SOURCE: Khalifa 'Abdul Hakim, "Love," in The Metaphysics of Rumi: A Critical and Historical Sketch, 1933.Reprint by The Institute of Islamic Culture, 1959, pp. 43-61.

[In the following essay, originally published in 1933, Hakim compares Rumi's "philosophy of love" to the theories of Plato.]

If there is anything in Rumi's mysticism that defies all attempts at analysis, that is his ecstatic utterances about Love. It is exactly here that theory has so very little in common with life and experience, and the words of Mephistopheles are justified: "Grau … ist alle Theorie Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum." If it were concerned only with lyrical fervours and ecstasies, there would no doubt be much that touches our own inner chords and stirs emotions in the soul that are too deep for words. But that is not all that we find in Rumi. He tells us that what he means by Love is indescribable and the attempt to define it is as baffling as to define life itself. Life as well as love, not in spite of, buton account of their immediacy cannot be defined.¹ He tells us that it is not logic but music² that is a partial medium of its expression, and love being paradoxical in its nature, music, that is its vehicle, becomes paradoxical too: "Poison and Antidote at the same time." "Our sweetest songs are those that tell us of saddest thoughts." Love is the greatest mystery of life and music is the garb in which it symbolises itself in the phenomenal realm:

There is a secret in the melody of the flute which if divulged would upset the scheme of things.

Who ever saw a poison and antidote like the reed? Who ever saw a sympathiser and a longing lover like the reed?

But the indescribability of the experience does not hinder him from giving to the uninitiated a kind of philosophy of Love. It is just this aspect that we propose to consider. So far as the theories of love are concerned, a part of his arguments and views can be directly traced back to Plato who has had a decisive influence on all mysticism, both Islamic and Christian, by his conception of a supersensuous Reality, as well as Eros as a cosmical power. Rumi's Love as an experience was not a product of any theory; as something intimately personal, it cannot be a subject of criticism. But the conceptual apparatus that he employs to philosophise about love requires to be understood in its historical connections. The contents of Phaedrus and Symposium that give us most of the theories of Love ever conceived by man were not unknown to the thinkers of Islam. Ibn Sina's (Avicenna) Fragment on Love³ is mostly a reproduction of the dialogues in Symposium. Love as a cosmic force and its universal operation in Nature; Love as the movement towards Beauty which being identical with Goodness and Truth represents Perfection and the Highest Idea, and Love as theinherent desire of the individual for immortality; in short, the whole outline of the theory of Life given by Avicenna is a simple repetition of the Platonic theory of Love. The processes of Assimilation, Growth, Reproduction are so many manifestations of Love. All things are moving towards Eternal Beauty and the worth of a thing is proportionate to its realisation of that beauty in itself.

Before coming to that aspect of Rumi's conception of Love where he differs from Plato, let us first pick out from the Mathnav the ideas that run parallel to the conceptions expounded in the dialogues of Plato.

1. The idea developed in Phaedrus that Love is not utilitarian, Rumi gives us back with the addition that it is the intellect that is utilitarian and that weighs profit and loss before taking a step. Love considering itself to be an end in itself does not ask 'Why' before it sacrifices. As a divine madness, it is directly opposed to the calculated Love of the sophists.

   How should Reason wend the way of despair? 'Tis Love that runs on its head in that direction.

   Love is reckless, not Reason: Reason seeks that from which it may get some profit, (vi, 1966-1967).

   Neither do they put God to any test, nor do they work at the door of any profit or loss, (vi, 1974).

2. In the speech of Agathon that precedes the speech of Socrates, we find the view of the young Plato that Love is Love of the Beautiful and the Beautiful alone is worth our love and homage. Rumi repeats the same conception in different words when he says that Perfect and Eternal Beauty belongs to God, and all that is beautiful in the phenomenal world is only a passing reflection of the Eternal Beauty of God and is related to God as sunlight is related to the sun. The beauty of a thing is like the illumination of a wall by the sun; when the sun looks away from it, lo! it is dark again.⁴ So our love should not stop short at the beautiful thing whose light is only transient and borrowed, but rise from the phenomenal to the noumenal origin of all beauty.…

3. Love is a principle of Unification and Assimilation. The force of attraction in every atom and one form of life losing itself in another form (Assimilation) and thereby resulting in Growth—all are manifestations of the form of Love.

