My criticism on the book "Forty Rules of Love"

 My criticism on the book "Forty Rules of Love" which is a total waste of time and energy 

By CSP Naeem Khan.

The book neither depicts what Sufism is nor it's a usual romantic story book. It's a very ugly amalgamation of both. 

It's like Paulo Coelho in a garb of  Persian mysticism and passing him off as a “modern” Sufi living in Amsterdam!

Sufism is Islamic mysticism where focus is God ,not some human romantic relationship. 

Adherents of puritanical and revivalist Islamic movements (Salafis and Wahhabis), who believe that practices such as visitation to and veneration of the tombs of Sufi saints, celebration of the birthdays of Sufi saints, and dhikr ("remembrance" of God) ceremonies are bid‘ah (impure "innovation") and shirk ("polytheistic").

"As far as the Sufis are concerned, the holy Qur'an is replete with obscure symbols and layered allusions, each of which ought to be interpreted in a mystic way. So they… look out for veiled references in the text, doing everything in their power to avoid reading God's message, plain and clear." Before long, this debate between the literal and metaphorical interpretations of religion will have significant consequences for all concerned.

It's a novel about an American Jewish housewife who finds love with a bohemian Sufi mystic and the plot is promoting sectarian divides. 

Thus you have to be either religious here or mystical but the author has further mixed it with romantic Love!

If you to know about Sufism, then go for original sources,  if you want to know about Romantic Love, the LAA( Lust ➕ Attraction ➕ Attachment), then study its biochemistry. Don't  mix it with divine love with human flesh based love.

Our people are already highly emotional and such books make them further ablaze. 

We need the sequence of RETI Rationalism Empiricism Transcendentalism Intuitionism 

Let's be philosophical,  scientific and analytical first and then go for such emotional stuff.

The book is a failed attempt to portray two parallel stories that mirror each other across two very different cultures and seven intervening centuries. The problem with The Forty Rules of Love is  that two disparate storylines are interweaved; it's that the present-day narrative is so horrendously awkward,  heavy and clumsy. 

Shams seems suspiciously modern, like a Quran-reading yoga teacher. Her rendering of the medieval Middle East feels anachronistic, as if the only thing separating it from our own society is the absence of cars and telephones. Nor does she convey any sense of religious profundity or transcendence. A book that turns on its characters’ spiritual raptures needs at least a hint of the sublime.

For me the reading of the book was totally  unrewarding. The story is not absorbing,  the style is complicated due to cliches.

Postscript:Some parts of the critique are of others to which I agreed.