in the sense of eating less. Less, not in terms of complete abstention, which is impossible, rather less in the sense that there must always be moderation.

But the limit or being full is admittedly relative to the individual, each of whom has a different capacity.

To quote Muhyiddin Ibn al-’Arabi (d. 638/1240), from Chapter 560 of his Futuhat al-Makkiyyah, “one should eat to live, and live to serve God; and not live to eat, and eat to fatten the body” (Wa kul li-ta’isha wa ‘ish li-tuti’a Rabbaka wa la ta’ish li-ta’kula wa la ta’kul li-tasmana).

Therefore, on the one hand, to eat for the purpose of getting the energy to accomplish the Divine Will and to eat for the purpose of gaining the strength to implement the commandment of Allah and to obtain His pleasure, is an act of devotion and religious observance (‘ibadah), just as fasting is.

Eating permissible, wholesome meals complement fasting.

As such, the act of eating per se is never blameworthy. God merely reminds mankind that they should not be distracted by matters of secondary importance, such as the ones led to by an over-indulgence in food and drink, excessive sleep, frivolous talk, and needless interaction.

This is why moderation in eating and drinking and in social interactions, in observing reasonable limits to sleep, and to be sober in talk, are the four pillars of spiritual struggle espoused by true Sufism.

It is more important that Muslims devote their purpose, intention, strong determination and resolution towards Divine Pleasure.

On the other hand, to lessen required food, to reduce nourishment and to deliberately weaken the body both physical and intellectual to the extent of being unable to perform one’s obligation is a sin and a wicked act.

A Muslim is one who renders his self its due right, who strikes a balance between overeating and under-nourishment. He should neither burden the limits of his stomach with gluttony, nor should he deprive his organs of sustenance and nourishment, which would cause the body to atrophy and the intellect to decay.

Inasmuch as poor nourishment may result in mental disorders and feeble-mindedness, the Prophet Muhammad sought the protection of Allah against hunger, specifically, going so far as to say that hunger is an “evil companion” (bi’su ‘l-daji’), as recorded in a hadith narrated by al-Bazzar in his Musnad.

In the light of that Prophetic tradition concerning the preservation of health and intellect, Ibn Mas’ud (d. 32/653), one of the greatest of the Companions in terms of virtue and intelligence, performed very little optional fasting.

He used to say words to the effect that “when I observe optional fasting, I grow weak in my prayer (salat). And I prefer prayer over non-obligatory fasting”.

Another narrative states that some of the Companions would be weakened in their recitation of the Quran when fasting. Thus, they observed less supererogatory fasting so that it would not undermine their recitation.

We conclude with a poignant maxim by al-Tustari, who used to say to a novice who persisted with abstaining from food over many days: “Keep your wits. God has never had a saint who was mentally deficient (naqis al-’aql).”

The Author is Senior Fellow / Director, Centre for Economics and Social Studies, Ikim

[Picture from FAO - Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations http://www.fao.org/]

"Aliens in America": beautifully insane

By Diane Werts - Newsday - Long Island, NY, U.S.A.
Sunday, October 7, 2007

Cross-culture coolness in The CW's acclaimed new comedy "Aliens in America" extends beyond the lead characters, a geeky Wisconsin teen and his exchange-student housemate from Pakistan.

The series' theme song hosts another international pair reaching across the same sorts of boundaries.

"Beautifully Insane" troubadour PJ Olsson trades lines on a new rendition of "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding" with Junoon group frontman Salman Ahmad, the Pakistani rocker/ doctor/ activist seen on PBS in the documentary conversation "The Rock Star and the Mullahs" (online at YouTube).

The CW press release explains, "Both musicians grew up playing the traditional music of their cultures and were transformed by their experience with rock 'n' roll.

Olsson grew up in an orchestral family [in Michigan] and sang gospel music in church, but it was the experience of seeing Led Zeppelin that inspired him to seek a career in music.

In Pakistan, Ahmad played Sufi devotional music, but when he came to America at the age of 11 and saw Jimmy Page perform 'Stairway to Heaven,' everything changed for him as well.

"The Sufi rock of Junoon ("obsession" in Urdu) has sold millions of CDs not just in their South Asia stronghold, but around the world during the past decade, melding ancient poetry, contemporary world affairs and driving guitar lines.

Olsson's newest CD, "American Scream," drops Oct. 16 with the "Aliens" duet included. Their full-length music video streams at http://youtube.com/watch?v=%20JTKsJrpRtww

[Picture: Salman Ahmad. Photo from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_Ahmad]

Urs of Sheikh Nooruddin Noorani begins tomorrow

Bureau Report - The Hindu - Chennai, India
Monday, October 8, 2007

The annual 'Urs' of Sufi saint Sheikh Nooruddin Noorani at Charar-e-Sharief in Budgam district will commence from tomorrow.

