Optimistic Universalism

Professor Ali Mazrui embodied an optimistic universalism and the capacity to find common ground for global dialogue amidst conflicts. When receiving a lifetime achievement award – Mazrui, in his acceptance speech, pointed to two specific poems of Rumi and Wordsworth as a source of inspiration for awakening the ‘love of beauty and the beauty of love.’ In the context of the shared humanity of these experiences, one realizes the ability of such experiences to create a common language across barriers, a language of social justice and human rights. Using integrative interdisciplinary approaches from the fields of comparative religion and comparative literature, this essay explores the similarities and differences of the messages of Mazrui, Rumi, and Wordsworth to achieve an awakening. Such an awakening involves the individual’s awareness of being a part of something greater, often achieved in nature, which may serve as a basis for the universal grammar of social justice and human rights. Hermeneutic and phenomenological approaches, including intersubjectivity, are employed in the exegesis of the poetic material and its context. Also explored are the historical similarities and differences, anthropological and psychobiographical factors in the life histories of Mazrui, Rumi and Wordsworth. Ultimately, the dialectic between the polarities of themes of the pain of separation and longing for union, often linked to losses and life changing experiences such as migration, can be understood as opportunities for personal growth – motivating individuals to reach toward connection, reparation and the ability to engage in cultural dialogue and move past difference toward social justice and human rights.