   If there had not been Love, how should there have been existence? How should bread have attached itself to you and become (assimilated to) you?

   The bread became you: through what? Through (your) love and appetite; otherwise, how should the bread have had any access to the (vital) spirit?

   Love makes the dead bread into spirit: it makes the spirit that was perishable everlasting, (v, 2012-2014).

4. That Love as a cosmogonical principle is the origin and beginning of life, an idea that Phaedrus put in the mythological form by saying that Eros belongs to the oldest gods. Love as a principle of the genesis of the world was present in Greek thought even before Plato. Hesiod had taught that in the beginning of all things was Chaos out of which sprang at first Earth and Love,⁵ i.e. the dead substratum and the informing principle.

   If there had not been Love, how should there have been existence? How should bread have attached itself to you and become (assimilated to) you? (v, 2012).

But in spite of all this parallelism of ideas sketched above, there are some important and fundamental differences between Plato and Rumi in their conceptions of the nature and function of Love. Most of the conceptions given above as parallel with Rumi's ideas are the views of the various speakers in the Dialogues that throw light on the different sides of the problem and represent different ways of looking at it. Plato's own views are only those put in the mouth of Socrates and can be summed up as follows:

1. Love as a craving after immortality in its various forms through procreation and through intellectual and artistic productions or through heroic deeds.
2. Love as a movement towards the idea of Perfect Beauty in order to look at it in its purest form in which the soul once looked at it before its connection with matter and sensibility.
3. Love as a mediator between the two worlds. (An idea taken up and developed by Christian dogma.)

The fundamental difference between the two thinkers can be best understood when we examine the relation of Rationalism with Irrationalism in their respective outlooks on Life. Plato was a rationalist in so far as he believed in the knowability of the ground of Being through theoretical Reason. What he calls Eternal Beauty was nothing but one of the highest Ideas or the attractive side of the picture of Eternal Truth. But in Truth there is nothing individual and personal; so his Highest Idea or his God is impersonal, theoretical Truth that sits in the Ideal Realm unmoved and untouched by its worshippers and admirers. It is something objective and outside the human soul, only to be looked at and admired like a perfect piece of art. Love, which taken by itself is an irrational element, is only a means to an end, which is the realisation of theoretical Truth. So in the end Eros of Plato is nothing but Spinoza's intellectual love of God.

Rumi, in contrast with Plato, is an Irrationalist. In him the position between Reason and Love is reversed. He does not believe in the knowability of the ground of Being through Theoretical Reason. The categories of the Understanding … or what he calls the Particular Reason … are from their very nature incapable of grasping the ultimate Reality and on account of their discursive and dualistic nature cannot comprehend the Unitary Essence of Existence. Reason for him is a light and a guide but not a goal. As life in its essence is non-intellectual, so the Eternal Beauty that attracts the lover is not the beauty that is the "Effulgence of Truth." Rumi employs the Platonic terminology for views that are poles apart from Plato. For Plato the word 'Ultrarational' would have been utter nonsense. When reason is identical with the ultimate reality, how can there be anything beyond it? That explains again why the Eros of Plato is theoretically intelligible and the Love … of Rumi defies all description. The nature of God and the nature of the human soul are ultrarational; so their deepest and ultimate relation must necessarily be so.⁶

It is a characteristic feature of Rumi's world of thought that his central conception is not Truth or Knowledge of God but Life. It is the organism and its function of Growth and Assimilation that presents to him a picture which explains life more than any system of intellectualistic metaphysics. Love is a paradox in the sense that in it by giving we take and by dying we live. This process of dying to live is represented by organic life. Inorganic matter becomes organic by dying to itself and living a higher life in the plant and so can the plant be exalted into still higher life by dying unto itself and living in the animal. The whole course of evolution is an illustration of the principle of dying to live.

