I am not a tailor, I do not make or sell clothes for a living, I am not in the textile business in any way. Even so, what had brought me to this exhibition was curiosity about such devices as stitches, stitching needles, scissors and the like. More precisely, I had come to see what I could find out about the history and development of such devices in relation to cutting and joining in surgical procedures, especially sutures. 

Every display in the great hall was presented by a team of experts who were there to answer questions. I asked many. In the end, rather to my surprise, I met one expert who was able to give me the kind of help I was looking for. He was Paul Breuer from Aachen, representing the German company SNF MANF, who, as it happens, manufacture surgical needles. Paul Breuer astonished me with his knowledge of a wide range of methods for sewing skin, including the use of ants. Naturally, I was intrigued, and Paul promised to post to me a photograph of an ant being used as a skin stitch, after his return to Aachen.

An embroidery equipment specialist, Caroline Sayers, of the company DATA STITCH, said she could design an ant stitch, if I could supply her with a suitable photograph. The very next day after I had supplied the photograph, the ant was scanned, digitized and an embroidery machine executed for us the amazing ant stitch.

My curiosity about this unusual suture technique led me to further investigations which finally bore fruit when I came across Welcome Institute for the History of Medicine’s 1973 publication, Albucasis on surgery and instruments. This book is a definitive edition of the original Arabic text with English translation and commentary by MS. Spink and G.L. Lewis.

In Book 2, Chapter 85, on suture materials used by the Arab surgeons, Albucasis (the Latinized version of Abu l-Qasim) mentions two techniques. Spink and Lewis, 1973, p.538, comment:

1. Ants’ nippers. This is not a classical method; but is said to be used by African tribes as a way of bringing skin edges together (modern Michel clips); evidently the Arabian ant-nippers acted in the same way.

2. Gut sutures. Gut was used by the earliest Greeks for bow-strings; but it is not mentioned as used for surgical purposes until the Arab era of surgery. Albucasis then describes it as ‘rubbed-down gut, well cleansed’. This may be the earliest reference to this now universal suture material.

Abu l-Qasim’s own account (ibid., p.550) is a vivid description of sutures using ants and cat gut:

Some men of experience have said that when a wound occurs in the intestine and it is small, it should be sutured in this manner, namely: ants with large heads are taken; then the edges of the wound are brought together and one of these ants is applied by its jaws then the head is cut off, and it will stick and will not loosen. Then another ant is applied near the first; and you proceed after this manner with a number of ants according to the size of the wound. Then reduce the intestine and sew up the wound; for the heads will remain sticking to the intestine until it is healed up; and no harm will come to the patient.

The intestine may be sewn up with fine suture which is extracted from an animals gut and sticks to it after being threaded in a needle. The method is that the end is taken of this suture made of gut, well scraped; and to this end is fixed a linen thread, twisted, and then that thread is passed through the needle affixed to the suture of animalis gut, with which the intestine is sewn and then replaced in the abdominal cavity (Abu l-Qasim al-Zahrawi, Al-Tasrif, Book 2 Chapter 85).

Abu l-Qasim Al-Zahrawi (936-1013) wrote his remarkable surgery manual Al-Tasrif during the period of Arab/Islamic rule in Spain about a thousand years ago. I felt a curious and wonderful sensation at the link between an ant stitch, mentioned and talked about in an exhibition of textile craftsmanship in Manchester near the end of the twentieth century, and the dedication and craftsmanly skills of the Muslim scholar who, a millenium before, had adapted the use of ants, and invented the use of cat gut, for making sutures. This was not the only contribution this extraordinary man made to the development of modern surgery techniques, nor was he the only Muslim to have made significant and striking advances in the field of medicine.

It is hard not to feel awe (and, naturally, some pride) at the achievement of the Muslims in that great period of Islamic civilization. I have no doubt that their success was owed to the excellence of their faith and their consequent commitment to working for the improvement of human well-being and the advancement of learning. And I realize that I am merely at the beginning of a long quest for information about what was achieved by Muslims dedicated to Islam in the broadest sense-namely, a way that improves the quality of human life and the quality of our understanding of the world we live in.

Much has been said and written on the lofty ideal which Bediuzzaman pursued and his deep familiarity with the world and the age in which he lived, as well as the simplicity and austerity of his life, his human tenderness, loyalty to his friends, chastity, modesty and contentedness. Yet it is worth writing volumes on each of those dimensions of his legendary character and life.

Though strikingly simple in outward appearence, he was wholly original in many of his ideas and in his way of activity. He embraced all humanity, was deeply averse to unbelief, injustice and deviations, and never stopped struggling against despotism even at the cost of his life. He was as profound in belief and feelings as he was wise and rational in his ideas and approach to problems. In a manner that may seem to some paradoxical, to the same extent that he was an example of love, ardour and feeling, he was extraordinarily balanced in his thoughts and acts and in his treatment of matters. Also, he was very far-sighted in assessment and judgement of the conditions surrounding him, and in finding solutions to the problems he encountered.

Among his contemporaries, those who knew him acknowledged, tacitly or explicitly, Bediuzzaman as the most serious and important thinker and writer of the twentieth-century Turkey or even of the Muslim world. Despite this and his indisputable leadership of a new Islamic revival in the intellectual, social and political conditions of time, he was never proud of himself and remained a humble servant of God Almighty and a most modest friend among human beings. ‘Desire for fame is the same as show and ostentation and it is a ‘poisonous honey’ extinguishing the spiritual liveliness of the heart’, is one of his golden sayings concerning humility.

Born in a small mountain village in an eastern province of Turkey, Bediuzzaman voiced the sighs and laments of the whole Muslim world, as well as its belief, hopes and aspirations. He said:

I can bear my own sorrows, but the sorrows arising from the calamities visiting Islam and Muslims have crushed me. I feel each blow delivered at the Muslim world to be delivered first at my own heart. That is why I have been so shaken.’ He also said: ‘During my whole life-time of over eighty years, I have tasted nothing of the worldly pleasures. My life has passed on either battlefields or in prisons or other places of suffering. They have treated me as if I were a criminal; they have banished me from one town to another, and kept me under continual surveillance. There has been no persecution which I have not tasted and no oppression which I have not suffered. I care for neither Paradise nor fear Hell. If I see the faith of my nation secured, I will not care even burning in the flames of Hell. For while my body is burning, my heart will be as if in a rose garden.

BEDIUZZAMAN LIVED IN AN AGE when materialism was at its peak and many crazed after communism, and the world was in great crisis. Shocked by the scientific and military victories of the West and under the influence of modern trends of thought, people all over the Muslim world were urged to break with their historical roots and many lost their faith. In that critical period when most Muslim intellectuals deviated from the Straight Path and lent their intellects to whatever would come from the West in the name of ideas, Bediuzzaman pointed people to the source of belief and inculcated in them a strong hope for an overall revival. He wrote to display the truth of the tenets of the Islamic faith and heroically resisted movements of deviation. In utmost reliance on God Almighty and unshakeable conviction in the truth of Islam, and with an infinite hope for a bright future awaiting the Muslim world, Bediuzzaman exerted a superhuman effort to defend Islam and bring up a new generation which would realize his hopes.

At a time when science and philosophy were used to mislead young generations into atheism, and nihilistic attitudes had a wide appeal, at a time when all this was done in the name of civilization, modernization and contemporary thinking and those who tried to resist them were subjected to the cruelest of persecutions, Bediuzzaman strove for the overall revival of a whole people, breathing into their minds and spirits whatever is taught in the institutions of both modern and traditional education and of spiritual training.

In the manner of an expert physician, Bediuzzaman diagnosed all the ‘diseases’ of Muslim communities, the diseases they had been suffering for centuries in all aspects of life, and offered the most effective remedies for them. Based on the Qur’an and the Sunnah and the centuries-old Islamic tradition which originated therein, and travelling in mind through natural phenomena, which are each a sign of Divine Existence and Unity, to fill his ‘comb of the knowledge of God’ with the ‘nectar’ he collected from them, Bediuzzaman concentrated first on proving the pillars of Islamic belief and then on the necessity of belief and worship, morality and good conduct, and finally on the social and economic issues which Muslims faced in this age.

Bediuzzaman lived in both the dying years of the Ottoman State and the formative years of the Turkish Republic. He travelled from city to city, as far as the remotest corners of the country, and witnessed the ignorance, poverty and destitution and internal conflicts and seditions prevalent there and throughout the Muslim world. In 1911, he delivered a sermon in the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. Approximately ten thousand people including one hundred high-ranking scholars packed the Mosque to listen to him. In this famous, historical sermon of his, he enumerated the disases which arrested Muslims in ‘the Middle Ages’, as follows:

The growth of despair among people, the loss of truthfulness in the social and political lives of Muslims; love of belligerency, ignorance of the bonds proper among believers; despotism in all fields of life, and egocentricity.

To cure these diseases, he offered hope, truthfulness, mutual love, consultation, solidarity, and freedom in accordance with Islam, and emphasized the three points, which are as follows:

History shows that Muslims increased in civilization and progressed in relation to the strength of their adherence to the truths of Islam; that is, to the degree that they acted in accordance with Islam, they drew force from its truths. History also shows that they fell into decline, disaster and defeat to the degree of their weakness in adherence to the truths of Islam. As for other, religions, it is quite the reverse. That is to say, history shows that as they increased in civilization and progressed in relation to their weakness in adhering to their religions and bigotry, so were they also subject to decline and convulsions to the degree of their strength in adering to them.

This is so because we Muslims, who are students of the Qur’an, follow proof; we do not abandon proof in favour of blind obedience and imitation of the clergy like some adherents of other religions. Therefore, in the future, when reason, sicence and knowledge prevail, the Qur’an will gain ascendancy, which relies on proof and calls reason to confirm its pronouncements.

If we are to display through our actions the perfections of the moral qualities of Islam and the truths of belief, without doubt, the followers of other religions will enter Islam in whole communities. Some entire regions and states, even, on the earth will take refuge in Islam.

DURING THE YEARS when Bediuzzaman lived, as today, ignorance of God Almighty and the Prophet, upon him be peace and blessings, heedlessness of the religious commandments, indifference to the Islamic dynamics of prosperity in both worlds, and ignorance in modern sciences, were among the primary factors behind the wretched state of Muslims. He maintained that unless people were enlightened in both sciences and religious knowledge and knew how to think systematically, unless they were protected against misleading trends of thought and equipped with true knowledge to resist them, it was impossible for Muslims to recover from the maladies they suffered.

Ignorance was also one of the reasons for the poverty of Muslims. For as they lived unaware of the truth of their religion, they had also fallen far behind the West in science and technology. It was because of this that the vast plains remained uncultivated and the natural wealth of Muslim lands went into the treasuries of others.

Again, it was ignorance which was largely responsible for the inner conflicts and seditions in the Muslim world. Although the Qur’an strictly commands unity of Muslims, Muslim peoples were quarelling with each other, even while their lands were under foreign invasion and they were being subjected to all kinds of humiliation.

At the same time, the Muslim intellectuals, whom the masses expected to diagnose the problem honestly and offer remedies, were attracted by the violent storm of ‘denial’ blowing from the West. This storm had arisen in the previous century, blown up by human rooted in scienticism, rationalism and positivism. As a result of contradictions between the findings of sciences and corrupted Christianity and the attitude of the Church towards sciences and scientists, Europe had almost lost its belief and, consequently, Revelation was forced to yield to human reason. This storm of denial, unparallelled in history, shook to its roots the ‘building’ of Islam, which was old and had already decayed in many hearts and minds, in the individual as well as collective life of the Muslim community. What had to be done was, according to Bediuzzaman, while preserving this ‘building’ from further destructive influences from the storm of denial, to present the essentials of Islamic belief with all their branches, to all the faculties of modern man, including his power of reasoning. If Muslim community, which had plainly run aground on the oceans of the modern world, was ever to sail freely again, then, according to Bediuzzaman, the Muslims’ present situation required an overall renewal in all the fields of Islam.

