Katharine, “Kadriye,” Branning was one of the passengers on a Turkish Airlines flight to New York on September 9, 2011, a flight which could not reach its destination that inauspicious day. Taken from her book Yes, I Would Love another Glass of Tea: An American Woman’s Letters to Turkey, the following is one of her imaginary letters to Lady Mary Montagu who lived in Turkey three centuries ago.

Unbelievably, about an hour out, the Kaptan came back on the intercom and stated in Turkish that we needed to return to Istanbul yet again. The entire cabin groaned and grumbled, and I began to doubt that I would ever get home that day. Only this time, his voice sounded odd, and he said, very vaguely, that we needed to return because “All American airspace has been closed.” I was immediately seized with panic, for I knew that something very, very terrible must have happened, for American airspace has never been closed in our entire history.

You certainly survived some dangerous scrapes on your travels, both on route to Turkey and on the return trip home to London. In one of your early letters, you relate a hair-raising crossing of the Alps, where your carriage almost plummeted over the precipice into the Elbe. The hazards of snow and Tartars awaited you at every turn on the road after that, and your boat almost capsized during your Channel crossing on your return home. I would like to relate to you the story of a difficult travel experience I had, one of an eventful return to my homeland after a stay in Turkey.

This trip started out on a warm and crisp late summer morning in Istanbul. It was the last day of a glorious voyage to eastern Turkey, where I saw some of the wildest beauty known to man: from the white snowy peak of Noah’s Mount Ararat to the deep cobalt blue of Lake Van and to the intense dark emerald green of the Kaçkar Mountains. It was a day when I felt particularly blessed because I had been lucky enough to witness such stunning examples of nature, God’s most loving gift to man. It was a day with a crystal clear sapphire sky and bright sun. It was the morning of September 11, 2001.

The return trip home announced itself like so many others before it. I traveled the familiar road to the airport filled with an infinite sadness to be leaving Turkey at the end of an intense time of learning, joyful play and living history, mixed with anticipation of the happiness of being reunited with loved ones at home. Candy, halvah, bonjuk blue bead trinkets, lokum, and Turkish coffee were purchased in the duty-free shop; and the last copies of the newspaper Hürriyet were tucked into my carry-on bag. As I passed through the first, second, and third security checkpoints, I commented to myself how thorough these Turks were when it came to ensuring security in this often volatile point of the world. I felt safe.

There was a delay of almost 2 hours before we could leave, due to the proverbial and mysterious “engine problems.” Finally we took off, but after only one hour out in flight, the pilot (“Kaptan”) came on the intercom to tell us that we needed to head back to Istanbul because the pesky problem was apparently still not cleared up. The stewardesses stored away the food service carts, seatbelts were fastened, and we returned, deplaned, and waited another two hours in the same embarkment area. A Turkish Airlines (THY) employee finally announced that a new plane had been found and that we would be heading out shortly. Once again, off we took, convinced that surely this time, all problems were behind us.

Unbelievably, about an hour out, the Kaptan came back on the intercom and stated in Turkish that we needed to return to Istanbul yet again. The entire cabin groaned and grumbled, and I began to doubt that I would ever get home that day. Only this time, his voice sounded odd, and he said, very vaguely, that we needed to return because “All American airspace has been closed.” I was immediately seized with panic, for I knew that something very, very terrible must have happened, for American airspace has never been closed in our entire history.

About a half an hour later, the Kaptan came back on, still in Turkish, and said that it looked like the problem was that a “big building in New York City has suffered some kind of attack.” And then I knew in the pit of my stomach what that “big building” had to be: it could be none other than the one I see day and night from my window of my apartment, standing like a sentinel for the whole world to see: the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. And I knew somehow that the assault was not a mere accident, but had to have been a terrorist attack.

At last the plane landed back in Istanbul. The cabin hostess made an intercom message requesting that everyone remain in their seats. The Kaptan came on and gave a message in Turkish, and then made another one in English so that the few Americans on the plane would be able to finally understand what was going on. He spoke very clearly and slowly, not because his command of English was weak, but because he was searching for the right words to communicate his message as gently and carefully as possible. In a voice obviously trembling with emotion, he said: “Dear Ladies and Gentlemen. I must inform you of some very sad news. There has been a terrorist attack on the big building in New York City, the World Trade Center. It is very, very bad, and many people have been hurt. To all the American people on this plane, I want to say I am so so sorry for you and your country today.” And then we heard him sob. To hear that sob made me realize how intense it must have been for him, an ever-gracious Turkish host, to announce that news to us, his “guests” in his aircraft home. The Kaptan must have felt devastated that a plane, object of his livelihood, had been used as an instrument of destruction. He was surely heartbroken, too, because he already knew the terrorists were fellow Muslims. His soft sob made the imagined bang of the crash in my ears all the more loud, and the whole incident became very real for me, although at the time, I had no idea that the Towers were to fall and that the terrorists were allegedly Muslims.

Because of those engine problems, we had been saved the fate of so many others who were flying home to America that day. Instead of being stranded, the few Americans on that Turkish Airlines flight that day had the great fortune, in the midst of all the ensuing chaos, to be returned to a country that would open its arms and take care of them.

When we stepped off the plane and came into the airport terminal, there stood in front of us a platoon of people of all kinds, lined up in total silence. The entire airport staff had gathered there to wait for us: some were officers dressed in suits and ties, some wore THY service uniforms and ties, some were baggage handlers in their grey tunics; there were the char women in their pink aprons standing attention next to their cleaning carts, police officers with their thick black leather belts, food service attendants in their white paper hats, security clerks in their black blazers, and so many others in a blur of colors and clothes. It seemed as if the full airport had come forth to form this very human wall to surround us with their protection. After that point everything became a slow motion blur, as if I were about to faint or as if I were underwater, with people moving towards us but no sounds coming from their mouths. But I do remember clearly all the hands coming forth – those famous magic Turkish hands that appear whenever there is a need – taking us by the elbow and guiding us to the baggage claim area. I do not recall what was said to me at this point; all I remember were their eyes – and it was the sadness that I saw in those eyes that made me realize the gravity of the situation. I distinctly remember, however, a grey-haired, handsome man in a charcoal suit with a walkie-talkie in his hand, who came up to me. In perfect English he said, “Please do not worry, you are being taken care of. We will be taking you by a van to a nearby hotel to stay. It is very beautiful and nice, do not worry. You will stay there for the time it takes for things to normalize and for you to go home again. Do not worry. We will take care of you. But know that when you go into your room and turn on the television, you will see images of a brutality never before seen, and that you will be very upset. There will be someone at a table in the lobby, a health worker, who will be there for you to speak with if it all becomes too much for you. Good luck and God bless you.” And to this day I can still see the sharp dark features of the unshaven face of the skinny man in a ragged black suit coat who stuck out his hand to whisk away my suitcase and to load it in the van for me.

When the few Americans on that flight arrived at the hotel, we were ushered to our rooms with the hushed consideration usually reserved for funeral services. After I entered that room, in that indeed very beautiful hotel, sat down on the edge of the bed and saw those images on the television screen, I knew that the grey-haired man had not exaggerated. I learned of the story of the “attack on the big building in New York.” I learned that it was done in the name of Allah, the most Merciful and the most Compassionate.

I stayed there for a week, unable to get personal news of the tragedy, with only the droning reports of CNN and those never-ending images of the impact of the crash played over and over as if one time was not enough to gouge it in your memory forever. Was my husband safe? Was my assistant, who crossed under the Towers every morning on her commute in from New Jersey, lying flattened under the tonnage? How was everyone in my downtown neighborhood, now closed off from the world, coping with the tragedy? Over and over again as I saw those images of that hole ripped in the sky, I felt as if a hole had been ripped in my heart. When I saw those crushed beams, I felt as if my own bones had been crushed. I clearly remember the next morning when I went out of the hotel to get some air, there fluttering in front of me on a giant flagpole was the Turkish flag – its red color symbolizing the blood of its own fallen – at half mast. It was then that I understood that this tragedy was not one that had just struck my city, but it was affecting the entire world as well.

One night that week when I couldn’t sleep I got up to write a letter. I did not know exactly to whom I should address it, but I just felt that writing a letter would help me in that moment of stress, for putting emotions to paper seemed the only possible outlet for my grief, as the shock of it all had pushed my tears way down deep inside of me. At least for that moment in time, I could control something in the world: the flow of words onto paper in my own proper universe.

One morning about eight days later, the hotel staff called to say that we were to be ready to leave in an hour: the US airspace had opened and that we were being sent home. We were to be picked up at the hotel by a special THY van and taken to the airport.

Before leaving, I went to the front desk of the hotel to ask what I owed them for all the expenses I had incurred staying there: the luxurious room, the breakfasts, the vain phone calls, and faxes home. I did not know the protocol of such a situation, but I wanted to make sure I had taken care of everything. The young woman at the front desk just looked at me, bowed her head, and whispered, “You owe us nothing.” I could not bear to look at her, overwhelmed by the hotel’s charity, the intensity of this tragic event and my incapacity to thank her for the role she played in my well-being. I could not speak but handed to her the envelope with the letter I had written on that night I was unable to sleep. She looked at the addressee, visibly moved, and then back at me, and quietly said “Thank you.” And it was only then that my tears started to fall, as if all the immeasurable solace and tender consideration provided over the past week made the horror of the event suddenly too much to keep inside.

We piled in the busses and arrived at a still-hushed airport and boarded the flight to New York City, mirroring the same steps of a week prior. No one talked much on that 11-hour flight home: everyone was either too frightened to be in the cursed skies, in one of these apparatus now associated with an instrument of mass destruction, or quite simply because we were all apprehensive about what we would find once at home. The city I found when I arrived that night was as quiet as the plane. The former glorious view onto the World Trade Center from my Greenwich Village apartment was now filled with a billowing, yellow-grey cloud, glowing in the day from the sun reflecting off all its dust and in the evening from the giant high-intensity lights set up at the site. The furnishings of my home were covered, that day and for many months to come, with the pulverized dust of those fallen Twin Towers and the ashes of its 3,000 victims. Each day as I cleaned it away, day after day for months, I ceremoniously repeated prayers and recited Scripture for all of those innocent souls reduced to the dust I was wiping away.

