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[quote]1) Karen Armstrong is one of the foremost authorities on comparative religion in both Britain and the United States. .......and received the 1999 Muslim Public Affairs Council Media Award.

http://www.synchronicity.org/Products/Books_by_Author/Karen_Armstrong.aspx

The following are extracted from her book:

Thus, a great scholar like Ibn Sina, who considered it a religious duty to discover God, died of excessive indulgence in wine and sex. Shams-u-Al-Din of Tabriz believed he was a reincarnation of the Holy Prophet (sws), the philosophers had their loyalties with the Hellenic Sciences, and similar arguments can be made for the proponents of Kalam.

Our purpose is not to malign the great luminaries but only to impress upon the Muslims that their scholars were not infallible and that many of them were often not from the mainstream.

http://www.monthly-renaissance.com/tobore.html

2) Maulana Rumi's Mathnavi: Saint or Dirty old man?

Rumi used the language of romance, but was often outrageous - many poems are about sexual love or drunkenness; and there's also a sense of ambiguity and frisson of the forbidden, common to much Sufi poetry. Early last century, some poems were translated only into Latin, to protect delicate sensibilities. One is the story of an effeminate looking man who, because of his looks, gets a job in a female bath-house and spends all day in a permanent state of excitement massaging women. Only when he is nearly discovered is he forced to rethink the way he lives his life. Another is a symbolic parable about two women who have sex with a donkey.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,608935,00.html

3) The The Essential Rumi p.283 says that the Sufi poet Sanai’s style impressed Rumi. Sanai said that dirty jokes can be instructional.

See the following website for details, they are not fit to be posted on this website.

http://www.muslimhope.com/rumi.htm

Conclusion: the readers are encouraged to make up their minds. Confront the truth on past scholars' imperfections and the filth that ensues in religious seminaries today or keep ignoring them.

The choice is yours.

Edited by: junaidj on Tuesday, November 09, 2004 8:41 PM[/quote]

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