Rumi finds the principle of growth and development through the organic power of assimilation as the highest principle of explanation. Although true to his anti-intellectual metaphysics, he admits the impossibility of explaining the connection and the interaction of body and soul in terms of spatial contact and physical causation, yet he untiringly points to the miraculous power of transformation which we can see everywhere in Nature. Mechanism may try to explain phenomena by the principle of identity of cause and effect, but Mechanism is an extremely partial abstraction from the Real. Reality presents to us nothing but qualitative transformation. Fuel turning into fire and bread turning into life and consciousness point to the incommensurability of the cause and the effect.⁷ The 'how' of it may not be intelligible but the fact itself is so evident and incontrovertible that for unsophisticated consciousness it hardly requires any proof. Now Rumi pushes the analogy further and asks us if it is not justifiable to believe that something like the principle that holds good in the evolution from man to matter should hold good further up from man to the all-embracing spiritual organism—God.⁸ That is the conclusion to which Rumi's interpretation of Assimilation as a process of love leads him. So here we find a tremendous difference between the Eros of Plato and the 'Ishq of Rumi; the former leading to the gazing of impersonal intellectual beauty and the latter leading us to be partakers of Infinite Life by becoming living organs in the Life of Life.

Philosophy attempts to find a thread of unity running through the multiplicity of phenomena. This attempt can succeed only partially, because Reason can never overcome the dualism of the subject and the object. In the words of Rumi, "there is a squint in the eye of the intellect," it sees double that which in reality is one. It is intellectual analysis that splits reality into two which it does not know afterwards how to bind again. As a principle of unification, Love stands higher that Reason. Reason differentiates and separates,⁹ while Love binds and assimilates the heterogeneous and makes it homogeneous with itself. One cannot help noticing a striking resemblance between Rumi's view of love and the various types of the philosophy of intuition developed in post-Kantian idealism. As his conception of the pure Ego is fundamentally the same as that of Fichte, so his utterances about that ultimate intuition which he calls Love have a marked similarity with the intuition of Schelling and Bergson. Rumi's views about the relation of the intellect to the spring of life within us are an astounding anticipation of the views of Schopenhauer and Bergson—that intellect is only a utilitarian product, an instrument in the hand of "will to live" and hence is incapable of measuring the depths and scanning the nature of our immediate intuition of life.

Partial (discursive) reason is a deniar of Love, though it may give out that it is a confidant.

It is clever and knowing, but it is naught (devoid of self-existence); until the augel has become naught, he is an Ahriman (Devil).

It (partial reason) is our friend in word and deed, (but) when you come to the case of inward feeling (ecstasy), it is naught (of no account), (i, 1982-1984).

Our ultimate intuition is an intuition of identity that transcends all contradictions and all relations and, therefore, from its very nature it is incapable of stepping into the realm of intellect and speech whose nature is dualistic in the sense that, in order to think at all, we must analyse and compare.¹⁰ That is a drawback rooted in the very nature of intellect. Life in its immediacy can only be lived and felt but not described. Analysis of life is a post mortem examination of it. Rumi who always calls this immediate intuition as 'Ishq (considering the connotation which Rumi attaches to the word, 'Love' is a very inadequate and misleading translation of it) expresses in the following verses a longing for a kind of expression that could unveil the nature of this intuition and at the same time tells us as to why it is not communicable:

Then what is love? The sea of Not-being: then the foot of the intellect is shattered, (iii, 4723).

Would that Being had a tongue, that it might remove the veils from existent beings.

O breath of (phenomenal) existence, whatsoever words thou mayest utter, know that thereby thou hast bound another veil upon it (the mystery).

That utterance and (that) state (of existence) are the bane of spiritual perception; to wash away blood with blood is absurd, absurd. (iii, 4725-4727).

The contrast of love and reason … is a popular topic in the Sufi literature. The demands of these two potent factors in the personality of man are felt to be conflicting. This conflict is sometimes expressed as the conflict of law and love … and at other times as a contradiction between law and reality … and the general tendency in the Sufi doctrine is to assert the Primacy of Love to Law and Reason. Sometimes the contradiction is maintained in all its sharpness by the bold assertion that Love is lawless and Law is loveless. Love is identified with ecstacy that absorbs all distinctions: fidelity and infidelity, good and bad, right and wrong—in short, all values are drowned in it. In weaker natures this doctrine degenerated into antinomianism against which sobriety and healthy commonsense had to protest. Hujwiri¹¹ says that truth is a synthesis of both these elements and points to the formula of the Islamic faith: "There is no god except Allah and Muhammad is His Prophet" … , as an example of this synthesis, the first part as Reality and the second part as Law.

