“The subjective experience of emptiness represents a temporary or permanent loss of normal relations of the self with object-representations, that is, with the world of inner objects that fixates intrapsychically the significant experiences with others and constitutes a basic ego identity and, therefore, a stable integrated self and a stable integrated world of internal objects.”(3) Existential psychotherapists call this “existential isolation,”(4) an unbridgeable gulf between self and other, a separation from the world. Yalom asserts that even fully satisfying relationships with other people, complete self-knowledge, and a sense of wholeness cannot overcome this feeling.

Fromm agrees that existential isolation is inevitable: “The awareness of his aloneness and separateness, of his helplessness before the forces of nature and of society, all this makes his separate disunited existence an unbearable prison … The experience of separateness arouses anxiety; it is indeed the source of all anxiety. To be separate means to be helpless, unable to grasp the world-things and people-actively; it means that the world can invade me without my ability to react.”(5)

Yalom writes: “A defamiliarization occurs when meanings are wrenched from objects, symbols disintegrate, and one is torn from one’s moorings of ‘at homeness.’”(6) This is true, for the two concepts most closely related to emptiness and existential isolation are meaninglessness and alienation.

We have self-knowledge only when other things have meaning, and relations with them when their meaning is understood. Reinhardt describes the alienation caused by the loss of meaning as: “Something utterly mysterious intervenes between him and the familiar objects of his world, between him and his fellowmen, between him and all his ‘values.’ Everything which he had called his own pales and sinks away, so that there is nothing left to which he might cling. What threatens is ‘nothing,’ and he finds himself lost in the void.”(7)

Even if this is inevitable, Yalom still asks: “How does one shield oneself from the dread of ultimate isolation?” In his view: “One may take a portion of the

isolation into oneself and bear it courageously or resolutely.“ His second solution is relationship, for it alleviates-but does not dispel-the sense of loneliness and basic isolation. Psychology stops here. Said Nursi, author of the Risale-i Nur and one familiar with emptiness and alienation, goes further.(8)But how was this feeling of emptiness initially caused? Kernberg provides the most useful clue: 

What does he mean?

Internalization of Self and Universe

No person begins life with a tabula rasa.(10) “The infant is equipped with basic feelings, as well as the basic ability to communicate them through expressive-motor mechanisms that are mainly concentrated in the face system.”(11)

A baby’s existing senses must be developed. According to Said Nursi, animals are born already perfected, whereas we need years to acquire the same skills and knowledge.(12) He concludes that a person’s innate duty is “to be perfected through learning and to proclaim his worship of God and servitude to Him through supplication.”

For the first 6 months, infants live in an “undifferentiated” world, an “us” system formed with the mother, and are unaware of any “self” and “other.”(13) But they are not passive, for they perceive and respond to stimulants as a “we.” This engenders a strong sense of security, like being a drop in the ocean (ocean feeling). “Self” and “other” are seen as not completely distinct, but as closely joined-mainly biologically-within one system.(14)

When they are around 2 years old, infants become more aware of themselves and thus of duality. The first thing encountered is the “self.” Through this developing “I,” they gradually acquire an awareness of “self” and “other,” and divide the world accordingly.

Internalization and self- and object-representation formation now begin. Children experience countless interactions, mainly with the mother, and begin

representing their self and objects, as well as the self-image and the object-image.(15) When they are around 2.5 years old, they enter the “identification” stage and begin internalizing their own and the other’s image and function.(16) “Just as the world settles in the child’s inner world, so the child’s inner world starts to become established in the world.”(17) This stage ends with the onset of puberty.

People, being alive and conscious, have relations with all things. Living but unconscious beings, such as birds and trees, also have relations but are unaware of them-only consciousness “illuminates” life and makes the being aware of its own existence.(18)

The sentence “a human being is able to move through the rooms of his house through his consciousness and mind, which are the light of life,”(19) means that we can internalize ourselves. We become aware of our existence through consciousness and mind, and come to know our spirit, consciousness, body, intellect, senses, and feelings. Conceptualizing and reaching conclusions about ourselves and values, we gain a “self” whose image is reflected and represented in our spirit’s mirror.

But we do not stop here, for “that conscious and animate being may go in spirit as though as a guest to those worlds [and].… those worlds too come as guests to his mirror-like spirit by being reflected and depicted there.”(20) Our consciousness and intellect convey the things with which we have relations to the spirit’s mirror, where they are reflected and their representations are formed. Thus each person becomes “a universal within particularity, and a world within … insignificance,”(21) a being who internalizes everything to understand His Names and experience His bounty. Each person first was given life, then consciousness, and so gained the comprehensive nature needed to “understand and take pleasure in the Divine Names.”(22) Such comprehensiveness enables us to have relations with the universe, for it makes each person “like a tiny index and miniature specimen of the universe, and so displays the embroideries of all the Names.”(23)

These representations make us reflect the manifestation of Divine Oneness and function as the Creator’s vicegerent on Earth. This manifestation is the simultaneous manifestation in one thing of the Creator’s Names, which are manifested in everything. It also includes the duties of beings, which constitute representations by forming images in our spirit’s mirror.(24) Since we are conscious, the universe can be “established” in us. Our representation of all beings’ glorifications and worship, realized primarily as an inner duty, means that we must know, be aware of, and internalize them.

Duality and Loneliness

The more self-aware we become, the more we are differentiated from the “other,” for “consciousness is an aspect of existence according to which beings are distinct from one another.”(25) The “ocean feeling” disappears, and each child becomes “aware of being alone, of being an entity separate from all others. This separation from a world, which in comparison with one’s own individual existence is overwhelmingly strong and powerful, and often threatening and dangerous, creates a feeling of powerlessness and anxiety.”(26)

Unconscious beings cannot expe-rience separation, for they are unaware of duality. Consciousness engenders individuality, yet recaptures and joins what has been separated. Consciousness and intellect want to establish relations with everything. Since “the realms of beings in the universe are so interwoven they have made the universe into a totality,”27 we seek reunification within a framework of meaningful ties between self and other in order to live as part of the universe’s system.

We search for that lost “ocean feeling,” hoping to establish relations with our self and all things. We do not want this biologically, but within the framework of meaningful ties.

Kernberg and others conclude by saying that a person’s inner world is filled with self- and object-representations. Said Nursi, however, presses onward.

Said Nursi’s Analysis

Said Nursi mentions three sorts of representation or reflection.(29)

First Representation: The reflection of dense, physical objects, such as a tree (“other”) reflected in a mirror, water, or a shining surface. Said Nursi says such reflections are “other than the thing reflected …without life. Their only quality is their apparent identity” [emphasis added]. This is how such people see and then represent the tree in their spirit.

In this case, we deny creation by claiming to be self-created, self-owning, powerful, and able to realize our own existence. We give ourselves and others whatever meaning we wish.(30) Our “I” functions in its own name, seeks to satisfy its physical desires, and wants no connection with its true Creator. Thus the self’s internal representation has no connection with its real, created self. The reflected image and the self’s representation are dead. We see a tree as owning itself, and therefore meaningless and limited to providing fruit.(31)

Our consciousness and intellect convey the self and the other to the spirit’s mirror, where their reflections form representations and images. As the tree’s reflection and representation are separate from its reality, its form is dead and meaningless, and there is no communication. The spirit remains unnourished, for mere similarity in appearance cannot nourish it.

This results in alienation, for both remain unknown to each other, as well as anxiety and fear, for fear of the unknown is intense and keeps us alert to danger. Thus alienated, the “I” sees itself as meaningless, the internalized and reflected self becomes dead and meaningless, and we feel pain. The absence of relations causes pain, and the object-representations continue to disappear.

This view fills our world with loneliness and emptiness. The lack of relations between the self and the object-representations engender feelings of nothingness (existential emptiness) and distress, of non-relation to the external world, for both are dead and thus unable to communicate. So, we cannot connect with reality.

Second Representation: “The reflection of physical luminous objects,”(32) such as the sun’s reflection in shining objects. The sun and its reflection are neither identical nor completely different. They do not resemble each other in essence, but the reflection has most of the sun’s characteristics and may be considered as living and having some of its attributes (e.g., light and its seven colors, and heat radiations).

In this case, our “I” accepts that it is a work of the Creator’s art,(33) tasked with recognizing and knowing Him, and serving as a mirror for His Names’ manifestation. Its representation in the spirit’s mirror is like the sun’s representation in a mirror, meaning fairly close to reality.

This “I” sees the tree as meaningful and created, and so forms a relation with its Creator to “read” it. This relationship gives the tree meaning, enabling it to be read as a mirror reflecting His Names and to be related to all beings. As the reading is close to its reality, the tree becomes something living and charged with duties. Our intellect and consciousness convey it to the spirit’s mirror, where its representation and reflection are like the sun’s reflection, for the reflection is neither the tree nor different from it. The tree’s representation, now a living missive, tells us of His Attributes and makes Him known. As they can communicate with the Creator, the tree becomes luminous like the sun, its representation gains luminosity, and it nourishes the spirit.

Through the Creator, all representations are related to each other. Here, the representation is formed of the tree’s meaning within itself-its function (role representations). The spirit feels no pain when the tree dies, for its representation remains alive. As the tree is not independent or existant in its own name, but only through and in its Creator’s name, its role/function representation persists in the spirit. The object-representations are never lost, for if the Creator exists, everything exists, has meaning, and exists as representations and role representations.

Our personal universe is full of living representations, neither identical with nor different from the actual things, that nourish the spirit. Thus we feel no existential emptiness, for the actual things form relations with the living representations. We cannot be nourished by a fruit’s reflected image, but just as the sun’s reflection may warm and illuminate us, living and meaningful object-representations may nourish our spirit and heart.

Not seeing ourselves as self-created or divine, we experience a warm feeling of belonging. We see ourselves as living in a friendly, stable,and interconnected world in which the “other” conveys His messages to us.

But something is missing. Our “belief consciousness” enables us to read the Creator’s art, but the unconscious “other” cannot read us.

Third representation: The reflection of luminous spirit beings belonging to unseen worlds. These reflections are identical to-and thus are-the beings themselves.(34) Said Nursi places angels, other spirit beings, and Prophet Muhammad in this group. He also emphasizes that the reflections in such representations are living. However, since the representation appears according to the mirror’s capacity, he sees a difference between the spirit being and the representation: The reflection and the thing are not the same in essence.

In this case, the third person is the second person’s articulation. This solves the following two problems: First, if people are unaware of the Creator’s Names, if their consciousness cannot understand them, or if they are aware of but cannot read them properly, the manifestation seems to be unnecessary, for all beings’ decorations, beauty, and inscriptions “require the gazes of thoughtful admirers and wondering, appreciative lovers; it demands their existence.”(35) Second, there is no real relationship, for the unconscious other is unaware of the conscious person.

If a tree’s attributes (e.g., art, beauty, order, perfection, knowledge, power, intention, and care) are unperceived or denied, they become meaningless. If they are not recognized by consciousness and read properly, they serve no purpose: “[C]reatures exist for, find their perfection and rejoice through, and are saved from futility through conscious beings.”(36)

However, angels understand the unconscious beings’ duties of worship and glorification, utter and represent them in the inner worlds, and offer them to the Divine Court. Like people, angels are “spectators of the palace of the universe, observers of the Book of Creation, and heralds of the sovereignty of dominicality.”(37) Their activities save unconscious beings from meaningless. Since angels present the duties of beings “knowingly at the Divine Court,”(38) all beings perform their functions consciously.