The administration has geared up to ensure smooth conduct of Urs as lakhs of devotees are expected to throng the shrine, an official spokesman said.

Chief Minister, Ghulam Nabi Azad, in his message on the eve of the Urs described the saint, popularly known as Sheikh-ul-Aalam, as the torch-bearer of Kashmir who preached and practised the teachings of Islam.

The Chief Minister has asked the administration to provide adequate facilities to devotees visiting the shrine.

[Picture from http://www.flickr.com/photos/gps1/1525812958/]

“Dust on the path of Muhammad (pbuh)”

By Dzulkifli Abdul Razak - The New Strait Times - Persekutuan, Malaysia
Saturday, October 6, 2007

“I am neither of the East nor of the West; no boundaries exist in my breast.”

In this so-called borderless and globalised world, such words sounded more like a cliche, coming from any one of the G8 leaders or at least from the champions of globalisation.

Only that this one is somewhat more poetic than rhetoric; more appealing to a palette of cultures, beliefs and religions, as compared to the usual empty lip service.

The reason perhaps is the person who uttered them is one of the greatest spiritual and literary figures of all time.

He is the renowned Jalal al-Din Muhammad Balkhi, better known as Rumi, the widely acclaimed poet-cum- scholar Rumi was born on Sept 30, 1207, in Balkh in Central Asia, now part of Afghanistan.

His father, Baha’ al-DinWalad (Bahauddin), a religious scholar and a Sufi (Islamic mystic), had tremendous impact on him. And Rumi, who later became a force in jurisprudence and religious matters, like his father, was made a university professor.

Some even said it was Rumi who transformed the history of Persian literature.

Despite the fact that 800 years have since passed, Rumi’s legacy remains timeless and is still relevant to today ’s world.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) saw it fit to designate this year as the International Year of Rumi with the underlying message of global peace.

Indeed, some of the themes in Rumi’s work focus on tolerance and the love and the remembrance of the divine as a way to achieve peace.

When writing about Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, he transcends the barriers between the East and West.

He constructed a religious-cultural bridge of deep understanding where “no boundaries exist in my breast”.

For Rumi, there is no room for the small-minded “clash of civilisations” as advocated by some; neither is there a “them versus us”as narrowly interpreted by others.

In contrast, he has been quoted as saying: “While beliefs vary from place to place, faith is essentially the same.” In parts, this has to do with the many years he spent exploring the frontiers of knowledge, travelling to places and meeting scholars as a keen learner of new cultures and meaning of life.

His broad exposure connected him to other dimensions of not only the Judeo-Christian faith, but also Buddhism, Hinduism and Zoroastrianism.

Not surprising then that his poems and stories do not fail to enchant and capture the minds and hearts of his audience. At the same time, they act as bridges in linking up this shrinking world of ours.

Rumi clearly put forward the messages of humility, peace and love based on the quest for Truth.

After all, not unlike today, his world, too, was plagued by war and violence, particularly as the Mongols led Genghis Khan were ravaging throughout the larger part of Asia.

When he was young, Rumi was forced to flee Balkh because of the invading Mongol forces.
Together with his family, he left for Konya, in present-day Turkey, where they eventually settled down, after making a pilgrimage to Mecca.

It was in Konya that he eventually made a name for himself as a famous jurisprudent and teacher, especially after the death of his father in 1231.

By then he had become known as an accomplished Sufi, devoting much of his time seeking Truth, by means of love and humility.

Reportedly, Rumi referred to himself as: “Dust on the path of Muhammad (pbuh)". Dust can be nothing but dust; it signifies humility, and submission.

Even the tiniest insect may move the lightness of dust.

Rumi died in Konya in 1272, at the age of 65, in what is described as the “Wedding Night”, to be described as the time for meeting His Creator. He left hugely rich traditions and practices of love, peace and humility as depicted by the Tariqat (spiritual way) founded by himself and a coterie of followers enchanted by his ideas and ideals.

In today’s troubled and fragmented world, the importance of Rumi and his contributions cannot be overemphasised.

Though eight centuries have gone by, the significance of his message must be rediscovered and relived if the world is to be at peace with itself.

To cite yet another one of his poems: “There are many languages in the world, in meaning all are the same. If you break the cups, water will be unified and will flow together.”

Thus it is essential to take a leaf from Rumi’s devotion towards love, peace and humanity in reaching out to the world at large, to solve some of the problems facing the world today.

Therein may be the answer to what is profoundly missing in our current understanding of the world and socalled phenomenon of “globalisation ”.

The writer is the vice-chancellor of Universiti Sains Malaysia

Tunisia: transcribing tradition

By Naceur M'tir - KUNA Kuwait News Agency - Kuwait
Friday, October 5, 2007

Tunis: Sufi music, which has always been an important part of Tunisian culture and is especially popular during the holy month of Ramadan, has undergone several changes over the years.

