ABSTRACT
“Islamic Publishing is Poised for Growth,” announced the headline of an article in Publishers’ Weekly, the main US book-trade journal, in 2000. “Books on Sufi Poet Rumi and Sufism Abound.” 2 Sufi literature is indeed popular in the West, and this chapter examines the extent, origins and nature of that popularity. It confirms that Sufi literature is now read in the West by millions, traces this phenomenon back to 1812, and argues that Sufi literature in the West is mostly read in distinctively Western ways.
