Also, there is an infinite degree of differentiation and compounding within infinite profusion. For example, while seeds and roots exist under earth in extremely confused position, they are amazingly distinguished in growth, and like the particles of food entering the body in confusion being separated and shared out among organs and tissues with perfect measure and wisdom, the particles going into trees in confusion are distinguished and distributed among leaves, flowers and fruits. This shows the necessity of the existence of that absolutely Wise, Knowing and Powerful One and His Unity and the perfection of His Power. Also, it demonstrates the grandeur and perfection of His Lordship that, making the world of particles into a boundless, vast field, He sows and harvests it every moment with perfect wisdom and obtains fresh crops of different worlds from it, and causes those unconscious, powerless and ignorant particles to perform innumerable, systematic functions just as if they were extremely learned, conscious and capable.

Thus a large window is opened onto knowledge of God through these four ways, and they display the All-Wise Maker to the mind on a large scale.

Now you unhappy, heedless one! If you do not want to see Him in this way and recognize Him, free yourself of your reason so as to become like an animal and be saved!

The testimony of all the Prophets, upon them be peace, who are those with luminous spirits among mankind, based on their manifest and evident miracles, the testimony of all the saints, who are those distinguished with their illumined hearts, relying on their wonder-making and spiritual discoveries, and the testimony of all the purified scholars, who with their enlightened minds rely on their researches and quests for truth, to tie necessary existence and Unity of One, the Creator of all things, and the perfection of His Power, form a truly vast and enlightening window, through which the position of His Lordship shows itself continually.

O you helpless denier! Who do you rely on so that you do not heed those people? Or, by closing your eyes in the daytime, do you imagine the world to be in darkness?

The worship performed by all beings in the universe evidently demonstrates an Absolutely- Worshipped One. Those who penetrate the world of spirits and the inner dimension of things and meet with the angels and spirit beings, testify that all spirit beings and angels worship an Eternally- Worshipped One in perfect obedience, and all living beings are observed to be performing duties in perfect order in a manner resembling worship, and all inanimate things evidently render services with perfect submission in a like manner. As all this shows the necessary existence and Unity of a True Object of Worship, so too the true knowledge of all gnostics, which bears the weight of consensus, and the fruitful thanks of all the thankful, and the blessed recitations of all those who recite God’s Names, and the praises, which cause the increase of Divine bounties, of all those who praise God, and the pronouncements and descriptions of Divine Unity, based on decisive proofs, of all those who believe in it, and the true love of all lovers of God, and the true will and desires of all those who seek Him, and the earnest searching and inclinations of all those who turn to Him, all demonstrate the necessary existence and Unity of that Eternally-Worshipped One, the One Who is Recognized, Mentioned, Praised, One Beloved, Desired and Sought, and the perfection of His Lordship.

Also, the acceptable worship and supplications of perfected people, and the spiritual radiance, visions and illuminations resulting from them, again demonstrate the necessary existence and Unity of that Everlasting and Eternally-Worshipped One and the perfection of His Lordship.

Thus these three aspects open up a broad, light-giving window onto Divine Unity.

And He sends down water from the heaven and brings forth with it crops and fruits as provision for you, and He has made subject to you the ships so that they sail through the sea by His command, and He has made the rivers subject to you; and He has made subject to you the sun and the moon, both pursuing their courses, and He has made subject to you the night and the day; and He gives you of all that you ask Him. If you were to count God’s bounties, you could not enumerate them.

The mutual helping and solidarity of beings in the universe and the fact that they respond to one another’s call for assistance show that all creatures are trained by a single Instructor, are administered by a single Director, are at the disposal of a single Disposer, and are the servants of a single Master. For through a universal law of mutual helping, the sun cooks the things necessary for the lives of living beings on the earth by the command of the Lord, and the moon acts as a calendar, and light, air, water and sustenance hasten to the assistance of animate beings, and plants hasten to the assistance of animals, and animals and plants together hasten to the assistance of human beings, and even the members of the body hasten to the assistance of one another, and the particles of provision hasten to the assistance of the cells of the body. This most wise and generous mutual assistance among those unconscious beings, and their responding to one another’s needs and their supporting one another under a law of munificence and grace, a law of compassion and care and a principle of mercy, demonstrate, clearly and evidently, that they are the servants, officers, and creatures of a unique One of Unity, a peerless, Eternally- Besought-of-All, an Absolutely Powerful, Absolutely Knowledgeable, Absolutely Merciful and Compassionate, Absolutely Generous and Munificent, Necessarly-Existent One. So, 0 you who are bankrupt of good reasoning and sound judgement because of materialistic philosophy and scientism! How do you respond in the face of this mighty window? Can chance have a hand in this?

Besides searching for new techniques to substitute man in the fields of labour, modern scientific inquiry is also directed to finding analogues for human mental activities. Since their assumption is that man is merely a physical-material entity (a complex of physical, biological and chemical processes) many scientists are hopeful that they can produce a complete copy of human functions. It is their assertion that since at least nothing in existing physical theories accounts for the existence of non-computable processes in the brain, all of man’s intellectual activities can be computed. However, Roger Penrose, the famous Oxford mathematician, argues against this assertion. He argues from Godel’s theorem which states that for every consistent formal system that has the power to do arithmetic, there will always be a true statement. That is, a formal system is a set of logical or computational rules; termed consistent if it never produces contradictory statements. Yet, as human beings can see that that statement is true, this constitutes a sign that our minds can go beyond the powers of any formal system. However, since Penrose himself (like many others who share his opinions) cannot free himself from the confines of (materialistic) physics and nothing in existing physical theories accounts for non-computable processes, in order to be able to find a physical foundation for his theory, he pins his hopes on future elaborations of the theory of quantum mechanics. In his attempt to explain human consciousness, Penrose notes that the biggest mystery of all is how electrical activity in the brain gives rise to the experience of consciousness. It is hard to understand why an inner life should arise from the mere enactment of a computation, no matter how complex. However, his alternative is not more convincing that what he rejects. He tries to explain human consciousness with quantum processes in microtubules – collapsing quantum wave functions (the mathematical functions describing the position and momentum of a particle) in protein structures found in the skeletons of neurons.

The main problem arises from accepting the physical body as the origin of all activities of mans intellect. The problem is also true for the expectations from Artificial Intelligence. Dr Aksoy has a simple but meaningful objection to the assumptions underlying those expectations: ‘A man-made system can be very smart and artificially very intelligent but no such system so far has been awarded a prize for its innovative abilities. It is the human being who made it who wins the prize. What is prized, what is of higher worth, is not the system but its maker or builder.’ Another more simple objection can be raised here. For example, after doing a spell-check on a word-processor. you may come across many mistakes which the software has not recognized. Any sentence can be written in several ways in which the words are correctly spelt but are not the words you intend to use. For example, if we type the sentence ‘What is prized is not the system but its maker or builder’ as ‘What is priced is not the system but its make or build’, most people who know the language will recognize it immediately and effortlessly as nonsense. But the software’s spell-check and grammar-check will pass the sentence as OK. Such examples can be multiplied for a great variety of tasks requiring experience and understanding which cannot be analogued or translated for Al machines but which humans cope with quite easily.

According to what we are asked to believe, the brain continually self-organizes, learns and adapts throughout our lives. Understanding how millions of neurons self-organize through non-linear feedback interactions requires that we have a full grasp of the mathematics of neural networks and of how this mathematics helps us to understand the link between brain and behaviour point to mention concerning man’s intellectual activities relates to the issue of learning and education.

Materialistic approaches attribute all of man’s intellectual activities to his brain. According to the theory of evolution, if taken literally, more developed animals must also be more developed in using their senses and faculties or their brains. But this is not the case. As Dr Yilmaz points out (‘Perfection and Primitiveness, The Fountain, Vol. 2, No. 19, p. 34), compared with a shark which can smell a drop of blood in the sea from a distance of about 25,000 feet, man is very much less developed. If we judge the degree of development according to the sense of smell, in place of men or monkeys, sharks will be at the top of the chain. Whereas, with respect to the sense of seeing, eagles are much more developed than sharks, as well as more than men and monkeys: an eagle can spot a rabbit on the ground from a height of about 6,000 feet. Would it not be true for a honey-bee to say of us: Those clumsy ones can draw with tools and only after calculations the hexagons that I can make so easily and exactly identical to one another. They cannot make so sweet and healing a substance as honey that 1 produce. Again, according to the literal logic of the theory of evolution, must a more developed animal not inherit the abilities of one less developed than itself? In this case, must man not have the abilities of all animals and must apes not have the abilities of all other animals ‘lower’ on the evolutionary ladder than themselves? Also, if man was evolved from apes, should the first man evolved not have inherited all the abilities and knowledge of all apes? However, we see that while all other animals are born as if educated and instructed already in all the information they will need to survive, man is born knowing next to nothing of what he needs to know to survive. And while all other animals come to the world with the same information or knowledge their predecessors had and there is negligible (if indeed any) difference between the amount of knowledge and abilities that the members of a species have, a man’s knowledge cannot be inherited by his progeny. Consequently, human beings vary hugely in their intellectual and artistic capacities and the amount or level of their knowledge.

Materialistic and evolutionist psychology consider learning either as a matter of behavioural patterning by reinforcement or the storage and use of knowledge. The first view is called behaviourism, while the latter cognitivisim. However, both are agreed that it is the brain or neural systems which learn. That is, the intellectual dimension of man’s being consists in his brain. They confuse how a man learns with what it is that does the learning. What they want us to believe with respect to man’s intellectual faculties is not different from defining how a factory works. According to their logic, it is the factory itself which built itself and works according to the laws pre-determined by either itself or the collective being of factories. Although they use personal pronouns such as ‘I’ or ‘You’ or We’ in referring to those who learn, speak, think, reason, decide and so on, forgetting that the brain does not know itself or what it is doing and also forgetting that it is we – humans – who study, speak about, comment on and even operate on the brain, they regard it as scientific to attribute all man’s intellectual activities and faculties, and therefore his conscious existence, to the brain, If that is so, why do we not concentrate our efforts merely on the brain and adjust it as a way of adjusting or educating individuals rather than go to the trouble and expense we currently go through to educate and bring our fellow members of society? Again, does attributing man’s intellectual activities to the brain mean that whatever man will need in life and also his desires, expectations, feelings, pains of the past and anxieties of the future, etc. were pre-encoded in his brain and that according to the situations or the stimuli coming from the outer world, the brain brings them forth as responses?

According to what we are asked to believe, the brain continually self-organizes, learns and adapts throughout our lives. Understanding how millions of neurons self-organize through non-linear feedback interactions requires that we have a full grasp of the mathematics of neural networks and of how this mathematics helps us to understand the link between brain and behaviour. Is it not compounding our ignorance to attribute to a heap of blind, deaf, ignorant flesh, blood and neurons unconscious of themselves, of their existence and what they are doing or why, all of man’s intellectual faculties and activities with all their complexity, all of our consciousness and culture, religious life? Does this make sense? And does not doing so entail a denial of man’s free will? Although some psychologists such as Tolman and Kohler are of the opinion that at least in some cases learning appears to be purposeful and animals and people have an awareness of what is being acquired and they actively interpret the stimuli they sense from the environment, since they too attribute this to the brain by asserting that there must be more than one system in the brain involved in learning, the point on which all materialistic approaches are agreed (consciously or unconsciously) is that man is an animal whose acts consist in the automatic responses of his brain, an animal that has no free will to direct and control his life.