In explaining the reasons for the Ottoman collapse in the First World War and Western domination over the whole Muslim world, Bediuzzaman said:

The reasons why Destiny has allowed this calamity are our neglect in performing the commandments of Islam. The Almighty Creator wanted us to assign to daily prescribed prayers one out of the twenty-four hours of a day but we showed neglect. In return, by subjecting us to four years of training, troubles and continuous mobilization, He has forced us to a kind of prayer. He wanted us to force our carnal selves to fast one month a year but we pitied them. In return, He has made us fast for four years. He also wanted us to allocate one fortieth of the wealth He bestowed on us to the needy and poor but we refrained in stinginess. In return, He has taken from us the accumulated zakat of many years. Again, God Almighty wanted us to go on pilgrimage once in our whole lives in order that, besides other benefits of pilgrimage, we could come together as Muslims arriving from all parts of the world and exchange views on our common problems, but we did not do that. In return, He caused us to hasten from front to front for four years.

As for the reasons why unbelievers are triumphant over believers, we should consider the following four points:

The first point is that although every means of truth must be right, it cannot always be so in actual life, whereas it is not necessary for every means of falsehood to be false. Since falsehood may sometimes follow a true, right way, it can be triumphant over truth, which fails in following that way.

The second is that although a Muslim must be Muslim in all his attributes and actions, he cannot always be so in practical life. Likewise, it is not always the case with a transgressor or unbeliever that every attribute and action of his should originate in his unbelief or transgression. Therefore, by virtue of having Muslim attributes and acting in conformity with Islamic principles more than a Muslim who fails in practising Islam, an unbeliever may be victorious over a Muslim.

The third is that God has two kinds of laws: one is the Shari’a, known by everybody, which is the group comprising God’s laws issuing from His attribute of Speech and governing man’s ‘religious’ life. The reward or punishment in following it or not usually pertains to the afterlife. The other group of Divine laws comprise those governing creation and life as a whole, which issue from His attribute of Will and are generally (but wrongly) called the ‘laws of nature’. The reward or punishment for them mostly pertains to this world. The Qur’an insistently draws attentions to ‘natural’ phenomena, which are the subject-matter of sciences, and urges their study. In the first five centuries of Islam, Muslims succeeded in uniting sciences with religion, the intellect with the heart, the material with the spiritual. However, in later centuries, the West took the initiative in sciences. This meant their obedience-although unconscious-to Divine laws of ‘nature’, which has resulted in their dominance over the Muslim world, which has failed to practice both the religious and scientific aspects of Islam. Power and force have some right in life, they have been created for some wise purpose. Equipped with force through sciences and technology, the West has got the upper hand over the Muslims.

The fourth point concerning the Muslims’ defeat is that truth has been left without force or it has been diluted or lost its purity and authenticity in the hands of Muslims. Like causing the hawk to attack the sparrow and thereby urging the sparrow to develop its power of defence, God has allowed unbelief to triumphantly attack Islam so that Islam should be restored to its original purity and re-gain its force.

ENDOWED WITH an extraordinary intelligence and learning capacity, Bediuzzaman had completed the normal course of madrasa (traditional religious school) education by the age of fourteen. Another striking characteristic he displayed from his early years was dissatisfaction with the existing education system. He had formulated his dissatisfaction with it into comprehensive proposals for its reform. At the heart of those proposals was the wedding of the traditional religious sciences with the modern ones and the founding of a university in important cities of Turkey, where his proposals could be put into practise. Although he had twice received funds for the construction of his university, and its foundations had been laid in 1913, it was never completed due to the consequences of the First World War and the vicissitudes of the time.

Contrary to the centuries old practice of religious scholars, Bediuzzaman studied intently in the natural and social sciences, as well as in mathematics and philosophy. During the First World War he was held prisoner-of- war by the Russians for two years. After his escape and return to Istanbul, he dedicated himself to expounding the pillars of the Islamic belief. The new, irreversible developments in Turkey which culminated in the establishment of a secular regime, and the rise of anti-Islamic trends and attitudes among intellectuals and the young as a result of deliberately positivist, even materialist, system of education, forced Bediuzzaman to concentrate primarily on the essentials of belief and worship and the main purposes pursued in the Qur’an, which he described as explaining and proving the Divine Existence and Unity, Prophethood, and the Resurrection and the necessity of worship and justice. He explains:

Be certain of this, that the highest aim of creation and its most sublime result is belief in God. The most exalted rank of humanity is the knowledge of God. The most radiant happiness and sweetest bounty for jinn and mankind is the love of God contained within the knowledge of God; the purest joy for the human spirit and the purest delight for man’s heart is the spiritual ecstasy contained within the love of God. Indeed, all true happiness, pure joy, sweet bounties and unclouded pleasure are undoubtedly contained within the knowledge and love of God.

Belief is not restricted to a brief affirmation based on imitation. It has degrees and stages of expansion or development as from, say, the seed of a tree to the fully grown, fruit-bearing state of that tree, from the image of the sun in the mirror in your hand or in a drop of water to its images on the whole surface of the sea and to the sun itself. Belief contains so many truths pertaining to the one thousand and one Names of God and the realities contained in the universe, that the most perfect of all human sciences and knowledge and virtues is belief, and knowledge of God originating in belief based on argument and investigation. While belief based on imitation can easily be refuted in the face of doubts and questions raised by the modern way of thinking, belief based on argument and investigation has many degrees and grades of manifestation to the number of Divine Names. Those who have been able to attain the degree of certainty of belief coming from direct observation of the truths on which belief is based, can study the universe as a kind of Qur’an.

In fact, The Qur’an, the universe and man are three kinds of manifestation of one truth. The Qur’an, having issued from the Divine attribute of Speech, may be regarded as the universe written or composed, while the universe, having originated in the Divine attributes of Power and Will, may be considered as the Qur’an created. So, from this point of view, the universe being the counterpart of the Qur’an and, in one respect, the collection of Divine laws of creation, the sciences which study the universe, can in no way be incompatible with Islam. Therefore, in the present time when sciences prevail, and in the future as well, which will be the age of knowledge, true belief should be based on argument and investigation, and on continual reflection on the ‘signs’ of God in the universe, on ‘natural’, social, historical and psychological phenomena. Belief is not something based on blind imitation. It should appeal to both the intellect or reason and the heart. It combines the acceptance and affirmation of the reason and the experience and submission of the heart.

There is another degree of belief, namely certainty coming from direct experience of its truths. This depends on regular worship and reflection. The one who has acquired this degree of belief can challenge the whole of the world. So, our first and foremost and most important duty should be to acquire this degree of belief and try in utmost sincerity and purely for the sake of God Almighty’s good pleasure to communicate it to others. For, as is stated in a hadith, it is better for you than having all the world together with everything in it that one accepts belief by means of you. In short, belief consists in the acquisition of the whole of Islam.

WHEN A REVOLT broke out in south-eastern Turkey in 1925, along with many others, Bediuzzaman was sent into internal exile and lived the remainder of his life until his death in 1960 under either strict surveillance or in prisons or under persecutions.

Bediuzzaman was first forced to live in Barla, a mountainous village in south-western Turkey. There he lived a wretched life isolated from almost everyone. However, he was able to find consolation, true consolation, in the Omnipresence of God Almighty and in utmost submission to Him.

The basic works of the Risale-i Nur, the Words and Letters, were written in Barla under harsh conditions. Copies were made by hand and began to circulate throughout Turkey. This method of serving Islam caused reaction and hostility in the government. Accused of forming a secret society and working against the regime, a charge carrying the death penalty was laid against Bediuzzaman and one hundred and twenty of his students and, in 1935, tried in Eskisehir Criminal Court. Although during his whole life he had opposed revolt and all actions which would breach public peace and order, and had stressed that the rights of a single person could not be violated even for the sake of the whole society, he was accused of forming secret organizations to destroy the public order. When he was asked during the trial his opinion of the Republic, he replied: ‘My biography which you have in your hands proves that I was a religious republican before any of you came into the world.’ He was held for eleven months in prison before acquittal.

Following his release, he was compelled to reside in Kastamonu. He stayed first on the top floor of the police station, then he was settled in a house immediately opposite it. His residence in Kastamonu continued for seven years, and a significant part of the Risale-i Nur was written there.

During this period, both he and his students [from Kastamonu and elsewhere] were under constant pressure from the authorities. This increased as time passed, culminating in widespread arrests and the Denizli trials and imprisonment in 1943-44. He was accused of forming a Sufi tariqa, and organizing a political society. Although the case would result in acquittal, Bediuzzaman was kept for nine months in solitary confinement under the most appalling conditions in a minute, dark, damp cell.

After release, Bediuzzaman was sent to reside in the town of Emirdag in the province of Afyon. In 1948 a new case was opened in Afyon Criminal Court, and although the Court sentenced him arbitrarily, the decision was quashed by the Appeal Court, and Bediuzzaman was acquitted together with his students. Following this, he stayed for brief periods in Emirdag, Isparta, Afyon, and Istanbul among other places. In 1952 he was tried once more, this time for his publication A Guide for Youth, and again acquitted. On his death in Urfa on 23rd March 1960, which may well have been the Night of Power in Ramadan, the coroner fixed his estate as a turban, a gown, and twenty lira. The real, invaluable estate which remained of this hero of Islam and humanity, who weighed only 40 kilos at his death, was the six-thousand-page Risale-i Nur Collection, which has been tried in different courts one thousand five hundred times to this day, and his noble cause which was of dimensions that could not be contained in the coroner’s records.

What is giftedness?

We should begin by realizing that giftedness is a particular degree or concentration of innate qualities such as arc given to every child by his or her Creator, a fact emphasized in several verses of the Qur’an, for example:

It is He who brought you forth from the wombs of your mothers when you knew nothing; and He gave you hearing and sight and intelligence and affections: that you may give thanks (al-Nahl, 16.78).

It is He who has created for you hearing, sight, feeling and understanding: little thanks you give (al Mu’minun, 23.78).

The counterpart to recognizing the special giftedness of a particular child is to recognize our special debt of gratitude for that giftedness, together with an understanding of the challenges and responsibilities which that debt brings with it.

Indicators of giftedness

It is important for parents to be fully aware of the ways in which giftedness can be manifested. There are a number of typical characteristics listed by authorities on the subject. No individual child is likely to be outstanding in all the ways indicated on the list.

1. Shows superior reasoning powers and marked ability to handle ideas, has outstanding problem-solving ability.
2. Shows persistent intellectual curiosity, asks searching questions, shows exceptional interests in the nature of man and the universe.
3. Has a wide range, of interests often of an intellectual kind; develops one or more interests to a considerable depth.
4. Is noticeably superior in quality and quantity of vocabulary, in speech and/or in writing.
5. Reads eagerly and absorbs books well beyond his or her years.
6. Learns quickly and easily and retains what is learned, recalls important details, concepts and principles; comprehends readily.
7. Shows creative ability or imaginative expression in such things as music, art, drama, shows sensitivity and fitness in rhythm, movement, and body control.
8. Shows insight into arithmetical problems that require careful reasoning and grasps mathematical concepts easily
9. Sustains concentration for lengthy periods and shows outstanding responsibility and independence in doing classroom work.
10. Sets realistically high standards for him or herself, is self- critical in evaluating and correcting his or her own efforts.
11. Shows initiative and originality in intellectual work; shows flexibility in thinking and considers problems from a number of viewpoints.
12. Observes keenly and is responsive to new ideas
13. Shows social poise and an ability to communicate with adults in a mature way.
14. Takes pleasure in intellectual challenges; shows an alert and subtle sense of humour.

It should be kept in mind that it is neither admirable nor contemptible to be gifted. It is what one does with one’s abilities that is important. Throughout the parenting years, it is wise to accept that the healthiest long-term goal is not necessarily a child who gains fame, fortune and a Nobel Prize, but one who becomes a contented adult able to use his or her gifts productively.

Throughout childhood and early adolescence, we must provide the environment in which gifted children can flourish. We can do this by trying to:

be responsive to the unusual questions the children ask;

be respectful of the children’s unusual ideas or solutions by listening to them without bias, as the children will see many relationships that their parents and teachers miss;

encourage the children to test their ideas by using them and communicating them to others;

ensure that the children can learn, think and discover without the threat of immediate evaluation or prejudgement.

Education of gifted children

Effective nurturing of giftedness in children and adolescents requires a co-operative partnership between home and school, one that is characterized by mutual respect and an ongoing sharing of ideas and observations about the children involved.

