Otherness in Rumi's Spiritual Masnavi: An Analysis of the Components and Moral Mechanisms of Encountering the Other

The issue of the “other” and the way of morally confronting him has become one of the main foci of cultural, religious, and identity tensions in the contemporary world. In the meantime, rereading classical moral-educational texts can provide alternative horizons for understanding the roots of anti-otherism and the possibilities of moral coexistence. The present study, with a qualitative approach and descriptive-analytical method, explores the concept of “otherness” in Rumi’s spiritual Masnavi and attempts to extract and formulate the components and moral-educational mechanisms of confronting the other from the text. The research data is the full text of the six Masnavi books, and the analysis is based on the logic of content analysis and conceptual clustering.The findings show that otherness in the Masnavi is not simply equivalent to tolerance or social tolerance, but rather a procedural and multi-level system of ethics of encountering the other. This system is based on four main clusters.Epistemic humility and criticism of certainty, dignity-centeredness and sensitivity to intention in moral judgment, de-egotism and inner purification as an educational mechanism, and politeness of disagreement and avoidance of humiliation at the level of social communication. Analysis of central anecdotes such as "The Elephant in the Dark", "Moses and the Shepherd", "Nahwa and the Shipman" and "The Romans and the Chinese" shows that the Masnavi traces the roots of anti-otherness in the error of perception, moral contempt, self-centered ego and linguistic violence and outlines the path of transition to otherness from internal reform to language and relationship reform.