The activity of learning is remarkably easy as both behaviourists or cognitivists assert. Yet it is nevertheless extremely complex. Besides senses, many human faculties such as imagination, conceptualization, reasoning, comparing, retaining, remembering, confirming and conviction, have a share in it. Each of these faculties give its colour to what is learnt. For example, only imagination gives rise to falsehoods, while conceptualization is ambiguous as to what passes through it. Reasoning does not have an established view of what comes to it, while capable of confirming partiality or prejudices pleasing to the one doing the reasoning. Surely the materialistic approach has no right to that degree of conviction achieved by impartial reasoning and study of real evidence and which is worthy to be called scientific knowledge. Rather, what materialist and evolutionist psychologists suggest may only be the product of imagination or partial (i.e. biased) reasoning.

Bibliography 

• KOHLER, W. (1925) The Mentality of Apes. Translated by E. Winter, New York.
• CRICK, Francis (1994) The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul, Charles Scribners Sons. PENROSE, Roger (1994) Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness, Oxford University Press.
• PENROSE,Roger(1994)Shadows of the Mind:A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness,Oxford University Press.
• AKSOY, M.S. (1993) ‘Artificial Intelligence: A Different Approach, The Fountain, Oct.-Nov, 1993, Vol. 1, No. 4, pp.9-11

The norms and assumptions that have characterised belief and action in Islam have their initial inspiration in two fundamental sources. One is scriptural, embodying the message revealed by God to the Prophet Muhammad (d.632), upon him be peace, and recorded in the Quran. The second is the exemplification of this message in the pattern or norm derived from the Prophet’s actions and precepts, collectively called the Sunna. Muslims regard the Qur’an as the ultimate closure in a series of revelations to humankind from God, and the Sunna as the historical projection of a divinely inspired and guided human life.

In one of the chapters of Qur’an, entitled al-Furqan (the Criterion: Chapter 25), revelation – addressed to all humankind — becomes the point of reference for distinguishing right from wrong:

Blessed be He Who sent down the criterion (of right and wrong, i.e. this Qur’an) to His servant (Muhammad) that he may be a warner to mankind. He to Whom belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth, and Who has begotten no son and for Whom there is no partner in the dominion. He has created everything, and has measured it exactly according to its due measurement (25.1-2).

The same chapter goes on to give examples of past Prophets and Messengers (many referred to in the Bible also) and their role as mediators of God’s word to their respective societies.

The Sunna is a necessary source of knowledge for Muslims as Muhammad is described in the Qur’an as ‘a fine example’ and one who possesses ‘high moral excellence’:

In the Messenger of God (Muhammad) you have a good example to follow for him who hopes for (the Meeting with) God and the Last Day and remembers God much. (al-Ahzab, 33.21)

… you (0 Muhammad) are on an exalted standard of character. (al-Qalain, 68.4)

As the secondary source of knowledge, the Hadith (sayings of Prophet Muhammad, the written record or text of the Sunna) are to be relied upon on the authority of God’s saying in the Quran:

By the star when it goes down. Your companion (Muhammad) is neither astray nor being misled. Nor does he speak from out of (his own) desire. It is no less than Inspiration sent down to him. (al-Najni, 53.1-4).

The necessary elements of the creed of Islam are defined in the Quran (al-Baqara, 2.177) as belief in God, the Angels, the Books (Scriptures), the Prophets, the Last Day, the qadar (destiny) or the faith that, good and bad, everything is originally from God-that is, God is the Creator of all men and their actions whether good or bad, and the genuine source of all good.

For the derivation of legal principles and rulings, Quran and Hadith are supported by ijma, the consensus of scholars on behalf of community, and by qiyas, reasoning by analogy, when no explicit and specific ruling can be found in the texts.

The human quality that encompasses the concept of ideal ethical value in the Qur’an is summed up in the term taqwa, which in its various forms occurs over two hundred times in the text. It represents, on the one hand, the moral grounding that underlies human action, while on the other, it signifies the ethical conscience which makes human beings aware of their responsibilities to God and society. Applied to the wider social context taqwa becomes the distinguishing mark of a truly moral community:

O humankind! We have created you out of male and female and constituted you into different groups and societies, so that you may come to know each other-the noblest of you, in the sight of God, are the ones possessing taqwa. God is the All-Knowing, the All-Aware. (al-Hujurat, 49.13)

The Quran affirms the different dimensions of human individual and social life-the material as well as the spiritual-but these aspects are not seen in conflictual terms, nor is it assumed that spiritual goals should predominate in a way that devalues material aspects of life. The Qur’an, affirming the complementarity of the two, asserts that human conduct and aspirations have relevance as acts of faith within the wider human, social and cultural contexts. It is in this sense that the idea that Islam embodies a total way of life can best be understood.

In the Qur’an Jews and Christians are referred to as ‘People of the Book. While recognizing the particularity of the Muslim community and its preeminent status, the Qur’an encourages a wider respect for difference and otherness in human society, while favouring common moral goals over mutually divisive and antagonistic attitudes:

We sent Jesus, son of Mary confirming the Torah that had come before him, and We gave him the Gospel, in which was guidance and light and confirmation of the Torah that had come before it, a guidance and an admonition for the pious. Let the people of the Gospel judge by what God has revealed therein. And whosoever does not judge by what God has revealed (then) such (people) are the rebellious to God. And We sent down to you (0 Muhammad) the Book (this Quran) in truth, confirming the Scripture that came before it and muhayminan (trustworthy in excellence and in witness) over it (old Scriptures). So judge between them by what God has revealed, and follow not their vain desires, diverging away from the truth that has come to you, We have prescribed law and a clear way. If God willed, He would have made you one nation, but that (He) may test you; so strive as in a race in good deeds. The return of you (all) is to God; then He will inform you about that in which you used to differ. (al-Ma ‘ida, 5.46-8)

For Muslims, the message of the Qur’an and the example of the Prophet’s life remain inseparably related through all of history as paradigms for moral and ethical behaviour. They formed the basis for Muslim thinkers subsequently to develop legal tools for embodying moral imperatives. The elaboration of legal sciences led to a codification of norms and statutes that gave form to the concept of law in Islam, generally referred to as the Shari’a. Muslim conquest and expansion resulted in contact with cultures whose intellectual heritage was in time selectively appropriated by Muslims, then refined and further developed. The integration of the intellectual and philosophical legacies of ancient Greece, India and Persia among others, created conditions and a tradition of intellectual activity that would lead to the cosmopolitan and pluralist character of an emerging Islamic civilisation. Christian and Jewish scholars, who had already encountered the above legacies in varying degrees, played a crucial mediating role as ‘translators, particularly since they were also aware that the moral disposition of Muslims, like their own, was shaped by common monotheistic conceptions based on Divine command and revelation. The term adab has come to be used to denote the wide-ranging moral, ethical, intellectual and literary discourse that emerged.

The integration of the philosophical legacy of antiquity in the Islamic world was a major enabling factor in the use of philosophical tradition among Muslim intellectuals. It gave rise to figures such as al-Farabi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Ibn Rushd (Averroes), al-Ghazali and others, who became well-known to medieval Europe as philosophers, commentators and exponents of the classical tradition going back to Plato and Aristotle. The Muslim philosophical tradition of ethics is therefore doubly significant: for its value in continuing and enhancing classical Greek philosophy and for its commitment to synthesising Islam and philosophical thinking.

Al-Farabi (d. 950) argued for harmony between the ideals of religious virtue and the goals of a true polity The greater the wisdom and virtue of the rulers and the citizens, the greater the possibility of attaining the true goal of philosophy and religion-contentment in this and the next world.

Ibn Sina (d. 1037) developed the argument that the Prophet embodies the totality of virtuous action and thought, the best of which is reflected in the attainment of moral virtue. The establishment of justice, in Ibn Sina’s view, is the basis for all human good. The combination of philosophy arid religion enables harmonious living in both this world and in the hereafter.

Al-Ghazali (d. 1111) stressed the importance of conformity to the religious law, but even more the inner spiritual dimension. In his ‘The Incoherence of The Philosophers’, he tried to show that the philosophers were self contradictory and anti-scriptural, and that, in some cases, they ended up affirming heretical beliefs. He stressed the importance of sabr (perseverance in hardship, patient endurance and resignation to God’s decrees), tawakkul (absolute trust in God) and dhikr (constant remembrance of God).

The various Muslim philosophers in their extension and occasional revision of earlier classical notions linked ethics to theoretical knowledge, which was to be acquired by rational means. Since human beings were rational, the virtues and qualities that they embraced and practised were seen as furthering the ultimate goal of individuals and community. This goal was the attainment of happiness.

The practice and influence of the diverse ethical heritage in Islam has continued in varying degrees among Muslims in the contemporary world. There is growing self-consciousness about identification with that past heritage and a recognition of the need to adapt to changing circumstances and a globalization of human society. They must take into account the diversity and pluralism that has marked the Muslims of the past as well as the present.

As Nanji has pointed out, because the modern conception of religion familiar to people in the West assumes a formal separation between specifically religious and perceived secular activity, certain aspects of contemporary Muslim discourse, which does not accept such a separation, appear strange and often retrogressive. Nanji went on to argue that, in the pursuit of a vision that will guide Muslims in decisions and choices about present and future ethical matters, the most important challenge may be not simply to formulate a continuity and dialogue with their own past ethical underpinning but, like the Muslims of the past, to remain open to the possibilities and challenges of new ethical and moral discoveries.

References and Further Reading 

• Dar, BA. (1960) Qur’anic Ethics, Institute of IslamicCulture, Lahore.
• Johnstone, P. ‘Islamic Ethics’ in MacQuarry, J. & Childress, J. (eds) New Dictionary of Christian Ethics, Westminster Press, London. pp.314-6.
• Nanji, A. (1993) ‘Islamic Ethics’, in Singer, P. (ed.) A Companion to Ethics, Blackwell, Oxford, pp.106-20. 

The popularity of Crusoe

Excepting the Gospel narrative, no story has so dominated the imagination of Europe as Robinson Crusoe. First published in London in 1719, it went through an unprecedented six editions the same year. Over the next century or so, it saw 700 editions and innumerable translations into every major European language. Since then, it has undergone adaptation and abridgement into other media – opera, pantomime, film, serial, cartoon, and so on. For over 250 years Crusoe has been a part of the self-image of every schoolboy with a European education. The author, Daniel Defoe, to cash in on the instant success of Crusoe, had a sequel ready for the press within four months (The Farther Adventures), and later wrote a more philosophical and contemplative third volume of Crusoe’s ‘Serious Reflections’. These sequels never caught on. What holds the imagination is the original situation: how a quite ordinary man, stranded for about 25 years on an uninhabited island, retains his sanity and dignity through every hardship and even emerges from this ‘trial’ with a modest fortune. The novel is a working up of the actual experiences of Alexander Selkirk, a sailor marooned five years on an island off Chile (subsequently named Isla Robinson Crusoe) who got back to England in 1708 and recounted his experiences to an eager public.

