"Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."

For Heckel there is another reason to focus on Rumi at this historical moment. “In a contemporary world where we’re overwhelmed with a vision that all Islamic people are suicide bombers, I want to create a different connection with that civilization during this evening,” he said. “Rumi is a particularly interesting and unique way to increase our cultural understanding.”

“Rumi was surrounded by news of terrorism, just as we are eight centuries later,” noted Jonathan Curiel. “So where’s the bloodshed in Rumi’s writing? Like Jesus, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., Rumi insisted violence was an unsatisfying way of resolving issues...Sentiments like that have turned Rumi into one of America’s best-selling poets—someone whose thoughts on love and other matters are revered by hundreds of thousands of readers.”