New York City healed, the United States healed, and I healed. We are still living the consequences of that ignominious event up to this day, some small, some large, some local, some international. In many ways, I wonder if the recovery from that day was for me harder than most Americans. Although I personally suffered no loss of life in the crash, I still felt a tremendous loss to my city and in my faith in my fellow man. I felt betrayed by Islam, this faith that had earned a special respect in my heart; I felt betrayed that several fanatics of this religion I considered so pure and so noble had tarnished it beyond apparent forgiveness. I could not believe that the Islam I knew, through my studies, through my life shared with Muslims, through the many Muslims I had met in Turkey, those who believed in a God, the most merciful, the most compassionate – could be anything like those who had done this act. When I saw the dangerous turn my grief was taking – veering towards doubt, bitterness, and deception – I knew it had to stop. It was then that I made a vow. I perhaps could not control the outcome of all the events in the world, I reasoned, but I could control my immediate sphere, the orbit around me that I influence. It is said that perhaps everything in life happens in order to help us live. And so from the horror of that day, I told myself that I needed to recommit my efforts to support understanding between people and religions and that I needed to continue more than ever my dedication to fostering cross-cultural relations. It made me realize that if a person like me, who had such respect for Islam, was feeling such negative emotions against Muslims, what must the average American be thinking? I needed now to be a bridge-builder more than ever.

The Turkish part of my 9/11 story has one last chapter. About five months after the incident, I returned to work after my lunch break one day, and the front desk receptionist handed me a very large wooden box. A THY envelope with my name on it taped to it. The letter was from the New York director of Turkish Airlines, extending his wishes for my well-being and telling me that he desired to offer this token of appreciation on behalf of the THY staff for my letter, the one I had addressed “to Turkish Airlines and the People of the Republic of Turkey” and left at that hotel desk months before and which had finally come into his hands. It was inconceivable to believe that after all that had already been done emotionally and materially for me, that the warm arms of the Turks were continuing to surround me with compassion and goodness.

Inside of that giant box, encased beautifully in an elegant walnut and glass frame, was a large, oval plaque in silver. On this plaque, inscribed in fine cursive calligraphy, was the iconic message “Maþallah” which translates as “how beautifully God created” and is used by Turks to mean “may God protect you from all evil.”

Yes, Turkey – this magnificent and most generous of nations – has shown me that I must never doubt the infinite goodness of my fellow man.

Sincerely,

Like law in the United States, historically Islamic jurisprudence is based on precedence. Each ruling or reform was based on the decisions and interpretations of previous jurists and scholars. But many movements that emerged in the last century disregarded this practice, and invented brand-new interpretations and rulings that were at odds with centuries of accumulated knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence and theology. Moreover, they refute all other interpretations. The most controversial among these questionable views concerns the meaning of jihad. The soundest method of discerning the meaning of this much-debated word is to refer back to the original text that is the source of all Islamic jurisprudence and theology.

What is jihad, according to the Qur’an? What does the Qur’an say about war? According to the consensus of classical and contemporary exegetes, the following Qur’anic verses indicate that there is no “holy war” but there is only “just war” or “unjust war” in Islam. The verses also clarify that jihad does not mean war or fighting; rather it means “to strive hard in the righteous cause.”

Some Qur’anic principles

The science of hermeneutics requires that the interpretation of any text should take into account the writer, the intent of the writer, the addressee, and the context. This is the method to understand the message of the Qur’an. Taking a single verse out of context, and interpreting it without taking into consideration the entire text, would inevitably distort the meaning of the verse. The following are some general Qur’anic principles that should underlie the interpretation of individual verses.

“There shall be no coercion faith.” (2:256)

“And had your Lord so willed, all those who live on earth would surely have attained to faith, all of them: do you then think that you could compel people to believe…” (10:99)

“And say: ‘The truth [has now come] from your Lord: Then, whoever wills (to believe), let him believe; and whoever wills (to disbelieve), let him disbelieve. …” (18:29)

“Goodness and evil can never be equal. Repel evil with what is better (or best). Then see: the one between whom and you there was enmity has become a bosom friend.” (41:34)

“…and [they who] repel the evil with good. Such are those for whom there is the ultimate (everlasting) abode.” (13:22)

“…for peace is best…” (4:128)

“… He who kills a soul unless it be (in legal punishment) for murder or for causing disorder and corruption on the earth will be as if he had killed all humankind; and he who saves a life will be as if he had saved the lives of all humankind.” (5:32)

“Do not kill any soul, which God has made sacred, except in just cause. If anyone has been killed wrongfully and intentionally, We have given his heir the authority (to claim retaliation or damages or to forgive outright). But let him (the heir) not exceed the legitimate bounds in (retaliatory) killing. Indeed he has been helped (already and sufficiently by the provisions and procedures of the Law).” (17:33)

“Just War” in the Qur’an

Here are some verses dealing with fighting (qital) on the battlefield. All these verses should be read and understood only when there is a Just War already in progress.

“And fight in God’s cause against those who wage war against you, but do not commit aggression—for, verily, God does not love aggressors.” (2:190)

This verse makes war permissible only in self-defense and even then, aggression is not permitted during the fight.

“Permission [to fight] is given to those against whom war is being wrongfully waged and, verily, God has indeed the power to succor them.” (22:39)

Again, fighting is declared permissible against a wrongfully waged war.

“God does not forbid you, as regards those who do not make war against you on account of your Religion, nor drive you away from your homes, to be kindly to them, and act towards them with equity. God surely loves the scrupulously equitable.” (60:8)

Believers are asked here to be kind to any people who do not fight against them regardless of their faith.

“God only forbids you, as regards those who make war against you on account of your Religion and drive you away from your homes, or support others to drive you away, to take them for friends and guardians. Whoever takes them for friends and guardians, those are the wrongdoers.” (60:9)

As clearly listed in the verse, fighting is permitted only when a) a war is waged against the believers because of their faith, b) the believers are driven away from their homelands, c) aid is given to those who drive the believers away from their homelands.

“Fight (therefore, O Messenger) in God’s cause—for (in the same way that every individual is responsible for himself) you are (first of all) responsible for none except yourself. (Even left by yourself alone, fulfill your responsibility)—and urge on the believers (to take their responsibility). It may be that God will (thereby) restrain the force of those who disbelieve. Indeed God is strongest in might, and strongest in repressing and punishing.” (4:84)

Urging on the believers to take their responsibility is valid only during a war already in progress to deter the oppressors, not as an incitement to war.

“When (whether traveling or at home, or in war or at peace) you are greeted with a greeting (of peace and goodwill), answer with one better, or (at least) with the same. Surely God keeps account of all things.” (4:86)

The aim of war must be to prevent the oppression, not to be triumphant. When peace is offered, it is to be accepted with no reserve.

“Except those who seek refuge in a people between whom and you there is a treaty (of peace or alliance), or (those who) come to you with hearts shrinking from fighting against you, as well as fighting against their own people. Had God willed, He would certainly have given them power over you and they would have fought against you. If they withdraw from you and do not fight against you, and offer you peace, then God allows you no way (to war) against them.” (4:90)

Fighting is allowed only when a war is waged against the believers. Otherwise, there is no permission to declare a war unilaterally.

“…You will find others who wish to be secure from you (by signing a treaty with you) and to be secure from their people (by breaking their treaty with you and joining them): every time they are called back to conspiracy and hostility against you, they plunge into it headlong. Hence, if they do not withdraw from you, nor offer you peace, nor restrain their hands (from hurting you), then seize them and kill them wherever you come upon them. It is against such that We have given you a clear sanction.” (4:91)

During a war already in progress, if the aggressors do not stop attacking the believers and do not offer them peace, then the believers are given permission to seize and slay those who insist upon attacking them.

“If you meet them in war, deal with them in such a manner as to deter those behind them (who follow them, and those who will come after them), so that they may reflect and be mindful.” (8:57)

The aim is again not to be triumphant in war, but to prevent the continuation of war.

“(Believers:) make ready against them whatever you can of force and horses assigned (for war), that thereby you may dismay the enemies of God and your enemies and others besides them, of whom (and the nature of whose enmity) you may be unaware. God is aware of them (and of the nature of their enmity). Whatever you spend in God’s cause will be repaid to you in full, and you will not be wronged” (8:60)

The purpose of these preparations is to avoid potential future wars.

“And if they (the enemies) incline to peace, incline to it also, and put your trust in God. Surely He is the All-Hearing, the All-Knowing. And if they seek (thereby only) to deceive you (O Messenger), surely God is sufficient for you. He it is Who has strengthened you with His help and with the believers” (8:61–62)

According to the well-known Qur’anic exegete Fahruddin Razi (1149–1209), this means that even if they offer you peace to deceive you, this offer of peace must be accepted, because all judgment of their intentions must be based on outward evidence alone. In other words, mere suspicion cannot be an excuse for rejecting an offer of peace.

(While at war) kill them wherever you come upon them, and drive them out from where they drove you out (thus recovering your lands from their usurpation). (Though killing is something you feel aversion to,) disorder (rooted in rebellion against God and recognizing no laws) is worse than killing. Do not fight against them in the vicinities of the Sacred Mosque unless they fight against you there; but if they fight against you (there), kill them—such is the recompense of the (rebellious) unbelievers. (2:191)

The prerequisite for the permission to slay the oppressors is their persistence to fight against the believers and not incline toward peace. Fahruddin Razi states that the injunction in this verse is valid only within the context of hostilities already in progress, not when there is no physical hostility between the believers and the non-believers. A more recent commentator, Said Nursi (1877–1960), interprets such verses that give permission to “drive them away from wherever they drove you away” as crushing the idea of the denial of God or materialism in the field where it originated by bringing the evidences for the existence of its Creator from the matter itself.