Angels and spirit beings, inhabitants of the unseen worlds and who necessarily exist, change our concept of the “other.” They “are not restricted to this manifest world, and existence is not limited to it,”(39) and remind us that we cannot perceive all levels of existence. Angels are created beings-not creators-who convey the Divine Names to our world.

This expanded definition causes visible beings to gain consciousness. An angel makes its tree meaningful and conscious, and its duties known and recognizable. Thus the first problem is solved, for angels and spirit beings have consciousness in the inner world. Each being’s angel observes and gazes upon the Divine Names manifested on that being, and represents its duties in the name of beings that formerly appeared to be unconscious.

This transforms all formerly meaningful missives into conscious envoys who visit our spirit and speak to us. No longer are they go-betweens waiting to carry our reply. The tree is the angel’s words in this world, for “the All-Wise Maker causes all the realms of beings in the universe to speak.”(40) The second problem is solved, for “the universe is seen to be full of angels, spirit beings, and intelligent beings.”(41)

Since we can internalize, be aware of, and experience relations with the other, we want the other to know and internalize us and so form a stable two-way relationship. As angels also want this, the relationship moves into further dimensions. Angels love us, pray to their Compassionate Sustainer for us, seek our forgiveness, and call blessings upon us.(42) There is a real relationship, for both sides are aware of, and can communicate with and “read,” the other.

Since an angel’s or spirit being’s representation is identical with its actual being, a tree is represented in the spirit as it actually is. Belief in the Creator gives life to a representation; belief in angels gives it consciousness. The tree’s reflection serves as a mirror to its Sustainer’s Names, glorifies Him, and is conscious; its angel offers its manifested Names and glorifications to the Divine Court. As both the actual thing and its reflection are conscious, our spirit is filled with reflections of conscious beings. Finally able to establish conscious relations with all beings, we represent their duties while their angels represent their reflections.

This is a basic existential need, for each person searches for the “ocean feeling” of infancy.(43) In order to say “us creatures,” all beings must be able to say “we.” The tree proclaims its createdness through the tongue of disposition only. However its angel, who is conscious and aware of and proclaims that the tree is created, enables it to say “us.”

The resulting relationship, mutual recognition, and knowledge of each other’s duties gives a sense of “us” without removing any individuality. We become friends with everything, for now they are conscious beings. Knowledge of God and belief in angels have removed all dualism. The universe remains the scene of all beings’ constant renewal, transformation, disappearance, and replacement, and yet our spirit suffers no pain. As its angel’s representation never dies, it continues to represent the tree’s glorification, even after the real tree’s death, and be light and sustenance for our spirit.

Our companionship with angels continues after death, for Azra’il, the angel of death who represents the glorifications offered at the moment of death, becomes our companion on our journey after death.(44)

Footnotes

1 I. Yalom, Love’s Executor and Other Tales of Psychotherapies (New York: 2000), 3.

2 T. Zeldin, Insanligin Mahrem Tarihi [Turk. trans.] (Istanbul: 1998) 67, 68.

3 O. Kernberg, Sinir Durumlar ve Patolojik Narsisizm [Turk. trans.] (Istanbul: 1999), 192.

4 I. Yalom, Existential Psychotheraphy (New York: 1980), 355.

5 E. Fromm, The Art of Loving (New York: 1956), 7.

6 Yalom, Psychotheraphy, 358.

7 K. Reinhardt, The Existential Revolt (New York: 1957), 235.

8 Said Nursi, Letters 1928-1932. 2d ed. [Eng. trans.] (Istanbul: 1997), 42 ff.

9 Kernberg, Sinir, 192.

10 V. F. Guidano, The Self in Process (New York: 1991), 17.

11 Ibid., 18.

12 Said Nursi, The Words. new ed. [Eng. trans.] (Istanbul: 1998), 324.

13 N. G. Hamilton, Self and Others: Object Relations Theory in Practice (London: 1988), 36.

14 Ibid., 38.

15 O. Kernberg, Object Relations Theory and Clinical Psychoanalysis, (London: 1995) 29.

16 Ibid., 38.

17 D. M. Orange, G. E. Atwood, R. D. Stolorow. Quoted by C. Ardali and Y. Erten, Psikoanalizden Dinamik Psikoterapilere (Alfa, 1999), 88.

18 Nursi, Words, 523.

19 Ibid., 524.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid., 338.

22 Said Nursi, The Flashes Collection. new ed.

[Eng. trans.] (Istanbul: 2000), 456.

23 Ibid., 458.

24 Nursi, Words, 523-24.

25 J. Kovel, Tarih ve Tin: A–zgurlesme Felsefesi Aœzerine Bir Inceleme (Istanbul: 1991), 95.

26 E. Fromm, Escape from Freedom (New York: 1941), 29.

27 Nursi, Flashes, 415.

28 Guidano, Self, 15.

29 Nursi, Words, 210; Said NursA, Mesnevi-i NA riye [Turk. trans. Abdulmecid NursA] (Istanbul: 1977).

30 Nursi, Words, 560.

31 Ibid., 560.

32 Ibid., 210.

33 Ibid., 320.

34 Ibid., 210.

35 Ibid., 522.

36 Ibid., 98.

37 Ibid., 191.

38 Ibid., 531.

39 Ibid., 528.

40 Nursi, Letters, 339-40.

41 Ibid., 342.

42 Qur’an: 33:56; 40:7-9.

43 Yalom, Psychotheraphy, 362.

44 Said Nursi, The Rays Collection [Eng. trans.] (Istanbul: 1998), 277.

Mary is depicted in the Qur’an as an individual in her own right. The Qur’an usually mentions her and Jesus separately, and deals more with her life before Jesus and her own merits as a woman chosen, purified, and protected by God. Most Biblical figures who appear in the Qur’an are from the Old Testament. Mary is one of the few New Testament figures, along with Zachariah, John the Baptist, and Jesus.(1)

Both holy books refer to women by their relationship to a man or a place. For example: the wives of Noah, Abraham, and Pharaoh, and the Queen of Sheba.

Only Moses, Abraham, and Noah are mentioned more often. The Qur’an’s nineteenth chapter”Surah Maryam”is named after her, and its third chapter”Surat Al-Imran (Imran’s Family)”is devoted primarily to her and her family.

While the Bible calls her the Mother of Jesus, the Qur’an calls Jesus the Son of Mary. Islam values mothers, and Muslims revere pious, devoted mothers. Mary is considered one of the greatest examples of female perfection, a person who reached one of the highest of positions.

The Qur’an, which lacks any mention of Joseph, moves in the other direction by identifying Jesus in relation to his maternal family tree. In the Qur’an, therefore, the spotlight is on Mary as a single parent who establishes Jesus’ lineage. This is quite different from the New Testament, where her family history is unknown and her primary role is to conceive and give birth to Jesus, not give him a bloodline he can be proud of.(3)

Her Early Life

God chose Mary and placed her in Imran’s blessed household. Hanne (or Anna), Imran’s wife and Mary’s mother,(4) prayed for a child despite her barrenness. Upon learning of her pregnancy, she devoted her child to God: My Lord, I have vowed to You that what is in my womb will be dedicated to Your service. Accept it from me, for You are the One Who hears, the One Who knows. When she brought forth the child, she said: My Lord, I have brought forth a female,”but God knew what she had brought forth, for the male is not like the female”and I have named her Mary. I place her and her offspring under Your protection from Satan, the cursed one (3:35-36).

Her piety was obvious. She dedicated her unborn child to God’s service, and then, after discovering it is a girl, placed the child and the child’s offspring, including Jesus, under God’s protection. God prepared a virtuous lineage for Jesus by protecting Mary, the mother-to-be of a Prophet, from all evil and impurity, so that she would be a pure source for the miraculous birth.

As boys were more likely to be given to priests to be raised and educated, girls were rarely dedicated to temples. Hanne, probably not expecting a daughter, gave Mary to the priest Zachariah so that she would be raised in the purest place. Her gender, as well as the traditions and social conceptions of her time, should not prevent her from attaining closeness to God. She was a special person, one being prepared for a life of utmost belief and devotion, and to witness God’s miracle. Her unique story started with a prayer while she was still an embryo. The prayer was accepted, and a life of faith and surrender to the Divine Will began…

God accepted her, caused her to grow up well, and had Zachariah take care of her. The exact nature of their relationship is unknown. The Bible notes that she was a relative of Zachariah’s wife. Zachariah had a special tie to Mary, seeing that Mary’s mother had placed her in his custody. Whenever he visited her, he found her with provisions. When he asked where they came from, she said: It is from God. Truly, God provides for whomever He wishes without measure (3:37).

Mary lived in a mihrab, literally a chamber, a place of honor, a sanctuary protected from impurity. The text says that Zachariah had to go there to see Mary, implying that she was confined therein and totally protected from the world. That he was always surprised to find her with food supports this interpretation. God was her true Provider, although she appeared to be in Zachariah’s custody.

Her answer to Zachariah was notable. She stated that God is the true Provider and provides for whomever He wishes without measure. Immediately after Mary’s suggestion, Zachariah prayed: My Lord, grant me offspring from Yourself. Truly, You hear all prayers (3:38). Thus she implied that God could grant any wish, regardless of its impossibility. Zachariah was old and his wife was barren, and yet he asked God for a child. The angels called to him while he was praying, saying that he would be given a son named John, who would be a Prophet. We could say that the Qur’an is hinting about the miraculous birth to come.

This scene shows Mary in all her wisdom and deepness of faith: The miraculous gift of food serves a double function in the story. In the first place, it is a tangible expression of the divine protection Mary receives of her dedication and devotion to God. Second, it functions as Zachariah’s springboard to deeper faith and trust in the deity. In the process, there has been an interesting reversal of roles between Zachariah and Mary. What he provides for her, the superfluous food and drink he brings to the mihrab, is unnecessary for her survival. But what she provides him, a much-needed lesson about the power of God, is indispensable for his. Sequestered in the solitude of the mihrab, she has become his caretaker.(5)

The Annunciation

Two Qur’anic passages mention Mary during her pregnancy, as follows:

The angels said: Oh Mary, God has chosen and purified you. He has chosen you above all other women. Oh Mary, be obedient to your Lord. Prostrate yourself and be among those who bow down. This is part of the hidden news We reveal to you. You were not with them when they cast lots to see who would take care of Mary, nor were you with them when they disputed among themselves. The angels said: Oh Mary, God gives you the good news of a word from Him. His name will be Messiah Jesus, son of Mary, who will be eminent in this world and the next, and will be one of those brought near (to God). He shall speak to people from the cradle and in his later years, and will be one of the righteous. She said: My Lord, how can I have a child when no man has touched me? He said: Thus it is. God creates what He wills. If He decrees something, He only need say: Be!’ and it is. (3:42-47)

Mary is called chosen and purified, one kept from sin by God. She was raised in the purest family and had the utmost dedication to God. Her mother prayed that she and her offspring would be protected from Satan, and her prayers were answered. In addition, she was advised to prostrate herself and be among those who bow down. The Qur’an often advises believers to perform these acts of faith in their prayers: Mary is being exhorted to do the same. The intention behind this, as we have seen with other biblical figures found in the Qur’an, is to remind the reader that the attitude of submission at the heart of Islam is not something that came into existence only with the arrival of Muhammad. Many virtuous people, like Mary, fully submitted themselves to the divine will centuries prior to the emergence of Islam.(6)

The Qur’an reminds Prophet Muhammad and its readers that part of the hidden news is being related. As only God knows all of the hidden news, Muslims are cautious not to add to what the Qur’an has revealed. For example, the place in the east mentioned in the following verse is not precise. It could be a chamber on the eastern side of Zachariah’s house or the city of Nazareth. As the Qur’an does not diverge from its main point, in this case Mary’s self-imposed seclusion even before the annunciation, such irrelevant details are not given. Her decision, made before she knew of this event, cannot be seen as an act of escape from social pressure. It is highly likely that it was an attempt to draw closer to God.

