Interconnectedness: Rumi and Islam (Dr. Yetkin Yildirim)

The ecstatic poetry of Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi is the poetry of connection. Born in 1207, this acclaimed Sufi poet preached a message of love and profound unity through his words and his actions that still resonates today. As recently as 2013, Rumi was the best-selling poet in the United States, and his message of interconnectedness has never been more relevant and more urgent. Our physical environment is in a worsening state of crisis, and our lives are permeated by social divisions. How can we re-acknowledge our connectedness to our world and to each other? 

Islam teaches that creation is a way of knowing God. This process begins with belief: the belief that the richness and intricacy of the natural world must have its origin in a Creator. Then our curiosity leads us to ask questions about this Creator. We seek to explore His “nature” in the double sense of the word: meaning both the essence of his being and the physical environment that is his creation. Indeed, the two meanings are inseparable. Muslim scholars refer to nature as “the book of the universe,” for it is by studying this book carefully that we can come to know and respect the One who made it. So our belief leads us to knowledge as we seek to learn more about the ultimate Author of this “book of the universe.” 

Rumi uses similar metaphors to gesture toward an ultimate source of love beyond creation. In one poem, he writes:

Is the sweetness of the cane sweeter
Than the One who made the canefield?
Behind the beauty of the moon is the MoonMaker.

Part of our connection to the earth is born of this relationship. It is by embracing nature that we can come to understand the Creator of nature and of mankind. As Rumi said, "All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen." In his poetry, the natural world is always directing our attention and admiration toward what lies beyond it. But this doesn’t make it disposable or secondary. On the contrary, we depend on the beauty of the world to lead us to the knowledge of God. 

And the more that one learns about God, the more one comes to love. In Islam, real love, the love of the Eternal Ruler, is the seed of our existence. It is what we discover when we look into the universe. In Islamic scripture, God created the universe in order to be known and loved, and so that those souls awakened to truth would feel and manifest a deep interest in His Essence, Attributes, and Names. This sacred, essential love of God for Himself is the reason why He created the universe and why He caused humanity to appear in the world. It is also this love that manifests itself in human beings as love of God, as the most essential center of humanity's relationship with God.

This perspective is not unique to Rumi; throughout the history of Islam, scholars and writers have seen in the interconnectedness of the natural world a picture of the love of God. The contemporary teacher Fethullah Gulen echoes many of these same themes. Gulen stresses the significance of the first creation, Paradise, and teaches that our natural environment mirrors this original paradise and has been entrusted to us to be nourished and cared for. But too often, humanity’s relationship to the natural world is one of extraction and exploitation, not balance and nurture. For Gulen and Rumi both, this is a grave mistake. If the natural environment is like another holy “book of the universe,” it must be preserved and studied carefully. Gulen reminds us of this passage from the Quran: 

“Verily, in the creation of the heavens and the earth and in the alternation of night and day, and in the ships which sail in the sea with that which profits men, and in the water which Allah sends down from the sky and quickens therewith the earth after its death and scatters therein all kinds of beasts, and in the change of the winds, and the clouds pressed into service between the heaven and the earth — are indeed Signs for the people who understand.”

So in one sense, we are connected to our environment because of our love for God and our desire to seek knowledge of Him. But this love also connects us to each other, to all mankind. Because just like the mountains, the rivers, the forests, we too were created by God. We are all the brothers and sisters of this natural world; we are all parts of the same “book of the universe.” So when we proceed from our belief in God toward the knowledge of his creation, we are also moving toward a knowledge of ourselves and of each other. And just as we must cherish our natural environment, for it is a book by which God’s essence is revealed, we must also cherish each other as part of his creation, knowing that we are also embodiments of the attributes of the Creator.

In this way, Islam teaches the deep interconnectedness of humanity and the natural environment. In the Quran: “No living creature is there moving on the earth, no bird flying on its two wings, but they are the communities like you.” Rumi expresses this vision of unity in one of his most famous poems:

I died as mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was human,
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die human,
To soar with angels blessed above.
And when I sacrifice my angel soul
I shall become what no mind ever conceived.

From the world of minerals to the realm of angels, Rumi paints a portrait of an interconnected creation constantly journeying towards God. The interdependence of all things leads the poet to this realization that there is nothing to fear, because we are all part of the same creation. As Yunus Emre, one of the other poets in Anatolia, put it, “We love the created because of the Creator.” As believers in God, it is our joy to care for this creation without prejudice or distinction, just as we must care for each other as brothers and sisters before God. To return again to the poetry of Rumi, we can "be certain that in the religion of Love there are no believers and unbelievers. Love embraces all."

Dr. Yetkin Yildirim is a member of the board of directors of Dialogue Institute. He received his Masters and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a faculty member at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Dr. Yildirim has been studying Rumi’s teachings on interfaith and intercultural dialogue since 2004, and in 2009 he produced a documentary titled “Rumi and Sufism: Universal Love and Dialog.” He is the co-editor of two books: “Flying with Two Wings: Interreligious Dialogue in the Age of Global Terrorism” and “The Ottoman Mosaic: Exploring Models for Peace by Re-Exploring the Past.” Incidentally, Dr. Yildirim was born in the same city where Rumi lived and taught.