Because gifted children may begin school already knowing much of the material covered in early grades and because they learn quickly, some type of acceleration is necessary. For some children and in some situations, grade skipping is the best choice. Placing a child with older children with similar interests may be socially and intellectually beneficial and result in a more appropriate curriculum.

The following strategies, suggested in a Gifted Leadership Conference in Washington. illustrate how bridges in thinking can be built between giftedness and education.

1. Gifted students should spend the majority of their school days with others of similar abilities and interests.
2. Cluster grouping of students within an otherwise mixed class can he considered where schools are unable to support a full time programme for gifted individuals.
3. In the absence of a full time programme for gifted individuals, students might be offered specific group instruction across grade levels, according to their individual knowledge acquisition in school subjects.
4. Gifted students, individually or in groups, should be given experiences involving a variety of appropriate acceleration-based options.
5. All students should be given experiences which involve various terms of enrichment that extend the regular school curriculum, leading to the more complete development in their minds of concepts, principles, and generalizations.
6. Mixed-ability co-operative learning groups should be used sparingly, perhaps only for the development of social skills.
7. All staff should be trained to identify and provide appropriate curricula for gifted students.
8. We should eliminate the ceiling on learning (in other words, if a student is ready to learn algebra in 5th grade, the system should not just permit but support it.).
9. Computers can be used to keep up with the students’ pace. They are patient and will hold on to an idea for a long time. Computers can do more complex tasks when the students are ready to use them in more complex ways, and they can provide information when the student is ready for it.

Career planning for the gifted

Although parents and teachers may be concerned about academic planning for gifted children, they often assume that career planning will take care of itself. The student is simply expected to make a career choice around the last year of college and then follow through on the steps necessary to attain that goal.

Unfortunately, there is growing evidence that youthful brilliance in one or more areas does not always translate into adult satisfaction and accomplishment in working life. Studies have shown that the path from education to career is not always smooth, and it may be complicated by the fact that the social-emotional problems and needs of gifted students differ from those of more typical students.

Young gifted people between the ages of II and 15 frequently report a range of problems as a result of their abundant gifts: perfectionism, competitiveness, unrealistic appraisal of their gifts, rejection from peers, confusion due to mixed messages about their talents, and parental and social pressures to achieve, as well as problems with unchallenging school programmes or increased expectations. Some encounter difficulties in finding and choosing friends and, eventually, a career. The developmental issues that all adolescents encounter exist also for gifted students, yet they are further complicated by the special needs and characteristics of being gifted. Once counselors and parents are aware of these obstacles, they seem better able to understand and support gifted adolescents. Caring adults can assists these young people to ‘own’ and develop their talents by understanding, responding to adjustments and challenges and coping with strategies.

Conclusion

Bringing up a gifted child may be ecstasy, agony and everything in between. Adults must perform almost impossible feats of balance – supporting a child’s gifts without pushing, valuing without over-investing, championing without taking over. It is costly, physically and emotionally draining, and intellectually demanding. In the first flush of pride, few parents realize that their task is in many ways similar to the task faced by parents of a child with severe handicaps. Our world does not accommodate differences easily, and it matters little whether the difference is perceived to be a deficit or an overabundance.

The most important help you can give your gifted child or children can be expressed in a single sentence: give them a safe home, a refuge where they feel loved, and genuine acceptance, particular of their differences. As adults who enjoyed such a safe home background, they should be able to put together lives of productivity and fulfilment.

USEFUL READING

• BERGER, S. (1989) College Planning for Gifted Students, The Council for Exceptional Children Reston, VA.
• COX, J., DANIEL, N. & BOSTON, B. (1985) Educating Able Learners, University of Texas Press, Austin TX.
• FREDERICKSON, R.H. & ROTHNAY, J.W.M. (1992) Recognizing and Assisting Multipotential Youth, Columbus, OH: Merril.
• KERR, B. (1985. September) ‘Raisins, the Career Aspirations of the Gifted’, The Vocational Guidance Quarterly, 32, pp. 37-43.
• KAUFMAN, F. (1988) ‘Mentors Provide Personal Coaching’,Gifted Child Monthly, 9(l), pp.I-3.

Whether the Qur’an really does refer, explicitly or implicitly, to the kinds of facts the sciences deal with, and the relationship between the Qur’an and modern sciences, are matters of considerable controversy among Muslim intellectuals. We should therefore treat the subject at length.

Science and religion

The civilization Islam created

The conflict of science and religion in the West dates back as far as the thirteenth century. Due to the essential character of the corrupted Christianity represented by the Catholic Church, which condemns nature as a veil separating man from God and curses the knowledge of nature, any scientific advances were not seen in the West during the middle ages, which are called dark ages in European history. However, during the same period a magnificent civilization was flourishing in the Muslim East. Muslims, obeying the injunctions of the holy Qur’an, studied both the Book of Divine Revelation, that is, the Qur’an, and the Book of Creation, that is, the universe, and founded the most magnificent civilization of human history. Scholars from all over the old world benefited from the centers of higher learning at Damascus, Bukhara, Baghdad, Cairo, Fez, Qairwan, Zeitona, Cordoba, Sicily, Isathan, Delhi, and other great centres throughout the Muslim world. Historians liken the Muslim world of the Middle Ages, dark for the West but bright for Muslims, to a beehive. Roads were full of students, scientists and scholas travelling from one center of learning to another. Many world-renowned figures such as al-Kindi, al-Khwarizrni, alFarabi, Ibn Sina, al-Mas’udi, lbn al-Haytham, al-Biruni, al-Ghazzali, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, al-Razi and many others shone like stars in the firmament of the sciences. In his multivolume History of Science, George Sarton divided his work into fifty- year periods, naming each chapter after the most eminent scientist of the period in question. For the years from the middle of eighth century (second century after Hijra) to the twelfth century, each of seven fifty- year periods carries the name of a Muslim scientist. Thus we have ‘the Time of al-Khwarizmi, the Time of al-Biruni’, etc. Within these chapters Sarton lists one hundred important Muslim scientists and their principal works.

John Davenport, a leading scientist, observed:

It must be owned that all the knowledge whether of Physics, Astronomy, Philosophy or Mathematics, which flourished in Europe from the 10th century was originally derived from the Arabian schools, and the Spanish Saracen may be looked upon as the father of European philosophy (Quoted by A. Karim in Islamic Contribution to Science and Civilization).

Bertrand Russell, the famous British philosopher, wrote (Pakistan Quarterly, Vol.A, No.3):

The supremacy of the East was not only military. Science, philosophy, poetry, and the arts, all flourished in the Muhammadan world at a time when Europe was sunk in barbarism. Europeans, with unpardonable insularity, call this period ‘the Dark Ages’: but it was only in Europe that it was dark—indeed only in Christian Europe, for Spain, which was Mohammedan, had a brilliant culture.

Robert Briffault, the renowned historian, acknowledges in his book The Making of Humanity:

It is highly probable that but for the Arabs, modem European civilization would have never assumed that character which has enabled it to transcend all previous phases of evolution. For although there is not a single aspect of human growth in which the decisive influence of Islamic culture is not traceable, nowhere is it so clear and momentous as in the genesis of that power which constitutes the paramount distinctive force of the modern world and the supreme course of its victory- natural sciences and the scientific spirit… What we call sciences arose in Europe as a result of a new spirit of inquiry; of new methods of investigation, of the method of experiment, observation, measurement, of the development of Mathematics in a form unknown to the Greeks. That spirit and those methods were introduced into the European world by the Arabs.

For the first five centuries of its existence, the realm of Islam was the most civilized and progressive portion of the world. Studded with splendid cities, gracious mosques and quiet universities, the Muslim East offered a striking contrast to the Christian West, which was sunk in the night of the Dark Ages (L. Stoddard, The New World of Islam).

This bright civilization progressed until it suffered the terrible disasters which came like huge overlapping waves, from the West and Far East one after the other in the form of the Crusades and Mongol invasion. The disasters lasted centuries until the Muslim government in Baghdad collapsed and the history of Islam entered, from the beginning of the fourteenth century, a new phase with the Ottoman Turks. Islamic civilization was still vigorous and remained far ahead of the Christian West in economic and military fields until the eighteenth century, despite (from the sixteenth century onwards) losing ground to it in the sciences.

Cordoba in the tenth century under Muslim rule was the most civilized city in Europe, the wonder and admiration of the world. Travellers from the north heard with something like fear of the city which contained 70 libraries with hundreds of thousands of volumes, and 900 public baths, yet whenever the rulers of Leon Navarre of Barcelona needed a surgeon, an architect, a dressmaker or a musician, it was to Cordoba that they applied (T. Arnold, The Legacy of Islam, p.9). Muslim literary prestige was so great that in Spain, for example, it was found necessary to translate the Bible and liturgy into Arabic for the use of the Christian community. The account given by Alvaro, the Christian zealot and writer, shows vividly how even the non- Muslim Spaniards were attracted to Arab/Muslim literature:

My fellow-Christians delight in the poems and romances of the Arabs.They study the works of Muhammadan theologians and philosophers, not in order to refute them, but to acquire a correct and elegant Arabic style. Where today can a layman be found who reads the Latin commentaries on holy Scriptures? Who is there that studies the Gospels, the Prophets, the Apostles? Alas, the young Christians who are the most conspicuous for their talents have no knowledge of any literature or language save the Arabic; they read and study with avidity Arabian books; they amass whole libraries of them at a vast cost, and they everywhere sing the praises of the Arabian world (Indiculus Luminosus, translated by Dozy).

If the purpose of education and worth of civilization is to raise the sense of pride, dignity, honour in individuals so that they improve their state and consequently the state of society, Islamic civilization is proven to have been a worthy one. There is ample evidence quoted by various writers showing how Islam has succeeded in doing this to various peoples of various regions, e.g. Isaac Taylor, in his speech delivered at the Church Congress of England about the effects and influence of Islam on people, said:

When Muhammadanism is embraced, paganism, fetishism, infanticide and which craft disappear. Filth is replaced by cleanliness and the new convert acquires personal dignity and self-respect. Immodest dances and promiscuous intercourse of the sewes cease; female chastity is rewarded as a virtue; industry replaces idleness; licence gives place to law; order and sobriety prevail; blood feuds, cruelty to animals and slaves are eradicated. Islam swept away corruption and superstitions. Islam was a revolt against empty polemics.. It gave hope to the slave, brotherhood to mankind, and recognition to the fundamental facts of human nature. The virtues which Islam inculcates are temperance, cleanliness, chastity, justice, fortitude, courage, benevolence, hospitality, veracity and resignation.. Islam preaches a practical brotherhood, the social equality of all Muslims. Slavery is not part of the creed of Islam. Polygamy is a more difficult question. Moses did not prohibit it. It was practised by David and it is not directly forbidden in the New Testament. Muhammad limited the unbounded license of polygamy. It is the exception rather than the rule… In resignation to God’s Will, temperance, chastity, veracity and in brotherhood of believers they (the Muslims) set us a pattern which we should well to follow. Islam has abolished drunkenness, gambling and prostitution, the three curses of the Christian lands. Islam has done more for civilization than Christianity. The conquest of one-third of the earth to his (Muhammad’s) creed was a miracle.

Science and the modern scientific approach

By way of explaining why I have given such a lengthy introduction to subject, let me note here the conflicting attitudes prevalent in Muslim world about the relationship of Islam and science. For many years, swayed by Western dominion over their lands, a dominion attributed to superior science and technology, some Muslim intellectuals accused Islam itself as the cause of the backwardness of Muslim peoples. Having forgotten the eleven centuries or more of Islamic supremacy, they thought and wrote as if the history of Islam had only begun in the eighteenth century. Further, they made the deplorable mistake of identifying the relationship between science and religion in general in the specific terms of the relationship between science and Christianity. They did not bother to make even a superficial study of Islam and its long history. In contrast to this, some other contemporary Muslim intellectuals who, after seeing the disasters-atomic bombs, mass murders, environmental pollution, loss of all moral and spiritual values, the ‘delirium which modern man suffers, and so on-science and technology have brought to mankind and the shortcomings and mistakes of the purely scientific approach in seeking the truth, as well as the failure of science and technology to bring man happiness, follow some of their Western counterparts in condemning science and technology outright, and adopting an almost purely idealistic attitude. However, Islam is the middle way. It neither rejects nor condemns the modern scientific approach, nor does it ‘deify’ it.