Sessions of Sufi music and "thikr" (remembering God) are held throughout Ramadan's evening, and although the spirituality of these gatherings remains unaltered, the techniques and instruments used have come under change.

This is quite evident in the Spiritual Music Festival, held here every Ramadan.

The festival's director Dr. Lutfi Al-Marayhi tells KUNA that "this form of spiritual music is very much a part of Tunisia culture."

He explains that the "Rababa" (single-string instrument played with a bow) that was used in the past was now replaced with the "Kamanja" (stringed instrument of the fiddle family).

Also, "Rababiya" troupes, formally composed of female members only, were no longer so.

Al-Maryahi stresses, however, the need to "develop the linguistic address of this music, in line with traditional forms of music, in order to preserve cultural Sufi music."

He explains that traditional forms of music have been "renewed" in the 1940s by many renowned composers, and that this created "a gap" between traditional and spiritual music forms."

The director also notes the attempts to transcribe Sufi music.

[Picture: A traditional kamancheh player, photographed in the 1860s or 1870s. Photo from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamanja]

Rumi in Croatia(n)

MNA - Iran Mania - London, U.K.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Croatian literary journal highlights Rumi

The Literary Croatian bimonthly Bahar has published a series of articles and reviews on the life and works of the Persian poet Molana Jalal ad-Din Rumi in the Croatian language.

Sponsored by the office of the Iranian cultural attaché in Zegrab, the 50-page journal consists of several articles and interviews with scholars on the life and works of Rumi.

It was published on September 30, marking the Persian poet's 800th birth anniversary, Iran's cultural attaché Ehsan Qazizadeh announced.

Croatian cultural figures collaborated on the collection and translation of the articles and the issue includes illustrations by the renowned Iranian artist Parviz Tanavoli, Qazizadeh added.

[Picture: The Plitvice Lakes, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Photo from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatia]

Another Pakistan: Lal Shahbaz Qalandar's festival Audio slideshow

By Declan Walsh - The Guardian - London, U.K.
Thursday, October 4, 2007

Pakistan's tourism ministry designated 2007 as "Destination Pakistan", the year when tourists were urged to discover the country's sights and delights.

Their timing couldn't have been worse. A military ruler clinging to power, al-Qaida fanatics hiding in the mountains, suicide bombings booming across the cities - in 2007, Pakistan has become a byword for peril and turmoil.

But there is another Pakistan, one the majority of its 165 million people are more familiar with. It is the thrusting software entrepreneurs and brash new television stations. It is the kite flyers and partygoers and the strangers who insist you sit for a cup of tea. And it is Sehwan Sharif.

I joined about 1 million people who come to Sehwan Sharif for three days every year, to mark the death of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, an ancient Sufi mystic. It is one of south Asia's greatest parties.

[The Festival took place from Friday, September 6 to Sunday, September 9. Click and scroll down: http://sufinews.blogspot.com/search?q=GUARDIAN ]

A million people - it's enough to give an embassy security officer a heart attack. Yet I've rarely felt so secure. Impromptu singing sessions erupt by the roadside. People offer strangers a bed, a meal, or a drag from their joint.

Smiles and handshakes are everywhere. Qalandar, a sort of medieval hippy, would have approved. Wandering through this area almost 800 years ago, he preached tolerance between Hindus and Muslims and peace to all men. Legend had it that he could transform himself into a falcon.

One night I met Muhammad Fiaz, a burly bus driver from Gujrat with glitter on his cheeks. He had taken his annual holiday to come and sit at the feet of a pir, or holy man. He brushed off any talk of politics. "Musharraf and his lot are one thing," he said. "This is entirely another".

See the Audio slideshow of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar festival at this link (or click on this article's title)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/slideshow/page/0,,2176124,00.html

Vehicles for transmission

By Marguerite Theophil - The Times of India - India
Thursday, October 4, 2007

Sufi teaching looks at the purpose, potential and meaning of life, and recognises that we have an essential nature that is spiritual; we are on an earthly journey in order to uncover this essential self.

Yet, though the potentiality for transformation of the self lies within us, it is not usually accessible because of our limited perception and our strong identification with our everyday, surface selves.

Sufis have traditionally spoken of the need to develop an "organ of perception" which, once developed, allows a person to apply herself more completely and effectively to life.

One of the ways this development is best achieved is through 'teaching stories', a term used to describe those stories and anecdotes deliberately created as vehicles for the transmission of wisdom.

While such stories are collected and transmitted in almost every tradition, the way of the Sufis is particularly significant to any story-lover or story-worker.

Idries Shah wrote that Sufi teaching stories are "works of objective art" - used to transmit to us a higher knowledge. Usually, we cannot perceive this higher knowledge because we are not really prepared for it.