Crusoe: the myth derived from the novel

A book so widely read for over ten generations during which the world has undergone remarkable transformations cannot be un-connected to those transformations. The novel has in fact become a modern European myth, and the myth varies from the novel in important ways.

The transformation of Crusoe began very early, through the status accorded to it by the French philosopher Rousseau in Emile (first English trans. 1762). In this treatise on ‘natural education’ (i.e. education without the religious/cultural preconceptions used to adapt children to their future role in society), Rousseau wrote:

I hate books; they only teach people to talk about what they don’t understand… Since we must have books, there is already one which, in my opinion, affords a complete treatise on natural education…. Emile [the boy whose education is being planned] will need no other book in his library for many years. It will afford us the text to which all our conversations on the objects of natural science will serve only as a comment. It will serve as our guide during our progress to a state of reason…. You ask impatiently what is the title of this wonderful book? Is it Aristotle, Pliny….? No. It is Robinson Crusoe.

Robinson Crusoe, cast ashore on a desolate island, destitute of human assistance, and of mechanical implements, providing, nevertheless, for his subsistence, for self-preservation, and even procuring for himself a kind of competency …The most certain method for [Emile] to raise himself above vulgar prejudices and to form his judgement on the actual relations of things, is to take on himself the character of such a solitary adventurer, and to judge of everything about him, as a man in such circumstances would, by its real utility. This romance beginning with his [Crusoe’s] shipwreck on the island, and ending with the arrival of the vessel that brought him away, would, if cleared of its rubbish, afford Emile…. both instruction and amusement …. The practise of simple manual arts, to the exercise of which the abilities of the individual are equal, leads to the invention of the arts of industry the exercise of which requires the concurrence of the many. The former may be practised by hermits and savages; but the latter can be exercised only in a state of society.

This account of Robinson Crusoe the novel is inaccurate and unfair. But it is a near perfect account of the myth. The explicit contents of that myth are: a man can enter upon an unknown land with nothing and, by applying his native energies without inhibition, learn the arts and crafts necessary for survival and economic success; later, he can improve this success by using the labour of others as well as his own to exploit resources in a more organised way. The implicit elements of the myth are less attractive: the adventurer is a white man (not a woman), a European. He never enters into abstract speculations about the moral worth or ultimate purpose or far consequences of particular actions; instead, he calculates their present utility and applies the necessary means to secure himself and make economic surpluses. The land is there for him to subdue and use to his present advantage. Ideally, the land should be uninhabited, but if it happens to be inhabited, he must act as if it were in fact empty. For reasons never uttered, the European adventurer has a right to eliminate any competition: the natives will eventually understand that it is better for them to be ruled by the adventurer.

Crusoe: the novel vs. the myth

The reason is that the myth is still carried by the novel and the novel, being better and greater than the myth, saves the myth. Among several inaccuracies of the myth vis A vis the novel, one is the notion that Crusoe enters upon the island unequipped. In fact, though he lacks needle and thread and a metal spade (for which he improvises with characteristic resolve), Crusoe has pretty well everything else – some food, rice and barley seed, cloth and clothing, an axe and other tools, guns and gunpowder, pen ink and paper, the Bible, a dog and two cats, also his comfort drugs: tobacco and the pipe to put it in and rum. He is not, as the myth pretends, humanly unassisted: the assistance of others is available to him in the compacted form of the ‘capital of all that he salvages from the shipwreck. Without this capital’, Crusoe could not have begun, let alone succeeded, as an entrepreneur. Similarly, on the land itself, he has no rivals – neither predatory animals nor fellow- Europeans nor, until he is relatively securely established, natives. In sum, the Europeans complete self- sufficiency is a fabrication. It has been added to what is there in the novel, namely his resourcefulness with his capital.

Most significantly of all, the myth has wiped from the novel its religious dimension: this is probably what Rousseau meant by the phrase: ‘if the romance were cleared of all its rubbish’. But the religious dimension is not rubbish, it shapes the character and temperament of Robinson Crusoe. The novel has pretensions to spiritual autobiography, in the tradition of Pilgrim’s Progress, but without overtly allegorical characters or plot: the events and the central character are meant to be believed as literally true, not figuratively true. Defoe, it is worth noting, was the author of a very popular book of moral guidance, The Family Instructor, first published the year before Crusoe, and often reprinted.

Crusoe is a first-person diary of events told, as they were experienced at the time, by the wise Christian the narrator has become. Crusoe tells us that his ‘original sin’ was to disobey his father’s instruction to make a career as a lawyer; he could not resist the urge to wander, and ran away to make a fortune in the slave-trade; though he had opportunities to learn the skills of a sailor, he disdained to do so, dressing instead as a ‘gentleman’ (one who does not need to labour with his hands). Through the vicissitudes of storms and capture by pirates, Crusoe tells us, he hardly ever looked upward to heaven or inward to the condition of his own soul. But alone on the island, an earth-tremor that destroys much of his painstaking handiwork, and the sight of seeds sprouting, and his own near death by fever, lead Crusoe to recover his spiritual senses. His life thereafter is one of steady, solitary labour in a state of constant fear – fear of want, of hunger, of attacks by unknown animals or persons. But he maintains a gritty composure, looking regularly for signs of Divine Providence in whatever occurs, expressing gratitude for God’s care of him, in particular of his soul. There are constant references to the patriarchs and prophets of the Bible, so that Crusoe is, as it were, in a state of continual dialogue with his own soul. It is by dint of these inward as well as his outward labours to secure the necessities of life that, little by little, he comes to regard his island not as his prison but as his garden. He accepts his fate by choosing it as his destiny and, till the day he finds a human footprint on the sand, he imagines that he could live there alone and content until Providence decreed his death.

The footprint throws him into turmoil. In part he is afraid of a threat to the security of his person and property. But his chief fear is that the company of men will reintroduce to his life the temptations to sin and forgetfulness of God. Alone, he has no use for money, his needs are minimal; in company, his needs will grow as opportunities for commercial exchange and competition are presented. The ‘state of nature’ (man on his own), conceived as a state of fear, can be relieved by a conscience resigned to Providence; but from the state of society (conceived as a ‘state of conflict’, the war of each against all), there is no relief.

In relation to the natural world, Crusoe is no contemplative or scientist: he sees a tree, not with the eye of botanist or poet but of an entrepreneur, as timber fit for building. He assesses all the islands resources in the same way, and desires to improve them, by which he means quite explicitly ‘to increase their economic value’. His understanding of God does not come through reflection on the natural world as signs of God It comes, instead, through his feeling inwardly that circumstances, and the resources put at his disposal, are all arranged by God to test his faith and actions. His response to the testing is to work hard, resigning success or failure to the wisdom of Providence, and to keep up a stable, steady thankfulness. Once he has attained this peace with himself he can hope that, whatever crisis occurs, he will act in a decent way pleasing to God and his conscience. Thus, for example, when disgusted by the sight of cannibals feasting on the sea-shore, he has an impulse to kill them all in cold blood, but he overcomes the impulse.

Among the resources Crusoe manages and improves is himself.

This aspect of the story is what most delights its young readers: the analysis of how things work or are made, the resort to first principles, the improvisation with inadequate or insufficient materials and tools, the delight in whatever gets made, however clumsy or incompetent. Crusoe is a self-made man, in the moral as well as the economic sense: from the materials provided by Providence, he makes his character – his humility conscience, forbearance, composure, open-mindedness – as well as his outlandish clothes, rickety furniture, leaky bowls, the famous umbrella. Moreover, his religion is not a passive observance, but active personal prayer, personal turning to God, personal reading of the Scripture. What deeper wish does a young boy have, instructed to believe or pray or think in particular ways, and surrounded by things that enter his world ready- made, than to obtain some understanding and mastery of himself and his things through his own effort? Robinson Crusoe is the fulfilment of that wish. It enacts in rich, realistic detail the attainment of economic and moral independence by an individual of ordinary abilities and background, assisted by an omnipresent and benevolent Providence.

Crusoe builds himself a little domain, colonises a little empire. But he did not intend to do so; his empire just came to him by way of economic reward for initiative and effort. On the individual scale, his enterprise involved relatively little cruelty to others, no ugly national or racist pride, no brutal genocide, no violent competition with other colonisers. Crusoe is a decent man, disciplined, humble and, in a typically English way, composed and self-deprecating. It is through this self-achieved moral character and temperament that the novel saves the myth: it allows the English in particular to delude themselves that they did not mean to build a world-wide empire, it just came to them – as if armies and navies, mechanised industries and compelled trade, savage taxation of natives and cynical diplomacy, and the rest, had nothing to do with it. The appeal of the novel rests on this principle: provided an individuals own conscience is clear with respect to his personal actions, whatever evil may be done collectively by the state or society or the nation of which he is a part need not be an additional burden to that conscience. Morally, the individual is independent of the collective: at liberty to protest and to take personal initiatives to help alleviate the consequences of collective actions, he is not charged with moral responsibility for those actions themselves. The evident contradiction may be illustrated from the incident of naming Crusoe’s slave, Man Friday.

Naming the native

This incident was described earlier from the perspective of the myth: as Crusoe names his dog, so he names his slave, Friday, the day he ‘discovers’ him. It is not like that in the novel. At the time Defoe was writing, it had been reported by returning travellers that some of the ‘savages’ they encountered did not have names for each other until the Europeans gave them names. The fact is utterly impossible: there are no human beings who do not use human language, and no human language is conceivable where consciousness of one’s self and the other’s self (which necessitates naming each other) does not exist. But we must allow that such reports were accepted as plausible, even as true, without any particular malice – simply as a mistake – by Defoe’s contemporaries. In this way, giving a name is a positive and indeed kindly act. It is certainly the case that Crusoe sees Friday as a person like himself, a fellow human being with feelings like his own (for example homesickness) and faculties like his own (for example curiosity and dexterity), above all with a past and a mind of his own, to whom he imparts the story of his own life and misfortunes as well as his religion. Crusoe learns from the companionship with Friday, and he says so. Because readers may suspect I am overstating the case, they will allow me an extensive quotation. On spotting his homeland from a hill-top, Friday expresses great delight. Crusoe quickly and wrongly suspects that Friday will now return to his people, come back with them in great numbers and kill and eat him. Here are his reflections on his suspicion:

I wronged the poor honest creature very much, for which I was very sorry afterwards. However, as my jealousy [suspicion] increased, and held me some weeks, I was a little more circumspect, and not so familiar and kind to him as before, in which I was certainly in the wrong too, the honest grateful creature having no thought about it, but what consisted with the best principles, both as a religious Christian, and as a grateful friend, as appeared afterwards to my full satisfaction.