“But if they desist—behold, God is much-forgiving, a dispenser of grace.” (Qur’an 2:192)

“Hence, fight against them until there is no more oppression and all worship is devoted to God alone; but if they desist, then all hostility shall cease, save against those who [willfully] do wrong.” (2:193)

Fighting is allowed again until God can be worshipped without fear of persecution and no one is compelled to bow down in awe before another human being. If persecution stops then all hostility shall cease.

“…Those who have been driven from their homeland against all right, for no other reason than that they say, “Our Lord is God. ” Were it not for God’s repelling some people by means of others, monasteries and churches and synagogues and mosques, where God is regularly worshipped and His Name is much mentioned, would surely have been pulled down (with the result that God is no longer worshipped and the earth becomes uninhabitable). God most certainly helps whoever helps His cause. Surely, God is All-Strong, All-Glorious with irresistible might.” (22:40)

Fighting against oppression is not confined to defending the mosques only, all the places where God’s name is extolled—monasteries, churches, synagogues—are to be protected.

“And if any of those who associate partners with God seeks asylum of you (O Messenger), grant him asylum, so that he may hear the Word of God, and then convey him to his place of security. That (is how you should act) because they are a people who have no knowledge. (9:6)

This verse emphasizes granting protection to mushrikun (those associating partners with God)—not only the People of Book—when they seek protection from the believers. They can be accepted as “neighbors” of the believing community. Should they want to leave the community of the believers, it is the responsibility of the believers to convey them to a place where they can feel secure.

In conclusion

The contextual analysis of the above Qur’anic verses elucidates that the utmost priority in all circumstances is achieving permanent peace. Believers are enjoined to accept peace, even when doing so would harm their interests, and must consent to all peace offers. It is not permissible to wage war against any people unilaterally. Fighting is not desirable and should be avoided whenever possible. Permission to fight is given only in self-defense. When a believer has been attacked and is fighting in self-defense, his aim must be to stop the oppression, not to be triumphant. Fighting is permitted only against people who have:

a) waged war against the community of believers because of their faith,

b) driven the community of believers out of their homelands,

c) aided others in driving the community of believers out of their homelands,

d) threatened the security of the community of believers. This judgment about the “threat” must be based on outward evidence alone, not on suspicion, which is subjective.

Fighting is permitted in the Qur’an only for the sake of defending the truth and its followers (including defending the monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques where God’s name is extolled). The believers can only engage in war against oppressors who are clearly marked and designated as a military force. This military force must not be mixed in with a civilian population. A prohibited method of fighting is the use of weapons of mass destruction which indiscriminately kill civilians along with the intended target. Even then, fighting can only be declared by a leader (caliph), who is elected by the community of believers from among themselves, not self-appointed kings, rulers, or authorities. Individuals cannot declare war or try to bring about justice by their own means. This is vigilantism, which is prohibited by Islamic law. Only the state has the authority in such issues.

Therefore, holy war can be an element of jihad, but is restrained by strict rules. Many modern interpretations of jihad are not congruent with classical jihad and many physical aggressions by Muslims today cannot be classified as the specific kind of holy war that is legitimized by the Qur’an.

The Prophet Muhammad described jihad as the “apex of lofty Islam.” Jihad literally translates to struggle or striving in English and it is derived from the root Arabic word jahada—to strive, strain, or exert oneself to the utmost. Jihad is a very important duty of Islam; some even consider it the sixth pillar of Islamic faith. Jihad encompasses many types of struggles that Muslims are meant to overcome throughout their daily life in different forms. In the Qur’an, jihad is striving in the name of Allah through four stages: jihad against the soul, jihad against Satan, jihad against disbelievers, and jihad against dissemblers. Jihad against the soul is meant to solidify firm belief within a person while jihad against Satan will create tenacity. For jihad against disbelievers, Muslims are meant to strive by pen, tongue, hand, media, and only if inevitable, with arms. Jihad against disbelievers is not purely peaceful and at times, the use of arms is inevitable in this stage, described in the Qur’an as qital, or fighting.

Contrarily, jihad against dissemblers is by the tongue, through educated arguments and persuasion. Therefore jihad is much more than physical aggression, and far greater emphasis is placed on striving by all other means before war. The most important struggles for Muslims will come from inside themselves, which will be a lifelong jihad of following Allah and living by his way. Jihad should then be described as the striving journey of Muslims to become aware and learn the injunctions of Islam, teach them to others, and make constant practice of them in their life while encouraging others to do the same. It is also the act of calling others to Islam and dealing with any obstacles that may arise from fulfilling this journey. This journey will encompass many obstacles that do not relate to physical violence and emphasize the importance of striving by other means throughout one’s life. Jihad with the tongue is viewed as very important because Muslims are meant to be peaceful in their struggle if possible and it is important to be expressive verbally rather than resorting to violence immediately. However, when words are not sufficient and qital, physical fighting, is necessary within jihad, there are strict guidelines that must be followed in the aggression. Not every war fought by Muslims can be defined as jihad; not every jihad can be generalized as holy war. In order for physical jihad to be legitimate, the opposing side receiving the aggression must be in a state of war against Islam, or a large group of Muslims, or non-Muslims who have had their personal freedoms and civil rights violated. A classical interpretation of jihad from the Qur’an clearly outlines that any physical jihad must be conventional warfare, with ambush fighting and the killing of civilians prohibited. There have been many examples of physical jihad in history that were legitimate in the eyes of the Qur’an, and exemplify the rules that limit aggression, as well as the circumstances necessary for a holy war to be considered jihad.

In Islamic history there are many instances when jihad was a holy war. This can partially be explained by the era. Arabia was engulfed in constant warfare throughout the Prophet Muhammad’s time, and for the centuries of empire rule that followed. Muslim tribes were often provoked by aggression and forced into numerous defensive jihads with their surrounding neighbors. The original physical jihad originated from Muhammad’s migration from Mecca to the city of Yathrib, modern day Medina, in 622. The Prophet and his Muslim followers were met with violent pilfering by the Meccans and Muhammad delivered verses from the Qur’an authorizing the Muslims to fight against the Meccans. The Muslim war with the Meccans began Muhammad’s career as military commander, a title that he had to carry in the remaining years of his life. This jihad follows the rules outlined by the Qur’an because it was in defense of Muslim land that was being physically threatened; it also follows the rules of jihad by keeping the warfare traditional and targeting only those directly involved in the aggression. Muhammad had decided physical jihad was necessary and fought in the name of Islam. But upon returning from battle he said, “We have returned from the lesser jihad to the greater jihad,” underlining the importance of a believer’s internal struggle against his or her carnal self. While the time demanded physical jihad from the Muslims for their very survival, the significance was placed on the other forms of jihad, most importantly those within the hearts of each Muslim. In addition to Prophet Muhammad’s own view of physical jihad, Muslim scholar Said Nursi supported physical jihad in response to physical aggression but also believed in continuing jihad through the written and spoken word. When he was required to fight, his jihad was with his pen. Nursi highlighted the shift between pre-modern civilization and modern civilization and believes jihad should follow this shift. Pre-modern civilization was plagued by violence and conquests from Islam’s neighbors and required defensive war in response. Modern civilization has seen the rise in science and reason, secularism and materialism, and therefore the most appropriate jihad is one that persuades hearts and minds. Muslims are called to fight a cultural and economic war through ideas and thoughts, not arms.

The battles fought by Muhammad and Nursi are historical examples of jihad as holy war used to protect Islam and guarantee its growth within the world. There is a physical aspect in battle, but the focus on Islamic law as derived from the Qur’an is never ignored in jihad. Jihad includes, but is not encompassed by, legitimate, defensive warfare against aggressive enemies, which contrasts with the modern usage of jihad among a minority of Muslim laymen and mainstream society. Most conflicts engaged in by some Muslims today are a crime under Islamic law, and jihad is defined solely as war, with its other aspects ignored. Today in Muslim-majority countries, and in non-Muslim media and discussion around the world, jihad means war. The usage in Muslim countries can be interpreted as rationalization, that all wars their governments involve themselves in are just, similar to the justification most countries do that any war they are involved in is just.

Though it is debatable whether a war is just and follows Islamic law, the more troubling factor is the shift of the entire meaning of the word jihad. Jihad has evolved from meaning struggle, usually internal, sometimes external by the written or spoken word, to simply being a synonym for war. This semantic evolution has perpetuated misunderstandings of Islam as a violent religion, with war and physical aggression central to its tenets. Jihad has evolved from struggle in classical Islam, with the occasional legitimate war, to representing necessary, continuous physical aggression within modern Islam. This linguistic shift has created a grave misunderstanding of jihad around the world, and its sole definition as holy war in popular culture.

Jihad has come to hold a new meaning with the general population because of the differing interpretations of jihad by classical and modern Muslim scholars. Without background knowledge of jihad’s origins in the Qur’an, most people would believe that jihad is a holy war without rules or guidelines, based on modern scholars and media portrayal. Most laymen are not aware that classical jihad explicitly prohibits aggression towards civilians, and must be limited to conventional war tactics. This misconception of jihad is a result of the rise in world terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims who claim their actions as jihad in the name of Allah and the Qur’an. The misinterpretation of jihad by a small group of Muslims has spread around the world because of globalization and effective media coverage. This misinterpretation has resulted in the current perception. Some modern Muslim scholars and popular figures within Islam who have catalyzed this new definition, refer to jihad as, “war against oppressors, particularly those who oppress Muslims.” Osama bin Laden said in many of his speeches that Americans resemble the medieval Crusaders, with the desire to subjugate the Muslim world in a colonial war. Therefore, bin Laden believed that Muslims are currently fighting a defensive jihad against the West in response to their actions. The West as an enemy is described as similar to the Christian knights of the Crusades who also attacked Muslim civilization. Egyptian Islamist Adb al Salam Faraj called for a new jihad against the subjugation of the Muslim world, and Osama bin Laden has expanded on the ideas of a new jihad to legitimize terrorist attacks against the West that result in the death of civilians. In addition to Faraj, the Muslim scholar Maududi’s thesis on the change in Muslim society has also been viewed as spawning the modern interpretation of jihad. Maududi believed that because not all Muslim societies were ruling based on Sharia law, there was a decline in the society as a whole, and the only viable response was to wage a jihad against this dark age. In order to confront the decline of Muslim society and loss of Muslim lands, Sharia law and the doctrine of jihad had to be reinterpreted and applied both internally within Muslim societies as well as externally to the West for its role in seeking Muslim land and fighting against Muslim civilization. Muslim countries have witnessed an internal “jihad” through the removal of leaders classified as un-Islamic based on an unwillingness to impose Sharia law within their nations. This internal “jihad” has taken place historically with the Iranian Revolution’s removal of Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat, and the overthrow of Sudanese President Jaafar Nimeiry. External “jihad” against foreign occupiers of Muslim lands has taken place many times throughout history, recently in the Afghan fight for independence against Soviet occupation and Palestinian and Lebanese liberation movements against Israeli-occupied territories. Modern “jihad” has become a war with the goals of reshaping Islamic society by ridding it of Western influence and presence, economically and politically.

