The Elephant in the Dark: Christianity, Islam and the Sufis

In a darkened room a group of men once sought to examine an elephant.

Taking hold of a different part – an ear, a leg, the tail – each one mistook his particular part for the whole. In the darkness, each of the men became convinced that the elephant was the object he himself had felt – a fan, a rope, a pillar – and so on.

With this ancient fable, first described by the Sufi Master Jalaluddin Rumi, Idries Shah presents the Sufi perspective that Christianity and Islam stem from one, inner, orig...