Can there be any doubt that Crusoe means well by his Man Friday? Yet, he is patronising in calling him ‘creature’, even as he praises him and criticises himself. The distance between master and slave is taken as a given; Crusoe never questions its propriety. He contemplates entering the slave- trade and his only negative comment on it is that it is a risky business, that it may be more prudent for him to purchase and pay a traders profit margin than risk the financial perils of capturing and transporting his own slaves. Since Crusoe abhors cannibalism without reserve, we may be sure he is capable of recognising something as an absolute evil; evidently, the slave-trade did not rate as such at that time.

The treatment by Europeans collectively of those natives or imported Negro slaves whose abused lives fuelled their commercial wealth is well known; natives and slaves were not accorded a status much above that of property or livestock, and their mistreatment continued long after such policies were officially condemned and outlawed. At the end of the 20th century, the attitudes behind that abuse have begun to die away, but the economic relations and political structures within which that abuse happened are proving more durable. The individual kindnesses in attitude and practice – and one could give historical as well as fictional examples – were irrelevant to affect or contain the evil done collectively.

The novels relationship with the myth is, in short, that it justifies the secularisation of economic and political life then taking place in Europe. Fifty years after Crusoe, the publication of Adam Smiths Wealth of Nations, marked the formal and permanent separation of economics/politics from ethics/ jurisprudence.

All of Crusoes moral and religious reflections are now read (outside specialist academic circles) as idiosyncrasies of the individual, a part of the charm of his character. Most modern Christians, and especially Christians of the Dissenting Non-Conformist Protestant tradition to which Defoe belonged, do not, as Crusoe did, rely upon Providence and their own industry, they rely upon their own industry exclusively, appealing to God only when they are unable to help themselves, and after they are helped, they are oblivious again – precisely the loss of grace Crusoe dreaded on seeing the human footprint. That loss was inevitable. For the reality is that the economic surplus that Crusoe achieves on his island in the state of nature (i.e. alone) is an impossibility: it can only be achieved in the ‘state of society’ (the conflict of each against all). This reality is represented in this realistic novel by (1) the ‘capital’ with which Crusoe starts his enterprise, a fact which, as we noted, the myth simply denies; and (2) Crusoe’s re-joining the economic mainland, his returning to England and voyaging Out again to new colonialist ventures, and (3) the revival of his hopes of entering the slave trade.

(Note: Robinson Crusoe Part 2:Economic individualism and secularisation and Part 3: The Muslim castaway: Hayy bin Yaqzan will appear in subsequent issues of The Fountain.

After the Hijra, the great migration of Muslims to Madina, God’s Messenger, upon him be peace and blessings, made Bilal his mu’adhdhin-the caller to prayer. He was so esteemed among the Companions that Umar the second Caliph, said of him: ‘Bilal is our master (meaning Abu Bakr) emancipated him’.

The ideal of equality and human brotherhood is explicitly enjoined in the Qur’an and discrimination on the basis of nation or race (tribe) is explicitly rejected: 0 mankind! We created you of a man and woman and made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another. The best and most honoured of you in the sight of God is the most pious and God-fearing among you. Surely God is the All-Knowing, the All-Aware. (49.13)

Abu Dharr, the leader of the tribe of Ghifar, and one who accepted Islam in its early days, narrates: ‘Once I was conversing with Bilal. Our conversation gave way to a dispute. Angry with him, the following insult burst from my mouth: ‘You cannot comprehend this, 0 son of a black woman!’

As Islam expressly forbade all kinds of racial, tribal and colour discrimination, Bilal was both upset and greatly angered.

A while later a man came and told me that the Messenger of God, upon him be peace and blessings, summoned me. I went to him immediately. He said to me:

“I have been informed that you addressed Bilal as the son of a black woman.”

I was deeply ashamed and could say nothing. God’s Messenger continued his reprimand: “This means you still retain the standards and judgements of the pre-Islamic days of ignorance. Islam has eradicated all those false standards or measures judging people by blood, fame, colour or wealth. It has established that the best and most honourable of men is he who is the most pious and upright in conduct. Is it right to defame a believer just because he is black?”

Abu Dharr felt profound remorse. He went straight to Bilal’s house and, putting his head on the threshold, said: This head will not rise from here until the blessed feet of Bilal tread on the face of foolish, impolite Abu Dharr.’

Bilal responded:” That face deserves to be kissed, not trodden upon’, and forgave Abu Dharr.

Zayd ibn Haritha was one of the first four people to accept Islam. Slave traders had kidnapped him from his parents and sold him in the Makkan market. Khadija, the future wife of the Prophet Muhammad, upon him be peace and blessings, bought him and, upon her marriage, gave him to her husband as a present. The future Prophet emancipated Zayd and adopted him as a son. After years of search, Zayd’s parents found him in Makka but Zayd preferred to remain with the Prophet.

Zayd was also a black man. The Messenger loved him very much. He gave Zaynab bint Jahsh, famous for her beauty and nobility, to him in marriage. He made Zayd the commander of the Muslim army in the baffle of Mu’ta, the first encounter of Muslims with the Romans. Zayd was martyred in this battle.

Usama was the son of Zayd. The Messenger loved him too very much. When Usama was a child, the Prophet would sit him on one knee, while Umama, the little daughter of one of the Companions, sat on his other knee. During his Caliphate, ‘Umar assigned for Usama a larger stipend than for his own son, ‘Abdullah, even though there was no difference in seniority or merit between them. ‘Umar explained to ‘Abdullah why he did so: ‘My son! God’s Messenger loved Usama more than you and his father more than your father.’

Before his death, the Messenger, upon him be peace and blessings, formed an army to dispatch against the Romans in which all of the leading Companions including Abu Bakr and ‘Umar also participated. The Messenger appointed Usama as a commander of that army, without considering that Usama was still a teenager, and said: ‘As his father had the necessary qualities to command an army, Usama too is qualified to be a commander.’

The Messenger, upon him be peace and blessings, fell ill before Usama’s army left Madina. When the Messenger died, Abu Bakr was chosen as the Caliph and he dispatched the army. 

Despite these common properties, the concept of being alive is well defined in biology. Living beings take in energy, produce waste, grow and reproduce. Plants and animals, however primitive, are living beings. Humans are included in the animal kingdom in that, like animals and unlike plants, they are animate.

It may be useful as well as interesting and challenging to make the distinction between living and non-living and seek answers to the questions, What is life? What is living and non-living being? What are the actual moral differences between them? and Do non-living beings

have any worth? The fact that (as we noted at the outset), in respect of their material and physical composition, living and non-living beings are similar, is a crucial one: if every thing is made up of Carbon, Nitrogen, Hydrogen and other elements, then, to some extent, the difference between living and non-living is going to be expressed in meta-physical and moral terms.

We define certain ‘life-functions’ like ‘take in energy, produce waste, grow and reproduce’, and classify entities as living or not by these criteria. If some or all of these ‘functions’ are there, we say ‘it is alive’, if not, we say ‘it is not-alive’. Consider a cat wandering and playing around. It eats poisonous meat and lies down. After ten minutes we check it for ‘life-functions and, realizing they are all negative, we say ‘it is dead (or not-alive)’. We may now ask, what is the actual difference in the being of the cat between these two states? Although, in terms of the cat’s physical make-up, everything is unchanged, how can we define it as being alive at one time and not-alive at another? Is it just our labelling of beings with our own criteria? And can our descriptions be adequate without some metaphysical considerations?

If it is right to say that the building blocks of every living being are lifeless, not only life but also lifelessness should have some worth. Oxygen and water are unquestionably lifeless entities, but they are the most precious things on earth for beings living in this world. Therefore the intrinsic value of something has nothing to do with its being alive or not.

Dworkin (1993, p.69) reports the argument of David Hume and many other philosophers that objects or events can be valuable only when and because they serve someone’s or something’s interests, and (p.71) comments:

On this view, nothing is valuable unless someone wants it or unless it helps someone to get what he does want.

Dworkin’s own view is:

Something is instrumentally important if its value depends on its usefulness, its capacity to help people get something else they want. For example, money and medicine. Something is subjectively valuable only to the people who happen to desire it. Something is intrinsically valuable, on the contrary, if its value is independent of what people happen to enjoy or want or need or what is good for them.

Dworkin’s classification, wide- ranging though it is, could be extended by replacing the word ‘someone’ with ‘something’, and ‘people’ with ‘entities’. If we accept this extension, it emerges that everything living or non-living has some sort of value. Whether humans comprehend it or not, everything on earth and in universe has a purpose, and is of service to someone or something. Perhaps with the further advance of science and technology we will come to see more and more things, now considered as useless, as in fact valuable for some entity or other.

It follows that life is not a prerequisite in order for something to have value. It is existence that is primary. Spinoza (1923 edn, p196) wrote:

No one can desire to be happy, to act well and live well, who does not at the same time desire to be, to act, and to live, that is to say, actually to exist.

From existence every beauty and perfection may come, whilst from non-existence nothing is produced, good or evil. Although existence is entirely valuable itself, there are degrees of value. We are almost bound to assume that the perfection of an entity’s existence is through life for only a living being can experience its own existence, through thinking and reasoning. And all our knowledge is founded on experiences (Locke, 1993 edn, p.45).

Schweitzer (1923, p.26) argues that the essence of Goodness is: preserve life, promote life, help it to achieve its highest destiny.According to him, the fundamental principle of ethics is reverence for life. All the goodness one displays toward a living organism is helping it to preserve and further its existence. He believes that ethics embraces not only people, but also creatures; an ethics that does not also embrace our relation to the world of creatures is incomplete (pp.22-3).

If something is so valuable and precious, it must, in one way or another, be protected. We go to great lengths to secure and protect man-made pieces of art and scientific instruments. If life is so good and precious, how is it protected?

Every living being has an instinctive will to survive and is equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills. A small animal e.g. chicken will fight with a dog to stay alive. Plants too exhibit a desire to live. Individuals from the same-species grow roots and leaves in different lengths and sizes, depending on their environment, to increase their life chance. Schweitzer (1966, p.25) calls this the ‘will to live’. The ‘will to live’ is a universal fact, and entails competition between individuals and species. We observe in nature that, as well as co-operation and mutual helping, there is struggle: one life preserves itself by fighting and destroying other lives.

We destroy lives not only for survival but also for our convenience. We cannot build dams and produce electricity without destroying the environment and ending some forms of lives. All our daily food are plants and animals. It is unavoidable to destroy the lives of some plants or animals, knowingly or unknowingly, for various reasons.

If existence is entirely valuable, and the real basis of existence is life, then life should be valuable and respected in any form. However, is there any difference in terms of their value between different forms of life? Can animals be favoured over against plants, or humans over against both animals and plants? Could there be any justification for it? Is this a species-ism?

Many writers have sought answers to the question: ‘What makes human life valuable and, in particular, what makes it more valuable than other forms of life?’ (Harris, 1985, p.7). Harris questions the assumption that human life is (or should be treated as) more valuable than other forms of life. What justifies it and what, if anything, makes it more than mere prejudice to favour ourselves and our own kind? He says: ‘There is no doubt that we do value human life supremely, we think it important to save a person rather than a dog where we cannot save both, and we think it right to do so.’ Obviously, we must ask Why?

