AVOIDANCE OF PREJUDICE AS SEEN IN PERSION MYSTICAL LITERATURE BASED ON MATHNAVI MANAVI

Ali Muhammad Sajjadi

Professor A. M. Sajjadi is Deputy of the Faculty of Letters
and Humanities in the University of Shahid Beheshti, Iran. He has published
five books and numerous papers.

Civilization gives rise to thoughts thoughts emerged from the
mind free from prejudice and stiffness. The prophet of Islam said: "The state of
being enamoured and charmed stops the sight from seeing as well as ears from
listening to the truths". One who through ignorance imagines everything to be
beautiful or ugly is unable to understand the realities wars, bloodshed,
oppressions, inequality, tyrannical acts, all have their roots in prejudice and
dogmatism.

To consider oneself free from any and all faults, to emphasize
the week point of others, to those of other, to imagine one's own race,
nationality, political party, and sect, superior to those of others, stops man
from exchanging ideas as well as finding a bilateral way for searching a
suitable atmosphere for man's co-existence

Perhaps mysticism or gnosis is the only advisable way in which
man may take everything with ease accompanied with high-mind as well as
devotion, Gnostics believe that the ways to God are as many as the people who
tread them. There is no mind in which there is no mystery of God. On top of the
door of the monastery of the Sufis is written: Give bread (or show your
hospitality) to any new comer without asking his name. In this article, an
attempt is made to give a summary of such high humane though on the basis of the
mystical references of Iran and Islam.