What has been described as jihad, and then reported by worldwide media, is far removed from classical jihad described in the Qur’an. Terrorist attacks that aim at killing large numbers of civilians, including women and children, are unilaterally condemned under Sharia law. Their fights do not comply with the rules outlining when physical jihad can take place and how it may be fought. It is not wrong for people to believe jihad can be violent, but it is wrong to only hold this belief without an understanding of the other aspects of jihad. Some modern Muslims have provided this misinterpretation and perpetuated the fear that Islam as a violent religion able to wage wars at any time, on any grounds.

Jihad is popularly misunderstood in today’s world as a synonym for holy war. This misunderstanding has been prevalent for decades but has become more widespread because of a handful of terrorist attacks being labeled as jihad against America and Europe by radical Islamists. By examining jihad, as defined by the Qur’an, and analyzing historical accounts of jihad, it becomes clear that jihad can involve physical violence if all the rules outlined by the Qur’an are followed, including only the use of conventional warfare and killing of combatants. The modern interpretation of jihad does not consider the context of the Qur’an or classical Islamic law, and it ignores the other aspects of jihad. Jihad is the internal struggle Muslims face to fight off evil, the striving effort to become a better person, a more pious follower of Islam. Jihad focuses primarily on internal struggles, with external struggles such as warfare being secondary, and only if physical force is necessary and legitimate. It is very unfortunate that the true meaning of jihad has become lost in today’s society. Jihad is one of most admirable and good-natured duties within Islam, from which many could learn from to better themselves and their lives.

References

• Ali, Afroz. Overcoming Misunderstandings: Understanding Jihad http://alghazzali.org/resources/articles/jihad.pdf, accessed 20 May 2010.
• Bonner, Michael. Jihad in Islamic History, Princeton, 2006, p. 39.
• Bonney, Richard. Jihad: From Qur’an to Bin Laden, New York, 2005, p. 27.
• Chittick, William and Murata, Sachiko. The Vision of Islam, St. Paul, 1994, p. 21.
• Esposito, John L. “VIOLENCE AND TERRORISM.” In What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam. Oxford Islamic Studies Online, http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com.ezproxy.lib.monash.edu.au/article/book/islam-9780195157130/islam-9780195157130-chapter-5 accessed 25 May 2010.
• Gerges, Fawaz. The Far Enemy, New York, 2009, p. 43.
• Greenberg, Karen. Al Qaeda Now, New York, 2005, p. 213.
• Kelsay, John. Arguing the Just War in Islam, Boston, 2007, p. 41.
• Muhammad, Noor. “The Doctrine of Jihad: An Introduction,” Journal of Law and Religion, vol. 3, no.2, 1985, p. 395
• Napoleoni, Loretta. “Modern Jihad: The Islamist Crusade,” SAIS Review, vol. 23, no. 2, 2003, p. 53.
• Tibi, Bassam. Political Islam, World Politics, and Europe. New York, 2008, pp. 41-42.
• Vahide, Sukran. Jihad in the Modern Age: Bediuzzaman Said Nursi’s Interpretation of Jihad, at http://www.nur.org/en/nurcenter/nurlibrary/Bediuzzaman_Said_Nursi_s_Interpretation_of_Jihad_168, accessed 22 May 2010.

Even though believers must adopt resignation of their free will at the beginning of the spiritual journey, in reality it is a direct gift of God to those whom He loves. For this reason, unlike patience, neither God Almighty nor the Prophet, upon him be peace and blessings, commanded it; they only recommended it. Although there is a narration attributed to the Prophet—Let him who does not endure misfortunes and show resignation to Divine decrees find another Lord for himself—the scholars of Traditions did not accept it as an authentic Prophetic Tradition.

Some saints have considered resignation a higher station than reliance and surrender, while others have regarded it, like other states, as a divine gift or radiance that sometimes appears and then disappears. Still others, like Imam Qushayri, have seen it as connected with or dependent upon the servant’s free will in the beginning, and as a state or condition of the heart in the end.

Resignation is a divine gift that can be acquired only by an individual’s conscious decision to exercise free will at the beginning of the journey. One can attain the rank of resignation through depth of belief, solemnity in religious actions, and profound consciousness of worshipping God as if seeing Him. To be favored with the rank of resignation, one also must transcend the ranks of reliance, surrender, and commitment. Since it is extremely difficult to attain the rank of resignation by free will, God Almighty did not order it; He only advised it and highly praised those who attained it.

If one sets out on the journey to attain the rank of resignation at the end, he or she must be solemn in his or her relations with the Lord; gratefully accept all bestowed (and unsought) Divine gifts as His blessings; remain silent about any deprivation; fulfill all religious obligations even in times of distress, loneliness, and hardship; and pray in the presence of God Almighty as if entering a bridal chamber. The most essential foundation of resignation is a continuous feeling of His company in one’s consciousness and experience, discovering Him afresh at every moment in one’s heart.

Fear and hope relate to one’s worldly life, for they render impossible all feelings of despair and security against God’s punishment while in this world. They have no relevance to the Hereafter, except for the reward they cause to be bestowed in the Hereafter. By contrast, being pleased with God and loving Him continue eternally, and resignation to His judgment and being pleased with Him is a source of spiritual peace and happiness in both worlds.

This does not mean that those who have obtained resignation and God’s pleasure or approval are free of anxiety, hardship, and suffering, for there remain many annoying and displeasing things along their way. However, champions of resignation regard them as pure mercies, for resignation or God’s pleasure changes the “poison” they drink into “elixir,” and the troubles they encounter cause them to fall even deeper in love with the Beloved.

The way of resignation, although difficult to follow, is safe and direct. It sometimes leads the wayfarer to the summit of human perfection after a single attempt. Just as a believer can reach that summit by strenuous effort in the way of God or by studying the universe (as if it were a book) in order to feel and find God everywhere (although He is contained in neither time nor place), the summit can also be reached through one’s inner suffering and sorrow arising from personal shortcomings and helplessness upon encountering difficulties while searching for a way to progress on the path.

Resignation results in a thrilling joy or a heavenly breeze from God’s being pleased with the believer that is proportional to the depth of one’s fear and hope. It does not come from feeling God’s nearness, worship and devotion, the struggle against sin and the temptations of one’s carnal self and Satan. Rather, it is a spiritual delight merged with hope and expectation, regulated by self-possession, a direct gift from Him, and a breath of mercy associated only with this station of being pleased with God. This station requires the self-regulation of one’s thoughts, considerations, plans, hopes, expectations, feelings, and actions according to God’s Will. Thus, seeing it as a way to experience pleasure and delight in the expectation of acquiring that pleasure and delight shows one’s disrespect of this station, which is based on the purity of one’s intention and sincerity. In reality, this applies to all other states and stations attained through actions of the heart, or which are themselves actions of the heart. One must love and pursue His approval or pleasure for His sake only.

Heroes of the spiritual life have expressed their views about resignation and being pleased with God since the early days of Sufism. According to Dhu al-Nun al-Misri, resignation means preferring God’s wishes over one’s own in advance, accepting His decree without complaint based on the realization that whatever God wills and does is good, and overflowing with love of Him even while in the grip of misfortune. ‘Ali Zayn al-’Abidin describes resignation as an initiate’s determination not to pursue anything opposed to God’s Will and pleasure. According to Abu ‘Uthman, resignation denotes welcoming with the same mood all divine decrees and disposals, regardless of whether they issue from His Grace or His Majesty or Wrath, and having no conscious preference for one or the other. God’s Messenger referred to this when he said: I ask You for resignation after You have decreed something. Being pleased in advance with God’s decree means being determined to show resignation, while resignation signifies enduring calamity when it occurs.

In short, resignation means that an initiate feels no resentment against or displeasure with whatever issues from God’s Divinity or Lordship. Rather, the initiate welcomes it gladly and is ready to accept or endure his or her fate without complaint. The initiate does not upset the balance of his or her heart. Rather, he or she preserves personal integrity and straightforwardness even when confronted with the most distressing and shocking events, considers God’s predestination recorded in the Supreme Preserved Tablet, and thus feels no regret or sorrow for what happens.

We encountered Judaism at the local synagogue, Hinduism at a Vishnu temple in a nearby city, and Islam at a mosque in the suburbs. We could also have studied Buddhism, Sikhism, and two other branches of Hinduism since there was a meditation society, a Gurdwara, and Shirdi and Jain temples in the city, as well as five additional mosques. Religious pluralism surrounded us, but we knew nothing about it because religious dialogue was not an ordinary activity.

Since taking students on such interfaith field visits was not common practice at the time, it stirred a mix of reactions. Many students approached the project with eager curiosity; they were rainbow optimists, following an arc of hope and expecting good at its end. Other students were reluctant, apprehensive, and afraid of the unknown; they armed themselves with intellectual rocks of protection for their worldview. Some parents even called my office to express their concern about the nature and purpose of such study for their children. Could curiosity weaken their child’s faith, the parents wondered. Even though religious pluralism has been a reality throughout human history, and is certainly an element of our societies today, for many people, then as now, it has remained a distant reality, remote from the routines of daily life. When the opportunity for an interreligious encounter is offered, it can evoke both curiosity and fear. As human beings we are equipped to wonder about and seek the new or unknown, but we are also endowed with a certain caution about, even fear, of what is different. Both of these reactions have characterized the debate about religious dialogue today, often to the irritation of one another, as students have encountered in classes. But both of these approaches have something important to share and should be heard.