Before attempting to offer a possible answer, we should refer to Aristotle’s argument in his Ethics. He suggested:

We must not even demand to know the explanation in all cases alike; there are some in which it is quite enough if the fact itself is exhibited, e.g. in the case of first principles; the fact is primary and a starting point. Some starting-points are grasped by indication, some by perception, some by a kind of habituation, others by other ways’ (Aristotle, 1976 edn, p.77).

And preferences between forms of life fit into this category. We may not be obliged to find a satisfactory explanation as to why we value human life, even some individual’s life, supremely. Who could accuse me of unworthy discrimination if I rescue a human rather than a cat, my wife rather than a stranger, a black rather than a white, one from my nationality rather than one from another, in a rescue operation that does not permit me to rescue all? Who could accuse me of being a nationalist, racist or species-ist? This is simply a matter of preferences. This does not mean that I do not value the lives of the ones I could not rescue.

I cannot be expected to have a special reason for making that or a similar choice. I did so just because I felt it was the right thing to do.

Although it is not necessary to find a ‘convincing’ reason to value human life supremely, we can distinguish humans from other beings by some of his features, namely by their consciousness, reason and intellect. Dworkin argues that; ‘We treat the preservation and prosperity of our own species as of capital importance because we believe that we are the highest achievements of God’s creation, if we are conventionally religious, or of evolution, if we are not’ (Dworkin, 1993, p.82). Although in religious terminology God is free from having particular achievements or failures, it is true that humans are His special creatures, to whom He relates through Messengers. He made humans responsible for their conduct as they uniquely are equipped with consciousness, reason and intelligence to distinguish right from wrong.

In conclusion we may say that, to comprehend the nature of life is extremely important, but perplexing as well. Maybe we will never achieve that. However, as conscious beings, it should not be too hard for us to respect every being on earth, and reflect that they are all valuable.

Is there any reason to compare the worth of different forms of lives, if we embrace in advance the idea that they are all valuable and necessary for this world? Why should we put ourselves to the trouble of wondering whether we have any right to destroy some forms of lives for the benefit of others? Why do we hesitate to admit the distinctiveness of human beings? It is perfectly understandable to reject discrimination between human beings on the basis of race, gender, nationality and religion, but what could be a sufficient reason for devaluing humans as such in the name of equality between species?

Existence is good and every single being on earth and in the universe is valuable, and purposeful.

Therefore we should value all existing beings.

Consciousness, reason and intellect are precious, and we do accord supreme value to the lives of those beings who have these features. We should be aware of that too, and be respectful and responsible accordingly. 

References

• Aristotle (1976 edn)The Ethics of Aristotle, Penguin Books, London.
• Dworkin, R. (1993) Life’s Dominion, Harper Collins, London.
• Harris, J. (1985) The Value of Life, Routledge & Kegan, Paul, London.
• Locke, J. (1993 edn) An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Everyman, London.
• Schweitzer, A. (1923) Civilization And Ethics, A.&C. Black Ltd., London.
• Schweitzer, A. (1966) The Teaching of Reverence for Life, Peter Owen Ltd., London.
• Spinoza (1923 edn), Ethics, trans. White, W.H. and Stirling, A.H., Oxford University Press, London.

In this discussion we will look at typical architectural forms of the Islamic city which reflect the social and cultural characteristics of Islamic community, and the impact upon the Islamic city and its Muslim inhabitants of the cultural invasion by modern Western (i.e.post-industrial) practices in urban design.

Architectural changes in the Islamic city

It is difficult to identify the architectural characteristics of cities in the Arab region before the advent of Islam because some have vanished and others have been greatly altered by developments after Islam. Most were established in the river valleys of the Nile, the Tigris and the Euphrates, and the littoral of the Levant and the southern Mediterranean. The prevailing type of major human settlements the Muslims encountered was the Greek-Roman type, a chess-board plan of equal sectors around the forum as administrative and commercial centre. Otherwise, the settlements were clusters of houses, more like villages rather than cities, and separated by open lands. Archeological remains show that most of these houses had internal yards to cope with the climatic and environmental conditions. There were also advanced engineering systems to provide the cities with water and irrigation. Greek colonies had long been established in urban settlements in Asia Minor, Syria and Palestine, as well as in parts of Egypt and North Africa. These were taken over by the Romans when they extended their empire to the eastern Mediterranean areas. There, they built cities sited and garrisoned for military purposes but soon afterwards transformed into commercial centres with markets and factories. Roman cities were distinguished from other cities in the southern and eastern Mediterranean region by their rigidly hierarchic arrangement of buildings and houses-the governing elite being nearest the centre and the lowest classes being furthest away.

This architectural pattern remained in place unchanged till around the middle of the seventh century when the rule of Islam spread, with unprecedented speed, out of the Arabian Peninsula westward across North Africa, northward over Asia Minor, and eastward across the former Persian empire. The region then witnessed the highest architectural growth in its long history. The Muslims followed Islamic Law and Islamic teachings on social and cultural aspects of community life in managing the cities they had conquered and the new cities they founded. Of the latter the most important- Basra (I4AH/635), Kufa (17AH/639), Fustat (21AH/641), Qairawan (48AH/670) and others-were large garrison settlements to start with but, as provincial administrative capitals, grew in size and importance as centres of Islamic learning and civilization-Fustat, for example, became Cairo.

While city planning and building necessarily responded to local conditions, there are typical architectural features by which the Islamic city is distinguished. The most important of these is the congregational mosques, built to express and focus the religious commitment of the Muslim community and its solidarity. The commercial and administrative activities and associated buildings grew around this central symbol of the Islamic city. An equally significant feature was the division of the cities into quarters where the Arab settlers were first housed: in many cases the different quarters are still called by the names of the clans who first inhabited them. There were also separate quarters for non-Arab converts to Islam from among the conquered peoples and, later, quarters also for the non-Muslims, the different areas being linked by roads and lanes and joined to the common centre.

The city was surrounded by a wall which, in addition to providing

some defence in the event of military attack, protected the inhabitants against the sand-laden desert winds. Access into the city was by large gates in the city walls, then along the main spinal roads where the commercial activities were concentrated. Workshops and small factories were situated side by side, often co-operating in the production of different articles. Islamic schools were situated around the central mosque, often funded by the rentals from traders in the nearby marketplace which typically had associated craft-shops such as book-binding and book-selling, sign writing, carpet making, etc, close to the central area. Commercial centres also grew up around the main city gates, serving the residential areas of the city and outlying villages. From the commercial centre, streets and roads branched out, usually becoming narrower and more winding, more disposed to provide seclusion than general access, into the residential quarters. Here too, there were smaller mosques and prayer-halls, but this was, broadly speaking, the private as distinct from the public part of the city, and intended to provide peace and quiet, intimacy and security, to the inhabitants. This arrangement, with its public/private division is still visible in some of the older cities of North Africa.

The elevations on the Islamic city streets are distinguished by their plainness and simplicity, very few openings and the low height commensurate wh the width of the streets. In contrast to the simplicity of architectural expression of the exterior facades, the interior of the houses was rich in architectural details and ornamentation, varying according to the tastes and means of the occupants. Thus, while simplicity and likeness on the outside confirmed the solidarity and egalitarianism of the community, the variety and wealth of the interiors allowed for individual freedom.

As noted above, building design varied from location to location, with different architectural solutions being adopted to suit different conditions. The wind tower (malqaf) is an example. In the dry hot areas it is directed to the north where winds blow most times of the year. Thus air is funnelled from top to bottom through moist elements in order to increase the percentage of moisture in the air and so enhance the feeling of coolness during the hot summer days. In more humid areas, the air corridor is pointed to all four sides in order to increase the chance of catching the wind flow, and the air is directed from top to bottom through moisture-absorbing elements to reduce the effects of summer humidity.

Though a central market-place is a common architectural feature of Islamic cities, public squares never achieved the prominence they have in Western cities, with the exception of some examples such as Shah Square in Isfahan, an impressive 510 m by 165 m and surrounded by shops and overlooked by the splendid Shah Mosque with its many domes at the entrance of the main city market.

With the decline of the Ottoman Turkish state from the late seventeenth century onwards, as the trade and commercial life of the Islamic world was squeezed by the expansion of the maritime powers of western Europe, the Islamic cities fell into a corresponding architectural decline and chaos. Thus, the golden epoch of the Islamic city in the Middle East was during the period between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, continued into the eighteenth century in the area under Ottoman rule in such places as Istanbul, Bursa, Konya and Bosnia. In the nineteenth century, following the industrial revolution in Europe, European economic and military superiority began to curtail the independence of Muslim peoples all over the Islamic world, most of whom were eventually colonized. The changes that followed affected the social and economic life of the Islamic world and the changes were reflected in the architecture of the Muslims’ cities. Cultural values that had prevailed in the Islamic city were set back, and the Islamic city lost its cultural identity and its distinct architectural feel.

The modern city, needing to provide large populations with utilities and public services, called for new patterns in urban planning contrary to the planning patterns of traditional cities. These new patterns were imported to the Islamic world from the West together with Western technologies, and cities came to be designed for road networks for vehicles and utilities networks. Western architectural forms appeared in public buildings like banks, courts, universities, schools and administrative centres, as well as in private palaces and private homes. Thinkers and architects in the Islamic world have been deeply disturbed by these changes and have searched for forms which can link the contemporary Islamic city with the values, teachings and spirit of Islam, an effort that is part and parcel of the general quest to rebuild a contemporary Islamic civilization.

Traditional Islamic architecture and modern dwellings

According to Islamic tradition, man is the high aim or object of creation, born perfectible though capable of sin and charged with the responsibility of constructing a beautiful world, almost a reflection of Paradise. So, in Islam, a work of art can be regarded as the product of human will and effort, individual and collective, to make the world (and human life in the world) beautiful. That is one of the reasons why architecture has been prominent among other fine arts in Islamic societies.

Western domination of Muslim lands has had its effect on architecture. As in the modern West, Muslim intellectuals have ceased to see life an integrated whole, and deal with the problems that arise separately, with little care or attention to the consequences of their solutions for the life of the community as a whole. Modern attitudes give priority to the material dimensions of life, to the short cycle of production and consumption, investment and drawing profit. This makes it very difficult to build for beauty, to build for the generations to come. That is why newness and being modern is part of the self-consciousness of even the most important public building projects in the West, and it is difficult to see how aggressively modern buildings can become loved over the centuries in the way that the pre-modern traditionally built monuments are loved, and loved as beautiful even when they are in ruins. A modern building in ruins is unbearably ugly. The emphasis on material considerations has of course also meant a cruel functionalism, the reduction of building to the economic calculation of maximum rent per square millimetre of land, or maximum dwelling space for minimum production costs. The effects on design and choice of materials of these considerations has resulted in the towers of steel and cement which so alienate and depress modern city- dwellers. The contemporary Islamic city has not, unfortunately, escaped the pressures to conform to the styles dominant in the Western cities.

