Boil Me Some More

By Lawrence Brown, *Discovering the poetic heart of faith* - Cape Cod Times - Hyannis, MA, USA // Friday, September 24, 2010

The Sufi movement appeared early in the history of Islam. Is it possible, they wanted to know, for Muslims to experience the kind of personal connection with God that Christians experience with Jesus? "Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies" says a Sufi poet, "And opens a door to another world."

Of all the Sufi poets, perhaps the greatest is Rumi. Born in Afghanistan, he was a contemporary of St. Francis of Assisi. Like Assisi, he was the very soul of gentleness. There is something in Rumi that reminds me of the poignant vision of Kurt Vonnegut: With the necessary ingredients of happiness all around us, we insist on being angry and tragic.

"I am iron" sang Rumi, "Resisting the most enormous magnet there is. Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love." I love Rumi.

God is everywhere, he tells us. Give up your search and in that very moment of surrender, there He is. Rumi avoids doctrines like the plague.

"Don't move the way fear makes you move," he tells us. "Let the beauty we love be what we do. This love is beyond the study of theology, that old trickery and hypocrisy. I've given up on my brain. I've torn the cloth to shreds and thrown it away."

Islam didn't know what to make of all this. On one hand, the Sufis were sincere in their devotion, drunk out of their minds with it. But the mystical part made them loose cannons. What exactly did they believe? As doctrine was being firmed up, were the Sufis in or out?

Christianity was busy with the same concerns, racking and burning heretics. In the end, the Muslim hierarchy lost patience with the Sufis and turned on the movement.

Nobody, it seems, can trust a mystic. "Out beyond the ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing" sang Rumi, "There is a field. I'll meet you there."

Sufism had become a heresy. For Muslim extremists like Osama bin Laden, it remains so today. Here's the irony: The atrocities of the Taliban — women shot through the skull at soccer intermissions, acid thrown in girls' faces for going to school, attacks on civilians — these are the true heresies of Islam.

God does not require us to submit to authorities on Earth. Measured against infinity, all language becomes ridiculous. In the end, we submit only to God. As Rumi says, "Eventually the chick-pea will say to the cook, boil me some more. Hit me with the skimming spoon; I can't do this by myself."

In 1999, I was at the Parliament of the World's Religions in South Africa. Coming out of a seminar, I was approached by the head of the World Islamic League. "What are you doing for the next hour or so?" he asked. We ended up walking into Cape Town for a look around. I respected him right off, a descendent of the Prophet, with his trimmed beard and hawk-like intelligence.

"You identified yourself during the discussion as Hindu," he said. "Funny," he added with a sly smile, "you don't look Hindu." We'd ended up in an art museum when I asked him what he thought of the Taliban's treatment of women. Suddenly, his voice filled half the second floor.
"THAT MAKES ME REALLY ANGRY!" he said.

I was stunned by the intensity of his reply and instinctively backed off a step or two. Instantly, he softened, gently touching my arm. "I'm sorry, my brother. I'm not angry with you; I'm angry with them. Remember, there is no sin greater than a sin committed in the name of God. The sin itself is bad enough. To say God required it makes it 10 times worse."

This was two years before Sept. 11.

There is Islam, and there is radical Islam. It might interest you to know that Imam Rauf in New York — the one who wants to open the Cordoba Center in New York — is a Muslim heretic. (At least to radical Muslims, he is.) He's a Sufi. There are places in the world where he'd be shot. But he's come to America. He has as much reason as any of us to tremble at the violent arrival of terrorists on American soil. But he's lucky in one way — he can read Rumi in the original.

"I am morning mist, and the breath of evening. I am rose and nightingale, lost in the fragrance. I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy, what is and what isn't. You, the One in all, say who I am. Say I am You."

Lawrence Brown of Hyannis teaches humanities at Cape Cod Academy and is vice chairman of the Cape Cod Interfaith Coalition.