It is true that science has been the most revered ‘fetish’ or ‘idol’ of modern man for nearly two hundred years. Scientists once believed that they could explain every phenomenon with the findings of science and the law of causality. However, modern physics destroyed the ‘theoretical’ foundations of mechanical physics and revealed that the universe is not a clockwork of certain parts and working according to strict, unchanging laws of causality and absolute determinism. Rather, despite its dazzling harmony and magnificent order, it is so complex and indeterminate that when we unveil one of its mysteries, as many more appear before us. In other words, the more we learn about the universe, the more we grow in ignorance of it. Experts in atomic physics say that no one can he sure that the universe will be in the same state a moment later as ii is in now. Although the universe works according to certain laws, these laws are not absolute and, more interestingly, they do not have real or material existence. Rather, their existence is nominal, that is, we deduce them from observation of natural events and phenomena. Also, it is highly questionable to what extent they have a part in creation and working of things. For example, scientists say that a seed, earth, air and water bring a tree into existence. However, these are only causes for a tree to come into existence. The existence of a tree requires exact calculations and ratios and the pre-established relations of the seed, earth, air and water. Science should also explain the beginning of this process and the diversification of seeds into different kinds. What science does is only to explain how things take place; it thinks it has got out of the difficulty of explaining the origin of existence by attributing it to ‘nature’ or ‘self-origination’ or ‘necessity and ‘chance’.

Nature is, evidently, a design, not the designer; a recipient, not the agent; a composition, not the composer; an order, not the orderer ; something printed, not the printer. It is a collection of laws established by the Divine Will, laws (which our minds can grasp but) which in themselves have no power or material reality. Attribution of existence to self origination or necessity and chance is sheer delusion. For we evidently see that existence displays absolute knowledge, absolute wisdom, absolute will, and absolute power. Chance, self-origination and necessity are only concepts without such material reality that we could attribute to them knowledge, wisdom, will and power.

Modern scientific approach

The modern scientific approach is very far from finding out the truth behind existence and explaining it. Truth is unchanging and beyond the visible world. Its relationship with the visible, changing world is like that of the spirit and the body or the Divine laws of nature and natural things and events. For example, the force of growth, which is a universal Divine law, is innate in living things. While this law is unchanging, a tree or a man undergoes incessant changes. Likewise, human beings, no matter how their dress or dwellings or means of transport have changed during the course of history, remain unchanged in respect of the essential purposes they serve and the impact of those purposes on their lives and environment. As human beings, we all share certain general conditions of life and value: we are all born, mature, marry, have children and face death; we all possess some degree of will and common desires, we share also certain values-we all know the meaning of honesty, kindness, justice, courage, and so on.

Despite this fact, the modern scientific approach searches for truth in changing nature, and in its search it bases itself on the impressions of senses. However, these impressions are relative, changing from person to person, and deceptive. Also, people defer in respect of their capacity of reasoning. So, it is impossible to arrive at one certain conclusion by deductive or inductive or analytical reasoning of the data received by senses. It is because of this that the modern scientific approach resorts to experiment to arrive at facts. However, without pre-established axioms or ‘premises’, it is not possible to establish a fact through experiments. Since David Flume, it has been generally accepted that it is not inevitable that, because an event has happened twice or a million times in two or a million different places, it must happen again. For this reason, since the collapse of classical physics, Western epistemologists speak not of seeking the truth itself but only of seeking approximations to it. Karl Raymond Popper says that we consider the theories of both Newton and Einstein as science…, both of them cannot be true at the same time; rather, both may be false.

Through empirical methods, science will not be able to find the truth which concerns the essence of existence. Therefore, as Guenon puts it, science or scientists have two alternatives before them: either they will acknowledge that the findings of science are of no value other than as suppositions about truth and therefore not recognize any certainty higher than sense-perception, or they will blindly believe as true in whatever is taught in the name of science. Doubting the findings of science, modern scientists try to find a way out in agnosticism or pragmatism, thus confessing the inability of science to find truth.

Science should recognize its limits and concede that truth is unchanging and lies in the realm above the visible world. When it can do that, it will find its real value. Evidently, without the absolute, it is impossible for the relative to exist; what is changing can be possible through the existence of the unchanging, and multiplicity is impossible without the existence of unity. It is only when any knowledge reaches the point of immutability that it acquires permanence and stability. What is unchangeable and permanent is above the human realm. Truth is ‘not something the human mind produces. Truth exists independently of man and mans task is to seek it.

Conflict between religion and science?

Seeing religion and science or scientific studies as two conflicting disciplines is a product of the Western attitude towards religion and science. In order to understand the background of the historical conflicts between science and Christianity in the West, we should first discuss the main reasons why sciences have developed in the West in recent centuries.

Christianity and changing Western way of thinking

When, after years of struggle and the lives of thousands of martyrs, Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire, it found itself in a climate where epicurean and naturalistic attitudes prevailed and human knowledge was sanctified.

The teaching of Jesus, which would later to be called Christianity, won the victory in its struggle with the Roman Empire but unfortunately at the expense of losing its original identity and purity. Besides, deviating from being a middle way as a God-revealed religion, theoretically, it restricted itself to love and condemned nature as a veil separating man from God. Also, influenced by Near Eastern religions like Mithraism and Manichaeism, it turned to be a completely mystical religion. However, the earth or nature is seen in Islam and, of course, in God-revealed religions, as a realm where God’s Most Beautiful Names are manifested, a realm on which minds should reflect in order to reach God Almighty, and which is itself a reflection of Paradise.

Certainly, it was the Church which, having announced itself as the body of Christ enjoying his authority, shaped Christianity in the mould explained above and later campaigned to seize, besides its spiritual, the worldly power also. In the centuries during which the West was under the dominion of the Church, a magnificent civilization flourished in the Muslim East. As a result of the West’s contact with this civilization through the Crusades and by way of Andalusia, the West had also the opportunity to learn about antiquity. Greek philosophy, especially Aristotelianism, Roman naturalism and also Greek epicurism and hedonism found their way to the Western thinking. When this Western awakening to antiquity through the translations from Arabic and by way of the Muslim centers of learning in Andalusia and Sicily, was united with Western envy of the prosperity of the Muslim East, the ground was prepared for the Renaissance.

Western ways of thinking changed greatly. The ‘iron wall’ between Western attitude and Islam which the Church had built up over centuries, caused this change to evolve against religion. Having teared that it would lose its worldly power, the Church severely resisted this change. The corrupted Bible was no longer able to answer the questions that arose in inquiring minds about creation and the order of the universe. The Old Testament had been lost long centuries before during the Assyrian invasion of Jerusalem. The texts to hand were written down by Jewish scholars, who certainly had in mind the problems of the Jewish community at that time. None of the Gospels, which had been chosen out of hundreds and accepted as canonical, was the original one which God sent to Jesus, upon him be peace. Besides, none of them was written by the apostles or disciples of Jesus. So, the symbolical language of Divine Scriptures-symbolical because they addressed every level of understanding at all times and in all places-was lost. As a result, for example, in the description of creation, the Old Testament mentions seven days like the days of the world. It says: ‘And there was evening, and there was morning-the first day.’ Whereas, the conception of a day of morning and evening belongs to us, who live on earth. The Qur’an also mentions days and that God created the universe in six days. But it never mentions mornings and evenings and presents ‘day’ as a relative period whose measure is not known to us. For example, in the verses: The angels and spirit ascend to Him in a day whereof the span is fifty thousand years (70.4), and They will bid you hasten on the Doom, and God fails not His promise, but a Day with God is a thousand years of what you reckon (22.47), and He directs the affair from the heaven unto the earth; then it ascends unto Him in a Day, whereof the measure is a thousand years of what you reckon (32.5).

The failure of Christianity and the Bible to answer the questions put by inquiring Western minds caused the direction of scientific developments to be opposed to religion. However, the great scientists such as Galileo or Bacon and others were not irreligious at all. They favoured a new interpretation of the Bible. Certain scientists and theologians tried to do that. For example, Roger Bacon was in favour of experimental methods in scientific investigations but he also defended the notion that one could attain knowledge of heavenly things through spiritual experience. Thomas Acquinas, whom some introduce as the Christian counterpart of Imam Ghazzali of the Muslim East, tried to reconcile Christianity with Aristotelianism. Another theologian. Nicolas de Cusa, opposed the astronomy of Ptolemy but emphasized the profound meaning of the limitless universe whose center is everywhere and peripheries nowhere. Nevertheless, the efforts of such theologians and scientists to reconcile Christianity with science were not enough to prevent science finally breaking with religion. This was partly due to the severe opposition of the Church to scientific developments for fear of losing its power, and partly because of the Western awakening to a material life.

Truly, as Professor Tawney says, quoted by Small is Beautiful by Schumacher, in the medieval period, people usually aimed at eternal happiness in economic activities and enterprises. They feared economic motives that appeared in the form of strong desires. A man had the right to gain enough money to lead a life according to his social status but to try to gain more meant greed for money and was a grave sin. Wealth and property had to be obtained through lawful ways and circulate among as many people as possible. However, the Renaissance changed social or even moral standards prevalent in the Middle Ages, or, we might say, changes in those standards gave birth to the Renaissance. Even a superficial glance at the arts of the period suffices to reveal this fundamental change from the moral and spiritual to the material. For example, sculpture-in the view of Sokorin, the product of the desire to escape death and the mental ‘diesase’ of representing mortals in the shape of young, immortal deities-used the female body to model passionate desires and pleasures, deceit, sexuality and physical beauty. In Renaissance art, Virgin Mary was no longer an image of modesty and chastity, inspiring respect and compassion; instead, she began to be painted as a woman with physical charms. The David of Michelangelo is a powerful, muscular youth, an image representing bodily perfection.

The man of the Renaissance desired to be like Odysseus, well-built, comely, intelligent, powerful and skilful in oratory. He was convinced that to become like Odysseus was possible through knowledge. Nevertheless, as will be seen in the following verses, ‘God’ of the Bible was jealous of man and had forbidden him to eat of the fruit of knowledge:

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.

And the Lord God said, “(by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil), the man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live for ever.” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.

These verses of the Bible which would certainly be antipathetic to the feelings of a typical man of the Renaissance and remind him of the Greek deities who forbade man the sacred fire. Therefore, what fired the imagination of the Renaissance man was to become a Prometheus, who rebelled against the gods and stole the sacred fire from them. This change of attitude towards religion and life is one of the foremost points to emphasize if we are to understand the conflict between science and religion in the West.

Protestanism

According to Max Weber, the development of science and technology in the West was not independent of religion. He maintains that Protestanism was one of the main factors behind scientific developments in the West. As everybody knows, Protestanism developed against the authority of the Catholic Church, although it has not any radical difference from Catholicism.

According to Weber, Protestanism is fatalistic in its attitude towards history and man’s destiny. Everybody is born stained with original sin and no one can be saved from eternal condemnation by his own acts. Both Luther and Calvin were of the opinion that whatever man does, he cannot be saved unless he is among those whom God pre-determined to be chosen and saved from eternal punishment. But the sign of one’s being chosen and saved is that one works tirelessly and is continuously active to overcome one’s feeling of weakness and helplesness. The more one earns and the more successful, the more he means to be loved by God. Weber asserts that the grudge of the middle classes against the rich and aristocracy roused them to further and further earning and accumulation of wealth. Earning incited consumption, consumption caused the rise of endless needs and needs stimulated further work. According to Weber, this never-ending spiral played an important role in the development of sciences and technology. However, it is also behind the egotism, individualism and self-centeredness of modern Western man.

Geographical discoveries and colonialism

United with the authority of the Church, the despotism of kings and feudal lords suffocated people. Besides, the continent no longer seemed to meet their increasing needs and the seas surrounding it invited them to overseas adventures. Needs urge people to investigate and learn new things, and the abundance of natural ways of transportation like rivers and seas as against the smallness of the land enable them to make frequent contact with both surrounding and overseas areas. The Europeans of the Renaissance period made much use of this privilege they had to increase their knowledge and reach remote lands.