Remember Mary in the Book. When she withdrew from her family to a place in the east and took cover from them, We sent to her Our spirit which appeared to her in the form of a normal person. She said: I take refuge in the Merciful One from you if you fear Him. He said: I am only a messenger from your Lord, to give you a righteous son. She said: How can I have a son when no man has touched me and I have not been unchaste? He said: Thus it is. Your Lord said: It is easy for Me. We will make him a sign for people and mercy from Us. It is an accomplished fact.’ (19:16-21)

One may imagine her distress at such an awkward situation. Raised in the purest household and living a life of chastity and virtue, she now must confront terribly degrading accusations and humiliation. Not comprehending, she said she cannot have a son because she is a chaste virgin. Although the angel confirmed this and said he was sent by her Lord, she still did not comprehend how the pregnancy can occur. Yet her upbringing and faith gave her the strength of heart to submit fully to the Divine Will and bear the result patiently.

She is a young virgin, all alone in a patriarchal society. The Qur’an does not mention Joseph, and Biblical sources only give him a minor role. Mary does not rely on her relatives or her appointed guardian for support. Her lifestyle seems to demonstrate the fact that God is the only one to rely on and turn to for help.

The Birth of Jesus

She conceived him and withdrew with him to a distant place. The birth pangs led her to the trunk of a palm tree, where she cried: Oh, if only I had died before this and had been forgotten, unremembered! Then (a voice) called out to her from below her: Do not grieve. Your Lord has placed a stream beneath you. Shake the trunk of the palm tree and it will drop fresh ripe dates upon you. Eat, drink, and be consoled. If you see another person, say: I have vowed a fast to the Merciful One and will not speak to anyone today.’ (19:22-27)

Mary went to an unknown distant place. Muslim commentators have proposed Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Egypt, and other places.(7) Wherever the place, she was far from civilization and in distress.

Her cry in verse 23, a heartfelt complaint in which she laments her situation, raises some interesting questions about her character. Most of the explanations of the cause of her anguish extend beyond herself, like her concern that others might mistakenly call Jesus the son of God, rather than understand it as due to lack of belief or some other personal flaw on her part. Whatever its precise cause, there is an ironic element to her prayer that can be easily overlooked. The image of Mary praying that she be unremembered and obliterated from history strikes the reader as incompatible with the high profile and exalted status she has come to hold within both Islam and Christianity. Against her wishes, she certainly was not forgotten! In this sense, Mary’s prayer was not answered.(8)

She carried him (Jesus) to her people, who said: Oh Mary, you have done something strange! Oh sister of Aaron, your father was not wicked nor was your mother unchaste. She pointed to him. They said: How can we talk to a child in the cradle? (19:27-29)

As her son was to be a sign for people and a mercy from God, Mary brought him to her people. God did not desert her. According to Jewish law, an adulteress had to be stoned to death. From his cradle, Jesus defended his mother: I am God’s servant. He has given me the Book, made me a Prophet, blessed me wherever I am, and charged me with prayer and almsgiving as long as I live. [He has made me] dutiful toward my mother, nor has He made me a tyrant, wretched (19:31-32).

One of Jesus’ miracles is to speak in the cradle to refute the calumnies against his mother. This idea has had a profound effect on the Muslim mentality, and to slander a virtuous Muslim woman is still considered one of the greatest sins. The text has certainly contributed to the preservation of the sense of woman’s honor in Muslim society.(9)

Conclusion

Mary’s story is an example of courage and trust. Her deep faith and devotion caused her unique life to flourish. In addition, her life shows that religion, when understood correctly, does not pacify or restrict believers but rather frees them from the chains of earthly worries and fears. This freedom allows them to fulfill their purpose in life.

Understanding that submission to the Divine Will is the ultimate source of relief in this world and the Hereafter, Mary submitted herself and found peace. Her example lives on in the hearts of all believers and continues to inspire all who seek to live up to their full spiritual potential.

Footnotes

1. Heribert Busse, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity: Theological and Historical Affiliations, trans. Allison Brown (Princeton: 1998), 113.
2. Geoffrey Parrinder, Jesus in the Qur’an (New York: 1965), 60.
3. The Bible states that Joseph was Mary’s husband. John Kaltner, Ishmael Instructs Isaac: An Introduction to the Qur’an for Bible Readers (Minnesota: 1999), 231.
4. Suat Yildirim, Mevcud Kaynaklara Gore Hiristiyanlik (Izmir: 1996), 3.
5. Kaltner, Ishmael, 212.
6. Ibid., 215.
7. Ibid., 224.
8. Ibid., 225.
9. Jacques Jomier, The Great Themes of the Qur’an, trans. Zoe Hersov (London: 1997), 87.

Light reveals a world of colors by painting everything it touches. Our plain and soulless furniture gains meaning. Our brown bookshelf, gray study table, green mug carpets, rugs, curtains the yellow wheat fields in the harvest picture, the blue china vase, our favorite brown sweater the striking green of a tree surrounded by concrete buildings, the blue sky, and the carousel of life that becomes worth living by being embellished with colors.

Let’s travel through the wonderful world of colors. Each color conceals a story. Some virtuous and sensitive eyes see the truth through them, while others see rage, anger, and all the evils dictated by the alter ego. Colors carry such feelings as anger and hope, and symbolize such concepts as sinfulness and innocence. They are abused or sacrificed, and widely preferred or despised.

Literally, color is a phenomenon of light or visual perception that enables people to differentiate otherwise identical objects. Being one of matter’s distinguishing characteristics, in a sense its meanings are the meanings of life. As truth is interwoven with life, truth might be viewed through colors.

Their Influence on People

The most important aspect of color in daily life is probably the aesthetic and psychological responses that they evoke”our psychological perception”and the resulting influences on art, fashion, commerce, and even physical and emotional sensations. For example, reds, oranges, yellows, and browns are warm, whereas blues, greens, and grays are cold. Reds, oranges, and yellows are said to induce excitement, cheerfulness, stimulation, and aggression; blues and greens to induce security, calm, and peace; and browns, grays, and blacks to bring sadness, depression, and melancholy. However, we can only generalize about such subjective perceptions.

Age, mood, mental health, and other factors affect color perception. People sharing distinct personal traits often share color perceptions and preferences. For example, schizophrenics are said to have abnormal color perception, and very young children learning to distinguish colors usually prefer red or orange. Many psychologists believe that analyzing one’s use of and response to color reveals relevant physiological and psychological information. Some even suggest that specific colors have a therapeutic effect on physical and mental disabilities.

In China, India, and Japan, colors are used in alternative medicine. Orange is considered good for depression, yellow for diabetes, green for ulcers and spiritual fatigue, and blue-violet for epilepsy. What is important here is the body’s receptor of color, such as eyes or skin. Each color’s wavelength carries and transmits energy to the bodily part having that color. This energy removes physical and emotional disorders, and colorful rays directly influence the neural system. Thus, different illnesses are treated with different rays of colors having different tones and impacts.

Although these medical benefits are still in question, color does cause definite physical and emotional reactions. Rooms and objects that are white or have light shades of cool colors may seem larger than those with intense dark or warm colors. As designers and decorators know, black or very dark colors have a slimming or shrinking effect. A cool room decorated in pale blue requires a higher thermostat setting than a warm room painted pale orange to achieve the same sensation of warmth.

People viewing unusual colors produced by special illumination may experience headaches and nervous disorders. Tasty wholesome food served under such conditions appears repulsive and may induce illness. Other colors induce pleasure. When an affectively positive or pleasurably perceived color is viewed after a less pleasant color, it produces more pleasure than when viewed by itself. This effect is known as affective contrast enhancement.

What Colors Have Experienced

Colors are not universal. Some languages do not have separate words for green and blue or yellow and orange, whereas Eskimos use 17 different words for white to describe different snow conditions. Comparing color terminology reveals certain consistent patterns. All languages have designations for black and white.

If a third hue is distinguished, it is red; next comes yellow or green, and then other colors.

Consider soccer fanatics who so love their team’s colors that they tear and burn the other team’s flag. They dye their hair and faces yellow-red, blue-white, or red-white to match their team’s colors, but cannot stand the opponent’s colors. They taunt the opposing team with clothes in their own team’s colors, even to the extent of injury or death. Most important, they gain identity, send a message, and enjoy the confidence that comes with belonging to a peer group.

Colors are gifts, not a cause of separatism. As sociologist Orhan Kologlu points out, people of different religions and nations chose different colors. In the Balkans, blue and white are considered to be Greece’s colors (its flag is blue and white). During conflicts, people do not use the colors of other nation’s flags. But this is emotional and irrational, for no nation owns a color. During a time of Turkish“Greek tension, red-white clothes were despised in Greece, and blue-white clothes in Turkey. Bulent Ecevit (current prime minister of Turkey) broke a taboo with his poem Blue Magic, which contains the lines: Like a blue magic, lies a warm sea between us / We are two nations, as beautiful as the other, at its shores. He also chose blue and white as his political party’s colors. Ironically, this party whose emblem is in Greek (!) colors now is now in power Turkey.

A nation’s color choices change over time. Ancient Turks considered blue as sacred, for it was the color of the sky. Some Turkic nations still use it as their national color. In medieval Europe, blue stood for nobility and aristocracy, and the latter were believed to have blue blood. But in America, blue is associated with low spirits, melancholy, and depression (a blue funk). For women it means learned and intellectual, while in morality it means puritanical. It also means profane or indecent (blue movies), off-color or risqué (blue jokes), and a kind of music (the Blues) dominated by sad and melancholic themes.

Red and black are most commonly associated with sociopolitical conflict. For years red symbolized violence, pillage, murder, oppression, anti-democracy, and terrorism. In emotional terms, it means a face flushed with anger or embarrassment (red in the face), or bloody (red eyes).

In politics, it means inciting or endorsing radical sociopolitical change, especially by force, as in red uprising or anything associated with communism (the former USSR’s Red Square). There are even two Red armies: the Soviet army established after the 1917 Revolution, and the Japanese Red Army formed in 1969. The first was renowned for its strict penal codes and discipline, such as punishing battalions by sending them on suicide missions. New regulations in 1960 considerably lightened the Soviet Army’s redness. The second army, a small-structured Japanese terrorist organization, remained active until 1990.

Italy’s Red Brigades, an extreme left-wing terrorist organization, chose red and violence as it sought to prepare 1970s Italy for a Marxist uprising. Chinese revolutionaries seeking to end China’s traditional culture chose red and violence, as did Cambodia’s radical Khmer Rouge (Red Khmers). This latter group massacred an entire generation, an estimated 1.5 million people out of an estimated population of 5.7 million, during their 3.5-year reign. 

