His [Sufi mystic Shams’] stern but gentle manner and his preachings of love arouse strong reactions, ranging from murderous hostility on the part of Islamic zealots to almost total identification by Rumi, from respect and devotion by outcasts whom he has consoled and aided to the one kind of love he cannot allow himself, the passionate, carnal kind.

The protests against GWB’s inauguration last Saturday [January 20, 2001] were the largest since the anti-Nixon rallies on inauguration day in 1973, the press has informed us. But a lot of newspaper and TV reporters have been pretending not to understand why so many of us were standing in the cold rain in Washington, chanting and waving placards and booing when the dignitaries rolled by Freedom Plaza.