The Europeans went in pursuit of gold in remote parts of the world. Finding gold only increased them in avarice which made them cruel and opened way to a ruthless colonialism. The slave trade and the eradication of the native peoples in continents like America and Australia became the trade mark of the rising capitalism and colonialism. It was only after the transportation of the treasures of the newly invaded countries to the West that the industrial revolution became realized. All historians are agreed that James Watt invented steamship after the coals of Bengal in India were carried to England after the Battle of Plassey. As everybody knows, the invention of steamship marked the start of the industrial revolution.

Today, the USA, whose population forms only 6 per cent of the world population, consume 40 per cent of the paper pulp, 36 per cent of the coal, 25 per cent of the steel, and 20 per cent of the cotton, produced in the whole of the world. The developed countries together form only 16 per cent of the world population but consume 80 per cent of world resources.

In sum, it should not be forgotten that colonialism and geographical discoveries are two of the main factors behind the scientific and technological advances in Europe.

Wartime coverage

For big institutions that need to deal with the media, buying advertisements through media outlets is a common way to avoid being attacked by the media and sponsoring programs is a good device for using the media as PR agents. After some bad experiences with the media in the Korean War and worse experiences in the Vietnam War, the US military determined to harness the power of the media. Like any other service-providers keen to establish and maintain the popularity of their products, the military sought to advertise their services: patriotism, heroism, military might and, of course, war. During the Gulf War they played the role of an advertising client of the media, especially the broadcast media, and, in effect, sponsored a live war spectacle in the Persian Gulf. Thousands of soldiers and innocent civilians made up the cast for a show which attracted millions to their TV screens. It was a masterpiece of collaboration between the army and the media.

In order to sustain government and national policies, especially in ‘democratic’ countries, public support is vital, and today the media monopolize this power of persuasion. We can see power centres attempting to control media as early as the 1400s. When Gutenberg invented the printing press, the Roman Catholic Church saw this tool being used to undermine the papal authority, and declared it as ‘evil.’ During the second half of the twentieth century, especially in democratic countries like the US, the broadcasting media have themselves become a major power centre. Since the majority of the intellectuals in these countries regard the media as a ‘watchdog’ over the actions of government, the media exercise tremendous political authority as well as economic power. Since very few, if any, major policy decisions can be made without media approval, government needs to reconcile itself to the media rather than control them. Indeed, whoever needs the media’s ‘seal of approval’ must appeal to the media.

Except for government financed channels, all media outlets are commercial and the goal of channels like ABC, NBC, and CNN is making profit, rather than playing the ‘watchdog’ role. Inevitably, the ‘watchdog’ role is often compromised by the need to make profit. A well-known example of this in the past was the relationship between the media and the cigarette industry. Cigarette companies paid huge amounts of money to the media which encouraged them not to discuss the harmful side- effects of smoking. ‘Information concerning the hazards of cigarette smoking was available as early as 1938 but was ignored, censored or played down by the media to such an extent that, even two decades later, only 44 percent of the people thought smoking was a cause of lung cancer’ (Jensen, 1993, p.212). In exchange for some benefits, the media can be manipulated to hide information and sometimes even give false information. Such a case occurred during the Reagan administration: each of the three big networks ABC, CBS and NBC was acquired by corporations that might have been unqualified under earlier FCC standards which Reagan lifted. In return, the big media dispensed relentlessly positive news about Reaganism and the great trickle-down dream (ibid., p.25). Furthermore, by writing positive news, ‘government lying was too willingly supported by the media’ (ibid., p.26). The general public are quite ignorant of the extent of distortion and false reporting. We are not speaking of hiding some few government blunders but of giving erroneous background information to favour a declaration of war or the application of murderously punitive economic sanctions against a country. Seriously independent, investigative journalists, such as those who publish annually The Censored Year Book, document many cases of disinformation and misinformation by the US media on serious issues that involve loss of human life. 

Following what they saw as the bias of the media during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the American military made a study of the weak points of the media, as of an enemy. In particular, they realized that the media’s concern to find the most interesting, up- to-date and spectacular news so that their channel would be viewed by large audiences was more important to them than their ‘watchdog’ role: ‘the larger the audience, the more they can charge for advertising’ (Fitzgerald). The media’s need for high ratings made them vulnerable to bargaining pressure, which the military exploited as any business interest would. War crimes and horrors were not to be shown, if the media wanted access to the international which would secure their audience ratings. The media’s capacity to present war as a big show was first realized (and managed) by British officials during the Falklands conflict. They knew that if the media were denied other alternatives than showing the official propaganda footage, they would use the propaganda rather than have nothing to broadcast. The British experience became the pattern for US military officials who set up a new, semi-formal code for US media and military relations. Following the Falklands pattern, military officials in charge of the Grenada, Panama and Gulf wars made it clear to media executives (through, for example such agreements as the Pentagon’s ten-page list of rules, revised in January 1991) that if they did not misbehave by revealing war crimes or US casualties they would have access to their military show and would make some profit. The deal suited both sides. CNN Executive Vice-President Ed Turner said:‘In the end, we are going to co-operate [with the US military]’ (Sukow, 1991) revealing his desire not to miss the chance to air the curious military show about to happen in the Arabian desert. However, it was not a show, it was a war. As a result, just as arguments for a non-military resolution were denied prominence, so too the unpleasant realities of the imposed military resolution, including the loss of human life, were hidden from a world-wide audience.

Conclusion

The military evolved tactics against the media to influence them as they had once influenced the military, began with the Korean War. Until the beginning of the end of the Vietnam War, the relations continued in the same pattern. Following the British example in the Falklands, the US military had their own model of media control in place before the Grenada invasion, and had made it more effective still for the Panama invasion. During the Gulf War, in the latest phase of these evolving tactics, there began a new level of almost overt commercial co-operation between the US military and the US mass media.

Today media and military planners work together on the battlefield. In the Gulf War, reflecting on the effort the broadcasting companies and other mass media put into advertising the war and attaining public support for it, we can say that correspondents seemed as if they were working as members of the army: the media functioned as a department of the military with the task of achieving public support for the victory. The co-operation between the army and news media succeeded. In the Gulf War, many reprehensible acts were committed by the US and its allies such as the bombing of civilian targets, including shelters and apartments, or concocting lies in order to make propaganda against the enemy seem legitimate. Sometimes this was even done by means of the President, George Bush. However, the war was legitimized in the eyes of the US public, and also in the eyes of many people all around the world.

In the past, the relationship between the military and the media was not so close. For the sake of getting good and interesting coverage, in many cases, the media harmed the aims of the military by exposing their failures or wrong actions, such as in the Vietnam War. In response, military and government offices increased censorship and stopped media access to military and governmental sources. After a long struggle and animosity between the media and the military, they appear to have become wholly reconciled in a mode of co-operation beneficial for both sides: exciting coverage and an international audience for the media and unquestioning public support for the military and government policies. Today the media, knowingly or unknowingly, function as the US Army’s PR agent, and in return the military gives them an important and exciting international event to report, which everyone is curious to see: war.

References

• FITZGERALD, J. (1995) ‘Aesthetics & Media Criticism’. Lecture in Emerson College, Media Criticism Aesthetics course, January 19.
• JENSEN, C. (1993) The News That Didn’t Make the News and Why, The 1993 Censored Year Book, Sheburne Press.
• KARNOW, S. (1984) Vietnam: A History. The first Complete Account of Vietnam at War, Penguin Books, New York, NY, p.23.
• LEE, R. S.H. (1978) ‘Early Korean War Coverage’, Journalism Quarterly, 55, pp.789fl93.
• MARTINI, L. Director. Lines in the Sand. Griffin-Wirth Assoc. c.1991.
• SHARKLEY, J. (1991) Under Fire, The Centre for Public Integrity, pp.614.
• SUKOW, M. R. (1991) ‘The Storm and the Eye’, Broadcasting, January 14.

Recently, the population of the world has grown enormously, as has consumption of goods and services, and this has meant an enormous increase in the volume of waste. Many scientific studies have been undertaken to find solutions to the ‘garbage problem’, which is, of course, also a pollution problem. Some studies showed that for plastics to be broken down completely and absorbed naturally could take as much as 400 years. Environmentally sensitive consumers therefore turned to using paper instead of plastics. But were they right to have done so? Or was it just a bit o f clever advertising by paper manufacturers?

Paper or plastic?

Paper manufacturers initiated many ‘anti-plastic’ campaigns. David Jacobson (1990) notes that they had lost about 60% of their grocery bag market to plastics by the 1980s. Paper once 20% more expensive than plastics was by then double the cost. But cost was not the only factor in consumer preferences. Technological advances made plastics thinner and lighter, requiring less storage space and reducing delivery costs. Consumers increasingly preferred lightweight plastic bags with moulded handles, and stores were happy to push the cheaper bags. Stone Container Corporation (which claims about 40% of the paper grocery market and 20% of the total grocery bag market) launched a vigorous campaign to raise consumer demand for paper grocery bags in the test markets of Jacksonville, Florida, and Hartford, Connecticut. The 13-week campaign included full-page newspaper ads, billboard advertising and 30-second prime time TV spots. According to Jacobson, the campaign improved paper bag sales by about 3%.

Plastic manufacturers fought back quickly, arguing that paper was not environmentally better than plastic: they ‘publicized findings that nothing degrades in a landfill – even biodegradable paper bags – thus negating part of paper’s environmental claim’ (Jacobson, 1990).

According to ‘The Changing Bag Market’, a market research report published by Business Communications Co. Inc., ‘low energy costs and favourable consumer response to plastic bags could increase plastic’s market share to 56.2% by the year 2000’ (quoted in ibid.).

The battle has remained remarkably positive. Both plastic and paper manufacturers acknowledge that they want to increase sales, but both express genuine concern for the environment.

Another preliminary study, done by Bank of America’s Environmental Policies and Programs Department, indicated that ‘though plastic film requires a bit more energy to manufacture, it may be the better choice because.., made with less water and chemicals’ (Bank of America, 1996. p.1).

Degradable plastics

Unlike traditional plastics, which may last 200 to 400 years, degradable plastics may deteriorate in a matter of months (GAO, 1988, p.8).

The report of the US General Accounting Office (GAO) grants that ‘degradable plastics may thus be able to reduce the life span of litter in the landscape and at sea; they also diminish the amount of plastics accumulating in landfills. Technical uncertainties about the performance of degradable plastics, however, have stirred some questions about their ability to alleviate these problems. As a result, some experts contend that recycling and incineration …. may be more effective responses to the environmental problems posed by plastics…:

In addition to their potential environmental benefits, it must be noted that degradable plastics offer new opportunities for use with agricultural products.

The private sector, local state and federal government have promoted the use of degradable plastics. In a letter dated January 19, 1988, Senator John Glenn, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, asked the GAO to conduct a study of federal government activities in the area of degradable plastics. Subsequently, the GAO contacted officials and scientists in the federal government and private sector. They found that the US Department of Agriculture, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation were together supporting 12 research and development projects directly related to degradable plastics, at a total funding level of $1.7 million in fiscal year 1988 (GAO, 1988, pp.8-13).

Recycling vs incineration of plastics

Incineration of paper or plastics is controversial: ‘… some people

object to the disposal of plastics [also paper] in waste-to- energy plants because, they say, plastics burned for energy are lost forever, but recycling allows the product to be used over and over again’ (Alexander, 1993, p. 138). Recycling is a better way of protecting the environment which has been gaining wider acceptance in recent years. Package goods titans such as Procter & Gamble and Lever Brothers, have both made commitments to use a percentage of recycled plastic resins in their detergent bottles and other consumer products. ‘Contrary to public presumptions, plastics are among the easiest materials to recycle, reports Amoco, one of two hundred companies re claiming millions of used plastic containers for conversion to paintbrush bristles, traffic signs, toys, floor tiles, wastebaskets, plastic lumber, and many other useful items…’ (ibid.)

As of 1990 about 20% of soft-drink bottles were being recycled for use in making textiles and fibres, appliance handles, etc. (Saunders, 1993, pp. 178-9). Among numerous other examples of applications for recycled plastics, McDonald’s Playlands are composed of partially shredded, worn-out tyres.