Enthusiasts for religious dialogue bring a desire for mutual enrichment and learning, and a confidence that coming to know one another better will bring benefits for all. The rock-wielding cautious fear that interreligious dialogue is a dangerous and misguided endeavor brings a deep sense of what is treasured and unique in our own traditions that must not be lost or sacrificed to the inevitable encounter. In listening to the concerns and hopes raised by both voices, it can become clearer what interreligious dialogue is not and also what it is intended to be; caution and enthusiasm together can shape encounters among various believers that are fruitful and inspirational.

The mirror of dialogue A frequent concern raised about dialogue is that it will be a disguised effort at proselytizing for conversions to one faith or another. This is certainly not the intention of genuine interreligious dialogue, and this approach should not be brought to the table of dialogue. Faithful and committed believers of a religious tradition are asked to respect the faithful believers of other religious traditions who share a similar devotion and joy in their commitments.

The holy Qur’an states, ‘O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another.’ (49:13) The Roman Catholic Church also exhorts her members that ‘through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions…they recognize, preserve and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the socio-cultural values found among them.’ (Nostra Aetate, 2)

Of course, believers engaged in dialogue will explain with great enthusiasm the faith that they hold dear, but the primary goal of interreligious dialogue is simply to listen to and come to know others. Far from converting believers away from their faith, interreligious experiences usually deepen original commitments. It has been suggested that ‘those who know only one, know none.’ In comprehending another faith, we come to a far deeper understanding and appreciation of our own belief. In our reflection in the Other, we come to see ourselves anew.

In my own experience over the years, leading dozens of classes on field visits to various houses of worship, I observe similar outcomes each time. Though the fear of parents that their children might be lured into a conversion by a persuasive speaker would seem to have even more ground today, since students often have very little religious knowledge when entering the classroom, the common response of students is not conversion to a new tradition but rather a renewed interest in the faith traditions of their own families. Even when students have been raised by their parents to make their own choice, as if a faith tradition were simply a matter of consumer preference in the marketplace, I have found that they want to ‘come home.’ If home does not provide much religious substance, to find spiritual roots students are more likely to turn to their grandparents than to convert simply because of exposure to a new tradition.

Not the baking method Sometimes the cautious question if interreligious dialogue is aiming to bring religions together in a way that creates a new and improved religion, a combination of the ‘best of all,’ so to speak. The technical term for this is syncretism, but it is also (derisively) known as the ‘baking method’—take a little of this and a little of that and a little more of something else and bake it into a new tasty religion for all to follow. This approach, too, is certainly not an element of genuine interreligious dialogue but rather is an attitude born in the individualism of consumer culture—finding something that suits my taste. True interreligious dialogue takes places among faithful and committed believers of established religious traditions who intend to remain that way. It is not a casual comparison of recipes, but a sincere effort to know one another as we are.

Again, in my own field visit experience with classes, it is precisely when faced with the devotion of a believing community at worship that students are inspired to look at their own tradition to see what they have missed. The prayer practice of Islam has led students to discover the Angelus and the Liturgy of the Hours in the Catholic tradition, or the practice of daily scripture devotion in other Christian traditions. This is not syncretism, but rather interfaith inspiration that strengthens.

But can we disagree? Two other objections I have heard raised about dialogue seem to be from opposite sides of the same coin. First, some fear that participants from other traditions will judge our beliefs or practices and condemn them unfairly because they are based in a different set of values or cultural apprehension. The second worry is that as we listen to others we may hear some things with which we profoundly disagree but, prevented from expressing this by the ‘etiquette’ of dialogue, be reduced to tacitly supporting relativism. I believe the question raised by both objections is essentially the same—where is Truth to be found and how do we act upon it? Can we truly listen to one another without discovering all the places we disagree? And what then do we do with that disagreement?

In response to these foundational questions, two points must be kept in mind. One is that each of us has the human obligation to sincerely seek for Truth, for the objective reality at the heart of the universe. This will necessarily entail that we must make judgments for ourselves in regard to various Truth claims. However, it is important to be clear that the basic purpose of interreligious dialogue is simply coming to know and understand those varied claims made by religious traditions; we are not expecting to reach agreement on them in regard to religious doctrine or practice.

The second point clarifies this further. In coming to know one another we may find real and significant differences in the lived moral consequences of our beliefs and practices. It is very important to remember that we do not grapple with these differences in interreligious dialogue. Rather, the proper sphere for that work is in political debate. In a multicultural democracy we engage one another in political discussion, convincing one another of the value and efficacy of our moral vision and why it should prevail in law. It is at the table of interreligious dialogue that we come to understand one another, but it is at the table of political discourse that we try to persuade one another, not for a religious conversion to our Truth claims, but for a moral consensus regarding lived values. The conversation at each table is better because of the work of the other.

Wisdom of the heart With these cautions and clarifications in mind, we are better able to hear the enthusiasts in explaining the benefits of dialogue. At center is the inspiration that dialogue can renew our own spirituality. I certainly see this result in the classroom. Most parents have encountered a stage in their adolescent children’s development when they listen to advice with greater openness if it comes from someone other than their parents. Interreligious experience is a similar inspiration, and not just to questioning teens, but to developed believers as well. Hearing others share their deepest convictions about the Divine can renew the vigor of our own quest for holiness. Often in dialogue our hearts meet before our heads agree and we find that it is in the wisdom of the heart that God’s presence is made known. Understanding one another and how very much our traditions hold in common can bring mutual enrichment on local and global levels as well. Citizens in society are better equipped to live in peace and work for justice when they have had interreligious encounters to share and learn about one another. Prejudice is exposed and broken. In the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy, I received several email messages from former students who expressed their gratitude for the field visits they had made to mosques in earlier years. Having met Muslims as prayerful, welcoming human beings was helping them, at that difficult national moment, to share with others that Islam is not a religion of terrorism and all Muslims were not responsible for, nor rejoiced in, the events of that tragedy. They were able to be voices of peace in the midst of great national confusion.

Sustained encounters When it is possible for interreligious dialogue to become a sustained encounter among individuals or groups, over time it can begin to reshape those who participate in profound and beautiful ways. Though most of my students are only able to have one or two field experiences during their study, I am privileged to be on every trip, returning year after year and building friendships with the generous believers who host our visits. The encounters have gradually ceased to be between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ learning about their ways and teaching them our ways. Instead, as we have continued to listen and share, we find ourselves becoming a ‘we’ in our common humanity, a commonality that honors, and yet also transcends the differences of culture and faith, of geography and economics. I am deeply grateful to my dialogue partners for the depth and strength they have added to my own faith journey.

Religious pluralism is a reality; it surrounds us and permeates the culture. But interreligious dialogue is a choice. Burying our heads in the sand and throwing rocks when we come up for air will not change anyone’s heart, including our own. Instead we can choose to move toward a mind of greater perception, a heart of greater love, a world of greater peace, by accepting the invitation to know one another, carefully and respectfully crossing the arc of dialogue into mutual understanding.

Frances M. Leap is associate professor of religious studies at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, Pennsylvania.

At the onset of the twenty-first century, a new relationship is being forged between my own Greek Orthodox Christian community and the Turkish Muslim community of the United States. That such a dialogue occurs at all surprises some within and beyond these communities, not understanding that such a dialogue has a long and complicated history in Turkey itself. Still, the stereotyped, traditional conflict between the Greeks and Turks has always been more complicated than what is portrayed outside of Greece and Turkey. The fact that the nascent American version of this dialogue between two communities has developed largely following the events of September 11, 2001, is therefore somewhat coincidental; that it has evolved in a society coming to terms with cultural and religious realities largely ignored by the majority prior to those events has only created an atmosphere where our work is increasingly perceived as necessary within both communities.

When coming “face to face” in dialogue, it is always an honor to be with so many people of like mind, who, for the sake of peace and justice and the higher ideals of their individual professions of faith and spiritual law, seek what St. Paul calls “a more excellent way.” Surely we “religious types” and others whose intellectual currency is the exchange of ideas between cultures, are in our day and age (a tense time of fear and resentment) unique stewards of a special and exceptional place in history. As representatives of our respective cultures and faiths, as representatives of what our individual culture’s legacy has shaped each of us to be, we are the inheritors of a vast wealth of knowledge, beauty, and pain. Surely, even though we are inheritors of history’s conflicts-which admittedly, sometimes color our more noble attempts to turn mere tolerance into understanding-we should be able to find some purpose and encouragement in that same history. This is not an easy thing in our time, in this age of constant media noise and lack of historical context.

The Greek Orthodox Christian and Turkish Muslim communities share a unique past; hence, our dialogue emerges from a complex, and, at times, painful history that Orthodox Christianity and Islam, Greece and Turkey have suffered and shared.

Yet we have come a long way. We have traveled a difficult road filled with many obstacles, physical violence, and the metaphorical obstacles of our intellectual insecurities that have perhaps hampered our higher aspirations even more than the former darkness of our historical conflicts. The influential and intellectually challenging Muslim thinker Fethullah Gülen puts it in another way, in broader terms, when he writes:

Negative feelings and attributes often defeat people, pulling them under their domination to such an extent that even the religions that guide people to goodness and kindness are abused, as well as the feelings and attributes that are sources of absolute good.

How truly these words reflect the experience for so many of us and for our ancestors. And struggling with religion’s truths-perhaps too weighty for us to comprehend fully and therefore abused by all of us, each of us misapplying our own ideals to baser human endeavors-we have suffered. What we did not understand was that we were suffering together. In retrospect, our shared history contains hope for our shared destiny.