It is used for heavy or serious (black intrigue); dirty and soiled (black hands); thoroughly sinister, evil, or wicked (black deed); negative (a black mark in one’s record); the supernatural or Satan (black magic); very sad, gloomy, or calamitous (black despair); a disaster (black Saturday); hostility, angry discontent, sullenness (black resentment); grim, distorted, grotesque satire (black humor); or covert intelligence operations (black government missions).

Although we associate black with negative meanings, we cannot deny that it also symbolizes seriousness, respectability, and nobility. There are occasions when white, the symbol of purity and innocence, is inappropriate says social psychiatrist Ibrahim Ballioglu. Colors should be used with the proper tones and combinations. He claims that it is logical to associate white with positive and black with negative concepts. Black and white are like night and day. The dark of night scares people, whereas the light of day relieves them. The colors hidden at night come forward in daytime. People are inclined to like light and bright colors. We apply white light in our depression patients’ therapy. One’s interest in dark colors gives clues about one’s mood. A patient’s wearing white signals that he or she is getting well.

In history, such groups as the Black Hand,1 Black Faces, and Black Shirts favored violence and vandalism. Mussolini’s fascist Black Shirts group is the most interesting. After his overthrow 1943 and the Black Shirts’ dismissal, people avoided wearing black shirts.

White means free of color; light or pallid (white hair, lips white with fear); without spot, blemish, or moral impurity; innocent or chaste (white wedding); harmless (white lie, white magic); and favorable or fortunate (white days of life). It also means politically conservative or reactionary people who undertake counter-revolutionary measures (white terror). In music, it is associated with a musical tone quality characterized by a controlled pure sound and a lack of warmth, color, and resonance.

Green means mild and clement (green winter); pleasantly alluring; youthful and vigorous; not ripened or matured (green apples, tender green grasses); fresh and new; marked by a pale, sickly, or nauseated appearance; envious (green with envy); somehow deficient or unsophisticated; and an environmentalist political movement (Green Peace) or individual working to preserve environmental quality.

Yellow is associated with sensationalized scandal items or distorted ordinary news (yellow journalism), and cowardice (a yellow streak up one’s back). Pink signifies moderately radical and usually socialistic political or economic views, as well as emotional excitement (tickled pink).

Do Nations or Religions Have Their Own Color?

Color harmony, preferences, symbolism, and other psychological aspects are culturally conditioned and vary with time and place. For instance, American and Japanese concepts of warm and cold colors are essentially the same. However, Japanese consider blues and greens good and the red-purple range bad, while Americans consider the red-yellow-green range good and oranges and red-purples bad. In the West, black signifies mourning; other cultures use white, purple, or gold.

Orhan Kural says that societies tend to use colors that comply with their culture and belief: In Indonesia’s Banggai Islands, people believe that their ancestors arrived in brown canoes. Their houses look like brown-painted canoes. They sacrifice a water buffalo and hang its head at their doors to make funerals more elaborate. During these rituals they wear red. Since the streets are filled with blood, red is dominant in their culture. In Mongolia, green is dominant. Mongolians has five times as many animals as people. I think they paint their tents and furniture green due to their love of animals and nature. In Guatemala, the Spanish invaders forced each clan to wear a different color in order to differentiate them. This seems to be welcomed and accepted by the people, for it remains in force. All women I saw in the bazaars wore the same color. The city of Varanasi in India and the sacred Ganj river reminds me of orange, and the Taj Mahal reminds me of white.

Nevval Sevindi, who lived in Iran for some time, says that Iranians consider black to be holy and noble. According to her, Iranians and Westerners both see black as a symbol of mourning. Iranians use black to commemorate their Imams, and Westerners wear it at funerals and to commemorate their saints.

It seems that they are always mourning, since they keep Karbala’ alive in their memories.2 Red is a color of disgrace in Iran. However in Turkey, China, and India, red is the color of weddings. In Turkey, the bride wears a red veil over her head on the eve of the wedding day and a red belt on the wedding day. Women wear a red ribbon after giving birth. Red means a new future and abundance. Turks do not consider black the color of mourning. They attend funerals in ordinary clothes, for death is an ordinary part of life. Africans and Asians like to wear many colors. I associate this with their living in bright and sunny countries and within nature. Sunlight affects their clothes and moods. Violet is the Byzantine Empire’s color, for only the emperor wore it. This tradition continued after the emperor’s death, for his grave was built with violet porphyry stones, says Sevindi.

Tumulus-hillock excavations in Tekirdag, Turkey, reveal that Alexander the Great’s father wore mostly purplish colors, like that of a judas-tree. Maybe this is why Byzantine emperors valued purple tones so much. Other researchers give different reasons. For instance, historian Haluk Dursun states: There is a belief in Christianity: Judas Iscariot, one of the 12 apostles of Jesus Christ, betrayed him at the Last Supper. Romans arrested and crucified Jesus. Judas, full of regret, hung himself from a tree full of white flowers. This tree felt so ashamed that it reddened. Hence it is called judas-tree. It also is said that the Byzantines recaptured Constantinople from Latin invaders when the judas-trees were blossoming, and so value this color.

Do religions have colors? Yes and no. Muslims favor green, as the covers of tombs and sarcophagus are green, and green is common in mosque decorations. Otherwise, Islam does not have its own color. Perhaps people associate green with Islam because Prophet Muhammad liked green, as it relaxes the eyes and connotes nature. In fact, he advised people to dress in plain and clean color-compliant clothes that would please the eyes.

Eastern Orthodox priests dress totally in black and wear a black cap. But this is probably not a religious color, for black is favored by Catholic priests and nuns as well, maybe for its simplicity and sobriety. Some Protestant (e.g., Lutheran) priests wear white or gray, which might be a reaction to the Catholic Church. Also, many Orthodox Jewish sect members wear long black coats and hats, usually during religious or important events to signify the occasion.

Conclusion

Colors are used for many purposes, ranging from medicine to art, politics to anthropology. They are an indispensable ingredient of our lives. But no matter how they are used, the best use of colors is observed in the works of the Great Artist.

Footnotes

1. The Black Hand is associated with two groups: immigrant Sicilian and Italian extortion rackets in America’s Italian communities (roughly between 1890 to 1920), and a secret Serbian terrorist society that promoted the liberation of Serbs outside Serbia from Habsburg or Ottoman rule.
2. Karbala’: A place in southern Iraq where Imam Husayn’s forces were defeated and killed by the Umayyad caliph Yazid I in 680.

References

• Akagunduz, Ulku Ozel. Freedom to Colors.
• Zaman North America 267 (8 Nov. 1999).
• Soylemez, Hasim. Diseases Are Treated by Colors. Aksiyon 242 (24-30 June 1999).
• Sahin, M. A. Truth through Colors (Izmir: 1992).
• www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/.
• www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary (especially the shades of meaning for different colors).

Why and how civilizations rise and fall is a hard question to answer. To do so, one must understand the civilization and the time in which it began to rise. Jason Goodwin, an English journalist, uses memoirs of European visitors and standard histories to explore the 600-year existence of the Ottoman Empire. He writes: This is a book about a people who do not exist. The word ˜Ottoman does not describe a place. Nobody nowadays speaks their language.

The Ottoman Empire, at one time, stretched from the border of Iran to the gates of Vienna and included hundreds of ethnic groups and three dozen nations. United under a tolerant form of Islam, the Ottoman Turks forged a culture that was such a prodigy of pep, such a miracle of human ingenuity, that contemporaries felt it was helped into being by powers not quite human”diabolical or divine, depending on their point of view.

The Ottomans were the first state to maintain a standing army in Europe since Roman days. Chalcocondyle, a Byzantine chronicler, wrote:

I think there is no prince who has his armies and camps in better order, both in abundance of victuals and in beautiful order they use in encamping without any confusion or embarrassment.

Goodwin argues that the key to Ottoman success, besides an obvious skill at war, was cultural and institutional open-mindedness: The Ottoman umbrella made room for Spanish Jews, Orthodox Greeks, Venetian merchants, Albanian tribesmen, Arab bedouins, and others. The Ottomans did not demand religious or linguistic uniformity. Unlike later imperialists, they never asked themselves why others were not like them. Muslims followed Islamic law, and Christians and Jews were expected to have their own laws. Community leaders were allowed to run the community’s affairs as long as they did not come into direct conflict with Islamic organization.

An Ottoman was not born, but made, passing through imperial schools, following the requisite course of studies says Goodwin. There was no inherited nobility, as in other contemporary European empires, for people rose on merit. Cities prospered by agriculture and trade. Social welfare projects were maintained by tax-exempt charitable foundations holding almost one-third of the land and great wealth. These foundations built bridges and mosques, took care of the sick and the poor, and lodged travelers for free.

With the coming of the Industrial Revolution, however, the Ottomans lost their military, economic, and social superiority. Decreased military power resulted in land losses and reduced tax revenues, and self-indulgent leaders could not adapt the intricate socio-economic structure to changing conditions. Although palace intrigue, factional rivalry, military disloyalty, and nationalist rebellions in Greece and Egypt combined to sap its strength, it survived into the twentieth century.

Goodwin narrates this fascinating story in an elegantly written, thoroughly entertaining work of popular history. As he quotes from Andrija Kacic-Mosic: These songs will not be for everyones taste May those who find them pleasing sing them; may those who do not, go off to sleep.

Religion and Science: The Institute on Religion in an Age of Science, Inc., will convene on July 29-August 4, 2001. The topic, Human Meaning in a Technological Culture, will explore and evaluate how these powerful [information and biotechnoloy] technologies redefine, for better and for worse, human identity and meaning, as well as ideas about reality and God. www.iras.org.

Call for Papers: The European Society for the Study of Science and Theology (ESSSAT) has issued a call for papers. Details about its conference, to be held during March 19-24, 2002, are now available. www.esssat.org.

The Future of Religion? The World Network of Religious Futurists will meet in Minneapolis, MN, July 29-31, 2001. Attendees are scholars and activists from around the world who study the future of their religious tradition in view of world civilization. www.wfs.org.

Interesting Books: Mariano Artigas, The Mind of the Universe: Understanding Science and Religion; Robert Herrmann (ed.), Expanding Humanity’s Vision of God: New Thoughts on Science and Religion; Arnold Benz, The Future of the Universe: Chance, Chaos, God?; Ted Peters (ed.), Science and Theology: The New

Consonance; Ian Barbour, When Science Meets Religion; Reuven Firestone, Children of Abraham: An Introduction to Judaism for Muslims; Khalid Duran, Children of Abraham: An Introduction to Islam for Jews; Michael Shermer, How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science. www.amazon.com.

African History in for a Rewrite: Professor John Hunwick and Northwestern University have received a $1 million Ford Foundation grant to study sub-Saharan Africa’s written traditions. In 1999, Hunwick discovered 3,000 Arabic manuscripts held by a Timbuktu family since 1592. He hopes to prove sub-Saharan Africans were not illiterate, and therefore uncivilized, before European colonialism. www.chicago-tribune.com.

In Society

Patent Fight Ended: Last year, 2.5 million Africans died from AIDS because they could not afford medicine. Large pharmaceutical companies, citing intellectual property rights, went to court to block South Africa’s efforts to get a WTO wavier to import far cheaper generic drugs on the grounds of national emergency. The companies withdrew their case on April 19, 2001, claiming that harsh international criticism was not a factor. http://dailynews.netscape.com.

Human Trafficking: The recent deaths of 58 out of 60 illegal Chinese immigrants in Europe highlights the problem of human trafficking. The UN estimates that those involved make $8 billion to $12.3 billion annually in profits. www.cnn.com.