On the other side, while a number of US companies have adopted plans to buy recycled paper supplies, many have resisted instituting such policies because of concerns over cost or quality. Because of the current technology, recycled paper products can cost 50% to 60% more than new ones (Eisenhart, 1990, p.20).

For the present, then, it would appear that, contrary to common misconceptions; the use of plastics is better for the environment than the use of paper.

References

• ALEXANDER, i.E-I. (1993) In Defense of Garbage, Praeger. Westport, CT.
• BERNARD, K. & LAWLER, E.D. (1990) ‘Recycling, Yes. Buying recyclables? Well’, Business Marketing, 75(11), pp.30-2.
• EISENHART, T, (1990) ‘There’s gold in that garbage!’ Business Marketing, 75(11), pp.2O-5.
• GAO [=US General Accounting Office I (1988) Degradable Plastica: Standards, research, and development, Report to the Chairman,Committee on Govemmcntal Affairs, US Senate, Washington, DC.
• JACOBSON, 0. (1990) ‘Paper marketers aim to bag their plastics cornpetitors’, Business Marketing, 75 (11), pp.32-3.

Grief of separation consumes the lover, and yet

even in gloomiest hours, he never despairs of ‘spring’;

journeying from desert to desert amid bitter tears

in ever-constant hope of the union he desires.

He weeps from deep within a heart like embers,

always alert and on the move as if chasing gazelle,

drunk upon hope of the beloved who eludes him

and whom he finds again in his nightly dreams.

Phantoms of anxiety beset his spirit, on his face

now joy shines like sunrise, now sunset gloom;

at times the door is ajar on a far landscape just

perceptible, it’s colours and tones hinting Paradise.

A moment comes when despair overwhelms and hope

seems unrecoverable, and then another when dawn breaks

in perfumed brightness. At times he withers like leaves,

melts like candles, and his sobbing his heard from afar.

Even then, in never-ending autumn, the root of his desire

flowers in hope, he transforms the grief of separation

into longing music, makes deepest wells of sorrow

brim with joy, celebrating the immortality of Love.

In the deep wells of his eyes a meaning settles

from the eternal life and is present in his looks and smile;

his feelings sound the depths of eternity, then flow out

like soil-enriching river floods or fertile winds.

Whoever truly loves understands love is everything;

that it may be either fatal poison or elixir of life;

but whoever loves the Truth and pursues the ways

to the Eternal Being knows it as inspiration, as life.

***

Interpretations, assumptions and expectations

In situations of cross-cultural communication it is not only what happens or what is said that is important, it is how participants interpret the interaction which ultimately counts. It is this interpretation which guides our perception of meaning and our memory of other people. Most of us draw conclusions about others from what they say, or rather from what we think they mean. The gap between what we think others mean and what they intend to say can occur in any communication. This gap is often wider in cross-cultural contexts. This is evident when there is a lack of knowledge of the common language of communication, say English, which may he a second or foreign language to one or both sides. Less obviously the gap is often wider because in intercultural communication participants may not realize that they are using language in different ways which go beyond purely linguistic competence. Our consideration of cross-cultural communication needs to include: discourse competence in which conversations or texts may be structured using different principles; sociolinguistic competence in which language users may draw on differing ideas about who may speak to whom, on what sorts of topics, on what kinds of occasion, in what manner and for what purposes; cultural competence in which cultural norms and beliefs are used to interpret actions and language behaviour and to attribute values and interpretations to interaction. The problem is that our own perception of these aspects of language use is influenced by our own cultural background. It is all too easy to be unconsciously ethnocentric about such matters and to assume that our way is normal, logical or better than those ways used by speakers who come from other cultural backgrounds.

An analogy illustrates this point. In Figure 1 the middle item may be interpreted as a letter B or as a number 13, depending on whether it is read vertically or horizontally. Our interpretation depends on the context of what system we expect to use, in this example an alphabetical or numerical context. 

In learning English, students need to be constantly alert for shifts in meaning as participants use varying systems and principles of interpretation. Objectively, the form and shape of the middle item in Figure 1 has not changed. Subjectively, the meaning can he completely different when the figure is seen in an alphabetical or numerical context. Different contexts lead to different expectations which in turn lead to different interpretations of the same object. Similarly, the context of our own culture may lead us to interpret another person’s words, behaviour or attitude quite differently from the way in which that person intends them to be interpreted. We may not be aware of the patterns of interpretation which members of a particular culture use.

In our own culture we can afford to take much communication for granted. Since childhood we have learned what word, normally mean, how and why things are said. Our own culture has provided us with a framework of working principles and systems of interpretation which most of us automatically use every day. We do not need to work out how to use greetings or apologies, how to respond to invitations or compliments, how to take turns or interrupt others, or what silences might mean. In learning to use a foreign language, however, we need to be aware that speakers of the target language may be using quite different assumptions and systems for such ways of using language. We need to become aware of alternatives. We need to expect the unexpected. We need to check our interpretations of what is apparently obvious.

Levels of communication

Language is like an iceberg: some aspects are visible with fairly obvious meaning, but a larger part is hidden or taken for granted. 

The greater the foreign language skill in pronunciation, grammar or vocabulary, the greater the danger that the other hidden levels of communication may come into play. Participants on both sides will assume that they mean the same thing by different gestures or patterns of discourse, but in fact they often have quite different interpretations. Hearers often that if a speaker has a reasonable level of skill in the obvious areas of words, grammar and pronunciation then the speaker will he equally skilled in the other kinds of competencies. Often this is not at all the case, especially if the speaker’s foreign language learning has concentrated on language competence. Many learners of English have focussed their main attention on learning words and grammar. In many foreign language classrooms little attention is given to the role of culture and cross-cultural communication.

Words

For many students, learning a foreign language is all about learning words. The students’ aim seems to be largely to acquire a knowledge of a wide vocabulary, concentrating on new and difficult words. These students may not realize the importance of learning new meanings to known words, especially apparently simple words. However, simple words often turn out to have unexpected cultural meanings, as the following dialogue noted in Britain shows. 

In this situation, A is an Arabic speaker, a visitor to Britain. She was only expecting a cup of tea and was puzzled by the offer of food. The British hostess (B) was upset that A had already eaten since she had, she thought, specifically invited A for food. The source of the misunderstanding is the word ‘tea’ which in Britain, especially among lower social classes, often means an early evening light meal. Although A speaks excellent English and is, in fact, an experienced university English teacher in her own country, she had not realized that a simple word like ‘tea’ can have different cultural meanings.

Similarly, ‘simple’ common words used in idioms can often catch out learners who are used to concentrating on ‘difficult’ words. The word ‘house’, for instance, takes on a variety of unexpected meanings in such examples as ‘The comedian really set the house on fire’ (the comedian got a good response from the audience, or ‘house’), The drinks are on the house tonight’ (the owner or manager will pay for all the customers’ drinks), ‘After the minister’s speech the House rose at nine’ (the members of the House of Commons, in the British Parliament, went home at nine o’clock).

Grammar

Grammar can often present unexpected difficulties in cross-cultural communication when learners of another language have not worked out the relationship between grammatical form and language function. This happened in the following example in Britain where a British person (B) wants to visit a Chinese student (C) in her room. 

The problem ‘here is that the expression ‘do you mind it’ is a polite form of a request which anticipates a negative response, No, I don’t mind…’. C realizes that this is a request but responds only to the function, ‘Yes’ (meaning ‘Yes, do come in’). Since C has not responded with the expected negative grammatical form this leaves B to understand that she is busy (‘Yes, I do mind, I am busy at the moment’) . Fortunately, B did not leave immediately after C’s first response and the misunderstanding was cleared up.

Pronunciation

Clearly when words are mispronounced this can cause problems in cross-cultural communication. This usually happens when speakers have poor pronunciation or confuse words. Less obvious problems can crop up when fluent speakers of English, for instance, are influenced by local varieties of the language. This would be perfectly acceptable in local situations but can cause difficulties when English is used in international contexts. For example, Malaysian speakers of English may stress the second syllables of words like ‘colleague’ or ‘management’ where speakers of other varieties of English expect to hear the stress on the first syllable. Since the difference in stress is also accompanied by changes in the pronunciation of stressed or unstressed vowels (schwa) this can cause momentary confusion. More seriously, hearers’ perceptions of speakers of a language like English are influenced by the fact that stress and intonation commonly convey attitudes. Thus in English a heavy falling intonation can mean definiteness, abruptness or rudeness. Unfortunately, Arabic speakers who learn English have often not been taught this and they transfer Arabic falling intonation patterns to English. One result is that English hearers sometimes perceive the other group (wrongly) as being aggressive or pushy. A solution is to raise the learners’ awareness of the meanings of various intonation patterns in English and the attitudes which might be interpreted from their use.

Body Language

The same gestures or body language may express quite different meanings in different cultures. In Northern Europe yes’ is generally signalled by a downward head movement or up-and- down nodding. In contrast, in Turkey and neighbouring countries a common gesture for ‘no’ is an upward movement of the head, easily mistaken for the European ‘yes’ by those who are unfamiliar with Turkish people. Further scope for misunderstanding arises because the Turkish ‘no’ is often accompanied by a click of the tongue. This noise and the upward head movement means ‘you are stupid’ in Britain! There are cultural differences in the use of space, e.g. how close to others people expect to stand or sit. Many Latin Americans or people from the Middle East prefer to come quite close to their hearers when talking. This shows friendliness and solidarity. North Americans or Northern Europeans, on the other hand, tend to keep more space between themselves and hearers. This shows their awareness of the other person’s individuality and need for personal space.When speakers from the USA and Saudi Arabia, for example, come together they may feel uncomfortable without knowing the reason. Both parties unconsciously try to maintain their own natural polite and friendly distances, The American may feel the Arab is aggressive or pushy when the latter comes close, while the Arab may believe the American is unfriendly or untrustworthy if that person keeps moving away.

Further cross-cultural mismatches can occur in eye contact. Whether and how listeners look at a speaker’s eyes varies from culture to culture. One contrast seems to be that in Britain and the Middle East listeners gaze at a speaker’s eyes to show that they are listening and showing respect whereas in many parts of Africa and Asia this can signify disrespect or anger and be interpreted as insulting. On the other hand, the African or Asian manner of showing politeness, respect and honour to a speaker – by lowering one’s gaze or looking below the other’s eyes – can be interpreted as disinterest, suspicion or guilt by British or Middle Eastern listeners.

Even a smile can cause problems, as an American teacher in Taiwan discovered. One of her students arrived late. He was smiling. She became angry and said, ‘You are late and it’s not funny. Take that smile off your face. He then became very upset because she had publicly become angry with him. Later she realized that a smile is not always a sign of humour – the student was smiling with embarrassment. Such potential sources of difficulty are not likely to be pointed out by participants in cross- cultural situations. Openly drawing attention to misunderstandings may be thought impolite or over-direct unless the speakers are well known to each other.

Discourse Patterns

Speakers from different cultures make use of different discourse patterns in the way they structure information or interpret what others say. Even silence is used to structure discourse: participants know by the length of a pause that a speaker has finished speaking and they can take a turn. However, the exact timing of such turn taking can vary. Among many Greek speakers the pauses between turns are minimal; speakers alternate rapidly and overlaps between one speaker and the next are common and arc accepted as showing solidarity between speakers who understand each other. In contrast, in Scandinavia and Finland such pauses are often one or two seconds longer as members of those cultures show respect and perhaps think carefully about what they want to say. In cross-cultural situations between these two different groups it is very likely that English will be used as a common language of communication. Greek speakers report that they feel there are long silences between themselves and Scandinavians, which leads them to wonder if they have said something wrong or (given that Scandinavians are often highly competent in English) whether they have made a language mistake. As a result the Greeks feel rather insecure (unnecessarily). The Scandinavians meanwhile feel that the Greeks keep interrupting them. They feel (wrongly) that the Greeks are aggressive.

