Non-Human Characters as Carriers of Environmental Ethics and Spiritual Wisdom in Rumi’s Fables: A Deep Ecological Reading

This study examines how Rumi uses non-human characters (animals, elements, plants) to convey environmental ethics and spiritual wisdom in selected fables from The Book of Rumi (2018). The study adopts a qualitative and interpretive approach and uses Arne Naess’s theory of Deep Ecology (1990) as the single theoretical framework. The focus of the study is to highlight the role played by non-human beings in examining the human-nature relationship. The analysis shows that Rumi has always provided voice, power, and moral status to non-human beings, animals, plants, and natural things, allowing them to stand against human domination and claim their existence. The fables are based on narration, metaphor and emotion as a means of ecological and moral understanding. Naess’s concepts of the Ecological Self and Self-realization, essential value, criticism of anthropocentrism, symbiosis and interdependence provide a philosophical lens to analyze Rumi’s spiritual language as ecological wisdom. The selected fables show that non-human beings speak, judge, resist, teach, mourn, and participate in relationships of dependence and care. This study shows that the fables of Rumi are a way of spiritual teaching and a kind of ecological collection, directly related to the contemporary environmental crisis, linking classical Islamic mysticism with the environmental philosophy of today. Finally, the study confirms that Rumi’s fables encourage humility, compassion, interdependence, and a more respectful relationship with the non-human world. It also shows that Rumi has always provided voice, power, and moral status to non-human beings, animals, plants, and natural things, allowing them to stand against human domination and claim their existence. The selected fables show that non-human beings speak, judge, resist, teach, mourn, and participate in relationships of dependence and care. Through these characters, spiritual wisdom is connected with humility, relationship, care, and recognition of the value of life.