Allow me to depict an image from our shared past, to recount an event shared by Greek Orthodox Christians and Turkish Muslims that is often overlooked. However, it has silently brought a message to us through the ages. In Istanbul, there are two images in the Patriarchate at the Phanar, two mosaics. They grace the foyer at the entrance of the main office building. On the one side is a depiction of St. Andrew, the First Called of Jesus’ Apostles and the first Bishop of Byzantium. With him is Stachys, Andrew’s successor (from 38-54 CE) in a long line of bishops who have made Byzantium, Constantinople, and Istanbul their home to the present. On the other side of that foyer at the Phanar is a mosaic that depicts the Patriarch Gennadios. He stands with his hand open, receiving a document being handed to him by Sultan Mehmet II in 1453. It is the Firman, the legal document guaranteeing that the Orthodox Church would continue its traditions and mission among its people during Muslim Ottoman rule.

The first image depicts the beginning of one of our peoples’ faith traditions. The next image depicts the inherent understanding of tradition that the progenitors of the Turkish nation had and would continue to keep. Our shared history is, obviously, something less than perfect. It is a human story about human people. Nevertheless, time and the tides of numerous historical fortunes have brought us to this moment in the United States. And we are together at this moment, in yet another time, in ways that could have only occurred because of this culture’s strengths. Imagine what this dialogue might mean to our ancestors if they were to see us now-Turks and Greeks together, sharing freedom, sharing meals at banquets, working together in a common cause and, most importantly, hoping for a still better future.

I, a Greek Orthodox bishop, one born in the United States, whose spiritual ties are to that great city on the shores of the Bosphorus, have stood before Turkish audiences and the people of America’s multi-cultural, multi-ethnic faith traditions, as an honored guest. We have been together at a table laden with the true food of human being-of human existence: understanding, mutual respect and hope.

Our future is contingent upon our acknowledgment of the past. History is always the greatest teacher. And after the long, difficult history of our interactions, we have something else that can and must help us become even greater witnesses: each of our own cultures and of the shared experiences we still remember. It is perhaps a difficult truth to embrace, but those who have been enemies quite often understand each other better than those who have never been part of their conflict. In the film, The Matrix Reloaded, one character says to another, whom he has just fought: “You never really know who someone is until you fight him.”

At this point in our history, when the need to fight has long passed, we have an opportunity to look at each other in a unique and intense way, and seeing one another in truth and love, we may yet see ourselves in the other. And this then may become the key to our common future and works of righteousness done in shared hope for a better world.

So, perhaps we have even managed to give goodness to the world together, to save what was the best of our respective histories, and allow the future to be a mirror, worthy of the deepest truths of our faiths, in which to see the truest reflection of our humanity. Turan Oflazoðlu says, “What we need is to enrich ourselves with those aspects of foreign culture which are not congenial to our nature.” We must seek the “other” amongst us and invite them into our lives. We must share our hopes our fears, our joys, and our sorrows. We must find ways of transcending our conflicts, both historical and intellectual, and create a new future together. My reflection on this dialogue is that, “We are the world in small.” May we may now truly praise the Creator’s gift of life in all its diversity, and walk together into the future in a new way. I hope that we will take the second step with the same sense of warmth and respect that we have experienced the first step. To quote the late, great prophet of reconciliation, Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras- ἐλάτε νά κοιτταχOούμε – “come, let us look into one another’s eyes.”

The Example of Greek-Turkish Dialogue in Post-9/11 America
Bishop Demetrios of Mokissos
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America,
Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople

‘Peaceful coexistence is the most important project of our era. But we cannot do it alone or in isolation; we must do it together.’

The world has become very small.

Mass communications, mass travel, and economic interdependence have created a contemporary world in which we as individuals and groups no longer can live in isolation from other groups as well as we could have in previous periods. Nations and groups of people who barely knew of each other now see each other’s lives and worlds in living color and in real time through television and the internet. Governments who counted on secrecy and submission just a few years ago now find themselves humbled, bewildered, and even overthrown through mass communications that broadcast their tyrannical deeds—and the bravery of those who resist them—to the entire world. Regions who thrived in their own prosperity in isolation from the poverty and stagnation of other regions now find their economies racked by volatility as globalism ties the purse strings of world commerce together into complicated knots.

The world has become small, and we are with each other—knowing of, affecting, and interacting with each other—more than we ever have in the history of the world. And we are not the same. Yes, we are all human beings. Yes, all of us are subject to the universal conditions of human existence like uncertainty, change, loss, and death. But how we deal with those conditions and what we make them mean depends in large part on our distinctive cultures, backgrounds, languages, and histories. Herein lie the differences in the human family. We do not think the same. We don’t pray to the same gods. We don’t choose the same cultural values. We don’t share specific histories. We interpret the world, and ourselves in it, in very different ways.

Given these differences, how can we all live together? Is peaceful coexistence possible globally, regionally, or even within one family? If so, what are the necessary components that create it? In other words, what are the preconditions—philosophically, socially, politically, culturally, or otherwise—for peaceful coexistence among different people? These are powerful and complex questions that require asking even more questions in order to answer.

First we must ask questions of history.

Have we as human beings ever lived together peacefully? Have people of very different faiths, for example, ever lived with each other for a sustained period of time without seeking to oppress or eradicate each other? Answering these questions requires a significant and thorough study of world history.

If we determine that sustained peaceful coexistence has been achieved in certain situations—for example, under the Ottomans in the fifteenth century, or in thirteenth-century Spain—we must further determine what factors allowed that coexistence to occur. What were the specific conditions—economic, political, social, cultural, etc.—that made that coexistence possible? These conditions and factors are myriad; to distinguish them so that they can be meaningful to us today requires intensive analysis from highly skilled and knowledgeable individuals.

Once distinguished, can the conditions that made peaceful coexistence possible elsewhere and in a different era be transported to the present time, into a current situation of conflict and violence? Can the conditions be recreated today, the present time, although taken from the past? This may seem simple, but it is not. People change from era to era. Notions of what is permissible, moral, and just change over time even within one culture, much more across cultures. What worked in a previous period, in terms of a conception of societal harmony and justice, cannot simply be picked up and moved into a new era with different notions of morality, truth, society, etc. Things must be translated first, and even before being translated, we must determine if the factors in question can be translated at all. Worldviews may have changed so much in the intervening centuries that they no longer work as viable concepts for today.

If certain conditions and factors that generate peaceful coexistence can be translated from the past into today’s world, they must then be implemented socially, culturally, politically, economically, and legally. In many instances, this will require a fundamental overhaul of current socio-political systems. Transformations of this nature are daunting simply because of their sheer magnitude. Moreover, such societal transformations contain within them the seeds for violence and injustice. They rarely happen without conflict. Implementation of new societal structures must happen in a way that minimizes or omits opportunities for breakdown, violence, and retribution from those who may feel left out or trampled upon by the changes. Otherwise, the implementation of a new system for peaceful coexistence ends up perpetuating yet more violent conflict.

These are the questions we must ask of history. But we cannot stop there. We must also ask questions of the religions.

What is the general stance of our religious traditions to those who do not share its beliefs and commitments? Does it demand eradication of all contrary belief systems and the people who propagate them? Or does it request accommodation of ‘the stranger,’ or those who believe and live differently? In short, do people of faith ground themselves into patterns of tolerance or intolerance as they root themselves in their faith traditions?

These are difficult questions to answer because the religions themselves, as historical entities that grow and change over time, sometimes seem to have multiple ways of being with regard to peaceful coexistence. Over the centuries, adherents of the largest two religions in the world—Christianity and Islam—have lived both peacefully and non-peacefully with each other, and with people of other religions they encountered. Certainly, the teachings of both religions encourage peaceful coexistence in their respective sacred texts and traditions. However, both these religions also have suffered violent expression in the hands of those who either ignore the teachings of coexistence, or twist the teachings to justify violence and terror.

Whatever our religious traditions were intended to be, the fact is that historically they have been used to perpetrate some of the worst imaginable violence ever created in the human family. And we have to face this hard fact with courage, and with resolve to enlist our religious traditions as major players in the project of peaceful coexistence.

The potential for religious conflict in society is the chief reason why societies that have achieved peaceful coexistence to any extent champion religious tolerance as a chief civic virtue, and they actually implement that virtue into society culturally and legally. Given the diverse and absolute claims of many religious and moral traditions, tolerance is really all we can ask of people. We cannot, in a truly pluralistic society, expect morally committed or devout persons to embrace or to celebrate practices that they, due to their faith or ethics, consider to be sinful, heretical, or abhorrent. We cannot expect them to acknowledge the legitimacy of gods, or modes of worship, or ways of life they consider to be false. To expect this in the realm of religion is to be fundamentally intolerant. We cannot advocate, in the name of tolerance, a society that tolerates everything but certain forms of traditional religious or moral conviction.

Tolerance, then, is the capacity to put up with or to accommodate ideas, beliefs, and behaviors that one finds deeply problematic, and is society’s most essential civic virtue, especially in societies as ethnically, religiously, and racially diverse as many countries are becoming in this period of globalization. Daily life in such societies simply will not move along if the citizenry cannot practice basic tolerance. Of course, simply gritting our teeth and grudgingly putting up with others we don’t like or with whom we disagree is the low-water mark of societal growth. Ideally, we would grow to a place of greater understanding and appreciation for those who are radically different from us, even if we still do not accept or agree with their beliefs or practices. Sometimes, however, basic tolerance, especially in matters of religion, is the best we can do.

These are the questions we must ask of our religions. But we cannot stop here, either. We must also ask questions of ourselves.

We must search ourselves and examine our hearts. Are we really committed to living together with people who are different from us? Do we really accept the fact that we as people will never all believe, think, pray, live, or act the same—and that we just have to deal with it? Or do we resent these ‘facts on the ground’ and spend our efforts trying to coerce others or force them into changing to be more like us? Or, having given up on making other people like us, do we isolate ourselves into enclaves of sameness and construct the daily arc of our lives so that we don’t have to encounter many people who are different from us?