Our preparation can be helped by not only getting to know the stories, but also by revisiting them and familiarising ourselves with them; by "soaking in story" so as to be ready for their meanings to be revealed to us, slowly, as we become ready for deeper knowing.

In workshops designed around such stories, most people want to 'crack open' the meaning of these stories; they are eager and in a hurry to get at the core meaning. It is hard for them to understand that with these kinds of stories, the timing is different for each of us, and that the stories give out the 'higher level' insights only after a patient engagement with them, through reflection and contemplation.

When we decide "Ah, this is the meaning", we could end the chance of further, deeper impact of the story on our inner being.

Allowing our logical mind to deal with teaching stories in a way which is customary to it, and imagining we have understood all there is to understand, we can find ourselves in a situation like the boy in the story who had dismembered a fly into its components and then wondered where the fly itself had gone.

Many Sufi stories and poems may be interpreted as being related to psychological processes. That is a valid consideration which is often useful for developing one's understanding, but this does not mean that its meaning is fully drawn out by this method. It may contain a great deal more.

We are too easily satisfied with surface answers, mainly because the more profound ones are often revealed slowly, over time.

Renowned psychologist Robert Ornstein says that teaching stories, with improbable events, lead the reader’s mind into new and unexplored venues, allowing her to develop more flexibility and to understand this complex world better.

Psychologists have found that teaching stories activate the right side of the brain. The left side that we mostly use provides the 'text', or the component pieces of an event or experience; the right side provides 'context', the essential function of putting together the different components of this experience.

Poet Kahlil Gibran once said, "The real teacher leads you not to himself, but to the threshold of your own mind". Teaching stories are known to act as these Real Teachers.

The writer is a Mumbai-based organisational consultant, personal growth coach and workshop leader

[Picture: Empis tesselata. Photo by André Karwath http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immagine:Empis_tesselata_male_%28aka%29.jpg]

Good vibrations

By Robert Mc Lure - Seattle Post - Seattle, WA, U.S.A.
Thursday, October 4, 2007

Pir Zia Inayat-Khan brings his message of harmony with the Earth to North Seattle Community College, Friday, October 5, at 7:30 p.m.

"What is Earth's cry today? The population of Homo sapiens is out of control, as is its insatiable appetite for consumption.

Instead of a genuine planetary civilization, we are witnesses to the proliferation of a soulless monoculture.

At its heart, the human species remains as spiritually divided as ever -- indeed more so, as sectarian ethnic, political and religious agendas take on a new misguided urgency in direct proportion to the absence of authentic personal and collective fulfillment.

The taproot of pathological division is in the human psyche itself. The Western mind has undergone an epic cognitive odyssey over the last three hundred years."

(From his writings).

Pir Zia Inayat-Khan is the grandson of Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan and the head of the Sufi Order International.

Pir Zia received his education in Sufism from Indian and Turkish Sufi Pirs and has studied extensively with masters of many paths including His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, in Dharamsala, India.

Pir Zia holds a doctorate in Religion from Duke University. He is also a recipient of the U Thant Peace Award.

His free public talk kicks off a weekend of events: more information at http://soi-seattle.org/events/specialevents.htm#PZIK

[Read also: Sufism, the West, and Modernity http://www.uga.edu/islam/sufismwest.html

Visit the Sufi Order International website : http://www.sufiorder.org/]

Voices from Konya

By Mustafa Akyol - Turkish Daily News - Ankara, Turkey
Tuesday, October 2, 2007

The big master of Sufi Islam, Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi was praised in his beloved city, Konya, on his 800th birthday.

Hundreds of dervishes and thousands of Konyans celebrated Rumi’s gospel of love.

The big event organized by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Konya's local authorities included theatrical dramas, several speeches, two mini concerts and a breath taking presentation by 150 whirling Sufi dervishes which performed their heavenly dance all together at once.

The 20,000 or so Konyans who filled the stadium cheered not only for the dervishes but all others who filled the stage to praise Rumi, including the Culture Minister Ertuğrul Günay, the Afghan Ambassador Masood Khalili who recited Rumi's poem in his original tongue, or modern Sufi musician Ahmet Özhan.

The stars of the night included Mazhar Alanson, Fuat Güner and Özkan Uğur, who make up one of Turkey's most admired pop music bands, the MFÖ.

The group has been famous not only for its creative music but also by the Sufi elements it used in some of its melodies and lyrics. On Mevlana's 800th birthday, the MFÖ performed three songs with strong Sufi themes and devoted them to the ultimate master.

“We are so honored to be in the presence of the revered one,” said Mazhar Alanson, who is probably not the best representative of a conservative life style.

“He is so tolerant that he accepted even us,” he said.

Love as food

By Dr. Rasoul Sorkhabi - Payvand News - Iran
Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Many literary, cultural and spiritual organizations have organized events to celebrate the 800th anniversary of Rumi's birth in 2007.

