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Meet Coleman Barks, the man responsible for nearly every & #39;Rumi quote& #39; you& #39;ve seen. Coleman hasn& #39;t studied Islam, Sufism, or Persian in academia or traditional settings, he doesn& #39;t even know Persian! But that didn& #39;t stop him from writing over a dozen translation books!
In a country where poetry books struggle to sell even a few thousand copies, Barks has sold over five hundred thousand, literally making millions from Moulana Rumi& #39;s writings.
After three decades of & #39;translating& #39; Moulana Rumi, Barks managed to establish himself as a scholar. Here he is giving a Ted talk about his & #39;translations.& #39;
Remember when I said he has no formal qualification? Scratch that, he was actually given an honorary doctorate by the University of Tehran (Iran& #39;s premier university) for all of his... scholarship... right. With friends like this, who needs enemies!
“I see a type of ‘spiritual colonialism’ at work here: bypassing, erasing, and occupying a spiritual landscape that has been lived...by Muslims from Bosnia and Istanbul to Konya and Iran to Central and South Asia.” a gem from an actual real Rumi scholar, @ostadjaan
Persians call Rumi& #39;s Masnavi, "The Qu& #39;ran in Persian." It& #39;s a storybook that embodies the spirit of the Qu& #39;ran in simple, rhyming Persian for the non-Arabic speaking masses. One cannot understand the Masnavi w/o the Qu& #39;ran, but alas “The Koran is hard to read.” remarks Barks.
But let& #39;s go back to the quote I mentioned earlier. I& #39;ve found the original Persian text (that Coleman can& #39;t even read) and translated it into English. Notice anything?
Compare my mostly literal translation with Coleman& #39;s & #39;translation.& #39; My heart aches for those who only know Moulana Rumi via this orientalist garbage masquerading as a translation.
Take this second poem. All of the Islam is removed to the point where the poem is almost meaningless. & #39;Home& #39; (dargah) in Persian is unnecessarily translated as & #39;caravan& #39;. This divergence from the original exposes the orientalist mindset of these & #39;translators.& #39;
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