I gotta agree with the government on this one: that Rumi was a dangerous character, a friend of terrorists, what with all that poetic yammering about love and independence and peace...people can get ideas from that kind of stuff, you know.

The ABC video missed the point. It started as a group protesting Bush's "Faith Based Initiatives", then dived into the ridiculous 'Fundamentalist Atheists' garbage the media hides behind every time an atheist gets some press. The group had a legitimate point that is being overshadowed.

On banning poetry:

Perhaps the Neocons are strict Platonists.

Socrates: Therefore, Glaucon, I said, whenever you meet with any of the eulogists of Homer declaring that he has been the educator of Hellas, and that he is profitable for education and for the ordering of human things, and that you should take him up again and again and get to know him and regulate your whole life according to him, we may love and honour those who say these things --they are excellent people, as far as their lights extend; and we are ready to acknowledge that Homer is the greatest of poets and first of tragedy writers; but we must remain firm in our conviction that hymns to the gods and praises of famous men are the only poetry which ought to be admitted into our State. For if you go beyond this and allow the honeyed muse to enter, either in epic or lyric verse, not law and the reason of mankind, which by common consent have ever been deemed best, but pleasure and pain will be the rulers in our State.

Plato's Republic - Book X