Patenting Gene Data: Biotechnology firms are seeking exclusive ownership of the pure scientific formulas that represent genes. Critics claim this would make any recording and storing of formulas illegal without the patent holder’s permission, effectively ending some genetic research. At least 16 such patents are now pending at the Canadian Patent Office, and similar ones in America and elsewhere. Legal scholars and intellectual property experts fear that the free flow of genetic knowledge and innovation is at stake. www.nationalpost.com.

New Data Transmission Record: French and Japanese engineers have squeezed more than 10 trillion bits per second through single optical fibers. This record capacity equals about 150 million simultaneous phone conversations. www.techreview.com.

In Science

Return to Mars: NASA launched its Mars Odyssey orbiter on April 7, 2001. When it lands on Mars during October 2001, it will map the surface’s chemical and mineral makeup, determine Mar’s radiation level and how it might affect future astronauts, locate near-surface water, and map mineral deposits from past water activity. www.nasa/gov.

A Biological First: Biologists have mapped the entire genetic code of Arabidopsis thaliana, a plant belonging to the mustard family. Scientists expect applications in agriculture (the genetic manipulation of rice, wheat, and other crops) and medicine (many medicines come from plants). www.popsi.com.

RNA Chips: RNA switches clustered on a gold-coated silicon surface can identify different strains of E.coli found in bacterial cultures. Scientists hope to develop RNA chips that can reveal the molecular composition of complex mixtures better than current DNA biochips. Future uses are seen in detecting drugs, toxins, metabolites, proteins, and nucleic acids. www.techreview.com.

New Cancer Treatment: Molecularly targeted therapy drugs recognize and attack specific molecules unique to specific cancers. The model drug leading the way is Glivec (STI571), which fights CML, a cancer characterized by excessive white blood cell overproduction. Such drugs are designed by working backward from a known abnormal molecule specific to a certain type of cancer, and thus have a limited use. Glivec is getting a priority FDA review. http://abcnews.go.com.

Virtual Reality Update: Computer scientists affiliated with the National Tele-Immersion Initiative have produced a prototype virtual office. Digital cameras that monitor movements from various angles, head-mounted tracking gear, polarized glasses, and screens mounted at right angles to your desk allow you to see your colleague’s office. All images are life-size and 3D. www.popsci.com.

Another important ingredient was their refusal to consider variations within a given race. As shown below, findings were extrapolated to cover an entire race, regardless of original sample size, and undesirable individual variations either were explained away or qualified to obtain the desired results. Given their discovery of new animal and plant species due to variations within the overall species, it is surprising that they did not extend this to people. Even more surprising is that this continues in our own time.

All of these led to one conclusion: the white race is forever superior to non-white races. Results have been and continue to be devastating.

Early Pseudoscience

During the Age of Enlightenment, objective scientists tried to prove that a races intelligence is determined by the distance between the navel and the male genitalia, skull size, slant of facial characteristics (distorted to make Africans appear more like gorillas or monkeys), brain weight and size, facial features (blacks have longer faces than whites, and so are closer to apes) and the assumed time of closing of sutures in the brain (non-white ones closed first in the brain’s front, where intelligence was asserted to be located; those of whites closed last). When the data did not give the desired results, theories were dropped, heavily qualified to give the right data, or sometimes forged outright. The result always was the same: Whites were superior to non-whites. A related theory held that the races evolved at different rates. This time dark-skinned Australian Aborigines came in last, followed by Africans.

Such leading figures as Voltaire and Hume compared Africans to animals who could never hope to equal Europeans. Cornelius de Pauw wrote that the sun had destroyed the most delicate and subtle organs of the [Africans’] brain. The damage was irreversible.(1) Other scientists devised various racial groups, always placing whites on top.

Scientific Racism in America

Looking for ways to justify slavery and genocide against Native Americans in a self-proclaimed land of human equality and liberty, Americans turned to science. When combined with the mania for measurement in the second half of the nineteenth century, racism became more acceptable. Several theories were developed, as follows:

Polygenism: Each race had its own Adam and Eve. Louis Agassiz, a major polygenist who emigrated to America in 1840, stated that the Biblical account referred only to Caucasians. Blacks could have equal legal rights with whites, but certainly not social equality, for they had the intelligence level of children. And, as they were not the same life form as whites, they did not need to enjoy equality. This theory never gained wide acceptance in the American South, where Biblical justifications for slavery and racial hierarchy held sway.(2) American pre-Adamites claimed that the Negro was a beast of the field created by God on the fifth day to labor for the ultimate object of God’s creation: white people.(3)

Crainiology: This European pseudoscience held that skull size determined intelligence. Samuel Morton

(d. 1851), a leading American scientist, used it to rank races. Practitioners made their work appear to be scientific by accepting their prejudices as facts and then working backwards to discover supporting data. Any incorrect results and methodological errors were explained away, severely qualified, or ignored.

Physiognomy and Phrenology: Adherents taught that physical variations in color and appearance cause intellectual and moral differences. Physiognomy involved telling one’s mental and moral capabilities by studying his or her face. Phrenology asserted that mental faculties are located in brain organs on the brain’s surface. As usage determines the organ’s size, the skull’s bumps and indentations disclose a person’s emotional and intellectual functions. Phrenology was discredited in the 1830s, but remained influential in England, Australia, and America until the end of the century.

Laying the Foundations for Genocide

The Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth century allowed certain European countries, and then America, to attain military and economic superiority. When combined with prevailing prejudices and Darwin’s findings during the mid-nineteenth century, some members of the elite saw the disappearance of inherently inferior peoples as natural and even desirable. For example:

Herbert Spencer, Social Statistics (1850): The forces which are working out the great scheme of perfect happiness, taking no account of incidental suffering, exterminate such sections of mankind as stand in their way. Be he human or be he brute”the hindrance must be got rid of.(4)

Eduard von Hartmann, Philosophy of the Unconscious (1869): The true philanthropist, if he has comprehended the natural law of anthropological evolution, cannot avoid desiring an acceleration of the last convulsion [the extinction of savages who are on the verge of extinction], and labor for that end.(5)

W. Winwood Reade, Savage Africa (1864): We must learn to look at this result [the extinction of Africans] with composure. It illustrates the beneficent law of nature, that the weak must be devoured by the strong.(6)

Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871): At some future period not very distant as measured in centuries, the civilised races of man will almost

certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.(7) Darwin’s struggle for survival and survival of the fittest made the disappearances of whole peoples, even races, inevitable and therefore acceptable.

These people were among the leading intellectuals of their time.

The Result: Nazi Germany

Germany was one of the most advanced European nations of this time. Basing itself firmly within this tradition, the Nazis began to determine who had the right to live. Surprisingly, or maybe not, they were helped by American scientific data.

Fritz Lenz (1887-1970), a leading German racial hygienist in the 1920s, argued that race is the ultimate principle of value, for genes determined mental and physical traits and environmental factors have no discernable effect. He based his claims on WWI US army intelligence tests. When black test scores did not fit in, he claimed that extensive admixture of white blood has contributed to raise the intellectual level of the colored population.(8) He asserted that blacks suffer developmental retardation after puberty and thus are inherently cruel, childlike, irresponsible, sexually promiscuous, and lack self-restraint. He had only this praise: they are good with their hands and can be trained in the manual crafts. The effects of slavery, Jim Crow legislation, social exclusion, and enforced ignorance, among other social realities, meant nothing. In Outline of Human Genetics and Racial Hygiene (1923), which was praised in America, he cited Plato’s social hierarchy of gold (rulers), silver (artisans), and bronze (slaves) as a justification for social inequities.

Nazi leaders claimed to have learned from other American precedents, such as:

Sterilizing inferiors. This began in America, when Indiana became the first state (1907) to sterilize the mentally ill and criminally insane. Other states followed; the Nazis just expanded the definition to racial, political, and other undesirables who had no right to live because they were a burden on the German Aryan race.

Outlawing racial intermarriage. The Nazis outlawed Aryan and non-Aryan intermarriage (1935), drawing on the American South’s and South Africa’s antimiscenegation laws. Earlier, in 1908, Germans were forbidden to marry natives of German Southwest Africa (now Namibia), and all such marriages were voided on the grounds that only defective individuals would result.

Controlled immigration. America passed a series of immigration restriction laws in 1924. H. H. Goddard, a popularizer of Binet’s work in the field of intelligence measuring, linked undesirable behavior to supposed mental deficiency. He and his associates would determine whether arriving immigrants at Ellis Island should be admitted or not. Possible influences of the lack of education, the trauma of immigrating, being tested in an unknown language, illness, effects of a difficult sea voyage, and other mitigating factors were raised and then dismissed in favor of hereditary. According to his scale, four-fifths of all Jewish, Hungarian, Italian, and Russian immigrants were feeble-minded. He recanted his theories in 1928.

American Variants

Such pseudoscientific theories have fallen into disfavor due to the horrors of Nazi race-based genocide and medical experimentation, the social and legal reform policies of the 1950s and 1960s, and scientific and social research showing the biases and flaws of such research. However, old ideas often appear in a new garb, as seen in Richard J. Herrnstein’s and Charles Murray’s controversial The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (1996). IQ Tests: IQ (intelligence quotient) tests remain a standard feature of American education. Its originator Alfred Binet, disillusioned with crainiology and the supposed physical traits of criminals and other inferiors, developed this technique in 1904 as one part of determining a child’s mental level. It consists of a series of random tasks ranked in order of difficulty. When the child stops, his or her mental age is calculated. Binet said that intelligence is too complex to capture with a single number, and wanted to free a beautiful native intelligence from the trammels of the school.(9)

Ever since, American researchers have tried to prove him wrong, even though there is no agreed-upon definition for intelligence. Criticisms of this methodology abound. Scholars assert that IQ tests are culturally biased in favor of urban whites and ignore non-white social realities. A major reality is white flight from increasingly non-white inner cities, for minorities tend to settle in large cities. Lost tax revenues mean less-qualified teachers, deteriorating facilities, and non-current technology and curriculum. This causes an exodus of good students to private schools, which deprives the remaining students of inspiring peer group role models. When added to such other urban realities as poverty, poor nutrition, violence and gangs, drugs and alcohol, many minority students give up. They see racism blocking their parents or relatives, even if they are educated. If education cannot free them from racism, why should they pursue it? Completing a vicious circle, the resulting low IQ test scores prove intellectual inferiority.