What the Sufis really meant to assert was the primacy and immediacy of the one as compared with the other. What they maintained was that the essence of religion is neither identical with law nor with morals, nor with theoretical reason, nor with the outward form of any positive religion. Their viewpoint was exactly that of Schleiermacher¹² that the essence of religion is neither morals nor theology but a cosmical feeling, an intuition of oneness with the spirit of the Universe. In this respect religion is not immoral or irrational but amoral and non-rational. It does not contradict morals and reason; it is categorically different from them.¹³ This indescribable cosmical feeling is exactly the same as the 'Ishq of Rumi. The following quotations from the Mathnavi will verify this statement.

1. This cosmical feeling has not any particular form as its object:

   That which is the object of love is not the form, whether it be love for (the things of) this world or yonder world, (ii, 703).

2. 'Ishq cannot be identified with the psychophysical feeling of pleasure and pain; it is categorically different from them.

   Do not say that the heart that is bound (conditioned) by (such bodily attributes as) sadness and laughter is worthy of seeing Thee (as Thou really art). (i, 1791).

   Love is higher than these two states of feeling: without spring and without autumn it is (ever) green and fresh, (i, 1794).

   Our emotion is not caused by grief and joy, our consciousness is not related to fancy and imagination.

   There is another state (of consciousness), which is rare: do not thou disbelieve, for God is very mighty. (i,1803-1804).

3. This cosmical feeling is the very essence of religion.… A man with this feeling cannot be pronounced irreligious in whatever from he might express his faith.

   Whatsoever the man in love (with God) speaks, the scent of love is springing from his mouth into the abode of Love, (i, 2882).

   And if he speaks infidelity, it has the scent of (the true) religion, and if he speaks doubtfully, his doubt turns to certainty, (i, 2882).

   If he speaks falsehood, it seems (like) the truth. O (fine) falsehood that would adorn (even) the truth l (i, 2886).

   Theoretical reason cannot lead to this feeling; one must turn away from logic in order to realise this feeling.

   I have tried far-thinking (Providence) intellect; henceforth I will make myself mad. (ii, 2332).

4. This feeling consumes away all doubts and difficulties raised by man's theoretical and practical interests; it is a source of englightenment not accessible to reason.

   His (God's) love is a fire that consumes difficulties; the daylight sweeps away every phantom. (iii, 1136).

   It is the Infinite in man which, dissatisfied with the Finite, doubts it and puts questions to it. Seek the answer there where the question emerges, i.e. in this infinite cosmical feeling.

   O thou with whom He is pleased, seek the answer from the same quarter from which this question came to thee. (iii, 1137).

   Why on this side and on that, like a beggar, O mountain of Belief, art thou seeking the echo? (iii, 1139).

   The only muzzle for evil suggestions (of doubt) is Love; else, when has anyone (ever) stopped (such) temptation? (v, 3230).

The identification of 'Ishq with this immediate cosmical intuition reveals the real meaning of a number of utterances in the Sufi literature which otherwise appear to be irresponsible and extravagant. For instance, the following verses attributed to Abu'l Khair¹⁴ must be interpreted in this spirit:

He whom destiny places among the group of lovers becomes free from the mosque and the temple. He whose mode of life is annihilation and Faqr (detachment from the world) has neither relation nor belief nor gnosis nor religion.¹⁵

Rumi is never tired telling us that this intuition is neither communicable nor teachable. Morality and reason may serve as helps to the relisation of it. He marks it off clearly from science as well as art.

Science is learnt through words and art is learnt through practice, but Faqr is awakened by personal touch.

As a consequence of seeing in this intuition the real purpose of religion, he prefers one moment of it to a thousand years spent sincerely in the service of God.¹⁶ Religion as revealed in forms and dogmas is not identical with this immediate intuition.¹⁷

In connection with this problem of the relation of this intuition to reason, Rumi has interpreted the story of Adam and Satan as given in the Qur'an. In order to appreciate Rumi's interpretation, we give a brief sketch of the story.¹⁸

"The universe and the angels were long in existence before the creation of man. When God proposed to create Adam, He put His proposal before the angels saying that He wished to create a being who should represent Him on the earth and act as His Vicegerent. The angels did not relish the proposal and asserted their purity and superiority and their incessant praise and glorification of Him. They objected to the creation of man because he would be cruel and shed blood on earth. To refute the angels God established the superiority of Adam by giving him the knowledge of all things. They acknowledged their ignorance and the worth of Adam. Having established the dignity of man on the basis of a type of knowledge that the angels did not possess, they were asked to pay homage to Adam by prostrating themselves before him. All the angels obeyed except Ibl s, the Satan, who refused out of pride looking down upon Adam as a mean creation of clay. For this crime against, God and Man, the Satan was cursed. He fell from his dignified position and determined to avenge himself on this new creature and his Creator.