Important cultural differences can emerge when we consider where a speaker puts the main point. Chinese speakers frequently put the main point near the end of what they say. First they establish common ground and give relevant background information before they lead the hearer up to the main point. Sometimes this point only gets a brief mention – after all, it will be clear to the listener familiar with this discourse pattern where the argument is going. This kind of inductive discourse pattern seems to be oriented to the hearer. Many British and American speakers, in contrast, use a more deductive discourse pattern which is more oriented to the speaker in this second pattern the speaker usually gives an early indication of what is to come. Often the main point conies right at the beginning, especially if the speaker is answering a question in a formal situation. The idea seems to be to get to the heart of the matter quickly. Background information or supporting arguments follow. Since the hearer already has a good idea of the main point, it is clear how this background information will be relevant. Each of these contrasting discourse patterns is completely valid and can he taken for granted in its own cultural context. In cross-cultural situations the differences can cause problems. British people listening to Chinese speakers expect the main point to come quickly. Not hearing one, the British may become impatient or lose concentration and miss the point when it finally comes. Some British listeners report that they think the Chinese keep ‘beating around the bush’, they go round and round but don’t seem to get to the point. Chinese listeners expecting the background first often feel they do not get this information from British speakers so they sometimes miss the significance of the main point or do not see the logic behind it. It would help if both sides realized that for the British the background comes from the main point, while for the Chinese the background leads up to the main idea.

Sociolinguistic Uses

Sociolinguistic uses of language relate closely to discourse patterns, but there is greater emphasis on the social context and variation. For instance, to ask a person’s age, how much they earn or whether they are married is acceptable in all cultures, but in very different circumstances. To ask such questions of a stranger is normal in Turkey or China hut quite unexpected in Britain, America or Australia. Western tourists in Turkey or China may not appreciate the friendliness behind such questions. Instead they may think that local people are too curious about what they think are private matters or questions for job interviews. They would prefer to talk about the weather or their jobs (but these may not be such interesting topics in Turkey or China).

Part of the challenge in learning a foreign language is to learn how to manage [he sociolinguistic uses of the language. At a simple level this means understanding how greetings vary across the world. In China, ‘Have you eaten?’ is a greeting, not an indirect invitation to a meal. In Fiji or Malaysia, ‘Where are you going?’ is not always an enquiry about a person’s destination, but again is a greeting. In Botswana, a greeting is ‘How did you wake up?’. Each language also has many informal greetings. An Indonesian student in Britain (I) did not realize this when greeted by a British teacher (B) at a bus stop:

B Hello. How’s it going?

I I’m going home.

This left B puzzled. His greeting had not been returned and he wondered why the student mentioned he was going home. Later he realized the student was about to catch the bus.

The sociolinguistic uses of compliments can cause dilemmas about the nature of the expected response, as this dialogue between a Chinese speaker (C) and a British visitor (B) shows.

C Your Chinese is very good.

B Oh, thank you

This dialogue looks harmless until we consider what each speaker is thinking. C thinks B must be very boastful: B’s Chinese is not, in fact, good and C expected B to say, ‘No, no, it’s very bad’, since in Chinese a compliment should be rejected to show modesty. B is much happier: he has been complimented and he has thanked the Chinese speaker for his kind thoughts; he is not, in fact, immodest but is following the English rule that a response to a compliment often relates to the complimentary, not to the content.

Cultural Presuppositions

In many instances of cross-cultural communication it is important to understand the cultural presuppositions which lie behind speakers’ words and their expectations and interpretations. For instance, a Chinese student (C) asks a British person (B) for help.

C Can you help me?

B I would like to help you….but I’m afraid I can’t because….

When C heard the first words she was very happy, believing she would get help; when she heard the second phrase she was very disappointed. She thought, ‘Why did you raise my hopes and then let me down?’ She concluded that B was hypocritical. It would help if she understood the cultural presuppositions that B is using: first, to show good will and kindness by saying he would like to help, then moving to the main point that he cannot help before explaining why not. A Chinese speaker would probably give the reasons for not helping first before concluding that it was impossible: this would prepare the hearer for the bad news.

Many Chinese and Latin Americans respond to personal invitations by accepting to come, but when the day arrives they may not turn up. This has left many British and North American hosts puzzled, thinking: why did they promise to come, then break their promises? Can they he trusted? But this interpretation misses the Chinese or Latin American cultural presupposition behind their reply: it is better to show good will, by accepting and perhaps not go, than to refuse and bring immediate disappointment to the potential host. This shows regard for the hosts face, and for that of the person invited, who does not have to provide an excuse for refusing the invitation. Thus the Chinese and Latin Americans in this situation base their reply on social values, while the British and North Americans put truth values first. If this is understood, the situation becomes easier on both sides, although there will still be further variation depending on whether the invitation is by telephone, letter, or face to face, on whether it is a group invitation and how well the people know each other.

Fundamentally, relevant cultural presuppositions relate to how members of a culture view the world, how they think about human nature, time, space and society. Also crucial are the balance between individual and social identity, the role of language in social relations and getting things done, and how concepts of politeness and face are realized in interaction. Probably all of these is important in all cultures, hut the nature and emphasis of each may vary.

Some Caveats

When we consider cross-cultural communication it is natural to consider cross-cultural differences but we should first remember that cultures have much in common: we are all members of humanity, there has been extensive interaction between cultural groups for centuries and for most of the time most people get along very well with each other. Differences and problems should not obscure common elements.

Secondly, we need to remind ourselves that generalities about cultural groups do not always apply to individuals. There is always individual variation even in those cultures which emphasize collective thinking and action. Every culture has some balance between unity and diversity, between the individual and the group, between expected conventional responses and freedom of choice.

Thirdly, while general insights are very helpful we also need to bear in mind that different situations elicit different responses even in the same culture. Situational variation is common and much cultural activity is determined by context even in those cultures which stress principles which apparently transcend contextual variation.

Fourthly, in thinking about cross-cultural communication we should avoid a tendency to think about ‘us’ and ‘them’- For example, it is very useful to analyse some cultures (like British, French, German, American) as being individualistic, since they put emphasis on the individual, and other cultures (say Turkish, Chinese, Japanese, Indian) as being collective, since they tend to emphasize the group. But in using such binary categories we should remember that any culture probably has both individualistic and collective tendencies – it is a question of emphasis and relative balance.

Some Conclusions

We have looked at cross-cultural communication from a foreign language perspective. We have emphasized that it is not only cross-cultural language and behaviour which count but also participants interpretations of situations and people, since this interpretation often frames perceived meaning. Our own culture provides us with systems of interpreting language and interaction and in cross-cultural situations we need to be aware of these systems and endeavour to transcend them. Here, we have used a framework of different levels of communication to discuss how the more obvious levels of words, grammar and pronunciation often obscure the crucial role of body language, discourse patterns, sociolinguistic uses of language and cultural presuppositions. In face-to-face communication all these levels usually work simultaneously, in combination,

Speakers’ or hearers’ attitudes can be influenced by their interpretations, which in turn can be influenced by their own cultural systems. There can be a vicious circle here: cultural expectations can lead to different language use, which can lead to miscommunication. This in turn can lead to wrong assessments and stereotypes of participants from other cultures, which cart reinforce or mould cultural expectations, and so on. However, a major way to break such vicious circles is to be aware of possible difficulties, to have some knowledge of other cultures, and to try to develop intercultural skills.

To finish on a positive note, it is worth remembering that most of the time people from different cultures do get on with each other: as members of different cultures we share a common humanity. Good will and a friendly smile can overcome many barriers. Patience, trust and sensitivity are part of an international language of humanity which goes beyond words.

FURTHER READING ON THE TOPIC BY THE AUTHORS

• CORTAZZI, M. (1990) ‘Cultural and Educational Expectations in the Language Classroom’ in B. Harrison (ed.) Culture in the Language Classroom, pp.54-65, London: Macmillan.
• JIN, L. CORTAZZI, M. (1993) ‘Cultural Orientation and Academic Language Use’ in I). Graddol, L. Thompson, M.Byram (eds.) Language and Culture, pp.84-97, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
• CORTAZZI, M. JiN, L. (1994) ‘Narrative Analysfis: applying linguistics to cultural models of learning’ in D.Graddol, J. Swann (eds.) Evaluating Language, pp.75-90, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
• CORTAZZI. M.; JiN, L. (1994) ‘Ways with Words – Chinese students’ learning of English vocabulary’in D. Dai (ed.) Papers from the Second International Symposium on ELT, pp.1 5-28 Taipei: ETAROC.
• JIN, L; CORTAZZI, M. (1995) ‘A Cultural Synergy Model for Academic Language Use’ in P. Bruthiaux; T. Boswood; B. Du-Babcock(eds.) Explorations in English for Professional Communication,pp.41-56, Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong.
• JiN, L. CORTAZZI, M. (1996) ‘Changes in Vocabulary Learning in China’ in H. Coleman & L. Cameron (eds.) Change and Language,Clevedon: Multilingual Matters,
• CORTAZZI, M JiN, L. (1996) ‘Cultures of Learning: Language Classrooms in China’ in H. Coleman (ed.) Society and the Language Classroom, Cambridge: CUP.
• JIN, L. CORTAZZI, M. (1996) ‘This way is very different from Chinese Ways’, EAP needs and Academic Culture in T. Dudley-Evans. M. Hewings (eds.) Evaluation and Course Design in EAP.London: Macmillan

As was explained before, angels are created from light. The ‘Arabic word’ for angel is ‘malak’. According to the root word from which it is derived, ‘malak’ means ‘messenger’, ‘deputy’, envoy’, ‘superintendent’ and ‘powerful one’. The root of the word also implies descent from a high place. Angels are beings who build relations between the macrocosmic world and the material one, and convey the commands of God, superintend or direct the acts and lives of beings and represent their worship in their own realms.

Having refined or subtle bodies of light, angels move very rapidly and permeate or penetrate all realms of existence. As they place themselves in our eyelids or in the bodies of other beings to observe the works of God through our or their eyes, they also descend into the hearts of the Prophets and saintly people and breathe inspirations into them. The inspirations occurring to the hearts of saintly people are usually from God but they may sometimes be from angels.

Some animals, like honeybees, for example, act under Divine inspiration, although science asserts that all animals are directed by impulses. Science is unable to explain what an impulse is and how it occurs. Scientists are studying to find out, for example, how migrating birds find their way; or how, for instance, young eels which hatch in the waters of Europe can find their way to their native waters in the Pacific Ocean. Even if we attribute this to the information coded into their DNAs, this information is assuredly from God, who knows everything and controls all the universe, and angels deputed for such creatures direct their lives. If it is a scientific attitude that we unquestionably accept the existence of some invisible forces like the law of growth in living creatures, then it will be more scientific to attribute those forces to God’s special servants, that is angels.

Each thing in existence, whether universal or particular, has a collective identity and performs a unique, universal function. As each flower displays a superlative design and symmetry and recites, in the tongue of its being, the Names of the Creator manifested on it, so the whole earth performs a universal duty of glorification as though it was a single flower. Likewise, the vast ‘ocean’ of the heavens gives praise to and glorifies the Majestic Maker of the universe through its suns, moons and stars. Even inert material bodies perform a vital function in praising God although they are outwardly inanimate and unconscious. Angels are the representatives of such bodies in the world of the inner dimensions of things, and express praises on behalf of them, and these bodies are, in turn, the representatives, dwellings, and mosques of the angels in the material world.

The Majestic Maker of this huge ‘palace’ of creation employs four kinds of labourers of which the first are the angels and other spirit beings. Second, there are inanimate things and vegetable creation, which are quite important servants of God working without wages. Thirdly, animals serve unconsciously in return for a small wage which is their food and pleasures, while, finally, mankind work in awareness of the purposes of the Majestic Creator. They take a lesson from everything and supervise the other servants below their rank in return for wages, which are paid in the form of a reward here and in the Hereafter.

Constituting the foremost category of these servants, the angels resemble mankind in that they know the purposes of the Creator and act in conformity with those purposes. They differ from man by working solely for God’s good pleasure, asking no reward other than the spiritual pleasure and happiness of nearness to their Creator. Their worship varies according to their different natures and the variety of their functions as the representatives of most species, and the services they perform and praises they sing differ from each other, as to the duties carried out by the different departments of a government. Michael, for example, superintends the growth of all kinds of corn and provision upon the earth by God’s leave and power, and, if one my say so, he is the head of all the angels that resemble farmers. There is another great angel who leads by God’s leave, command and power the ‘incorporeal shepherds-angels – of all the animals.

