You may be surprised to learn that one of the best-selling poets in America today is a man who lived and died 800 years ago. The Persian-born Rumi, Jalal ad-Din Muhammed Rumi, to give him his full name, was a Sufi master who wrote ecstatic poems about joy and love and separation and pain. One respected scholar compares Rumi's work to Shakespeare's for "its resonance and beauty." Contemporary artists as diverse as Madonna and Philip Glass acknowledge their debt to him. But the popular editions of his work, much edited, contain little evidence of his Muslim origins. Has he been sanitised for a sensitive modern reader? Has his religion been removed from his poetry to help him become a more universal figure?

Ernie Rea is joined by Fatemah Keshavarz, Director of the Roshan Institute for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park; Alan Williams, Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Religion at the University of Manchester; and Shahram Shiva, a Rumi Translator and scholar

Produced by Nija Dalal-Small.