"The Satan misled Adam and Eve into eating the fruit of the forbidden tree. They acknowledged their sin and were forgiven and sent down to live on the Earth. Adam was dignified again, but Satan kept on in his contempt of man and the consequent revolt against God."

Now, let us turn to Rumi's interpretation of the story which partly agrees and partly differs from the Biblical narrative. His views may be summed up as follows:

1. Adam of the Qur'an is symbolical of Humanity¹⁹ in its original Essence; he is the prototype of man
2. The knowledge given to Adam²⁰ which put the angels to shame and established his superiority to them was of an intuitional nature; it had nothing in common with intellectual knowledge or theoretical reason.
3. In the creation of Adam God breathed His own Spirit into him that was the source of Adam's divinity and dignity and that was the Essence to which angels were asked to pay homage.
4. Satan, the principle of evil, represents a view of life that is incapable of appreciating the divine dignity of man.²¹

Intellect working by itself is materialistic and realistic and is incapable of realising the eternal value of man. This value lies in the intuition of man's divinity and infinity which the fallen man is always trying to realise and reattain.²²

Satan is the personification of the realistic intellect while Adam's essence is the love of the Ideal and the Infinite. Then again Rumi represents Satan as a determinisit²³ giving a hint that intellect cannot believe in freedom; freedom lies in the non-intellectual side of man. So Satan is the embodiment of the intellect which is realistic and deterministic, while the intuitional side of man represents him as an ideal and free being.

Thus it is love allied with the sense of freedom that Rumi conceives as the essence of man.…

Notes

1. My secret is not far from my plaint, but ear and eye lack the light (whereby it should be apprehended). Body is not veiled from soul, nor soul from body, yet none is permitted to see the soul. (i, 7, 8).

2. The reed is the comrade of busy one who has been parted from a friend: its strains pierced our hearts.

   Whatsoever I say in exposition and explanation of Love, when I come to Love (itself) I am ashamed of that (explanation).

   Although the commentary of the tongue makes (all) clear, yet tongueless love is clearer. (i, 112, 113).

3. This fragment on love forms part of his collected works preserved in the British Museum Library and has been edited by N. A. F. Mehren (Leiden, 1894).

4. That (friendship) was a radiance (cast) upon their wall: the sign (of the sun) went back towards the sun.

   On whatsoever thing that radiance may fall, thou becomest in love with that (thing), O brave man.

   On whatsoever existent thing thy love (is bestowed), that (thing) is glided with Divine qualities. (iii, 552-554).

5. Compare it with the following:

   Had it not been for pure Love's sake, how should I have bestowed an existence on the heavens? (v, 2739).

6. There is a union beyond description or analogy between the Lord of Man and the spirit of Man. (iv, 760)

   No created being is unconnected with Him: that connection, O uncle, is indescribable.

   Because in the spirit there is no separating and uniting, while (our) thought cannot think except of separating and uniting. (iv, 3695-3696).

   How should the intellect find the way to this connection? This intellect is in bondage to separation and union. (iv, 3699).

7. Everything except love is devoured by love: to the beak of love the two worlds are (but) a single grain. (v, 2726).

   Again they crushed the bread under their teeth: it became the mind and spirit and understanding of one endowed with reason.

   Again, when that spirit became lost in Love, it became (as that which) rejoiceth the sowers after the sowing. (i, 3167-3168).

   The delight of (every) kind is certainly in its own kind (congener): the delight of the past, observe, is in its whole. (i, 889).

   As (for instance) water and bread, which were not our congeners, became homegeneous with us and increased within us (added to our bulk and strength). (i. 891).

   Oh, happy is the man who was freed from himself and united with the existence of a living one! (i, 1535).

8. Love is an (infinite) ocean, on which the heavens are (but) a flake of foam: (they are distraught) like Zalikha in desire for a Joseph.

   Know that the wheeling heavens are turned by waves of Love: were it not for Love, the world would be frozen (inanimate).

   How would an inorganic thing disappear (by change) into a plant? How would vegetive things sacrifice themselves to become (enclosed with) spirit?