UNESCO organized an international seminar, performance and exhibition from 6-14 September in Paris, and issued a Commemorative Medal in honor of Moulânâ Rumi.

On 26 June, the United Nations Organization hosted a gathering in New York (with the participation of representatives from Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey), and the UN Secretary-General Mr. Ban Ki-moon commented:

"Rumi's poetry is timeless. But its celebration at the United Nations is extremely timely. Events of recent years have created a growing gulf between communities and nations. They have led to a worrying rise in intolerance and cross-cultural tensions … As Moulana teaches, we must be mindful of the people around us, and love them as human beings and God's creatures."

Rumi's poetry reaches our heart and mind seven centuries after his death and in various lands and among different peoples because Rumi sees the Divine love shining everywhere and in all ages.

His path and poetry is based on love. In the very beginning of his great work Masnawi Ma'nawi Rumi says that his poetry of love is the "root of the root of the root of all religions."

He thinks of love as food ("Mâ eshgh khoreem: we eat love"); he sees love as a creative force in the fabric of the universe; he considers God as a friend (doost or yâr) and beloved (mahboob or ma'shoogh) on earth and in our heart.

(...)

Rumi's poems (98% in Persian and about two percents in Arabic) are collected in two great works:

(1) Diwân Shams ("The Poetry Book of Shams") or Diwân Kabir ("The Great Book of Poetry") which contains some 3500 lyric odes (Ghazal) and nearly 2000 quatrains (Rubâi'yât) and is dedicated to Shams Tabrizi.

This book is full of ecstatic love poems and in many of the poems Rumi addresses himself with the pen-name of Khamoosh ("Silent") in many poems.

(2) Masnawi Ma'nawi ("Rhymed Couplets on Spiritual Matters") is a six-volume book of didactic poetry (stories and parables) which Rumi recited to Husâm Chelebi during the last decade of his life. Many of the Rumi translations in English available on the market today (and with varying quality) are all selections from these two works.

Rumi died on 17 December 1273, aged 67. People from diverse religions and ethnicities – Muslims, Christians, Jews, Persians, Turks, Arabs and Greek, the rich, the poor, the elite and the illiterate, women and men – all came to his funeral and mourned the loss of their great spiritual master.

Buried in Konya, Rumi's tomb (called "Ghobat al-Khidhra" the Green Dome, or "Yashil Turbe" in Turkish) has become a shrine for thousands of visitor and pilgrims each year.

17 December is celebrated as Sheb-i Arus ("Wedding Night" symbolizing reunion with the Divine) in Konya in the spirit of Rumi's will that those who come to his tomb should not cry and grieve but rejoice in prayer, poetry and contemplation.

It is interesting to note that Rumi was born on Sunday and this year 30 September (his birthday) also falls on Sunday. Rumi died at sunset on Sunday.

This symbolism of his birth and death on a day named after the Sun is beautifully consistent with the place of Moulânâ Rumi's personality and poetry among us.

For seven centuries, his art and vision has shined like a bright, warm sun upon our minds and hearts. Master Rumi is an enlightening poet for all ages and peoples.

About the Author: Dr. Rasoul Sorkhabi is director of the Rumi Poetry Club at Salt Lake City, Utah: he can be reached at rumipoetryclub@earthlink.net

For further readings the Author recommends:

Annemarie Schimmel (2001)
Rumi's World
Shambhala Dragon Editions

[read Editorial and Customer Reviews and/or buy the book at
The Sufi Store
http://astore.amazon.com/wilderwri-20/detail/0877736111/105-1791904-0645206]

“Jisme khak az Ishq her aflak shod”

By Abu Syed Golam Dastgir - The Daily Star - Dhaka, Bangladesh
Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Some months ago, the Rumi Society held a seminar in which I presented a paper on Jalaluddin Rumi's Sufi philosophy at the RC Majumdar Hall, Dhaka University.

In May, I attended an International Symposium on Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi in Turkey. The title of my paper was “Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi's Divine Love for World Peace”.

Jalaluddin Rumi was a harbinger of divine love. It is this love that made him humble, a prerequisite to understand Allah as the Quran states: “Seek help in patience and prayer; and truly it is hard save for the humble-minded, who know that they will have to meet their Lord, and that unto Him they are returning. (2: 45-46)”.

In seeking this true divine love, a devotee finds an inexplicable beauty with unlimited inspiration to return to the origin from which separation has taken place.

One can realise the mysteries of creation when one understands the meaning of this divine love. He/she blissfully rises above the everyday narrow-mindedness. Once love empowers one with the sense of reality, man attains the strength of humility and nobility.

