The Lamp and the Way: Rumi, Islam, and the Journey to God

Readers who know little about Islam may nevertheless feel that they know Rumi. There is a good reason for this. Rumi’s appeal is universal. His poetry draws upon experiences recognizable across cultures: love and separation, suffering and transformation, beauty and mortality, as well as the longing to know who we are and to return to our Source. His extraordinary ability to speak across religious and cultural boundaries is part of his enduring gift.

Yet the Rumi many readers encounter today is often strangely detached from the religious world in which he lived.

He is described as a mystic, a Sufi, a poet of universal love, or simply as a great spiritual teacher. All of these descriptions contain something that is true. But when “Sufi” is separated from Islam, something essential disappears. Rumi was not a spiritual poet who happened to be Muslim. The Qur’an, the Prophet Muhammad (may the peace and blessings of God be upon him), prayer, fasting, pilgrimage and remembrance of God permeate his writings and his understanding of the spiritual life.

Rumi himself left little ambiguity about this allegiance:

“I am a slave of the Quran
if I have a soul.
I am the dust of the road of Muhammad, the Chosen.
If anyone quotes from my sayings
other than this,
I have nothing to do with him and
I have nothing to do with his words.” [1]

The declaration is striking. The poet whose verses have come to symbolize a spirituality capable of crossing religious boundaries explicitly identifies himself with the Qur’an and with the path of the Prophet Muhammad (may the peace and blessings of God be upon him).

But this does not diminish Rumi’s universality. It may help us understand it.

The reader can love the universal Rumi without erasing a particular Rumi who is rooted in Islam. Indeed, loving Rumi might make us curious about who he actually was—and about the spiritual world from which this remarkable poetry emerged.

A Poet Formed by the Qur’an

The Qur’an was not simply one influence among many upon Rumi. Its language, stories and imagery are woven throughout the Mathnawi. Rumi incorporates Qur’anic Arabic into his Persian verse, paraphrases verses, retells Qur’anic narratives and draws repeatedly upon the scripture’s imagery and teachings. Scholars have situated the Mathnawi within the longer tradition of Sufi Qur’anic interpretation. In the work’s own opening, the Mathnawi is described as a Kashshāf al-Qur’an—an “Unveiler” or “Expounder of the Qur’an.” [2]

This deep Qur’anic presence was already apparent to those closest to Rumi. His son Sultan Walad wrote:

“The poetry of God’s friends is all
explanation and secrets of the Qur’an,
for they are annihilated from themselves
and exist through God.” [3]

The significance lies not simply in how often Rumi quotes or alludes to the scripture. The Qur’an had become part of his way of seeing. Its language had entered his spiritual imagination so deeply that it helped shape the way he understood the human being, the world, and the journey toward God.

This is important when approaching Rumi today. To restore the Qur’anic ground of his thought is not to reduce a universal poet to a religious label. Nor is it to claim Rumi is only for Muslims. It is to encounter him more fully—to ask what formed the imagination from which the poetry arose.

And from that Qur’anic ground, another characteristic movement in Rumi becomes clearer: his continual movement between the outward and the inward, between form and meaning, and between Shari‘ah, the path that orders religious life, and Haqiqah, the Truth toward which the seeker journeys.

Form and Meaning: The Lamp and the Way

One of the keys to understanding Rumi is his refusal to separate outward religious practice from inward spiritual meaning. He certainly distinguishes between them. The form is not the meaning, and religious observance without inward understanding can become empty. But neither does the inward life make the outward form unnecessary.

This relationship between outward practice and inward realization lies behind Rumi’s understanding of Shari‘ah, Tariqah and Haqiqah: the Divine Law, the spiritual Way, and the Truth or Reality toward which the seeker journeys. Rumi does not present them as competing alternatives. In the introduction to the fifth book of the Mathnawi, he uses another image:

“The law is like a lamp: it shows the way. Without a lamp, you will not be able to go forward. When you enter the path, your going is the Way. And when you reach the goal, that is the Truth.”

The lamp is not the destination. But without the lamp, how does the traveler find the road?

This is why Rumi’s ecstatic language of Divine Love cannot easily be separated from the religious practices that formed his life. He could speak of transcending appearances, of passing beyond forms, of losing oneself in Love—and at the same time insist: “If love of God were only thought and meaning, the form of fasting and prayer would not exist.” [4]

For Rumi, then, to go beyond form does not mean abandoning form. Outward practice can become a means through which inward meaning is discovered. As he writes elsewhere, it is “through the mediumship and blessing of the external” that people “find the way to the internal.” [5] Yet Rumi never allows the form to become the destination either. The purpose of the lamp is to illuminate the road. The purpose of the road is to be traveled on.