Part of the reason why achieving peaceful coexistence is so challenging has to do with individuals. All the legal, cultural, and societal structures that support peaceful coexistence may be in place; however, they will fail to show results unless one thing is true—people genuinely must want to live in peace. This is not a given. While we may think, and commonly say, that all people really want is to live in peace, this is not true. Not everyone wants to live in peace. Often people put qualifiers to the prospects for peace in their lives and worlds. For example, they say, ‘I want peace in my region, but not if it means giving up any of our land.’ Or, ‘I want peace in the region, but we cannot allow attacks on our national honor.’ In other words, we say we want peace, but not if it means we have to give up something that we deem more important than peace. Many of us value other things more than peace.

Even in our personal lives, in our relationships with family and friends, we often keep grudges and enmities in place for years and years despite many opportunities to do away with them and create peace. Why? Because we would have to give up something that we value more than peace, in order to achieve peace in that situation—a feeling of being right, a sense of superiority, the perverse joy we take in condemning other people or groups, and other things. We have to let go of these types of things to create peace, yet we often prefer them to peace. So, the conflict and tension endure year after year, and all the while we are saying, to ourselves and to others, that we want peace. We are not being honest about the situation. We value other things more than peace.

Ultimately, achieving peaceful coexistence at the individual, interpersonal level has to do with a person’s capacity for difference. How comfortable are we with people who are different from us? Do we feel threatened by them? Do we feel nervous around them? Or, can we be relaxed and comfortable within ourselves even when surrounded by people who believe, look, and act differently than us? Today’s global world demands all of us to expand our inner capacities for difference, so that we are not easily threatened by people who are not exactly like us. All of us must stretch our comfort zones beyond their current boundaries.

These are the hard, searching questions we must ask ourselves.

Only when we give ourselves authentically to these questions with a view toward creating sustained, peaceful coexistence will we have a future worth living for. Moreover, all of us must do this work together—religious and secular, liberals and conservatives—all of us. Otherwise, the forces of globalization that have made our world smaller will bring with it new and more barbaric forms of hatred, oppression, and violence.

Achieving peaceful coexistence is, then, the most important project of our era. And we must give ourselves to it wholly, with our fullest capacities for knowledge and understanding, with our truest intentions for truth and justice, and with our bravest strengths in order to journey through the challenges and difficulties that the process entails. We most certainly can do it. But we cannot do it alone or in isolation; we must do it together.

Recently I was reading a book called The Geography of Thought. To my surprise, the author claimed that Eastern and Western people had different types of cognition, meaning that they think differently, perceive the world differently, explain relations of causality differently, and solve their problems differently. As I was pondering all these differences, a friend of mine, Kelli, ebulliently came up with an idea. We would each separately write a ‘Where I’m from’ poem and compare them. Since I was born in the East, and she was born in the West, we would see the differences between us, as well as the similarities, helping us to understand each other better and enrich us culturally and informatively. In order to write the poem I began to think about my roots and heritage and also my personal experiences. The experience made me dive deep in my thoughts and feelings, and explore myself again. Writing this poem was helpful and good for me psychologically. Here is the final product.

Where I’m from
By Sumeyra Tosun

I am from the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve and from the nomads of the Toros Mountains and the grandchildren of Mawlana Jalal ad-Din Rumi.

I am from a specially sifted extract of clay in the very beginning, then from a clot clinging, then from a chewed lump, and then from created bones and clothed flesh.

I am from impassable mountains, cranes that are dignified as well as shy, tireless horses,

from the daystar to find my way, wisdom, hospitality, and righteousness, and from kismet, not luck.

I am from Istanbul, the city of dialectics, the city that is born every day and dies every day, and the city that stands in limbo

from the scent of narcissus in winter and baby’s breath in summer.

I am from sweat, blood, elbow grease, and honor, not easy money.

I am from a coffee thermos that is actually for drinking tea.

I am from ‘Down with Big Brother.’

from freedom and equality, but not, ‘All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.’

I am from the eyes of Edgar Allen Poe, who saw much sorrow, cruelty, disappointment, and craziness.

I am from a grizzled mind, rather than from white or black or even from gray.

So I am from ‘both/and’ instead of ‘either/or.’

I am from the timeless adage, ‘serving people, serving God.’

All in all, after living this long, I am in the phase of giving up Leyla in the way of finding Mawla. ,

The fact that Sumeyra and I come from such different backgrounds continues to astonish me. There are many American cultural references that she does not understand or has never heard. Since we both live in America right now—I have lived here my whole life and Sumeyra is here for school—I get to play teacher. I love English so I teach Sumeyra and other Turkish friends of ours American phrases, mannerisms, customs, and vocabulary. She comes to me with words she does not understand and I explain. At the same time, when I am in her home with her roommates from Turkish-speaking parts of the world and different regions of Turkey, I am the one left in the dark about cultural practices and sayings, especially when everyone begins speaking Turkish. I am learning, but it is slow because here in America I have the advantage—more people speak my language.

I found this poem called ‘Where I’m from’ by George Ella, and I thought writing a similar poem would help me learn more about where Sumeyra is coming from. She speaks softly but likes loud music. She loves to learn and cares about people. We are both so proud of our heritage, a pride that I sense comes from an appreciation of the gifts our predecessors have given us. Sumeyra has a head-start on me: English literature is taught in many places, and American culture—movies, music, customs—is more widely known throughout the world. Before Sumeyra, the last significant thing I had heard about Turkey was Constantinople and the Ottoman Empire. But she can talk to me about American movies, American books—she’s read and seen many of them as well. She educates me about Turkish music and tells me about Turkish politics and history.

Where I’m from
By Kelli Angelone

I am from the soft hills of Texas, cactus flowers,

and the smooth stone bed of the Frio River.

I am from sunlight through autumn leaves

and the scent of rosemary.

I am from cheerfulness, ingenuity, and pragmatism,

from seamstresses9 and survivors of the Depression and World War II,

from the ones who shared with neighbors

and the ones who happened to come back.

I am from the South, the sweltering heat that envelops you,

sometimes comforting, sometimes suffocating.

I am from this place, these people,

but I am also from the world of books,

from dragon riders and shapeshifters10 and Bilbo the Hobbit.11

I am from the Birmingham jail:

‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’12

And I am from compassion and defiance:

‘What kind of world do you think is suitable for love?’13

But most importantly, I am made from a messaged delivered on white wings:

‘Sing for Me a new song.’14

We were hoping with these poems that we could give you a taste of two worlds, so you could be as fascinated as we are about how different we are and how much we have in common.

1 Holy Qur’an 23:12-14

2 Kismet means fate or destiny

3 Schrödinger’s Cat, by Alev Alatli

4 1984, by George Orwell

5 Animal Farm, by George Orwell

6 Schrödinger’s Cat, by Alev Alatli

7 Mawla means protector, master, or friend, and is used for God

8 Layla and Majnun, by Fuzuli

9 Seamstresses are people who sew for a living, usually clothes.

10 Shapeshifters are fantasy creatures/people that can make themselves look like other creatures, even humans.

11 Bilbo the Hobbit is a character from JRR Tolkien’s novel, The Hobbit. Hobbits are shorter-than-average people (actually fantasy creatures) with big hairy feet that live in houses underground and have extra mealtimes and tea-times.

12 Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote this in a letter from jail during the Civil Rights Movement.

13 A quote from Azar Nafisi’s book, Reading Lolita in Tehran.

14 A quote from the Holy Bible, Psalms.

As the only Muslim woman in the room, outside their prayer circle, I was there to observe their prayer session by the invitation of my friend C. As they sighed and tried to find words to console and inspire one another, I could feel their despair about creating a more peaceful and understanding world. They were truly concerned about America’s position in maintaining peace in the world, but after the events of the last decade, they ran out of hope.

When they don’t have hope, what could they pray for?

Pitched into this darkness, I heard myself say, ‘Well, actually, I am feeling hope.’ There was an uneasy creak of folding chairs and tired faces. Their looks said, ‘Please, not another voice of denial…’ but they were kind enough to listen to what I had to say. ‘I think America has the greatest potential for peace,’ I continued. Glimmers of candlelight played across the eyes in the room. Having heard a Muslim woman say this was new for them.

‘Well, I think so because…’ I paused for a moment to search for the right words, and continued, ‘… because it all began with French fries.’ Once I saw their puzzled faces and the half smiles playing on their lips, I knew I had caught their attention to tell them my story. When I saw, for the first time, people calmly dipping individual fries into cups of ketchup with bare fingers, I had just arrived in America to go to the graduate school. I couldn’t believe that they used no forks, no toothpicks—just eating greasy fries with their bare hands. How crude, I thought. But then another foreign student from Morocco shared with me that in her country, people ate with their hands, too, and that eating with one’s hands enhances the flavor of the food. I saw her, also for the first time in my life, enjoy chicken biryani with her fingers. It was my first glimpse of just how wide the world was. It was the fragrance of my own budding tolerance.

After I saw how eager they were to hear about it, I continued my story. I told them I had come to the United States ten years before, on a college scholarship from Turkey. I’ll be honest. Before coming to America, I had never spoken to a person who was not Muslim, much less shared a meal with them. But here, in America, where I met fellow graduate students from India, China, Africa and Europe, I experienced first-hand that we could all live and eat in our own unique ways, learning side by side, and live in peace. My tolerance grew.

Then I walked in to the Islamic Center of the city I lived in. I saw different Muslims, from around the world, in different clothing, of different races, speaking different languages, bowing down in reverent prayer side by side. All those differences seemed like jewels and beads on an elegant dress, enriching and beautifying the fabric in harmony. It was a vision, and witnessing it, I felt such a profound peace. I thought, though they, my fellow Muslim brothers and sisters, dress or talk and eat differently, we all bow down in front of God the same way. We are all the same in the important stuff, and only different in the minor issues. What significance does it have if one eats with their hands, with a fork, or with a couple of chopsticks?