As IQ scores are held to be unalterable, minority students are forever stigmatized as somehow intellectually deficient.(10) Psychosurgery: This procedure, after finding little success in Europe, spread to America. It claimed to calm agitated mental patients and others, without harming other mental functions, by severing nerves connected to the temporal and frontal cortex, which control emotional behavior and aggressiveness. Walter Freeman and James Watts developed the Freeman-Watts Standard Procedure for prefrontal lobotomies. Freeman later developed the ice-pick lobotomy, which was as grisly as it sounds. Dr. Antanio Egas Moniz received the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology (1949) for creating the prefrontal leucotomy. Popular from 1939-51, it gradually fell out of favor due to ethical concerns, medical drugs that treated the same symptoms, and devastating side effects. During its acceptability, it was used in America and elsewhere to control prisoners, the insane, political dissidents/rebels, and even unruly children and troublesome relatives.(11)

In the 1950s, American physicians Vernon Mark, Frank Ervin, and William Sweet were given almost $1 million by the government to prove their theory: urban rebellions were caused by brain damaged individuals who could be cured by psychosurgery (lobotomy).(12) The social and economic reasons for such rebellions were not considered. Genetic Predispositions to Violence: The belief that everything has a chemical or medical solution is currently very strong in the American medical community and the general population at large. Even the government has lent its support. Consider the following examples: In February 1992, Frederick Goodwin informed the National Health Advisory Council of supposed similarities between monkeys and blacks: a tendency toward violence and killing off each other, links between hyper-aggressive and hyper-sexuality to perpetuate the species, and a loosening of social controls that whites have imposed upon themselves over thousands of years of their evolution. His reward, despite public outcry: appointed head of the influential National Institute of Mental Health. His first act: approved funding for the National Violence Initiative.(13) Calling it the government’s highest science priority, he says it applies the tools of behavior genetics to detect biological markers in at risk inner city children and to treat them with drugs at a very early age before they have become criminalized.(14) One of his publications calls for more attention to biological and genetic factors in violent crime, more research on new pharmaceuticals that reduce violent behavior, and asks researchers to determine whether male or black persons have a higher potential for violence, and if so, why?(15) The Human Genome Project: This $3 billion effort is designed to map our entire genetic code so that cures for genetically related diseases can be found. Some of those involved in it, however, say that discoveries will help cure society of crime, poverty, and other social ills.(16) Racial Profiling: This practice is linked with the war on drugs, gangs, and terrorist threats. Made official policy during the Clinton administration, there is now a strong push to have it abolished due to police and airport policies that are considered harassment, unjustified, and race-based. High-profile cases have taken place in New York City (Abner Luima and Amadou Diallo, both black immigrants), Los Angeles (Rodney King), and elsewhere. Many other incidents go unreported and unpublicized.

Current Research

According to the Breggins, well-established opponents of such practices, we have reached the following point: Against this background of expectations and beliefs, scientists and doctors are attempting to address violence [among non-whites] as a disease: The U.S. Public Health Service has launched a public health campaign against violence, focusing upon vulnerable individuals. The most powerful psychiatrist in the federal government has publicly promoted the screening and preventive treatment of inner-city children”those with a presumed biological and genetic predisposition to become violent when they grow older. Federal agencies, foundations, and private industry are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into finding the genetic source of social behavior. Once it is found,drug treatments can be developed and administered to those who arebiologically or genetically disposed to violence. Supporters of the federal Human Genome Project suggest that science is on the verge of locating genes that predispose people to everything from poverty and unemployment to alcoholism and crime. Anticipating such discoveries, the Human Genome Project has funded a conference called Genetic Factors in Crime. Researchers and clinicians alike are frequently quoted in the media as citing genetic predispositions for every possible psychological and social problem, from inattentive behavior in school to alcoholism, schizophrenia, crime, and violence. The view that widespread violence can be best defined and treated as an individual disorder ignores other vast influences, including social, economic, educational, environmental and cultural differences in experience. The reduction of human experience to an expression of DNA or a wholly biological event shows an underlying bias and ideology”even though it is presented as objective research.(17)

Conclusion

Biological and genetic predeterminism seek to justify the status quo instead of trying to solve such existing social problems as, among others, race-based poverty, segregation, discrimination in housing and employment, substandard education, lack of equal opportunity, and violence. In this respect, they deny many core assumptions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: human equality and respect, individual responsibility, the value of education, the possibility of self-improvement, and the ultimate triumph of the human will by connection with the Divine.

Footnotes

1 Scott Foutz, Ignorant Science: The Eighteenth Century’s Development of a Scientific Racism. Quodlibet Journal 1, no. 8 (December 1999). Online at: www.Quodlibet.net.

2 Genesis 9: 20-27 was interpreted in such a way that Ham and his descendents were forever cursed to be a race of servants because Ham had looked upon Noah as he lay naked and drunk. The Qur’an does not mention this.

3 Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis (Cambridge, MA: 1988), 13.

4 Sven Lindqvist, Exterminate All the Brutes. Tr. Joan Tate (New York: 1996), 8.

5 Ibid., 9.

6 Ibid., 131.

7 Ibid., 107.

8 Proctor, Racial Hygiene, 48, 52.

9 Stephen Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: 1996), 180, 181.

10 These and other arguments are discussed fully in Claude Fischer et al., Inequality by Design (Princeton: 1996); Russell Jacobi and Naomi Glauberman, eds., The Bell Curve Debate (New York and London: 1995); and Ashley Montagu ed., Race & IQ Expanded Edition (New York 1999).

11 Renato M. E. Sabbatini, The History of Psychosurgery, Brain & Mind Magazine (June: 1997). Online at: www.epub.org.br/cm/n02/ historia/lobotomy.htm.

12 Mitchel Cohen, Beware the Violence Initiative Project ” Coming Soon to an Inner City Near You, Synthesis/Regeneration 19 (Spring 1999). Online at: www.greens.org/s-r/19/19-07.html. This article recounts medical experiments conducted on minority children since 1992, and shows the close relationship between researchers and pharmaceutical companies.

13 Ibid.

14 Washington Post (29 July 1992). Online at: www.breggin.com/Mehlerart.html.

15 Frederick Goodwin, Understanding and Preventing Violence, (National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council: 1992). Partially funded by the Centers for Disease Control, the U.S. Justice Department, and the National Science Foundation. Online at: www.breggin.com/Mehlerart.html.

16 Ibid.

17 Excerpted from Peter Roger Breggin and Ginger Ross Breggin, The War Against Children of Color: Psychiatry Targets Inner-City Youth (Monroe, ME: 1998). Online at: www.ftrbooks.com/psych/ breggin/ war_against_children.htm.

O worshipper of causes! Imagine that you see a splendid palace being built of different, marvelous jewels. However, some of these jewels can be found only in China, others in only Andalusia or Yemen, and still some others only in Siberia. Would you not say that only one who controls and owns the whole world, who can have anything he wants brought to him whenever he wants it, can build that palace? 

[its jewels”particles or atoms”are gathered from many worlds: the worlds of spirits and symbols; the Supreme Preserved Tablet¹ and from the worlds of air, water, earth, light, and fire]. Human needs are infinite, and human desires encompass the heavens and Earth. As human beings have connections with everything in this world and the Hereafter, they have no right to pray and worship that which is not the One Who

dominates Earth and the heavens and holds the reins of the world and the Hereafter.

Second Sign

O my heart. The most ignorant people are those who do not recognize the sun while seeing its image in a mirror, but rather love the mirror and seek to preserve it so that they can hold onto the sun permanently. If only they understood that the sun does not perish or disappear when the mirror does, they would direct their love only to the sun itself. A reflection does not depend on the mirror for its permanence; rather, the mirrors permanence depends on it, whereas the original object is self-subsistent. The permanence of the mirrorsliveliness and its shining [with the sun in it] are possible only through the permanence of the suns manifestations and the mirrors facing the sun.

Your heart is like that mirror, and the love of permanence implanted in your nature must be directed only to what is manifested in it. So, say: O Permanent One, You are the Permanent, and turn to Him so that you may become permanent. Then let mortality do as it wishes, for we do not mind whatever befalls us.

Third Sign

Know, my friend, that the All-Wise Creator has implanted within human nature a strange characteristic: Since the world cannot contain you, you frequently utter, as if in a suffocating dungeon, a sound of disgust. Yet something as small as a mustard seed, a cell, a memory, or a minute of time so absorbs you that you are lost in it and passionately attracted to it. The Creator has given you such faculties that some of them would not be satisfied even if they could swallow the world. Others are bored with microscopic particles and cannot tolerate even a hair out of place. You know that your eye cannot work properly if there is a hair in it.

Be alert and careful of what you do so that you will not ruin yourself and your most subtle faculties. An (unlawful) morsel or a word, an (illicit) glance, beckoning, or kiss can ruin you. Everything has an aspect of non-existence that can ruin and swallow you. Look at the mirror in your hand, and see how the sky and its stars are contained in it. See how the Truth inscribes most of your acts or deeds and even most of your life in your mustard seed-sized memory. Glory be to Him, the All-Powerful, the Self-Subsistent.

Fourth Sign

O you who worship the world! Your private world is a narrow, grave-like place. But since its walls are made of glass, and therefore reflect one within the other as far as the eye can see, you see it as spacious, as wide as a town. With respect to this worldly lifes material dimension, the past (the right wall) has finished and the future (the left wall) does not exist. However, as your worlds two mirror-like walls face each other, they come together at the point of your present time and make it difficult for you to distinguish between what is real and what is reflected [in them].

The line of your present extends into [your past and future] and becomes an area. When misfortune moves you, you strike your head against the walls, suffer disappointment, and lose sleep. You see your world as narrower than a grave and a bridge, and your life moves faster than a river and even lightning.

Since this is the nature of worldly life, and of life lived on the level of the flesh and animals, free yourself of animality, leave corporeality behind, and enter the level of life of the heart and spirit! You will find therein a sphere of life and a world of light more broad than the world that you imagined to be so broad. The key to that world is to make the heart utter the sacred words: There is no god but God, which express the mysteries of Divine Unity and knowledge of God, and to make the spirit work them.

Footnote

1. The Supreme Preserved Tablet: This Tablet contains the originals of everything in Divine Knowledge, as well as the principles and laws of creation, and never changes. It has two aspects. One is known as the Supreme Preserved Tablet (85:22), and the other as the Manifest Record (36:12). The Quran states: Nothing befalls us save that which God has decreed or preordained for us (9:51), such as our complete personal characteristics, particularities, and future life-history, and: All moving creature on Earth and flying creatures are communities like humanity. God has neglected nothing in the Record (6:38).

What is reality? What is illusion? Do we have free will, or is our life somehow preprogrammed? Such questions have vexed humanity from the beginning. Technology has added another wrinkle: virtual reality. Now that we can create reality, how do we know that what we consider reality is really real? Might we be in somebody elses virtual reality program?

External Reality

Nobody remembers being born. By learning about ourselves, we learn things from our surroundings and people, and how to experience events on our own. If our senses function normally, we begin to wonder about our sense-related experiences and seek meaningfulness: Who am I? How were I and the world created? Why am I here?

Each normal person is aware of himself or herself and the external world. We learn how to distinguish colors and shapes through sight and touch. But how would blindness or an impaired sense of touch alter our perception and understanding? Perhaps we would ask: Is the red that I see, the roundness that I see and touch, inside or outside of me?

No one can explain what red is. Yet we know what it is because people tell us that a ripe tomato is red, or that beaming the 620 to 740 nanometers wavelength into our eyes lets us experience redness. In both cases, someone else causes us to see red. Redness is also in the mind, for we can see it behind closed eyes. This is true for the other senses as well.

Recent brain studies reveal that neither light nor sound reaches our brain. Rather, it receives electrical stimuli produced by our senses and then processes them into meaningful sense impressions.(1) As the brain cannot distinguish between a real and an artificial electrical stimulus, we can make it see and respond to imaginary pictures as if they were real. When we see a red apple, what do we really see? What does its reality mean? Is it outside of us, are our senses tricking us, or is the world presented to us in another way?

What Is Virtual Reality?

Scientists and philosophers traditionally considered space and time absolute, as defined by Aristotle and formulized by Newton.(2) In other words, the space we inhabit existed before us and will exist after us, and time flows over and through it at a uniform rate. Modern science, particularly Einsteins theory of relativity, undermines this assumption.(3) Time and space are not absolute; they exist with us, partly because we invest them with reality and meaning. If we define real by what we feel, smell, taste, hear, and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by our brain. The world may exist as part of a neural-interactive simulation, meaning that we might be living in a dream world.