Osman Bechcet, teacher at the Kadikoy Imperial College, Turkey, has aptly written in his book on Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi: “Mawlana sips from the elixir of divine love of Allah the Almighty as he reaches His nearness with his religious ecstasy…”

In fact, the theme of Rumi's famous Masnawi is love and separation, that is, the sublime, profound and perennial union of the individual soul with the pure universal soul.

Professor Dr. Dilawar Guler of the Seljuk University's Department of Theology wrote, “According to Islamic mysticism in reaching the Almighty Creator Allah, the nearest sample to a human being is again he himself.

The more people who love each other for Allah's sake, are genuine and deep in their love, the better they help each other and become each other's step to reach the divine truth to be in the immediate vicinity to the eminent Creator Allah.”

Mawlana Rumi described 'Miraj' (ascension to the presence of Allah in heaven) of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) as an ineffable condition of seeking divine love.

Rumi said, “Jisme khak az Ishq her aflak shod,” which means, “Due to the power of divine love, the body made of earth could rise to the heavens.”

The inaugural programme of the symposium was attended by 162 participants from nearly 32 countries.

On the second day, I delivered a speech under the chairmanship of Professor Nasrollah Pourjavady from Iran. Later, I was interviewed by a TV Channel, on three subjects: Hazrat Ali (Radiallahuanhu), Mawlana Rumi, and Sufism.

After sunset, we had a gala dinner at Hotel Ciragan Kempinski, a spectacular palace of Sultan Abdul Majid, by the Bosphorus strait.

Sacred relics of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) collected during the long Turkish rule are preserved in Turkey with love and respect. Although Kamal Ataturk modernised Turkey and freed it from religious fanaticism, symbols of valuable Islamic heritage were carefully guarded.

We also went to Konya where Mawlana Rumi was buried 800 years back. We attended the Sema Ceremony, typical of the Mevlevi Sufi Order, at the Mevlana Cultural Center. It had a sober, solemn environment.

To explain briefly, Dr. Jalaluddin Bakir, grandson of Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi, had written, “Sema is the unification with Allah in order to hear the question of Allah to spirit particles: Am I not your Lord and the answer of them, 'Yes you are our Lord' and be in an ecstatic attitude.

Those particles whirl around the light of the Sun performing Sema like Sufis; however, no one knows which tune, which beat, and with what sort of instrument they do that.

Sema is a greeting from the secret corners of the heart...Sema is the comfort and peace to the soul of the livings. The ones who have spirit in their soul know this.”

On our last day in Konya, in the morning after saying prayers, we reached the Mevlana Cultural Center for a two-and-half-hour symposium, chaired by Professor Dr. Mahmud.

After exchanging greetings, we were taken on a guided tour to the shrines of Hazrat Mawlana Rumi, Hazrat Shames-i-Tabrizi, Hazrat Sadeddin Konevi and Sircali Madrash.

The visit was greatly educational -- a hub for a large number of scholars, mystics, writers and poets and learned Sufis.

Group Captain Abu Syed Golam Dastgir (Retd) is former Director of Education, Bangladesh Air Force

Sound is Form

[From the Italian language press]:

La voce è il suono che caratterizza ogni essere umano, rendendolo unico e irripetibile.

Questa frequenza si stabilizza dopo la pubertà e rimane costante per tutta la vita.

Biblio-net Musica Classica, Italy - martedì 2 ottobre 2007 - di Bruno Oddenino

The voice is the sound that characterizes every human being, making him unique and unrepeatable.

This frequency is stabilizing after puberty and remains constant for the whole life.

In India, in the village of Shivapur, there is a small mosque dedicated to the sufi saint Qamar Alì Dervish: in its courtyard there is a 138 pounds stone [62 Kg].

During the daily prayer, eleven faithfuls encircle the stone repeating the name of the saint: when they catch up a determined degree of intensity, the eleven men raise the stone each using a single finger, and when the song is interrupted the faithfuls jump beside while the stone, back to its weight, falls to earth with a loud thud.

Although in order to understand it we decode the sound in frequency and number, the sound is not that: rather, it is information -in the etymological sense of the word (that it creates shape).

Every man is a rope that vibrates in the Universe.

The author is Professor of Oboe in the Conservatory "Giuseppe Verdi" of Turin; he also holds a degree in Musicotherapy, System Nada - Brahma (school of Vemu Mukunda) and is a Founder of the Italian Academy of Vibrational Medicine.

Zurkhaneh, symbol of spiritual growth

By Shirin Barghi - Press TV - Tehran, Iran
Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Iran's traditional Zurkhaneh is an ancient sporting ritual, which combines pre-Islamic Iranian culture with the spirituality of Sufism.

To the western eye, Zurkhaneh (house of strength) may seem like an ordinary sports club, but for the ancient Persians it was a unique place where the improvement of men's physical fiber was seen as a vital step towards moral and spiritual enlightenment.