Since there is an angel to represent every kind of creature in existence and present their service and worship to the Divine Court, the description given by the Prophet, upon him be peace and blessings, of the angels are entirely reasonable and true: There are angels with forty thousand heads, each with forty thousand mouths, and forty thousand praises sung by forty thousand tongues in each mouth. This Prophetic tradition means that the angels serve universal purposes, and some natural creatures worship God with forty thousand heads in forty thousand ways. The firmament, for example, praises the Majestic creator through the suns and stars, whilst the earth, although a single body, worships with many thousands of ‘heads’, each with many thousands of ‘mouths’, each with many thousands of ‘tongues’. Thus, the angel who represents the earth in the world of the inner dimensions of things or in the world of immaterial bodies is to be regarded as referred to by this tradition.

The relevant verses of the Qur’an such as those to follow are an observatory from which we may look at angels:

By the loosed ones successively, storming tempestously, by the scatterers scattering, and the severally severing and those hurling a reminder, excusing or warning (77.1-6)

By those that plug out violently; and those that draw out gently; by those that float serenely, and those that outstrip suddenly; by those that direct an affair (79.1-5).

…in (the Night of Power) the angels and the spirit descend, by the leave of their Lord, upon every command (97.4).

…a Fire whose fuel is men and stones, and over which are harsh, terrible angels who disobey not God in what He commands them and do what they are commanded (66.6). Glory be to Him! Nay, hut they are honoured servants that outstrip Him not in speech, and perform as He commands (21. 26-27).

Angels do whatever God commands them; they never commit sins and show disobedience, and since they have no evil-commanding souls to resist obedience to God, they have fixed stations, they are not promoted to higher ranks, nor reduced to lower ones. They are also free of negative moral qualities like envy, rancour and enmity and from lusts and animal appetites which are to be found in mankind and jinn.

Angels have no sexes; they do not eat and drink, nor do they feel hunger, thirst and tiredness. Although they have no wages in return for their worship, they derive special pleasure in carrying out God’s commands and feel delight in being near to Him. They are not promoted but they receive some sort of spiritual pleasure from their worship. Praise, worship. recitation of God’s Names and glorification are their nourishment; they are also nourished with light and sweet fragrance.

Since angels do not have evil-commanding souls to struggle with, they are not promoted to higher ranks, but human beings are bound by creation to fight with their evil- commanding selves and Satan. While angels appointed to invite them to true guidance, always inspire in them belief, good conduct and virtues and call them to resist the temptations of Satan and their evil-commanding selves, Satan and their evil-commanding selves try to seduce them. It can be said that the life of a man is the history of his continuous struggle to make choices between the inspirations of angels through his spirit and the temptations of his evil-commanding self and Satan. That is why a human being can be elevated to the highest of the high or reduced to the lowest of the low. Also, that is why the elect of mankind- the Prophets and greatest saints – are higher in rank than the greatest of angels and ordinary believers than the commonalty of angels. Also, although angels are more advanced than human beings in knowledge of God and His Names and attributes, human beings by virtue of having developed senses and abilities like meditation and the complexity of their nature, excel angels in being more comprehensive mirrors to God’s Names and attributes.

As was pointed out, angels are of different kinds. Besides those deputed to represent and supervise species of creation on the earth and present to God their worship, there are four Archangels, and the angels carrying God’s Throne -we do not know what the Qur’an means by God’s Throne and how it is carried. There are also the groups of angels named Mala-i Ala (the Highest Council), Nadiyy-i Ala (the Highest Assembly) and Rafiq-i Aid (the Highest Company). There are angels appointed to Paradise and Hell. The angels who record men’s deeds are called Kiramun Katibin (the Noble Recorders), and as stated in a hadith, there are 360 angels responsible for the life of each believer. They guard him, especially during his infancy and old age, and pray for him and ask God for his forgiveness. There are also angels who come to the aid of believers at war, attend the assemblies of praise and glorification of God and the meetings held to make studies for God’s sake and for the benefit of people.

Angels, particularly the angels of mercy, do not enter the houses where there are statues and dogs are fed, and refrain from close contact with those who are ritually unclean and women having periods. They also keep aloof from those who have bad breath because of what they have had like onions and garlic or because of smoking. Angels also do not visit those who break off relations with their parents and relatives.

God Almighty is powerful over everything; even though He is able to guard everyone by Himself, He may appoint angels to guard His servants. In order to deserve the guardianship and company of angels, one should use his free will in making good choices and build up a close relation with God Almighty. One must have strong belief in God and other pillars of faith and never give up worshipping and praying to Him regularly. One must lead a disciplined life and refrain from forbidden things or sinful acts.

Angels came to the aid of the believers at the Battles of Badr and Uhud, and also at the conquest of Makka. They help the believers who struggle in the way of God sincerely, whenever they need and wherever they are.

Belief in angels has many benefits for man. It provides man with some sorth of peace and removes his loneliness. The inspiration breathed by angels exhilarates him, enlightens him intellectually and opens for him new horizons in knowledge and thinking. Awareness of the continuous company of angels holds man back from committing sins and improper behaviour.

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF JINN

The word jinn literally means something hidden or veiled from sight. As mentioned earlier, jinn are the species or kinds of beings that cannot be seen with the naked eye, nor we can see them with telescopes or microscopes. In the Qur’an, there is a short chapter called jinn, which tells us that a band of jinn listened to the Prophet Muhammad, upon him be peace and blessings, and some of them believed in his message and some did not. From this we understand that like mankind, jinn are also conscious beings charged with Divine obligations. Recent discoveries in biology made it clear that God created beings particular to each realm in the universe. Jinn might have been created while the earth was a body of some sort of fire. They preceded mankind in creation and were responsible for cultivating and improving the world. Although God later superseded them with mankind for ruling the world, He did not exempt the jinn from religious obligations.

As we mentioned before, the Qur’an states that jinn are created from smokeless fire. In another verse, it clarifies that the fire from which jinn are created is scorching and penetrating as deep as the inner part of the body (15. 27). We are not certain whether the Qur’an means energy or something like X-rays by smokeless, penetrating and scorching fire.

Like angels, jinn move extremely fast; they are not bound by the constraints of time and space within which we normally move. However, since the spirit is more active and faster than jinn, a man who lives at the level of the spirit’s life, who can go beyond the limits of matter and the confines of time and space within which normal people live, can excel jinn in speed and activity. For example, as we read in the Qur’an when the Prophet Solomon asked those around him who could bring the throne of the Queen of the Yemen, a member of jinn answered that he could bring it before he finished the meeting and stood up from his seat. However, a man who had special knowledge from God replied; ‘I can bring it to you in a time shorter than the twinkling of an eye,’ and he did so.

Nothing is difficult for God Almighty; it is equally easy for Him to create the whole of the universe and a tiny particle. He has provided men, jinn and angels with power and strength appropriate for the function or duties of each. As He uses angels in the supervision of the movements of celestial bodies, He has allowed man to rule on the earth, dominate over matter and build civilizations and produce technology.

Power and strength are not limited to the physical world, nor are they proportional to bodily size. We observe that immaterial things are much more powerful than huge physical bodies. For example, memory is much more spacious and comprehensive than a large room. We can touch with our hands a very near object, but our eyes can travel long distances in an instant while our imagination can go beyond time and space all at once. Winds can pull out trees and demolish huge buildings. A young, thin shoot of a plant can split rocks and appear in sun-light. The power of energy, whose existence we can know through the effect it produces, is known to everybody. All this shows that the power of something is not proportional to its physical structure, rather the immaterial world is dominant over the physical world, and immaterial entities are much more powerful than material ones.

This ‘book’ or exhibition was once much more dazzling; like a magnificent vessel sailing in the ocean of love and ecstasy or a chandelier with one thousand and one lights, it was beautiful beyond imagination. With its emerald hills and slopes and exhilarating valleys and plains, with its forests inhabited by thousands of kinds of cheerful animals and paradise-like gardens, fields and orchards, and with its singing birds and merry-making insects, this ‘book’ was the realm neighboring the other world. Divine mercy poured onto it in the form of rain to make the earth more fertile and, in return, hands were held open towards it in profound gratitude.

Those who sensed nature in that manner could not help but establish a deep heartfelt relation with the sound, melody, taste, smell and beauties which issued from it by the Hand of Power. For they were so intimate and familiar with it that whenever they gazed on it, they felt different things pertaining to the worlds beyond.

Like the elegance and grace in the architecture of a palace inspiring in us different things beyond the palace itself, nature, this exhibition of the miracles of Divine art, inspires in our hearts an intuition of the existence of One who, being the real source of all harmony and beauty, has brought it into existence and designed it, One who, although He makes us feel Himself through every work of His, is beyond the capacity of direct human perception.

The natural world and the heavens are as if in each other’s arms. It is as if in response to the strong desire of mountains to meet with heavens which they show by making their peaks lean on their skirts, heavens hang their skirts down over them. Like bees flying from one flower to the other, human imagination travels through the reflections of the Creator’s beauty and goes as fas as the horizon. When it reaches the horizon, thinking that the road goes on far into eternity beyond heavens, it sets out for a new journey and man begins to hear the melodies belonging to the worlds beyond. Those who, through their imaginations, can stay in those worlds for a long time, succeed in meeting the true beloved, with the love of whom they are consumed and for the union with whom they long.

For those who have resolved to make a journey through this realm of nature which provides knowledge of God for the traveller and where the heart, spirit and conscience overflow with innumerable kinds of pleasures, with its exhilarating spectacles, multi-coloured hills and slopes, impressive mountains that lead one into day-dreams, amorous gardens, awe-inspiring forests, streams and rivers murmuring in their way to union with seas-it is especially in spring and summer, a realm of joy, pleasure, peace and imagination. 

There is a magnificence, a charm, and a poetical harmony in every corner of this ‘book’ or exhibition. It is as if-with all its variety of beauty diversified in colours and forms, and the sheer charm of its general appearance, such that one would say, It is impossible for it to be more beautiful than this!-nature were in a sort of beauty competition. Those who have awakened to those beauties observe it differently and hear from it melodies of unimaginable beauty. Those ‘intoxicated’ spirits see trees dancing mentioning His Name and flowers announcing Him in the languages particular to themselves, and they hear everything in nature whispering peculiar messages from that symphony of beauty.

There are parts of nature which know of neither winter nor autumn. They are so dazzling and charming that you feel near the pont of touching the ultimate reach of beauty where this and other worlds are as if concentric with each other. The slopes of those places give you the impression that you are in gardens of Paradise, the rivers flowing through them bring to your mind the rivers of Paradise, and the swaying of their trees bring you a gust of breezes in gardens of Paradise. In short, in the beauties exhibited in those places you feel and observe the eternal beauties and, thinking that the worldly life is too short to experience all those beauties perfectly, you feel an earnest desire for eternity and turn to the Infinitely Powerful One so that that vital desire of yours may be realized.

What a pity it is that this magnificent book, this charming exhibition, which the Infinitely Merciful One has created and presented to man to observe and study and to be exhilarated by, is no longer given any more care than is given to a heap of junk or rubbish. Worse than that, it is more and more becoming a wasteland and like a dunghill.

Today, air, that magnificent conductor of Divine commands, is a suffocating smoke and a perilous ‘whirlpool’. Water, that source of life and other Divine bounties, is either a hazardous flood or forms desolate expanses of pitch. And earth, that treasure of Divine grace and munificence, is a wilderness no longer productive and a ruin without any ecological balance.

Like everything else entrusted to us, we have deplorably treated this ‘book’, this magnificent exhibition, which is an embodiment of Divine grace and mercy. How deplorably and awkwardly we have treated plains and residential places, which we have changed into deserts and heaps of ruin. How deplorably and gracelessly we have treated seas and rivers, which we have polluted. Again, how deplorably and awkwardly we have treated air and water, and fields, forests, and gardens, which we have made unfavorable to any life. Truly, by changing this Paradise-like world to a hell, how deplorably and awkwardly we have treated ourselves!

Unless we improve this world, whose order we have destroyed and which we have polluted, and restore it to its essential beauty and magnificence, it will inevitably collapse on us in heaps of wreckage.