Virtual reality is defined as a cartoon that we can enter; an interactive computer system so fast and intuitive that the computer disappears from our mind and leaves its generated environment as reality; and a computer-synthesized, 3-D environment in which more than one person can engage and manipulate simulated physical elements and interact with human representations or invented creatures.(4) Essentially, it is a hardware system that uses headgear, gloves, and other items to make us feel that we are in a computer program. Its core is a simulation system based on a programmed process that handles all interactions, scripted object actions, simulations of physical laws (real or imaginary), and determines the worlds status. This simulation is a discrete process that is iterated once for each time step or frame. Several systems can be coordinated to create a smooth virtual world.

Is Virtual Reality Possible?

As we are conscious beings, our senses gather data and transmit it to our brain for processing. But we cannot consider this data processing, which is a computers main task. We experience things; computers process data.

Virtual reality appears to go a step further because it creates a reality. Miniature screens in goggles, stereophonic sound in headphones, and a pressure-sensitive glove can create an illusory immersion in another 3-D space. But such informatic technologies still depend upon our sense organs to have any effect. Virtual-reality goggles display moving imagery to the retina, but that information must be transported along the optic nerve to the brains visual cortex. Only the brain can render this bio-information into conscious experience.

Theoretically, a computer can create a desired reality via an electrical stimulation of nerve fibers. The brain can be manipulated to see red by stimulating nerves in our retina, feel tension in our shoulders, and so on. Some say scientists can construct a virtual world that is just as real as the real world. Others disagree, citing two objections: the direct mind“body connection, and the necessity of simulating the entire universe.

The Direct Mind Body Connection: Pressing a finger causes a sensation in that fingera specific, visible location in 3-D spacenot in the brain or mind. But if we swing a numb leg, we feel a tingling sensation along it. This numbness and tingling is caused by a compressed nerve further up the leg, maybe in the knee, while the sensations paradoxically seem to be spread toward the foot. Apparently, the brain receives signals from a particular nerve fiber and imaginatively projects the resulting sensation back to the nerve ending. Since the brain receives only a bundle of nerve fibers bearing pulsed signals from the leg, and no information about where these signals originated, it assumes that they originated in the leg’s nerve endings and projects the sensation to that site. As the mind can be fooled, we can say that it creates a complete, subjective body image and then assigns all bodily sensations to specific locations. Do we press our physical or body-image finger? We press our body-image finger, for this is the finger recognized by the brain. Some people say that such feelings as love and toge-therness cannot be simulated. But they can, for the world we experience exists inside the mind and is projected onto the physical world. Seeing love in a spouse’s eyes is the result of light reflected from his or her eyes, focused onto our eyes’ retinas, and coded electrical signals transmitted from the eyeballs to the brain. Thus the only connection is one mediated by electrical (albeit biological) signals. Whether we have bionic or normal eyes is irrelevant, for what matters is the person behind the eyes, not the eyes’ mere visual apprehension. If a couple is immersed in virtual reality, they can still look into each others’ eyes in exactly the same manner. The same is true for togetherness and other feelings, as well as what our five senses experience. Simulating the Universe: This argument overlooks two points: First, we focus on certain things, relegating everything else to the background. Our optic nerve can be stimulated to ignore what we consider un-important. Second, as our sight and hearing are limited to a narrow spectrum of light and sound, the computer only has to focus on that particular spectrum.

An Interesting Experiment

A Ph.D. project in Manchester involves communicating with a robot located 40 miles from the lab.(6) Sensors in its hand read temperature, pressure, and humidity. When wired to a fast communication net, it sends collected data to a glove worn by an operator in the lab so that he or she can feel what the robot feels. This two-way communication system enables the operator to command the robot to move its hand and touch nearby objects by moving the glove. In one test, the hand touched a hot object and the operator’s hand felt the burn. The operator sees what the robot sees, thanks to two video cameras in the latter’s eyes.

What Would Happen If ? (7)

We can simulate a world. A normal brain stores at least 1018 bits and processes information at about 1015 bits per second.(8) Thus we can make an hour seem like a year. The subject will see changing seasons, solar and lunar movements, and lengthening and shrinking shadows. We know that our program causes these effects, but he believes cause and effect to be operative: Have you not seen how your Lord spread the shadowif He willed He could have made it still thus We have made the sun its guide (25:45). This verse indicates that the sun rises toward noon, and that shadows shrink and then begin to lengthen as the sun declines. The subject is limited by the program. For example, he appears to throw a stone, but only if the computer generates the necessary images and sensations. His action is virtual, as in: You killed them not, but God killed them. You threw them not when you threw, but God threw, that He might test the believers by a fair trial from Him (8:17). Let’s send in a virtual messenger to inform the subject of the programmer’s rules. If he does not obey, he will be punished. For example, we could easily rewrite the program to exclude sunlight. After terminating the program, the programmer could explain and demonstrate the truth of the virtual messenger’s words. The subject would have to accept the programmer’s control of, and his lack of influence upon, his life. This is a lesson for those who struggle with their perception of the physical world and the reality of the unseen spiritual world. Two Qur’anic verses show that such speculations are not so different from the subject’s virtual world: Say: Tell me, if God made night perpetual for you until the Day of Resurrection, who is a god beside God who could bring you light? Will you not then pay heed? (28:71), and: How can you reject faith in God? Seeing that you were without life and He gave you life; then He will cause you to die and will bring you again to life; and to Him you will return? (2:28)

Conclusion

For believers, such advances bring one question to mind: Are we living in a virtual world created by God? Most religions answer yes. Although their goals or understandings may differ, the main point is the same: Our life in this world is only a prelude of what is to come.

Footnotes

1. The Brain Tumor Foundation of Canada. Online at: www.oncolink.upenn.edu.
2. Online at: http://eserver.org/ philosophy and www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history, respectively.
3. The Virtual Reality Store. Online at: www.thevrstore.com.
4. http://ksi.cpsc.ucalgary.ca.
5. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam consider this world a testing ground for the eternal life. Buddhism and Hinduism consider it an illusion that must be penetrated to achieve enlightenment.
6. Osman Kocak, Virtual Reality in Medicine (Ph.D. diss., Salford University [Manchester, UK], 1996).
7. Adapted from H. Baki, Virtual Reality (Ph.D. diss., Newcastle University [Newcastle, UK], 1997).
8. Ibid.

The point of this article is not who hates who. Rather, we want to learn why people become angry with others who have different skin colors,

religions, or thoughts. This nightmare, known as racism, has been the source of great and frequent violence throughout history.

Who Was the First Racist?

The first racist was Satan, for he hated Adam. According to Qur’an 17:61: All angels prostrated [before Adam], except Iblis [Satan]. He asked: Shall I prostrate to one whom You made from clay? What was Satan’s biggest mistake? Instead of accepting the reality of diversity in creation, he sought to justify his rejection of Adam. He assumed and asserted that he was nobler than Adam. He did not ponder who decides everyone’s color, nation, and social environment, but justified his racist superiority: [God] asked: Why did you not prostrate when I commanded you? [Satan] replied: I am nobler than him. You created me from fire, but You created him from clay (7:12).

Since this early racist dialectic, all racist groups and their followers have used similar arguments to justify their beliefs and prove that they are the best. The result of such an effort has been a very bloody history.

We are living in a period of rapid change. Due to the global media, these changes affect everyone. Hate organizations use the media to expand their reach in totally new ways. Of course, this is not new: In Italy, in 1922, Benito Mussolini understood the power of the brand-new medium, radio, and he began to use it as soon as it was electronically possible in his country. Some years later he was quoted as saying, ˜If it weren’t for radio, I wouldn’t have the power over the Italian people that I have.(2)

In recent years, the Internet has become a major tool for extremist propaganda. Time columnist John Cloud makes a significant point:

He is absolutely right, for creating hate-filled Web sites is easier and cheaper than taking risks, such as public demonstrations and protests. Don Black, founder of a famous racist Web site, learned in jail how to use the Internet to spread his message. He started a Web site, which at last count had been visited by over 3 million people. It even has sections for women and children.

How Do Such Sites Affect People?

A recent race crime horrified the nation. On June 7, 1998, William King and his friends kidnapped James Byrd, an African-American, tied him to their truck, and dragged him to his death. How can a person become a racist murder? While covering the story, the American media found several reasons, among them that a hate group had agitated King while he was in jail. The Christian Science Monitor interviewed Clara Byrd-Taylor, Byrd’s sister, to get insight into King’s personality: After the dragging death of Texan James Byrd, his sister decided that he would not die in vain. She set out to discover what could have nurtured the hate that killed her brother. She found it on the Internet. ˜Prior to the death of my brother,’ Clara Byrd-Taylor says, ˜I had very little knowledge about the hate sites and what was happening with the hate groups around the world. I had heard isolated incidents, but I had not put all those things together.'(4) There are now over 600 hate Web sites, most of them targeted specifically at young people. The Internet and rock music are two key attractions for youth. CD and Web sites have presented young people with music mixed with advocacy of violence and racial separation Resistance Records, in Detroit, identified as a neo-Nazi music label, sells about 50,000 albums a year through its Web site.(5) Why are youths chosen as targets? Nowadays, more people feel lonely even though they live and interact with people all the time, such as in the workplace. But sharing social and moral values with some communities, like family, has been forgotten. People are losing themselves and, as a result, seeking a new identity that might solve their individual and social crises. Many young people feel isolated by the social structure, and so face an identity crisis. They feel alone, insecure, and abandoned. Music about violence offers messages that highlight the importance of rebelling against social discipline and authority. Being a part of the group and against others is a way to obtain a new social identity for many young people, who see everything in black and white. This is a very complicated problem without a clear solution. Many academic researchers and human rights groups are trying to learn how to overcome hate propaganda on the media. For instance, the Southern Poverty Law Center declared 10 ways to fight racism. They are as follows(6):

Act. Apathy is interpreted as acceptance.

Unite. Join those who oppose hate and work to eliminate it.

Support the Victims. Let victims know that you care, and report any hate directed toward you or people you know.

Do Your Homework. Learn how to identify hate groups and spread this knowledge to others.

Create an Alternative. Find another outlet for anger and frustration, and capitalize on people’s desire to do something

Speak Up. Expose and denounce hate wherever and whenever you can.

Lobby Leaders. Persuade political, business, and community leaders to take a stand against hate in the interest of their reputations and businesses.

Look Long Range.Create a bias response team and celebrate your community’s diversity and harmony.

Teach Tolerance. Bias is learned early, usually at home. Sponsor an I have a dream contest. Target youths who may be tempted by skinheads or other hate groups.

Dig Deeper. Study divisive issues so that you can determine your own prejudices, and then work to eliminate social prejudice.

Defining Censorship

One of the most contentious media-related issues is defining censorship. Governments are responsible for protecting their citizens from racist groups and propaganda. For instance, Canada and Germany are trying to catch people who use the media, including personal Web sites, to spread hate. But there is still one vital question that must be answered: Who defines protecting the people, especially the young, and protecting the freedom of speech? Prohibiting such speech is not the answer, because governments have abused this authority throughout history. Besides, modern technology and its products almost have eliminated the importance of physical borders as tools for governmental control.