The modern Islamic city is no longer a unity or totality encompassing the family, the district, the natural environment, unifying action with the spiritual, the functional with the beautiful, the private secluded space for family residence with access to public space for communal, collective activities. Individualism has captivated almost all people, with the result that almost no one tries to build in accord or harmony with his neighbours, near or far, but tries to outdo them. Ostentation in exterior facades has come to characterize both private and public buildings, with individuals trying to show off their wealth or taste, and corporations or departments of state trying to project their power or authority onto the streets to impress passers-by.

When human existence began to be viewed as made up of disconnected material and spiritual elements, the arts, architecture included, inevitably reflected the change. Art is not now that beauty of man-made things which appears (and should appear) in the ordinary use of things, to add (like good manners) grace to ordinary living, to elevate the spirit. Instead, art has become that which is seen in special objects, prized and priced by specialists, pieces for the museum: the beautiful carpet is hung on the wall. Architecture of course has to be useful, practical, and has consequently suffered the worst extreme of the effects of commercialism and mass-production. Thus, families are not linked to each other by shared spaces leading into accessible areas where they do things in common like going to the mosque or the market, but are instead stacked one on top of the other in residential towers of steel, concrete and glass, as physically near to each other as ever but near without easy accessibility, so that people feel crowded without feeling together. The pressure of land values has become so intense in certain cities that, in some individual buildings, as many as 30.000 people may come and go each day, with all the necessary services laid on: as exercises of human power and planning, these buildings are spectacular achievements, but insofar as architecture is supposed to provide an environment which expresses the values of human life and symbolizes great human aspirations, these buildings are failures. The values they express are this-worldly materialism and commercialism, functionality disconnected from the higher purposes and the deeper needs of human beings.

Belief in eternity is central in Muslim life and has had a very particular influence on Islamic architecture. Belief in eternity leads a Muslim to see everything as formed in an infinitude of time and space which cannot be changed by man, cannot be divided into parcels. What first interests a Muslim architect is, rather than the size and shape of the site, the architectural features in spatial infinitude, that is, the relation of the site to its environment and how the whole space around the site fells. The site is seen in its full environmental context, not as a fixed and separate volume exploitable for some specific building purpose. That is why the traditional Islamic constructions, especially those for public use, were complexes of buildings– mosque, school, pool or fountain with faucets at the sides for ablution, library, bath houses, and residential rooms for teachers or students.What first catches the eye is not the individual buildings composing the collection, but the collection itself, so it is experienced as a whole with all its fronts, from top to bottom, from bottom to top. (In the West, the mediaeval collegiate buildings in the ancient universities like Oxford or Cambridge which were derived from Islamic models, are the nearest equivalent though. of course, being cut off from the normal life of the towns in which they were situated, these buildings do not have the feel of Islamic mosque-madrassa-market-place complexes.)

The infinitude of space in Islamic architecture showed itself both in the horizontal extension seen from windows, and in the vertical extension symbolized by the minarets and domes of mosques. Intimate courtyards, often arcaded with asymmetrical arches, set off by trees, gardens and flowers, and surrounded by high walls, symbolized privacy: while their firmness of construction symbolized the hope of eternity and beauty everlasting. The roof lines, bay windows and wooden latticework over windows, the terraces and the variety of interior ornamentation expressed spiritual richness, serenity and quiet, a kind of solemn peace at ease with itself-this is especially characteristic of Turkish architecture with its wealth of naturalistic motifs.

The older Turkish houses especially were dwellings providing both privacy and sociability-dwellings where the sanctity of family life was deeply felt but whose seclusion was not an isolation because the structure was complementary to similar residences spaced closely in the whole district. They inspired the feeling of a meaningful, modest existence and were lively, secure and spacious, homes in which the residents lived conscious of their own identity and of their belonging to their community.

Islam is based on unity in multiplicity and harmonious wholeness of opposites. It frees man from intellectual and spiritual fragmentation, unifying his life on the basis of tawhid. Tawhid, that is, attributing all existence to God and affirming His Unity, without associating any partners with Him, is the integrative principle of harmony, able to align the physical with the metaphysical, the functional with the ideal, the corpo-real with the spiritual, and the individual with the communal. All dimensions of man’s earthly life have their proper stations within the matrix of Tawhid so that each can serve its function and enable man to be at peace with his whole being, his self, his family, his community and the natural world, and ultimately to earn happiness in both worlds. Tawhid enables a Muslim to maintain a holistic view of life; to see the city and its districts and their functions, and his home, within the one same whole, as fully interconnected and interdependent. It is unsurprising if a Muslim is exceptionally challenged and alienated by the assumptions and values which underlie modern Western thinking and the cities it has produced.

A few hours ago I was in another, more suffocating place, together with sixty or so sisters of mine, sisters-to-be. We all set out on a journey. Passing through a corridor to which doors are opened from hundreds of cells such as those we had just left and into which eggs like me were rolling, we reached a crossroads. At just that point, something very agile and smaller even than me entered into me. A little later I found myself within the six walls of a cell.

If you could become so small as a particle of air, you would be astonished at what you see. Molecules compete in me: they combine and separate from one another, take on new forms, curve and move here and there. In short, I am being prepared for a new life; whatever will be necessary for this life is encoded in me. I have begun to be equipped with such information as would take you many years to acquire.

Day 4 – I am no longer an egg, and not yet a honeybee. I have left my shell, and now look like a worm. I am called a larva. You will be amazed to learn that I have completed the age of my education. While you are first born and then learn, we first learn and then are born. All the information I will use during my life has been encoded in the brain within my head. Now I am busy eating to grow so as to make use of this information. All the food I need reaches me continually as if pouring down from the sky.

Day 5 – I had 1300 meals yesterday. I am constantly eating. I must eat another 10.000 meals. I eat a sort of jelly extremely rich in vitamins and proteins and prepared by our elder sisters. Although it is the prerogative of the queen bee to eat this jelly, it is given also to us in this period of our growth. I have grown five times heavier than yesterday. My head is more visible, and the three sections of my future body. My antennae are about to appear, but my legs have not yet begun to do so. There are ten air- holes around my body through which I breathe. My stomach is still in the form of a closed sac.

Day 6 – It was a little cool last night. All the bees in the hive crowded onto the comb and throbbed to produce heat. We need a temperature of about 35 C if we are to grow. As well as feeding us, it is again our elder sisters who ensure we are warm enough. When it is cool, they throb to warm us; when it is too hot, they cool us by beating their wings.

Day 7 – Our menu has changed today. In place of the jelly-liked food, we are given a food prepared with honey and pollen. I have grown so fat that I nearly cover more than half of my cell.

Day 9 – They have stopped giving us food. They have covered the ceiling of my cell with wax. However, I do not feel forsaken in the cell. I feel there is someone who is caring for all my needs. It is as if He whispered to me that it is He Who always feeds me and that I simply do not need feeding for a certain time.

Day 10- It is as if the One Who whispered to me yesterday, whispered again that He has installed silk ‘machines’ in my head and that I should set them to operate. My secretion glands get to work and thin threads of silk come out of my mouth. I knit a silk cocoon around me. This is the first thing I have done since the beginning of my life. I am not called a larva any more, but a pupa.

Day 15 – (your May 20) – Over the last week I have grown to look more like a bee. My eyes and antennae have started to appear. My head has grown. The first section of my abdomen has been added to my chest. My wings and three pairs of legs continue to grow out from my body.

Day 20 – I am a perfectly- formed honeybee. I have a head with antennae, eyes, a tongue, jaws, and legs, wings and a sting. I am a female bee; my brain is bigger than that of either the queen bee or the male bees. My legs and wings are fixed to my body and made up of many muscles. My abdomen has been arranged in a way to do the tasks of both digestion and secretion.

Day 21 – I was ordered to leave my cell. I opened the seal with my jaws and went out. I am looking at my environment. My home that I see for the first time is not strange to me. I do know what I am to do but I need some time to adjust my body to my tasks.

I see some other bees also leaving their cells. They must be my sisters that started the journey of their lives at the same time as I did. Cells are opened and as the new bees clamber out, the comb resembles a place of gathering.

My legs work but as yet my four wings do not. I stand on my feet with claws which have sticking organs. I keep my balance by means of the hairs on my body which inform my brain of the position of the parts of my body according to the gravitation.

The lower parts of my front legs will serve as a brush to remove from my eyes the dust which will stick to them as I fly around flowers. On the same front legs I also have other stick-like brushes to clean my antennae. I have instruments on my middle legs to collect the wax I will secrete from my body. There are sacs on my back legs to store the pollen that I am to collect.

I look at my sisters and see on the upper part of their heads three tiny eyes and two larger ones on their sides. The tiny eyes see polarized light, while the larger ones are sensitive to ultraviolet rays. We bees cannot see red. We cannot see the environment crisply delineated, we see it as a dim design of colours. We see most distinctly at the distance of touching.

Whatever I will need has all been installed in my body. I have a tongue to suck water and nectar, and antenae to touch and smell and a sting to defend myself. In addition, I have an environment to live in comfortably. All this cannot have been arranged by the things themselves around me. I did not arrange it myself. So, there must be One Who knows both me, my needs and my environment and Who brings me into existence for the tasks I am to do. He must have infinite knowledge and power.

I am starting to work today. We work according to a strict division of labour. What falls on me today is to do cleaning. Our comb is perfectly clean and tidy.

Day 22 – I have continued to do cleaning. I know my hive and sisters better than before. We have a very crowded population, we are about 40.000 bees. About 1500 new sisters have joined us today.

We can measure the length of days and know the coming of summer. Summer is coming.

Day 23 – Today I have been promoted to nurse. I am looking after larvae of 4-6 days. I partly digest in my stomach some of the food brought to me by elder bees and make bread of honey to feed the larvae.

Day 24 – A new factory has started to work in my body today. I have just begun using a secretion gland in my throat.

Thousands of elder bees offer us the pollen they collect and honey they make and we thousands of younger bees, crowd around cells and feed the larvae. A perfect mutual helping prevails in our comb.

Day 26 – I am extremely busy. I make royal jelly using the gland I began working two days ago and offer it to the larvae which eat 1300 meals a day. As you remember, I was also fed this when I was a larva.

Day 29 – (your June 3) – The larvae I am feeding today are of a different kind. They are in cells a little bigger than ours. It will take 26 days for them to leave their cells as male bees.

Day 30 – I have been promoted to cook. I make honey from the nectar my elders collect from flowers and store it in cells.

The honey I make is composed of water, sucrose and glucose and is very rich in vitamins. It contains enzymes to digest carbo-hydrates. It is very delicious and healthful. Some part of the honey I make may come to your table one day. I will have died by the time you are eating it. You have no obligation at all to remember me, but do not forget the One Who provides you with it through me and thank Him.

Day 32 – Thousands of bees die in our comb every day and other thousands are born. This happens in so orderly a way that no confusion is seen.