The Varzesh-e Pahlavani (Sport of the Heroes) rituals go to the very heart of traditional Iranian ideals about spiritual growth, masculinity, religious devotion and physical prowess, with an ancient history dating back to the Parthian Empire of Iran (132 BC - 226 AD).

Every session begins with pious praise of the holy Prophet (PBUH) and his family, followed by the recitation of stories from The Shahnameh of Ferdowsi (Book of kings).

The exercises are varied. They include wielding the mil (wooden club), pulling the kaman (bow-shaped iron weights), lifting various types of weights, push-ups, and gyration.

Usually, the exercises begin with acrobatics and juggling presented by the pishro (novice) and end with a wrestling match between two tested pahlavans (heroes).

The Zurkhaneh membership is by rank. The lowest rank is that of the nowcheh (tyro), an individual who is being trained by a designated champion. The next rank belongs to the nowkhasteh (neophyte). The third rank belongs to the Pahlavan or tested champion.

The leader of the champions is called the Pahlavan- e-pahlavanan (champion of champions). The rhythm for the exercises is set by ancient poetry recited by the murshed (master) and the beat of his drum.

The Alchemist

The Persian Mirror - U.S.A.
Monday, October 1st, 2007

Shirzad Sharif’s Solo Album & CD Release Party

Featuring: Shirzad Sharif – Tanbur, Zarb, Daf & electronicsMark Deutsch – Bazantar & SitarJohn Connell – Daf

Creating a fine tapestry of sound using dreamscape ambience and sacred Persian melodies this performance will take you on a journey into the deep space of sacred sound.

Inspired by the creation of the universe, astronomy and mankind’s quest to understand himself, the origin of creation & the true essence of life, this will be a very special performance & sneak preview of Shirzad Sharif’s new upcoming solo album titled “The Alchemist” which features lush electronic sound-scapes, organic Persian drumming, sacred Sufi Tanbur & Daf music.

Joining Shirzad for this special performance will be Mark Deutsch on the amazing Bazantar and John Connell on Daf (Sufi Frame Drums).

Saturday, October 6th, 2007
The Red Poppy Art House2698 Folsom St., SF, CA
General Admission $15
Doors: 7:30pm - Show: 8:00pm

For more information please visit: www.shirzadsharif.com or www.bazantar.com or www.redpoppyarthouse.org

"Just one of God's funny family"

By David Ian Miller - San Francisco Chronicle - SF, CA, U.S.A.
Monday, October 1st, 2007

Whether it's about God or the pangs of earthly love, the poetry of Rumi is often startlingly modern, partly due to those who have translated his poems from 13th century Persian into many of the world's languages.

Coleman Barks, the world's best known translator of Rumi's work, is credited with helping make Rumi one of the most popular poets in the United States — Barks' 18 books of Rumi poems have sold more than 750,000 copies. His newest book, "Rumi: Bridge to the Soul," in honor of the 800th anniversary of the poet's birthday, came out Sept. 18.

Rumi, born on Sept. 30, 1207, was a theologian and follower of Islam's mystical tradition of Sufism. He founded the Mevlevi Dervish Order, also known as the whirling dervishes, and wrote thousands of poems, many of them ecstatic expressions of the Sufi notion that all things can be seen as manifestations of the divine.

Barks, 70, a warm, open Southerner who describes himself as "just one of God's funny family," spoke by phone last week from his home in Athens, Ga., about Rumi's ageless attractions and how much of Coleman Barks makes its way into the Rumi poems so many of us have read.

I was surprised to learn that you don't speak Persian. How do you "translate" Rumi's work, then?
I didn't discover Rumi until I was 39 years old. I'd had this wonderful literary education at Berkeley and at North Carolina, Chapel Hill, but I had never even heard the name of the greatest mystical poet that ever lived!

At that point — and I'm lazy, as a matter of fact — it was hopeless to try to learn Farsi. So I depend upon scholarly translations and living scholars to give me word-for-word translations, and then I work with the English, trying to be as faithful as possible to the images that come through the words and the spiritual information coming through those images.

But I don't try to reproduce any of the musicality of the Persian. I translate it into American free verse.

So the word "translator" doesn't exactly describe what you do?
It's often called a second translation. Someone brings it from the source language sort of halfway to a literal translation and then someone else takes it from that stage to a poem in the English language. Scholarly translations don't try to do that.

How much of yourself is in these poems, and how much of it is Rumi, do you think?
Well, of course, the way I approach these poems has to be filtered through my own experience. He (Rumi) is an enlightened being, and I am not. And so there must be some distortion resulting from that.

The great Sufi master Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan told me once: "Coleman, when you first started translating these in the 1970s, I heard a lot of sexuality in them." I said: "Well, there was a lot of sexuality in me." (Laughs.)