   How would the spirit sacrifice itself for the sake of that Breath by the draft whereof a Mary was made pregnant? (v, 3853-3856).

9. That Unity is beyond description and condition: nothing comes into the arena (domain) of speech except duality. (vi, 2034).

10. The substance of the spirit is itself beyond contraries (vi, 63).

11. Kashf al-Mahjub, pp. 139-40.
12. Uber die Religion Reden an die Gehildeten unter ihrer Verächtern, Deutsche, Bibleotek, Berlin, pp. 1-27.

13. In that quarter where love was increasing (my) pain, Bu Hanifa and Shafi'i gave no instruction. (iii, 3832).

    The religion of love is different from all other religions.

    Verily, the circumambulation performed by him who beholds the king is above wrath and grace and infidelity and religion. (iv, 2697).

14. Abu Sa'id Abu'l Khair, edited by Mitra, Lahore. About the life of Abu'l Khair see R. A. Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Mysticism (Cambridge).

15. A comparison of these lines with a quatrain of 'Umar Khayyam shows into what utter Nihilism an exaggeration of this standpoint might lead:

    I saw a free Sufi squatting on the ground, who was neither for infidelity nor for Islam, neither for the world nor for religion: truth and reality and law and belief were nothing to him: in the two worlds who is brave like him?

16. A short time (spent) in the company of God's friends is better than sincere religious worship of a hundred years.

17. In that quarter where love was increasing (my) pain, Bu Hanifa and Shafi'i gave no instruction. (iii, 3832).

    Verily, the circumambulation performed by him who beholds the king is above wrath and grace and infidelity and religion. (iv, 2967).

    Not one word (capable of) expressing it has (ever) come into the world, for it is hidden, hidden, hidden. (iv, 2968).

    The Mathnavi is full of utterances about the superiority of love to law. The Qur'an emphasised the aspect of law and duty and obedience and the relation of God and man was depicted as the relation of the master to the servant. The Sufi reaction against orthodoxy expressed itself mainly in this revision of values. Rumi conceives of duty and service only as a disguise of love:

    At the time of the Sama' Love's minstrel strikes up this (strain): 'Servitude is chains and lordship headache.' (iii, 4722).

    Servitude and sovereignty are known: loverhood is concealed by these two veils. (iii, 4724).

18. References to the story in the Qur'an:

    Adam created to rule on earth. (ii. 30).

    Adam is taught the names of all things. (ii. 31).

    Angels ordered to make obeisance to Adam. (ii. 34; vii. II; xv. 28; xvii. 61; xviii. 50; xx. 116; xxxviii. 72).

    Iblis refuses to make obeisance to Adam. (ii. 34; vii. II; xiv. 30; xvii. 61; xviii. 50; xx. 116; xxxviii. 73, 74).

19. The Adam like this whose name I am celebrating, if I praise (him) till the Resurrection, I fall short (of what is due). (i, 1248).

    Adam was the eye of the Eternal light. (ii, 18).

    If outwardly, the peri is hidden, (yet) Man is a hundred times more hidden than the peris. (iii, 4255).

    Since, in the view of the intelligent, Man is hidden, how (hidden) must be the Adam who is pure (chosen of God) in the unseen world! (iii, 4257).

    About the identification of Adam with man in general there is a verse in the Qur'an which, though not directly alluded to by Rumi, may have served him as a scriptural basis for his doctrine:

    And certainly We created you, then We fashioned you, then We said to the angels: Make obeisance to Adam. So they did obeisance except Ibl s. (vii 11).

20. Inasmuch as the eye of Adam saw by means of the pure light, the soul and in most sense of the names became evident to him. (i, 1246).

21. He (Iblis) had knowledge, (but) since he had no religious love, he beheld in Adam nothing but figure of clay. Though you may know (all) the mimitiae of knowledge, O trustworty (scholar) not by that (means) will your two (inward) eyes that discern the invisible be opened. (vi 260-261).

22. He that is blessed and familiar (with spiritual mysteries) knows that intelligence is of Iblis, while love is of Adam (iv, 1402).

23. That the Devil, the embodiment of intellect, is at the same time a personification of Determinism as opposed to Freedom represented by Adam, is very ingeniously based by Rumi on certain verses of the Qur'an. Adam as well as Satan committed a sin; the former admitted having committed it out of his own choice and begged for forgiveness but Satan attributed his own sin to God.…