Rumi

There is a small piece on the BBC web site on the revival of interest in the 13th century Sufi poet and mystic Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi in Afghanistan.

An interview with Professor Abdulah Rohen gives an insight into the totalitarian hostility to aesthetics,

He says the advent of communism in Afghanistan brought poetry into disfavour because it was seen as backward-looking.

Then the Taleban attempted to crush Sufism and outlawed all music, but Prof Rohen says it has since regained huge popularity.

Rumi himself put it more succinctly,

Only sweet-voiced birds are imprisoned. Owls are not kept in cages.