Spiritual but not religious

A great many Iranians describe themselves as spiritual but not religious: ma’navi, ‘spiritual’, but not mazhabi, ‘religious’ in the sense of following a set creed and its rules. The word they often reach for is erfan, which in its strict sense means the mystical knowledge of the Sufis but in everyday speech has come to cover any inner search for meaning. Some were raised in religious homes and moved away from observance; others grew up in secular families and found their way to something beyond themselves. What they share is a practice that is personal, chosen and usually rooted in Persian poetry.

At the heart of that practice is Jalal al-Din Rumi, Mowlana, ‘our master’, born in the region of Balkh in 1207 and buried in Konya in 1273. His Masnavi and his lyric Divan-e Shams are read aloud in living rooms, set to music and sung in concert by singers such as Mohammad Reza Shajarian and Shahram Nazeri, and quoted in messages of comfort. Iranian readers who keep no religious rules still find in him a language for love, loss and longing. Since the free English versions of Coleman Barks appeared from the 1970s onwards, Rumi has also become one of the most widely read poets in the English-speaking world. Some scholars and writers, among them Rozina Ali in The New Yorker, argue that these popular versions strip away the Qur’anic and Islamic world in which Rumi wrote; admirers answer that they have carried him to readers who would otherwise never have met him.

Other poets keep company with Rumi. Hafez is consulted rather than simply read. Sohrab Sepehri, the twentieth-century painter-poet of Kashan, who travelled in India and Japan and drew on Buddhist and Eastern thought, wrote of water, light and plain things with a reverence many readers find spiritual without being doctrinal.

The fal of Hafez

To take a fal-e Hafez, the reader makes an intention, a niyyat, often addresses the poet by name, and opens the Divan at random. The ghazal that appears is read as an answer. Families do this at Yalda and Nowruz, students before exams, lovers before a decision. Outside the poet’s tomb, the Hafezieh in Shiraz, and on the pavements of Tehran, fortune-sellers offer printed verses, sometimes chosen by a small trained bird. For some the fal is a game; for others it is a serious way of listening to their own hearts through another’s words.

Nature, festivals and practice

For many, the sacred is found outdoors. On Friday mornings Tehranis climb the paths of Darband and Tochal in the Alborz mountains; families picnic beside rivers at Sizdah Bedar; people leave the city for the forests of Gilan and Mazandaran or the desert nights of Yazd and Kerman. The old festivals of the solar year, Nowruz, Chaharshanbeh Suri, Yalda, give many non-religious Iranians a ritual life tied to the seasons rather than to scripture. Meditation and yoga classes are found in Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan and Mashhad, and across the diaspora, where some teachers blend breathing practice with readings from Rumi.

New religious movements have also drawn followers. Among the best documented is Erfan-e Halgheh, ‘Interuniversal Mysticism’, founded by Mohammad Ali Taheri, which teaches a form of spiritual healing. Taheri has been arrested several times since 2011 and was sentenced to death in 2015 on a charge of ‘corruption on earth’, a sentence later overturned; UN human rights experts and Amnesty International raised concern over his case and the treatment of his followers. Most spiritual Iranians, though, belong to no movement at all. They keep a book of poems, a window onto the mountains and their own counsel.