On the occaison of the famous poet’s birthday, I found some nice reflections online. This one, for example, points out the connection to peaceful themes within Islam:

Whenever people say that Islam is hostile to opposing views and violent in its nature, I always wonder whether those people actually ever took the time to read the Koran, to talk about it, to read other Islamic literature, to take a long and hard look at the history of this second largest religion of the world, and whether they’ve ever heard of someone we in the West have come to know as Rumi.

The BBC adds some classic British dry humor for perspective:

For many years now, the most popular poet in America has been a 13th-century mystical Muslim scholar.

I guess they were really trying to say Madonna is the most popular, and since she cites Rumi…but the effect is the same. Poetry today is more alive, more integrated, and more important than ever before. The BBC continues:

“When a religious scholar reads the Mathnawi, he interprets it religiously. And when sociologists study it, they say how powerful a sociologist Rumi was. When people in the West study it, they see that it’s full of emotions of humanity.”

Ironically, the biggest threat to poetry is from those who argue that it is in such a weak state that it needs to be popularized through force — they want to see their idea of poetry become more dominant and that usually means the stuff most like themselves rather than from a global perspective. But let’s face it, there’s plenty of Rumi in this world for everyone, and so we do not have to measure poetry’s success solely by what makes old rich white men in America happy.