What You Can Do

If you are involved in education or business, work to get your employers to focus on cultural diversity as a valuable human resource. Schools are many children’s first direct exposure to different cultures and peoples. The business sector often brings people who otherwise would not meet each other into close contact, thereby dispelling stereotypes. If handled correctly, deep biases can be destroyed in both children and adults. In addition, the importance of peace must be taught and reinforced in the home, school, workplace, and everywhere else. Create your own anti-hate Web site. Spread the information provided by such anti-hate organization Web sites as:

www.angelfire.com/on2/EvasGarden/AntiHate.html

http://earnestman.tripod.com/forewarned.htm,www.kcmetro.cc.mo.us/multicultural/pages/anti.htm,

and

http://users.westnet.gr/~cgian/hatred1_frame.html.

Subscribe to their publications, donate money or time, and participate in their activities whenever possible. Protest all radio programs and music that encourage this nightmare of modern times. Explain to your children why you oppose their listening to such programs or music. Sponsors and producers are not immune to public outcry and negative publicity. Remind the mainstream media that it has the vital responsibility of showing its audience how to live together without hate. If religious or racial discrimination are tolerated or even encouraged, the media only reinforces negative or distorted images and racism. Establish or join coalitions devoted to fighting hate messages. Explain to others that you do so in order to create a better future for everyone by trying to prevent the racist nightmare from destroying our good dreams for the future.

Footnotes

1. The Southern Poverty Law Center, Ten Ways to Fight Hate: A Community Response Guide. Online at: www.splcenter.org.
2. Robert L. Hilliard and Michael C. Keith, Waves of Rancor: Turning in the Radical Right (M. E. Sharpe: 1999), 20.
3. John Cloud, Trading White Sheets for Pinstripes, Time Magazine (8 March 1999).
4. Gloria Goodale, HBO Exposes Hate Groups in Cyberspace, The Christian Science Monitor (20 October 2000), 20.
5. Hilliard and Keith, Waves of Rancor, 55.
6. The full text is available online at: www.splcenter.org/intelligenceproject/ip-index.html.

A: Atheism means denying God’s existence, rejecting His commandments, avoiding religious reflection and seriousness, and considering oneself independent of Him. As such beliefs negate the concept of sin, people imagine that they can live as they please and thus begin to corrupt their hearts and minds. Atheism spreads because education is misused, young people are neglected, and schools defend and foster it.

Ignorance about the essentials of faith and religion is the primary cause of atheism. People whose minds, hearts, and souls are not directed toward the truth become vulnerable. Only God’s help and grace can save them. If a community does not counter this trend, its members’ hearts and minds open to deviation.

Atheism first manifests itself as a lack of interest in the principles of faith. Such people say this is a positive attitude, for it represents a desire for the mind’s independence and freedom of thought. As the demands of faith are strenuous, indifference turns toward what is easier. Seeking to avoid honest and serious reflection, it easily falls into neglect and then heedlessness, atheism, and even contempt for religion. Given this, atheism is not the result of sound reasoning, intuition or experience, or scientific truth, but of a lazy yet sometimes active and militant mood of not caring and of rebellion.

God’s countless manifestations testify that there is only One Creator and Governor who administers, directs, and sustains this universe. We may think of each manifestation as a letter or book from God to us, reflecting His Divine Attributes in a comprehensible way. These Attributes are seen everywhere in creation. However, some who do not understand these things correctly present nature, as well as it principles and relationships, in ways designed to make many people (especially the young) abandon true faith.

Does Science Support Atheism?

Much has been said and written about the natural world’s delicate balance and innumerable subtle harmonies. Such an order can be attributed only to the All-Mighty. Planets and stars move within an interrelated complexity of drifts and orbits that are infinitely more precise than anything we can design or make. If what we make is accepted as evidence of intelligent design, why is the far more vast and complicated universe considered an exception?

Nature resembles a huge factory of enormous generative power. Its working principles are astonishingly subtle and supple, yet firmly established in reassuring patterns and rhythms. From where does nature get these operating rules? Claims that nature is self-created are not convincing. Of course one of the operating rules is a measure of self-organizing power. But what is the origin of this rule?

Principles are non-essential attributes of a thing or being and, as such, are secondary and dependent on substance and essence. Attributes cannot exist before or independently of the compound or organism of which they are attributes. Thus if a plant demonstrates some self-organizing power by seeking light, moisture, and nutrients for its growth, it means that a limited self-organizing power has been embedded in its seed. Similarly, the principle of attraction in physics operates in and through existent masses, distances, and forces. To claim that such principles are the origin or source of existent things or beings is untenable. Just as untenable is the confidence with which such claims are asserted. To claim that this extraordinarily subtle and ordered universe is the outcome of haphazard coincidences is absurd, contradictory, and quite unscientific, for no evidence supports this claim.

As the result of long experiments and reflection, Muller declared that reason could not explain the origin of life.1 He established, on behalf of science and scientists, the absurdity of coincidence as a possible explanation. Similarly, after a 22-year series of studies, the Soviet Institute of Chemistry, under the chairmanship of Aleksandr Oparin, proved that the laws of chemistry and chemical reactions shed no light on the origin of life, and that science still has no answer to this question.(2)

When these scientists acknowledged the limitations to human inquiry, they did so on behalf of all science and scientists. Yet such work has not undone the damage done by earlier, less careful scientists, who offered guesses as reliable scientific theory. Unfortunately, general attitudes and values continue to be shaped by such guesses instead of the realities established by better scientists.

For example, many textbooks and encyclopedias continue to present Darwin’s theory of evolution as fact instead of theory. Meanwhile, a growing number of scientists, particularly evolutionists, argue that Darwin’s theoryis not a truly scientific theory. Many critics admit that we still have no idea how this evolution took place. While scientists and other experts have produced various ideas about probable causes and the actual process, the general public and less-informed scientists continue to believe in this theory.

Research projects and published studies cast doubt on evolution and seek to give a truer picture of nature as creation and our place in it. Works like Why Do We Believe in God? help those who considered non-believers in evolution as rather odd people reconsider their opinion and reflect more wisely on the matter.

Given the fact that a sound, reliable understanding of the natural world leads to belief in a single, universal Creator, atheism has more to do with obstinacy, prejudice, and a refusal to give up illusions than with the mind’s independence or freedom of thought. Young people remain vulnerable, for they do not fully understand their behavior’s nature and consequences, their spiritual being and their resulting deep-seated spiritual needs, and the balance between material and non-material values that characterizes a total human existence. Thus they are easily deceived by outdated concepts presented as scientific truths, although scientists know (and have said) that they are no more than theories. This is why teaching and learning about the truth are more important today than other duties and obligations.

If this vital task is not taken up, we may be unable to rectify the situation later on. Some of those evil consequences are with us already. We, this unlucky generation, are deprived of good teachers teachers possessing inner unity and harmony of mind and heart, self-knowledge in their deepest thoughts and feelings, a desire to teach others, and a willingness to suffer to promote others’ happiness and welfare. We hope such noble-minded teachers will arise to rescue people from their current moral and spiritual suffering.

If this can be done, present and future generations will acquire the necessary stability in their thinking and reasoning about life’s great questions. They will be able to resist the lure of false beliefs and illusions, and thereby be saved from the anxiety of constantly doubting the nature and purpose of their lives. They will be immunized, at least partially, against atheism and its attendant self-centered and neurotic behaviors. Atheism is caused by a lack of knowledge and learning, an inability to synthesize one’s inner and outer life, and is the result of an undernourished heart and soul. People cling to what they know, and resist what they do not knowor at least try to remain uninterested and unconcerned.

External Influences

The mass media continually presents ideas, lifestyles, and character types that encourage self-indulgence and self-abandonment. Such messages encourage young people to become punks or whatever the latest craze is; to seek immediate gratification and pleasure; and to prefer triviality and banality, loudness and vulgarity to cultivating their minds. People quickly adopt ways considered exciting and attractive. What they do not know becomes even more strange and alien, and eventually a matter of total indifference. Thus we have to find effective ways of introducing young people to the deeper ways of religious life, ways that lead toward tranquillity and light, and away from anxiety and darkness. Young people are excitable and susceptible. They crave limitless freedom and have countless unsatisfied appetites and desires. Their overly generous hearts and minds cause imbalance and disharmony, which can lead them toward atheism. They prefer immediate pleasure, however slight or brief, to the misery and distress that come in the wake of indulgence. They jump at the pleasures and enjoyments that Satan displays to them, and so prepare their own calamity. They fly to the fire of atheism just as moths are drawn to light. While ignorance and unfed hearts and souls increase, materialism and carnality gradually subvert the desire for truth and annul any nobility of purpose. This is what happened with Faust.3

This man, who desired extraordinary powers to do whatever he wished for a limited period, sold his soul cheaply to Mephistopheles, Satan’s agent. He then wasted these powers by pursuing trivial pleasures instead of serving humanity. When the soul is dead, the heart dies, compassion disappears, and the mind and reason become so confused that people become helpless victims of their own whims or current fads. Those who indulge in carnal and sensual passions will suffer crises and change direction continually, applaud every new fashion in thought as if it were the truth, and swing from one ideology to another from confusion to doubt and back again. Faith, a steady sense of duty, or a patient and enduring heart will not attract them. Nor will they find any merit in moral education, self-discipline, contemplation, the soul’s improvement, or strengthening their morals and manners. Wholly addicted to triviality and self-indulgence, they will deny our ancestors’ achievement and remain willfully ignorant of what real culture and civilization can make possible: a balance between spirituality and sanity, between virtue and happiness.

As not everyone can be saved, we should focus on educating those young people who have not yet been overtaken by the worst habits. We must teach them the fundamental principles of the system upon which we depend and to which our existence belongs. We must lead them to a systematic, straight, and honest way of thinking. If we cannot, we will see our community or nation continue to sink into moral and spiritual corruption. An additional cause of atheism is the deliberate rejection of all constraints and prohibitions. This tendency entered Muslim societies from western Europe via a degenerate form of existentialism (mainly French) that replaced traditional values and formal religious education with absolute individual freedom. The theory was that the individual would (and could) mature and develop into a noble, moral being through personal experience. This theory has never produced sane, caring, and compassionate people. All it has done is intensify misery and selfishness by isolating individuals from their families, traditions, and their selves. Its adherents cultivate no morals or tastes and do not try to find the truth, for all they are interested in is their own shallow private life.

In short, they simply survive from moment to moment in the illusory hope of one day finding happiness. These few reflections do not cover the whole subject. Yet I hope that future guides, teachers, and leaders with discernment and foresight will consider them when trying to stop the spread of deviation and atheism. I have presented a brief insight, with the prayer that some people may be alerted to the truth, conquer the self, and regain the means to do what is good.

Footnotes

1. Aleksandr Ivanovich Oparin (d. 1980): Russian biochemist noted for his studies on the origin of life from chemical matter. By drawing on the insights of chemistry, he extended the Darwinian theory of evolution backward in time to explain how simple organic and inorganic materials might have combined into complex organic compounds and how the latter might have formed the primordial organism. (www.britannica.com)
2. Hermann Joseph Muller (d. 1967): American geneticist best remembered for his demonstration that mutations and hereditary changes can be caused by X rays striking the genes and chromosomes of living cells. His discovery of artificially induced mutations in genes had far-reaching consequences, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1946. (www.britannica.com)
3. Written by Goethe (d. 1832), this classic work is the story of a person’s spiritual journey and self-discovery.