When Cat Stevens (a.k.a. Yusuf Islam) got on a plane from London, it did not touch ground at Dulles International as anticipated. Instead the flight was diverted to Maine's Bangor airport where the former pop singer turned Muslim peace activist endured a four hour detention and a subsequent return to England on grounds of being on a government watch list. Refusal to enter the United States also befell a prominent Swiss/Muslim scholar whose visa to teach at the University of Notre Dame was revoked at the last minute. Both scenarios are sordid examples of the paranoia that has engulfed the US administration in the name of national security. They alienate meaningful cultural dialogue, reinforce stereotypes and deepen the growing chasm between Islam and the West.

Perhaps it is somewhat surprising then that one of America's most widely read and best selling poets has been a devout Muslim mystic born eight centuries ago in Afghanistan – Maulana Jelaluddin Rumi. His verses in praise of Allah were set to music by Madonna; Donna Karan has used recitations of his poetry as background to her fashion shows. A two year old Time magazine article heralds the rise of Rumi's popularity with American readers in the tenuous aftermath of September 11, when Harper Collins published a pricey hardback entitled The Soul of Rumi, 400 pages of poetry translated by Coleman Barks, to follow up its previous best seller, The Essential Rumi, published in 1995 with more than 250,000 copies in print. In the currently deteriorating relations between America and Islamic constituents, the words of an ancient Muslim mystic as having captured the hearts of so many Americans might seem a total aberration or imply some hidden logic of hope and renewal.

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