At his best, Rumi expresses love for another man more profoundly and more poetically than any other writer except, perhaps, Shakespeare or Hafiz. "I see my beauty in you," Rumi says in another ghazal for Shams. For seven centuries, readers have discovered their own capacity for beauty in the words of Rumi.
Two noteworthy world religions have grown out of same-sex love affairs. The Roman Emperor Hadrian began a religion in the name of Antinous following the death of his young companion. However, the legacy of Antinous, based in part on the boy's physical beauty, was insufficient to rival the growing popularity of Christianity, and the religion died. By contrast, the "whirling dervish" order of Sufis, begun by Jalal al-Din Rumi following the disappearance of his beloved friend Shams al-Din, continues to whirl after more than seven centuries, and the love poems Rumi wrote for and about Shams are still recited and praised throughout Persia and much of the Islamic world, although modern Islam certainly downplays and frequently ignores or denies altogether the homosexual roots and aspects of the verse.