Rumi prevents us from turning form into an idol. The form is necessary; it carries, protects, and gives expression to a meaning. But it is still the shadow. The Sun is the meaning. That tension is precisely what makes his understanding of Shari‘ah richer than either extreme: neither empty formalism nor a formless spirituality claiming that love makes practice unnecessary. Or, in one of his simplest images: “Form is shadow, meaning the Sun.” [6]

And so, we come to prayer— not merely as an obligation performed by the body, but as one of the places where, for Rumi, form begins to open into meaning.

Prayer: The Conversation of Lover and Beloved

Nowhere is Rumi’s movement from form toward meaning more vivid than in his writing about prayer. Rumi does not merely tell us that prayer has an inner meaning. He takes us inside the experience of prayer. The canonical form remains recognizable—ablution, standing, supplication—but suddenly prayer becomes longing, fire, intimacy, even bewilderment before God.

Prayer is one of the central obligations of Muslim life, performed at prescribed times each day. Rumi neither dismisses nor dissolves that form. Instead, he shows us what can happen within it.

“My profession is to speak prayers …
My prayers constantly turn around
the candle of Thy hearing; therefore
I possess burning prayers like the moth.” [7]

Here, the form of prayer has become a language of love. The worshipper who turns toward God in prayer becomes, in Rumi’s image, the moth circling the flame.

Even the preparation for prayer carries inward significance. Rumi invokes the Prophetic teaching:

“None with face unwashed beholds
the faces of the houris; he said:
‘There is no ritual prayer without the ablution.’” [8]

Ablution prepares the body. Prayer establishes the form. But Rumi continually draws the reader toward what may awaken within that form.

In one of his most extraordinary descriptions of prayer, the familiar act becomes almost unrecognizable in the intensity of Divine encounter:

“When I perform the ablution with tears, prayer becomes fiery …
I wonder at the prayer of the [divinely] intoxicated
By God, I do not know how I performed the ritual prayer …” [9]

The language is ecstatic, but the prayer has not disappeared. Quite the opposite. Rumi has taken us inside it.

This changes how we understand the relationship between religious practice and mystical experience in Rumi. Prayer is no longer “the obligatory practice” on one side and mystical intoxication on the other. The bewilderment occurs within the prayer. The fire burns within the form. The outward form remains. But it has become a doorway into a meaning.

Fasting: The Alchemy of Hunger

The fire that appears in Rumi’s prayer returns in his writing about fasting. But here, the fire does something more: it burns away what stands between the seeker and clearer sight.

“If your brain and stomach burn
from fasting …
Through that fire you will
burn a thousand veils…
When you fast, good character traits
gather round you …” [10]

For Rumi, hunger is not simply a deprivation. The fast has a form: one abstains. But within that abstinence, something may be transformed.

His imagery is striking because fasting, which outwardly appears to be an experience of emptiness, becomes inwardly a language of abundance: “Those who fast, drink the wine of the Spirit.” [11]

Elsewhere, Rumi imagines fasting as an almost alchemical transformation:

“On the mountain Qaf of fasting
even the sparrow becomes a Phoenix,
the stone turns into a wonderful ruby …” [12]

The body is emptied, yet Rumi’s world becomes more abundant: the sparrow becomes a Phoenix; the stone, a ruby. Hunger becomes not an end in itself, but part of the work of transformation. This is why Rumi could speak of fasting with such extraordinary reverence. On the five pillars, he writes: “Although faith is built upon five pillars, yet, by God, the greatest pillar of those is fasting…” [13]

For Rumi, fasting is not a rejection of the body, nor an escape from the world. It is a discipline through which the hold of appetite and habit may loosen, making room for something else to appear. “Only when empty the reed can sing.” [14]

Pilgrimage: The Journey Toward the Friend

Pilgrimage gives Rumi another of Islam’s most powerful outward forms through which to explore an inward journey. The Hajj carries the pilgrim toward the Ka’bah in Mecca. Yet Rumi asks what that journey ultimately seeks.

