Home›Sources›Billy Gray, "Rumi, Sufi Spirituality and the Teacher-Disciple Relationship in Elif Shafak's The Forty Rules of Love" (2020)SourcesBilly Gray, "Rumi, Sufi Spirituality and the Teacher-Disciple Relationship in Elif Shafak's The Forty Rules of Love" (2020)Billy Gray, 2020Citation FormatsGeneral ReferenceGeneral Reference Citation TextDivinity Atlas. "Billy Gray, "Rumi, Sufi Spirituality and the Teacher-Disciple Relationship in Elif Shafak's The Forty Rules of Love" (2020)." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://divinity.interactivelion.com/sources/gray-rumi-sufi-spirituality-forty-rules-of-love-2020.Copy General ReferenceAPA StyleAPA Style Citation TextDivinity Atlas. (n.d.). Billy Gray, "Rumi, Sufi Spirituality and the Teacher-Disciple Relationship in Elif Shafak's The Forty Rules of Love" (2020). Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://divinity.interactivelion.com/sources/gray-rumi-sufi-spirituality-forty-rules-of-love-2020Copy APA StyleBibTeXBibTeX Citation Text@misc{divinityatlas-billy-gray-rumi-sufi-spirituality-and-th, author = {Divinity Atlas}, title = {Billy Gray, "Rumi, Sufi Spirituality and the Teacher-Disciple Relationship in Elif Shafak's The Forty Rules of Love" (2020)}, year = {2026}, url = {https://divinity.interactivelion.com/sources/gray-rumi-sufi-spirituality-forty-rules-of-love-2020}, note = {Accessed August 30, 2026} }Copy BibTeXA peer reviewed article by Billy Gray of Dalarna University, checked directly at its DOI landing page. Its strength is a close scholarly reading of how the novel represents Sufi teaching and where that representation diverges from Rumi's own historical context. Its argument, that the novel reflects a modern, popularized current sometimes called Western Sufism, is cited here as Gray's own critical judgment, not the atlas's.FactsClaims Backed By This Source (10 claims)Comments (0)Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)FactsAssessmentReliability TierWell-attested1Reliability tier 1: a peer-reviewed article in Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis, the Donner Institute for Research in Religious and Cultural History's scholarly series, the strongest available evidentiary form for a claim about a novel's treatment of Sufi themes.NotesWell-attestedChecked directly at its DOI landing page (Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis, Vol. 29, No. 1, 2020, pp. 124 to 146). Gray argues the novel's account of Rumi and Shams reflects Western Sufism, a modern current built on universalist and perennialist assumptions, and that in shaping the material for an international readership the novel simplifies and decontextualizes Rumi's own teaching, a pattern he connects to what the scholar Amira El-Zein has termed the Rumi phenomenon in Western popular culture.CitationPublisherWell-attestedScripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis (Donner Institute for Research in Religious and Cultural History)URLWell-attestedhttps://doi.org/10.30674/scripta.84280Source TypeWell-attestedpeer-reviewed articleClaims Backed By This Source (10 claims)This source backs 10 claims across the atlas. As facts: 8 well-attested. Plus 2 entities citing it as a general reference with no single fact or relationship attached.Disposition By TopicSources, 6 claims: 6 well-attested.Articles, 2 claims: 1 well-attested, 1 general references.Literary Works, 2 claims: 1 well-attested, 1 general references.Well-attested8ArticlesSelling Sufism to a Western ReaderLiterary WorksThe Forty Rules of LoveSourcesBilly Gray, "Rumi, Sufi Spirituality and the Teacher-Disciple Relationship in Elif Shafak's The Forty Rules of Love" (2020)General References2ArticlesSelling Sufism to a Western ReaderLiterary WorksThe Forty Rules of LoveComments (0)No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.Sign in to join the discussion.Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.View At A Past YearThe atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.Show This Year