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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books The Wine of Love, Mystical Poetry of Imam Khomeini Appendix: On the Symbolism of Religious Poetry On the Symbolism of Religious Poetry [^1] In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful Persian poetry is rich in symbolism, which may be shocking to one unfamiliar with its conventions. In the Arabic language, Sufis had already used the metaphor of intoxication for mystical experience, and of the union of lovers for the presence of God.

These themes were expanded upon in Persian, and elements of pre-Islamic Persian culture were introduced to symbolize the interiorization of faith. When the Sufi poet ‘Attar describes himself as a Zoroaster, he does not mean that he had abandoned Islam, but rather that there was a dimension of Islam which might appear so strange to one who was merely superficially a Muslim that it could be imagined to be a different religion.

When Hafiz speaks of the hair of his beloved, he is interpreted as indicating the grace of God which emanates multiplicity, just as the strands of hair are a multiplicity. One cannot, however, simply replace the symbols of Persian poetry by their prosaic equivalents in mystical theology, for this would destroy the poem.

Persian poetry derives its excitement from the impossibility of disentangling all the images, from the nagging doubt that something unorthodox lurks within it, and from the invitation of the poet to the reader to become an insider, one who sees through the apparently heretical images to the purity of the poet’s meaning. Persian poetry is the most perfect expression of the multiplicity of levels of meaning which lies at the heart of Iranian culture.

Persian poetry must not be read as a puzzle to be decoded, but as an unsolvable enigma. The poetry of Imam Khomeini (may his soul be sanctified) trades on the use of the standard symbols of classical Persian mystical poetry. The apparent heterodoxy is sharpened by the position of the poet as an exoteric religious leader. Even though we know he had nothing to do with worldly wine, there is something shocking in the fact that such a person should talk about wine at all.

Some have also questioned whether Islamic law does not prohibit the use of the language of love, ‘ishq in Arabic and adopted in Farsi, with reference to Allah, the Exalted. ‘Ishq literally means extreme love, as has been mentioned in the standard dictionaries of classical Arabic.