There is one among us without whom it is impossible for things to be in order in our comb-the queen. She is a bit larger than us and was programmed to do things different from what we do. She cannot collect nectar nor make honey, nor feed the larvae. She cannot feed herself either. We, her daughters, feed her with the royal jelly we offer to the young larvae.

The queen bee lays eggs. She must lay around 2000 eggs every day, for our lifespan is very short. While we are feeding her, she lets us taste from a substance she produces. We go round the comb and so cause all female bees to taste that substance by which a kind of birthcontrol is secured in the comb. On the day we do not taste it, we all begin to lay eggs. Since those eggs are not fertilized, only male bees come from them. Male bees have no task other than inseminating the queen bee. Their number is quite limited. If they were to be too many, the order in our comb would collapse.

Day 35 – A new factory has started to work in my body today. This factory installed in the back, lower part of my abdomen produces wax. I collect that wax with the sticks on my middle legs and chew it to mould it into the cells of the comb.

The cells we make are hexagonal in shape, because, compared with the amount of the wax used to build them, as much honey as possible can be stored in them. Also, a hexagonal form is most resistant to external forces. We make 35 thousand cells from half a kilo of wax and store 10 kilos of honey in them. We need three and a half kilos of honey to make half a kilo of wax.

We make cells in different forms according to need. While making them, we take gravitation into account. For example, the cells where the female worker bees lie horizontally form a vertical layer, while the cells where future queen bees lie vertically are parallel to the earth surface. The cells where male bees grow are bigger than those of the females. As you certainly understand, it is impossible for us and for any other things in nature, including what some of you call natural forces, to know and arrange all these things. There must be One Who does it. One Who knows us together with our relation with our environment and employs us in many important tasks.

Day 37 – (your June 11)- So far, I have left my comb on many occasions but only to throw out the waste matter and had opportunities to see the outer world from afar. Today I left my comb but not to discard waste but to fly around the comb, to obtain knowledge of the outer world.

Flying is very tiring for us. Unlike birds, we do not flap wings. When we start to fly, our wings move automatically in a way to make 250 complete turns in a second. While flying, our front and back wings are bound to each other.

When we start to fly, our wings curve along certain lines in a way to adjust our body to the air current. They draw a figure-of-8 shape in the air. In proportion to the size of our wings, our bodies are heavy (unlike birds which fly). They grow heavier when we collect nectar from flowers. Despite this, we can fly 15 kilometres an hour.

Like our flying, our landing is also miraculous. Unlike birds and your planes, we do not need to decrease our speed before we land. Thanks to the tips of our legs, while flying in the air, we can immediate- my alight wherever we want.

Since our wings move at extremely high speed, our need for fuel is high. Our muscles have a metabolic rate ten times faster than the heart of a man. We consume sugar as fuel. Before we start a journey, we take enough ‘fuel’. However, if the amount of sugar in our blood reduces to 1 per cent, we obtain new food wherever we are.

Day 38 – My new task is keeping guard at the entrance of the comb. No one, not even other bees, are allowed to tenter our comb. We know one another by our smell. The smell of each community of honeybees is different. Our antennae distinguish between the smells very well. The entrance of our comb is also marked with the smell particular to our community. Any other creature which does not carry our semll is prevented from entering.

Day 39 – There have been some changes in the comb. The cells of about a dozen larvae have been made bigger and turned vertical. The larvae in them will be fed with royal jelly until they become pupae.

The queen bee has accelerated laying eggs. She lays about 2000 eggs a day.

Day 41 – Now I am a fully mature honeybee. I will no longer do the housework because the factories in my body producing royal jelly and wax have stopped. From now, I will spend my days collecting nectar from flowers.

Today it was my first flight outside. When I flew far away from the comb, I found myself surrounded by a design of colours. The scents coming from all around nearly caused me to faint. Flowers attract us by their colours and smells. They have structures arranged as if to serve as platforms for our landing. When we land on them, we pass our tongues into the source of nectar in their centres. Meanwhile pollen from the flowers clings to the hairs on our bodies giving them the look of prickly sticks. We leave some of this pollen on other flowers we visit and thereby assist i the pollination of flowers. But for this service we perform, you would not enjoy the benefit from fruit-bearing trees such as peach, apple, pear, almond and plum.

We do not visit flowers at random. Whatever kind of flowers we visit first, we continue to visit the same kind in the same environment. If we did otherwise we would be carrying pollen of other kinds of flowers and therefore waste the pollen, uselessly.

We are mostly attracted by blue. However, we also visit flowers of other colours except red. Red flowers do business with butterflies.

We do not see flowers in the same colour as you see them. Only the nectar containing central parts of the flowers you see as yellow appear to us as yellow to attract us to you see as white appear to us as coloured. In short, when we go on a journey to collect nectar, we do not look for them. Flowers themselves smile to us and attract us.

Day 42 – I have spent today also among flowers. If you had followed, you would have seen that I visited around twenty flowers in a minute and as many as 20,000 by evening. I stored the nectar in my stomach and the pollen in the sacs on my back legs.

Since our return is difficult because of our load, we follow a direct way called the line of bees. Even if we pass through places unknown to us, we always follow that direct way. It is extremely easy for us to establish it. The place and position of the sun gives us our direction, Of course, the sun has changed position while we are visiting flowers. That is no matter at all. You cannot compete with us when it comes to calculating the exact place and position of the sun at any time of the day. If you kept me in a dark place and then released me hours later, it would not take me more than a few moments to find my direction. We use the atmospheric polarization and find the place of the sun by means of any little light coming from any corner of the sky. We have been doing this calculation for millions of years but you have come to know it only in the last forty years.

We cannot make our way only on completely dark days and therefore we do not go out on those days. We stay in and are busy with the work in the comb.

Day 44 – We are a big anonymous company with its tens of thousands of partners and personnel, agents, boards of directors, awesone storage and processing establishments and a well-developed communications network. We pursue big markets to do business.

We do big business. Many other insects, flies and butterflies visit the flowers with which we do business. However, when we find a profitable source, we rush toward it as an army of 10 or 20 or 30 thousand bees.

Five per cent of our population are responsible for finding a market. They constantly search big markets and we evaluate the markets they have found. If, for example, one of our friends finds a market of one million flowers in the morning, you will see their nectar and pollen transferred into our depots in a few hours.

Our communication system works perfectly. Let me describe this to you with an example.

It was nearly noon. One of the elder bees entered the hive in great excitement. Other grown-up bees crowded around it.

From the smell of the pollen on its body we could understand what kind of a source it had found. We tasted the nectar it threw up onto the comb from its mouth. It was a bit more watery than it should be. However, we had to take into account the heat outside and the fact that that sample had been collected in early morning. The amount of sugar in nectar in morning hours is less than at other times. In short, the kind and quality of the nectar seemed OK. But we did not yet know the location of the source and whether it was a rich site, nor how far away it was.

Our friend immediately began to dance. A few bees near it and I held on to it to follow its movements. While dancing, it uttered some sounds which meant that the source was rich, and drew a figure 8 over the comb, completing a turn in 15 seconds, which meant that the source was 10 kilometres away. Our friend was dancing according to gravitation. While drawing the line in the middle of 8, it made an angle of 28 to the right. Since we always take the sun to be at an angle of 90, the source our friend described was 62 to the right of the sun.

The information our friend gave to us was for a still, windless day. However, it was windy when we left the hive and therefore, taking into account the direction and strength of the wind, we corrected the angle given to us.

Day 47 – Our population has recently increased. We are about 60.000 bees. Our hive is not enough to accommodate all of us. Preparations made over the preceding few weeks mean that some of us will move to another place.

Day 50 – (your June 25) – Male bees have left their cells in which they had been fed for some time. For the time being, they have nothing to do in the hive.

About a dozen larvae have been specially fed for some weeks. We feed in this way more larvae than needed. The first among them to leave its cell becomes the queen and, since there cannot be more than one queen in a hive, she immediately seeks out the cells where other candidates are and destroys them.

The new queen will spend the first few days of her life eating honey to gain strength. Afterwards, she will set off on the mating flight. During this flight which lasts a few days, she will store up in a special section in her body the sperms she will have taken from six or so male bees in sufficient amount to fertilize the one million or so eggs she will lay during her life. If the hive needs male bees, the queen closes the mouth of that section and the eggs she lays pass into the cells of the comb prepared for the male bees without being inseminated.

Two days after her return from the mating, she begins to lay eggs.

Day 51 – Today at noon, about 15,000 of us, left our hive. Before departure, we filled our stomachs fully with honey. We will use it to build the comb in our new home.

It was a great responsibility. If we made a mistake in choosing the site of a new home, it might result in the end of the community.

We made a detailed search of all the places that looked suitable for a new home.

Returning to the cluster, we began to dance to inform one another about the places we had found. A consultative system prevails in bee communities. No one forces its opinion upon others. So, we follow carefully each other’s dance. If the idea of one among us seems to another better than its own, it copies that one’s dance. In this way, as the dance spreads, a consensus is formed.

The hole or opening we prefer for home must be of a volume of at least 15 litres. For we must put by at least ten kilos of honey for winter. We do not choose openings of a volume of more than 100 litres, for it is almost impossible to heat them. The entrance must be at least two metres above the ground and face south. The home must be dry, without wet. If any moisture leaks through the walls, we cover them with the resin of trees. We do not decide on a place after a single search. We repeat searches several times to be certain of the suitability of a particular site.

Day 52 – As yesterday, today too, we could not agree on a particular site to establish our new home.

Day 53 – We have found two other places. After comparisons and new researches, we have been pleased with two of them.

Day 54 – We found new places today. Many of the surveyors began to dance the same dance but unanimity was not achieved.

Day 55 – We have to make a choice. If we fail to reach an agreement, though it happens rarely, we will end up making our home in a bush. This means death.

We have looked at 29 possible sites, of which we have chosen one to the south-east after a last visit to it of the explorers. We rushed into the cluster of bees who have been waiting for days. They were as if dead. Slowly, we managed to move them. First they began movements to get warm. The temperature of the muscles has to reach 36 C. At last, a humming began. Those which had got warm enough began leaving the cluster. In a minute all the bees took flight. When they had formed a cylinder with a diameter of 10 metres, we advanced to the front to lead the others. Flying at a speed of more than 10 kilometres an hour, we reached our new home. Before entering, we marked the entrance with the smell of our community.

First we cleaned the site of all the rubbish and then covered the fissures with the resin we collected from trees. Afterwards, we began to build a comb. The pioneering columns scattered round to collect nectar. A new community of beas has been established by the end of the day.

Day 58 – It is very hot. Some among us have set up an air-condition system at the entrance of the hive. They cool the hive by moving their wings.

I left the pioneering column. I collect water driblets and carry them to the hive.

