Rūmī’s Antinomian Poetic Philosophy

Abstract

Western reception of Rūmī in the last few decades is intriguing, as he is commonly considered a gentle Muslim, different from other sages that Islamic culture produced. Rūmī’s otherness is often based on his powerful and peerless poetry, deploying rich wine imagery, homoerotic love metaphors, and an emphasis on the superiority of the heart and spiritual growth, and dismissing the outward and orthodox tenets. This paper argues that Rūmī belongs to a millennium-old Persian Sufism, and these poetic tropes derive from a firm antinomian tradition, functioning as strong metaphors to express religious piety by transcending all temporal dualities such as unbelief and belief, the profane and the sacred, purity and impurity, and so forth.