Islam
Symbol · Symbols of the Religions
Star and Crescent
The Borrowed Emblem
An Ottoman state emblem read worldwide as the sign of Islam, and adopted far later than most people assume.
What it meansThe crescent is the young moon, and the Islamic calendar begins each month on its sighting — so the emblem marks the instant a new month is confirmed by human observation rather than by calculation. Time in this reading is something a community sees and agrees.
Person · Sufism · 1165
Ibn ʿArabī
The Greatest Master, Still Contested
Readers found a God disclosed through every form yet confined to none, and their experience as knowledge.
Who they wereHis most quoted lines make the heart, not the creed, the organ of religion: it has become capable of every form — a pasture for gazelles, a convent for monks, a temple, a Kaʿba, the tablets of the Torah. God is disclosed in every form and confined by none, which is what his readers found and his critics objected to.
The FindingWaḥdat al-wujūd, the phrase Ibn ʿArabī is universally labelled with, is one specialists find nowhere in his writings: on Chittick's reading Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) made it the name of a doctrine in order to condemn it, and only with Jāmī (d. 1492) did admirers take it up approvingly.
Person · Sufism · 1278
Rūmī
Muslim Preacher, American Bestseller
Qurʾanic teaching by story, plain enough for a shopkeeper; the popular English versions cut the Islam out.
Who they wereThe Masnavi gives its own instruction for reading it: the story is the husk and the meaning the kernel, and a listener who stops at the tale has eaten the shell. He preached in stories because a shopkeeper could follow one, and the Qurʾan is under almost every page.
The FindingThe Rumi who sells in English is Coleman Barks's — versions begun in 1984 and made without Persian from Nicholson and Arberry, in which īmān and kufr become 'wrongdoing and rightdoing' — while the poet himself was a Hanafi jurist whose verse runs on the Qurʾan.
Poems from the Masnavi 38
- ‘Allah’ and ‘Here Am I’Sufism
- Ayāz and His SheepskinSufism
- Daqūqī and the Seven CandlesSufism
- I Died as a MineralSufism
- Moses and the ShepherdSufism
- Muʿāwiya and IblīsSufism
- The Bear and the FoolSufism
- The Bird's Three CounselsSufism
- The Chickpea to the CookSufism
- The Chinese and the Greek PaintersSufism
- The Dream of the Treasure in CairoSufism
- The Elephant in the DarkSufism
- The Embryo in the WombSufism
- The Faqir and the Hidden TreasureSufism
- The Four Men and the GrapesSufism
- The Garden WithinSufism
- The Grammarian and the BoatmanSufism
- The Greengrocer and the ParrotSufism
- The Journey Through the KingdomsSufism
- The King and the HandmaidenSufism
- The Lion and the HareSufism
- The Lover and the Night PatrolSufism
- The Man Who Planted ThornsSufism
- The Merchant and the ParrotSufism
- The Moaning PillarSufism
- The Mouse and the CamelSufism
- The Old HarperSufism
- The Ruby and the SunSufism
- The Sage and the PeacockSufism
- The Snake-Catcher and the Frozen SnakeSufism
- The Song of the ReedSufism
- The Sufi's DonkeySufism
- The Tanner in the Perfume MarketSufism
- The Three FishSufism
- The Three TravellersSufism
- The Turkish Amir and the MinstrelSufism
- Who Is at the Door?Sufism
- ʿAlī and the KnightSufism
Poems from the Dīvān-e Shams-e Tabrīzī 11
- Every Form You SeeSufism
- Every Moment the Voice of LoveSufism
- Neither Christian nor JewSufism
- On the Day of My DeathSufism
- Out Beyond Ideas of Wrongdoing and RightdoingSufism
- Seek Him in the PlacelessSufism
- Show Thy FaceSufism
- The Man of GodSufism
- Up, O Ye LoversSufism
- When the Names Were NotSufism
- Why Does Not the Soul Take WingSufism