Do people who read it in the West understand the Islam that underlies his poetry?
Rumi’s writings fall into two basic categories. One category is the lyric poems–the gazals and rubayat. These poems are somewhat ecstatic and intoxicated. They don’t often directly refer to Islamic teachings because they work in the language of metaphor and poetry. These poems also work in the conventions of classical Persian poetry, where people use the metaphors of wine and passionate love, knowing very well that they were referring to spiritual experiences and that these experiences are rooted within an Islamic context. Nowadays, it has been these kind of poems that have been the more popular ones in America. Whereas his “Mathnawi,” which has his more mature teachings and which contain references to Qur’anic ayat and hadith and Islamic practice on every page, are only now becoming popular. Also, some of the most popular translations have had some of the Islamic references removed because they would not be intelligible to the average American. However, Rumi’s message is always about
