Please help! Looking for Farsi for 'Christian, Jew, Muslim...'

[Medina Whiteman]

Salams all,

I just joined the group and it looks like an amazing place to be!

My husband is a calligrapher from Iran and we are trying to track down various Rumi poems with the original Farsi for a calligraphy commission. Would have a link to the following poem:

"Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Zoroastrian, stone, ground, mountain, river, each has a secret way of being with the Mystery, unique and not to be judged."

It's actually from Fihi-ma-fihi but perhaps someone here might have a link to it.

Many thanks in advance!

Medina

[Ibrahim]

Dear Medina,

Salâm,

This is not an authentic quote from Mawlana Rumi and it is not from his Discourses (Fihi ma fihi) as claimed on the Internet. There are many fake Rumi quotes on the Internet. It is all too common, following the example of Coleman Barks, for people to change accurately translated quotes (whether authentic or inauthentic Rumi) into "poetic interpretive versions".

In this case, the British scholar, Nicholson, translated a ghazal (published in 1898) that he believed at the time to be authentic (but, as it turned out, it is not; it is not in the early manuscripts of Rumi's Divan). Here is the first verse:

What advice (is there for me), O Muslims? For I do not know myself. I am neither Christian nor Jew, nether Magian nor Muslim.

This is the first verse of a ghazal that was translated by Nicholson during the earlier part of his career as a scholar. He admitted in a note in an appendix that he had not seen this ghazal in any manuscripts or editions of Rumi's "Dîvân-e Kabîr" used by him. (See Nicholson's translation, "Selected Poems from the Dîwâni Shamsi Tabrîz," 1897, pp. 124-27, 281)

This verse was amplified in an interpretive version by Coleman Barks: "Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion or cultural system." ("The Essential Rumi", 1995 p. 32)

The quote you asked about is yet another poetic interpretation of the same verse. It sounds very much like a Barks version, but I could not trace it on the Internet to any of his books. It might be a from something he said during a public performance reading of his material. A variation on the Internet has, "Christian, Jew, Muslim, pagan, Zoroastrian . . ." The rendering, "not to be judged" is obviously modern and unlike the way Rumi speaks in Persian. Rumi's reputation nowadays for supporting religious pluralism is so strong that I continue to be asked about quotes I have never read before in which he supposedly tolerates and affirms the value of other religions. However, I have found hardly any authentic quotes that come close to this--and all the rest are not authentic. As a result, I have concluded that there is no evidence that he knew anything about other religions other than what he learned through a traditional Islamic education.

Ibrahim

--------------

[Ibrahim]

Does anyone have Coleman Barks' "The Big Red Book"? If so, please look up the citation at the end of the book for the poem title, "Your First Eyes" (p. 258). The citation is probably a translation by Ergin from Turkish used by Barks in creating the following version:

A lover has four streams inside,

of water, wine, honey, and milk.

Find those in yourself and pay no attention

to what so-and-so says about such-and-such.

The rose does not care

if someone calls it a thorn, or a jasmine.

Ordinary eyes categorize human beings.

That one is a Zoroastrian. This one a Muslim.

Walk instead with the other vision given you,

your first eyes. Bow to the essence

in a human being. Do not be content

with judging people good and bad.

Grow out of that.

The great blessing is that Shams

has poured a strength into the ground

that lets us wait and trust the waiting.

[Behnaz Hashemipour]

Dear Sheikh Ibrahim,

Salâm

I think Medina is referring to the following passage from Fih-e ma fih :

"But love for God is latent in all people, Magians, Jews or Christians, and in all things that have being. How can anyone not love Him who is the source of their existence? Therefore, love is latent in everyone, but circumstances veil that love. When those circumstances change, that love becomes manifest."

(A.J. Arberry, Discourses of Rumi. p. 373)

The Persian text according to Tofigh Sobhani's edition (2010: p. 196) is as follows:

"اما محبت در حق باری در همه عالم و خلایق از گبر و جهود و ترسا و جمله موجودات کامن است. کسی موجد خود را چون دوست ندارد؟ دوستی در او کامن است. الا موانع آن را محجوب می دارد. چون موانع برخیزد آن محبت ظاهر گردد." 

Behnaz

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