Islam’s influence on Rumi’s poetry was lost (or erased) in translation

Islam’s influence on Rumi’s poetry was lost (or erased) in translation: All those spiritual Rumi quotes that show up on your Facebook newsfeed are likely missing a central feature of the Persian poet’s works: “The Rumi that people love is very beautiful in English, and the price you pay is to cut the culture and religion,” a scholar of Sufism tells The New Yorker’s Rozana Ali. Before you start lambasting pop culture figures like Madonna or Coldplay’s Chris Martin, both of whom relied on Rumi’s work for their personal spiritual journeys, the true culprits are translators and theologians from the Victorian period, who “could not reconcile their ideas about a ‘desert religion,’ with its unusual moral and legal codes, and the work of poets like Rumi and Hafez.”