So it (sex) was getting in there. Gradually, as I've sort of understood these poems more and more, I hope they don't lose their sensuous delight in the universe, but there is less of a sexual feel to them.

I've heard several of your Rumi readings. Some writers don't particularly enjoy reading their work in public, but you obviously do.
I hope so. I think that's partly because he (Rumi) had a great joy in being alive. He said that just being sentient and in a body is cause for rapture. Whitman had that sense of wonder, very close to Rumi's, I think. And so did Emily Dickinson.

Does it seem remarkable to you that so many people today have an interest in this Persian poet from 800 years ago?
Yes, and I don't completely understand it. The poet Robert Bly says that in terms of Western culture, the Council of Nicaea in 325 expunged the ecstatic material out of the New Testament — the scenes where Jesus was dancing.

And he thinks that loss is being filled now by Rumi's poetry and that we have, for a long time wanted someone with an ecstatic vision, a mature human being.

Is that what you think, too?
I do. I think that's why people delight in him so, because he is showing us a vision of the world that we have wanted to have a spokesman for. And it's full of grief, too. You might even call it ecstatic grief — it's deeply grieving poetry but also delighted in the moment-to-moment story of our lives.

(...)

Do you have some favorite lines from Rumi?
There's a little quatrain that's sort of famous, it begins:

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing
There is a field. I'll meet you there.
A soul who 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."

More for Rumi

MNA - Mehr News - Tehran, Iran
Monday, October 1st, 2007

An English language version of the Iranian Rumi website launched its work on September 30 marking Rumi’s 800th birth anniversary.

News, articles, films and a bibliography of Rumi have been put on the website by the Molana News Agency which launched its work on August 29. The website is now available at http://www.maulananews.com/.

***

The Iranian Stamp Association is to publish a stamp featuring Mahmud Farshchian’s latest miniature work “Shams and Rumi” to commemorate the 800th birth anniversary of Molana Jalal ad-Din Rumi (1207-1273).

The stamp will be available bearing the UNESCO hallmark.

[Picture: "From Dust to Dust" 23. 5/8 x 17. 3/8 in. (cm 60 x 45) , a painting from Master Mahmoud Farshchian http://farshchianart.com/html/biography.htm]

"I'm a moth who's not afraid of burning"

By Charles Haviland - BBC News South Asia - Balkh, Afghanistan
Sunday, September 30, 2007

A young Afghan archaeologist, Reza Hosseini, took me to the ruins of the mud-and-brick-built khanaqa - a kind of madrassa or religious school - where Rumi's father taught and the young boy is believed to have studied, lying just outside the old mud city walls and probably within yards of his birthplace.

It is a quiet and melancholy place, the structure eroded and encroached on by shrubs and bushes.

But an amazing amount of it is still standing - the square structure, its four arches with pointed tops, in the Islamic style, and half of the graceful dome.

Mr Hosseini says the floor was originally constructed of baked bricks and lined with carpets donated by those who came to share the learning.

Sufism - or Islamic mysticism - was already enshrined here before Rumi's time and Mr Hosseini imagines that this corner of the town, by the madrassa, would have echoed to the sound of Sufi singing and prayer.

Rumi's greatest poetic work, the Mathnawi, describes the soul's separation from God and hers yearning to reunite.

With his injunctions of tolerance and love, Rumi has universal appeal, says Abdul Qadir Misbah, a culture specialist in the Balkh provincial government.

"Whether a person is from East or West, he can feel the roar of Rumi," he says.

"When a religious scholar reads the Mathnawi, he interprets it religiously. And when sociologists study it, they say how powerful a sociologist Rumi was. When people in the West study it, they see that it's full of emotions of humanity."

The Sufi mystical tradition is not immediately apparent in modern Afghanistan, but with Mr Hosseini's help, I traced a small group of eight Sufi musicians in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif whose great love is Rumi's poetry.

First there is a solo from Rumi's favoured instrument, the reed flute. Then the flute player is joined by Mohammed Zakir, usually a shopkeeper, who fills the room with his powerful voice in interpreting the words:

"I'm a man who's not afraid of love;
I'm a moth who's not afraid of burning".

In the third song, all the men join in with an extraordinary, percussive vocal sound which, Mr Zakir says, comes straight from the heart. It continues for nearly 10 intense minutes.

According to Professor Abdulah Rohen, a local expert on the poet, Rumi brought Sufi mysticism away from asceticism and into the heart of the people.

Many western fans of Rumi have secularised his message, which was in fact a religious one; and, says Prof Rohen, Christians and Jews as well as Muslims flocked to his funeral.

I ask him to sum up the poet's message and he offers a quote:

"If the sky is not in love, then it will not be so clear.
If the sun is not in love, then it will not be giving any light.
If the river is not in love, then it will be in silence, it will not be moving.
If the mountains, the earth are not in love, then there will be nothing growing."