The article discusses the significant difference between Rumi’s initial literature, which was infused with Quranic teachings, and Rumi’s spiritual and theological understanding and Bark’s translations and how Rumi’s original Persian poetry was a vivid depiction of his Muslim identity and spiritual views. Rumi’s poetry was warped, deprived of the culture it was entrenched in, and changed to a diluted imitation of his original poetry in the hands of colonial ‘translators.’
Coleman Barks was the interpreter who most visibly separated Rumi from his Muslim background and built a profession out of his ‘translations.’ Barks had a Literature degree, but he had never studied Islam or Sufism academically.