Day 60 – I am old and worn out, ready to retire. Besides the tasks I did in the hive, I have flown more than 2000 kilometers to provide you with the best of food, as it is ordered and inspired in me by my Creator:

You Lord inspired in the bee: Build your homes in hills, on trees, and in what they (men) construct. Then eat of all the produce (fruit and flowers of the earth), and set out on the ways of your Lord submissively (to Him). From their stomachs issues a drink of varying colours, wherein is healing for men. Surely in this a sign for those who reflect. (Qur’an, 16.68-9)

I have produced 50 grams of honey. Do not despise this for we, the population of a hive, make 200,000 flights a day and produce one kilo of honey. You, all human beings, could not produce or make even a single gram of it even if you all helped one another.

We make honey for your benefit but do not expect any return for it. We fulfill our duty of servant hood to our Creator. It is He Who employs us to offer to you the best of food by means of us. So, you must know Him and thank Him.

In the industrialised countries biotechnology has been one of the fastest developing and most promising fields of research in recent decades. It is defined as the application of biological organisms, systems or processes to manufacturing and service industries. There are sub-divisions within biotechnology — such as fermenter technology, genetic engineering, enzyme technology, environmental technology, animal and plant biotechnology. In this article, we will look briefly at some topics in plant biotechnology which deals with the building- blocks of agriculture, horticulture, and the food, chemical and pharmacological industries. Already, commercially important applications of plant biotechnology such as transgenic vegetables and fruits, insecticide-resistant corn and cotton, herbicide-resistant beans and synthetic seeds have begun to appear in the market-places of America, Japan and Europe. This trend is set to expand dramatically in the coming decade.

Molecular biology

Molecular biology tools figure importantly in plant biotechnology. Plant breeders are trying to discover and determine the best combination of the genetic characters in different plants with the help of Randomly Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphisim (RFLP) techniques. The aim is to identify desirable characters and their precise location on chromosomes. Then, recombinant DNA technology can be applied to transfer a particular gene into a plant cell so as to alter and improve its original character. This technique enables us to, for example, produce flowers of a specified shape and colour or plants which secrete anti-fungal and anti- insect proteins.

The Human Genome Prced(HGP) is one of the grandest scientific projects of the end of the 20th century. The location, functions and base sequences of all human genes will be identified and the information used for diagnostic purposes such as controlling cancer or ageing genes. There is another, comparable project on model plant Aribidopsis which contains the smallest genome size in. The gene sequences of Aribidopsis are expected to have been fully mapped in ten years time. Japanese scientists are trying to determine the gene sequences of rice by using the mRNAs. Plant genome projects will be as important as the HGP in the coming century, because understanding the gene structures of plants may, by permitting us to produce ‘new’ genetically enhanced foods, provide the solution to the problem of ensuring food supplies while protecting the environment.

Plants genetically resistant to insects and herbicides

Insect pests and diseases caused by fungal, viral and bacterial pathogens are responsible for substantial losses in crop yields world-wide. The chemical control of insects and fungal pathogens represents a large segment of the crop- protecting business, currently estimated at US$ 8.7 billion annually. The global losses due to insects or diseases, despite extensive use of pesticides, are still 12-13%. Although all plants have some defensive systems to protect against insects and pathogens, the crop varieties used in modern agriculture often lack sufficient resistance. A kind of ‘killer proteins’ secreted by plants and micro-organisms prevent the larval development of insects or fungal and bacterial growths. The ‘killer protein’ genes are transposed to make genetically resistant varieties of such crops as corn, cotton, tomato, yellow squash, tobacco, and other model transgenic plants. For example, transgenic potato plants expressing a synthetic gene from B.thuringiensis sub sp terebrionus at high level exhibited strong resistance to Colorado potato beetle (CPB) in a large number of field trials and have recently been approved for commercial release. Potato growers currently spend US$ 75-100 million annually on the protection of about 480,000 hectares of potato. The CPB resistance potatoes will significantly reduce their use of environmentally undesirable insecticides.

Another example: Roundup is a commonly used herbicide which deactivates one of the chloroplast enzymes and so causes the death of the target plant but which also negatively affects crops. Plant molecular biologists identified a highly expressing enzyme which can defuse the effect of Roundup. This strain has been successfully transferred to some important crop species such as a rice which is now genetically resistant to the Roundup herbicide.

Natural plant metabolites in cell suspension cultures

Plants sometimes produce secondary metabolites (unlike primary metabolites such as DNA and amino acids) to adapt to their environment or to protect themselves from enemies. There are more then 100,000 types of secondary metabolites secreted by many kinds of plants which count as ‘natural products’ used particularly in the dyeing, pharmacology and cosmetic industry, and in insecticide and herbicide production. Some of the secondary metabolites are produced in batch cultures (growing plant cells in suspension medium) in plant biotechnology laboratories. Not all metabolites are in production, only a few and (for the present) economically non-viable metabolites have been produced over the last few decades. However, some metabolites are extremely important such as vincristine and taxol natural products which are used as anticancer drugs in medicine. Taxol is naturally produced by taxus tree (Taxus brevifolia), and costs approximately US$ 1.6 million kg-i. Taxol can be synthesized in chemistry labs in 52 steps, but is so laborious and expensive as not to hold much hope for commercial application. Vincristine is the rarest alkaloid found (1 part in 5 million dry weight) which is naturally produced by Madagascar Periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus) and it costs US$ 3 million kg-i. Five to six year- old trees are used to extract these ‘fine chemicals’. 250 kg of taxol is needed throughout the world each year. That means we must destroy one million taxol trees every year in order to supply this amount. This is not a cost-efficient or environment friendly process. Today, some economically less important chemicals are produced in bioreactors but, as yet, valuable Chemicals like taxol and vincristine are still waiting for the development of economically viable in vitro production techniques. If that aim is achieved, destroying trees for extraction will stop, production will be increased and prices come down.

‘Edible vaccine production in transgenic plants

Plant and animal protein structures are almost similar. Today, micro-organisms are used to produce vaccines. However, plants can easily be made to produce some pharmacalogically important antigens, and can economically be used as an alternative method. For instance, the production of hepatic B surface antigen (HBsAg) was expressed by transgenic tobacco plant. Although the expression level was low, HBsAg was expressed with similar physical properties to the serum-derived protein. The antigen extracted from tobacco has recently been demonstrated successfully in mice.

There are some other reports on vaccine production against cholera and malaria by transgenic plants. The demonstration that vaccine antigens can provide new opportunities for bio-farming of vaccines, If the antigens were orally active, food-based ‘edible vaccines’ could allow economical production and delivery in developing countries. Astonishingly, the vaccines containing edible plants may be developed and will be commercially available, and in the very near future, children in developing countries will be eating tailor-made polysaccharide containing potato as a nutrient, as well as a vaccine to protect them from cholera. The ‘edible vaccine’ plant foods will be one of the most amazing new products of the next century.

Micro-propagation and somatic embryogenesis

Plant cells unlike animals, have the potential, known as totipotency, to make individual plant organisms. Plants can be regenerated in biotechnology labs by the help of tissue culture techniques. Natural seeds are generally heterogeneous and lose desired characters in their phenotypes. Therefore, seed manufacturers produce homozygous (wild type) products but this is time-consuming and uneconomical. Plant biotechnologists are dealing with this problem by regenerating the plant in vitro. Micro-propagation and somatic embryogenesis are two principal ways of plant regeneration in vitro.

Micro-propagation involves the germination of seeds, cutting axillary buds of regenerants and then distributing on solid media to get new regenerated plants. Thousands of similar genomic structure regenerants can be produced by this technique. Although this technique needs less labour and money on a small scale, there are some technical problems in scaling up.

There is an alternative but less known somatic embryogenesis technique. It offers the production of ‘synthetic seeds’ in vitro on a large scales. A few model plant synthetic seeds such as carrot, alfalfa, spruce and celery have been successfully achieved in bio-industries. This technique involves the production of large numbers of synthetic seeds and then their encapsulation by variety gels. Subsequently, the synthetic seeds grow successfully in greenhouses. The aim in this field is to achieve large scale production of economically important plant seeds containing desirable characters.

Ethics

The question of what the effects will be of transgenic products on human health and on nature still remains unanswered. Should we answer this question now or should we wait until we see the bad consequences? It is our view that this question should be answered by scientists, philosophers and lay people before the products are released onto the market.

It is my belief that the earth has enough resources to provide the well-being of its human population, and human beings can enhance these resources by sensitive application of the new technologies, some aspects of which we have just looked at. However, some of the major problems of food supply and environmental degradation arise not from the lack of resources but from inequalities in access to and distribution of those resources, not least of which is the resource of knowledge and technology. If we are to use the new technologies for the benefit of human beings generally, without destroying the environment we all share, the political and social problems of distribution and transfer of technologies must be addressed. We need to live co-operatively and collaboratively both with ourselves and with our planet.

References 

• Mason H. S. & Amtzen C. J. (1994)‘Transgenic Plants as Vaccine Production System’, Trends In Biotechnology (Elsveir Trends Journals). 13(9), pp.388-392.
• Onishi N., Sakamato Y. & Hirosawa T.(1994) ‘Synthetic Seeds as an Application of Mass Production of Somatic Embryos, Plant Cell, Tissue and Organ Culture (Kluwer Academic Publications), 39, pp.137-48.
• Pezzuta J., (1996) ‘Taxol Production in Plant Cell Culture Comes of age’. Nature Biotechnology, 14, p.1063.
• Shah M.D.. Rommens C.M T. & Beachy R.N. (1994) ‘Resistance to Diseases and Insects in Transgenic Plants: Progress and Applications to Agriculture’, Trends In Biotechnology (Elsveir Trends Journals), 13(9), pp.362-7.
• Smith J.E. (1981) Biotechnology, Edward Arnold Ltd, London, pp.1-6.
• Stogkigt J., Obitz P., Falkenhagen H.,Lutterbach R. & Endress S. (1995) ‘Natural Products And Enzymes From Plant Cell Cultures’, Plant Cell, Tissue and Organ Culture (Kluwer Academic Publications), 43. pp.97- 105. 

pure as rain, cool as the shade of clouds;

its colour and design address all the worlds,

unstained white like the river of milk in Paradise…

Not a transient hope, but peace everlasting,

from which begin all roads leading souls to heaven.

A source of strength for whoever affirms it,

a source of light for whoever takes refuge in it.

It unveils its wonders one after the other

To whoever enters its clime.

It draws the attention of all because of its message,

never worn out, written in the moisture of gabriel’s speech.

Its ever-green hills are pavilions where

the created meet with the Creator.

Satan is always defeated in its climate.

The greatest mystery between the Creator and existence.

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Souls thirsty for that mystery stand before it

in utmost respect and ready to follow its way,

enveloped with the fragrant scent of afterlife.

The days it promises approach in blooms of spring;

it points to eternal existence and leads to

eternity, and along all the paths it clears

welcoming breezes blow from gardens of friends…

Through all the succeeding years, time

overflows with the pleasures it brings.

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and its breath holds the cure for incurable diseases.

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those burning in love are cooled with the hope of union

Though winter visits every year, those who enter it

gain immortality, suffering no autumn fall.

They advance to eternity with documents

showing their absolution from punishment..

meet with god and seek intimacy with Him

flying on wings of light that cannot tire

they pass impenetrable veils one after the other.

***