In one of his most beautiful poems, he calls out to the pilgrims:

“O people gone to pilgrimage,
where are you? Where are you?
The Friend is in this very place—
come hither, come O come!
Your Friend, he is your neighbor,
his wall and yours are one.
Bewildered in the desert,
what do you seek and roam?” [15]

The language might at first sound like a rejection of pilgrimage: Why journey across the desert if the Friend is already nearby?

But Rumi’s purpose is not to empty pilgrimage of meaning. As elsewhere, he moves from the visible form toward the reality to which it points. The physical journey has an inward counterpart. One may travel toward the sacred House while still being called to recognize the One for whom the journey is made.

The poem continues:

“When you behold, without forms,
the form of this your Friend,
then master, house and Ka‘bah
will you become yourself …” [16]

Here again, Rumi does not allow the outward form to become an end in itself. The Ka‘bah remains sacred, and the pilgrimage remains a journey, but the seeker’s attention is continually drawn beyond the sign toward the One to whom the sign points. The pilgrim travels toward the House. The heart is seeking the Friend.

Muhammad: The Guide on the Way

Behind Rumi’s devotion to the Qur’an and the practice of Islam stands his profound love for the Prophet Muhammad (may the peace and blessings of God be upon him). The Prophet is not merely a historical figure in Rumi’s writings, nor simply the bearer of the revelation he revered. He is the guide whose path the seeker follows toward God.

Rumi states this with characteristic directness:

“Know now that Muhammad is the guide. Until a man first comes to Muhammad, he cannot reach unto Us.” [17]

The force of the statement is difficult to miss. For all the universality of Rumi’s language of love, his own spiritual path was not without direction or guide. His love of God did not lead him away from the Prophet; it drew him more deeply into the Prophetic way.

Throughout Rumi’s writings, Muhammad (may the peace and blessings of God be upon him) appears as messenger, guide, beloved of God, and model for those who seek Him. Rumi draws repeatedly upon the Prophet’s sayings and the stories of his life, sometimes explicitly and sometimes so naturally that they become part of the texture of his own teaching. And when Rumi speaks directly of the Prophet, scholarship gives way to love:

“This is my beloved, this my physician,
this my tutor, this my remedy…” [18]

Perhaps this is where the modern reader comes closest to understanding something essential about Rumi. The poet who could speak so freely across boundaries did not achieve universality by becoming detached from his own religious ground. His vision grew within a particular spiritual world: a world formed by the Qur’an, illuminated by Shari‘ah, deepened through prayer and fasting, and oriented toward God through the example and guidance of Muhammad (may the peace and blessings of God be upon him).

To recognize this does not make Rumi smaller. It allows us to encounter more of him. And perhaps, after following him this far, we can hear differently the words with which we began:

“I am a slave of the Quran
if I have a soul.
I am the dust of the road of Muhammad, the Chosen.” [19]

At the beginning, these words may have sounded like a declaration of religious identity. Now perhaps they sound more like a declaration of love.

“I am the dust of the road of Muhammad, the Chosen.”

 

REFERENCES

[1] Jalal al-Din Rumi, Kolliyat-e Shams (or Diwan-i Kabir), B. Foruzanfar (ed.), Tehran University Press, Tehran, 1959.
[2] Jalal al-Din Rumi, The Mathnawi of Jalal ud-Din Rumi, R.A. Nicholson (trans.), Messrs Luzac & Co., London, 1968.
[3] F. Sepahsalar, Resallah, Eqbal Publishing., Tehran, 1946.
[4] Rumi, Mathnawi, Nicholson (trans.), 1968, 1: 2624.
[5] A.J. Arberry, Discourses of Rumi,  John Murray, London, 1961, p. 184.
[6] Rumi, Mathnawi, Nicholson (trans.), 1968, 6:4747.
[7] Ibid.,  3: 2314.
[8] Ibid., 3: 3033.
[9] Annemarie Schimmel, The Triumphal Sun, East-West Publications. London, 1980, p.357.
[10] Rumi, Kolliyat-e Shams, 1959, no. 1739.
[11] Ibid., no. 2266.
[12] Ibid., no. 1602.
[13] Schimmel, The Triumphal Sun, p. 290.
[14] Ibid., p. 303.
[15] Ibid., p. 291.
[16] Ibid., p. 291.
[17] Arberry, Discourses of Rumi, p. 232
[18] Schimmel, The Triumphal Sun.
[19] Rumi, Kolliyat-e Shams, 1959, no. 1173.