In later years, I was blown away when I witnessed how Christians worshipped at my friend B’s church. They sing, listen to the sermon, read passages from the Bible, which is considered a holy book in Islam and to be respected, and they get connected with the God. And when I noticed how the stories, values, and traditions we claim as ours were also shared by them, my first image of Americans collapsed completely. Before I came to this country, the only Americans I knew were from the movies and soap operas. Naturally, I thought all American women were blond, tall, and beautiful, and all the American men were tall, rich, and handsome. They didn’t have any financial problems, health problems, or any real-life problems; they had only relationship problems and cared about no one but themselves. This was the image in my head about Americans. How wrong I was! I was surprised and fascinated when I observed my friend B’s church worship, when I came together with other families from my son’s school for play dates, or when our neighbors invited us to their Thanksgiving dinner, and also when they came to ours for a Ramadan iftar. It came to me in a flash: Americans have similar family values, religious values, holiday traditions, and love and compassion for their neighbors, just as we do. They are not actors in a soap opera!

What is more, they welcome thousands of foreign students, scholars, refugees, and immigrants from many different countries around the globe each year. Every year Americans are exposed to many cultures, languages, and faith traditions, and hardly anyone is jumping down anybody’s throat for being different. Of course, there are occasional negative comments toward what is different, but even then, most people come together to neutralize that negativity with support and compassion. Different is viewed as richness, as variety, and as interesting. My own tolerance and appreciation of other cultures blossomed because of these experiences.

The United States can have a great ability to bring about peace, as I shared with the ladies that night, because American culture is already open, tolerant of religious freedom, and welcoming to people around the globe. These are the perfect ingredients for peace. America has the power to wage peace in other countries, not with war or fear, but with goodness, faith, acceptance, and aid, to build hospitals and schools, and create jobs and programs that acknowledge human rights and generate good will.

America has long been a mixed salad. Its unique blend of people from around the world, stirred together with mingling flavors, develops a taste for tolerance, for freedom, for the savory experience of diverse cultures living together. May our prayer in this post-9/11 world be this: that we move beyond the ineffectual and destructive politics of warfare and fear, and hold fast to the goodness and power of this nation’s moral tolerance, constitutional freedoms, and potential for peace. God has created us with this potential. More powerful than any military force, I hope my experiences of tolerance and good will in the United States offered a recipe for hope for my friends that night.

Today, more than 1 billion people are suffering from the lack of potable water. About 2.3 billion people (41 percent of the earth’s population) live in regions with water scarcity; this number is estimated to be 3.5 billion by 2025.1

96.5 percent of the world’s water is found in seas and oceans, and the remainder is found as ice caps, brackish water, and fresh water sources (e.g. lakes, rivers, and ground waters). To overcome water shortage problems, methods such as water conservation and dam construction have been applied for several years, but they are not enough against increasing water demand and decreasing fresh water sources.2

Water is also very important for generating energy, and vice versa. The largest portion of U.S. electric production is provided by thermoelectric power generation, where steam-driven turbine generators are used to generate electricity. In 2000, thermoelectric power plants used 39 percent of all fresh water sources in the United States.3 All these reasons make the production of drinking water a worldwide issue.

Desalination

Since most of world’s water supply is found in oceans and seas, desalination is the process of removing salts and minerals from either ocean or brackish water to make it safe for human consumption and use. The most widely applied desalination processes are divided into two main categories, thermal distillation processes and membrane processes.

Desalination via thermal distillation methods, which separate liquid mixtures based on their boiling points, mainly fall into three categories: multi-stage flash (MSF), multi-effect distillation (MED), and mechanical vapor compression (MVC). Thermal distillation processes require the evaporation of water while leaving the salt in a concentrated brine. Middle Eastern countries mainly use thermal-based desalination plants to produce fresh water because of their easily accessible fossil fuel sources.2, 4

Membrane-based separations are the main choice of producing potable water in countries outside the Middle East. More than 50 percent of the newly installed desalination plants have been using reverse osmosis (RO) membrane technology (since 2001).2

Membrane separations

A membrane is an interphase between two adjacent phases acting as a selective barrier, regulating the transport of substances between the two compartments. It is a very thin film that allows passage of some types of substances while preventing the passage of other substances, depending on their sizes. Membranes used for separation technology gave rise to an interdisciplinary area including many fields of science and engineering such as chemistry, chemical engineering, material science, process engineering, environmental science, ecology, and economics.5, 6 Today, the membrane industry is impressively large. The membrane separation technology market is quite diverse and ranges from medicine to the chemical industry, and the most important markets are medical devices and water treatment. There was a $2 billion sale of synthetic membranes worldwide in 2003.6

Water purification membranes

Water treatment processes employ several types of membranes. They include microfiltration (MF), ultrafiltration (UF), nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO) membranes. They are designed to remove materials of increasing sizes. MF membranes have the largest pore size and typically reject large particles and various microorganisms. UF membranes have smaller pores than MF membranes and, therefore, in addition to large particles and microorganisms, they can reject bacteria and soluble macromolecules such as proteins. RO membranes are effectively nonporous and therefore exclude particles and even many low molar mass species such as salt ions, organic substances, etc.7 NF membranes are relatively new and are sometimes called “loose” RO membranes. They are porous membranes, but since the pores are ten of angstroms or less, they exhibit performance between that of RO and UF membranes.8 Of these membranes, NF and RO membranes constitute the dominant technology for desalination of water.9

2.1 Nanofiltration Membranes

Membranes for nanofiltration (NF) are usually comprised of cellulose acetate or aromatic polyamides. NF allows diffusion of organic compounds, and rejects some salts with low pressures being applied. NF itself cannot purify seawater to drinking water standards, but it is a process that can be used to produce mildly salty water, or as a water-softening technique.2, 4 When NF is coupled with RO, then it can be used to turn seawater into drinking water.10

Nanofiltration membranes usually have negative charges (e.g., carboxylate groups, sulfonate groups, etc.), and as a result, ion repulsion is a major factor in determining salt rejection. More highly charged ions, such as sulfate, are more highly rejected than monovalent ions, such as chloride, by a negatively charged nanofiltration membrane. In particular, NF membranes are used to remove divalent ions such as calcium and magnesium, which are mainly responsible for water hardness. These membranes also usually display good rejection of organic compounds with molecular weights above 200 to 500 grams.2,11,12

2.2 Reverse osmosis membranes

Osmosis is a natural process in which water molecules move across a semipermeable membrane from a lower solute concentration area to the higher solute concentration area. Water flows until a chemical potential equilibrium of water is established. When equilibrium is reached, the pressure difference between the two sides of the membrane is equal to the osmotic pressure of the solution.12

Reverse osmosis (RO) is the process of forcing water from a region of high solute concentration through a membrane to a region of low solute concentration by applying a pressure that is greater than the osmotic pressure. As a result, separation of water from the solution occurs as pure water from the high concentration side to the low concentration side. The RO process includes a feed water source, feed pre-treatment, a high-pressure pump, RO membrane modules and post-treatment steps.

RO membranes are capable of rejecting monovalent ions such as sodium and chloride, which makes the RO process a valuable method for desalination. Membranes used for RO processes have salt rejections of more than 99 percent. RO membranes do not have distinct pores, but rather rely on free volume within the polymer film.

RO membrane separations depend highly on the properties of the polymer film such as the chemical and physical structure of the membrane material. Desired RO membranes should be resistant to chemical substances and microbial organisms, stable over a long time both mechanically and structurally, and have ideal separation properties such as high water flux, high salt rejection, chlorine, and fouling (clogging of membrane pores) resistance.

Approximately one billion of six billion people in the world live in water-stressed areas, and RO membrane technology is the leading desalination technology to overcome the problem of insufficient clean water and estimated to continue its leadership in the near future.13 Scientists and engineers are extensively investigating the development of the most efficient membrane desalination technology to produce the cheapest potable water.

On the other hand, cells use membranes, though scientists do not try to further develop them, since they were already designed in a perfect manner. Cellular membranes have a phospholipid structure with embedded proteins. They control many different kinds of transportations of substances in and out of cells (e.g. sugar, drugs, ions). They are so well designed that they know which substances are helpful or harmful for the cell, and decide on the passage of substances based on that. Many researchers have tried countless times for many years to produce an equally wonderful membrane technology for making clean water. But cellular membranes, consisting of hundreds of functions in living organisms, do not form spontaneously.

REFERENCES

1) R.F. Service, Freshwater resources, desalination freshens up. Science, (2006). 313, 1088- 1090.

2) L.F. Greenlee, D.F.Lawler, B.D. Freeman, B. Marrot, P. Moulin, Reverse osmosis desalination: Water sources, technology and today’s challenges. Water Research (2009), 43, 2317-2348.

3) T.J. Feeley, T.J. Skone, G.J.Stiegel, A. McNemar, M.Nemeth, B. Schimmoller, J.T. Murphy, L. Manfredo, Water: A critical resource in the thermoelectric power industry.Energy (2008), 33, 1-11.

4) G. A. Tularam, M. Ilahee, Environmental concerns of desalinating seawater using reverse osmosis. J. Environ. Monit.(2007), 9, 805–813.

5) P. Vandezande, L. E. M. Gevers, I. F. J. Vankelecom, Solvent resistant nanofiltration: separating on a molecular level. Chem. Soc. Rev.(2008), 37, 365–405.

6) M. Ulbricht, Advanced functional polymer membranes. Polymer (2006), 47, 2217–2262.

7) R.H. Perry, D.W.Green, Eds., Perry’s Chemical Engineers’ Handbook, 7th ed., McGraw-Hill: New York, 1997.

8) Sagle, A., and B. Freeman, “Fundamentals of Membranes for Water Treatment,” in The Future of Desalination in Texas: Volume 2, Report Number 363, Texas Water Development Board, Austin, TX, pp. 137-154 (2004).

9) H.B.Park, B.D.Freeman, Z.Zhang, M.Sankir, J.E.McGrath, Highly Chlorine-Tolerant Polymers for Desalination, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. (2008), 47, 6019-6024.

10) N. Hilal, H. Al-Zoubi, N. A. Darwish, A. W. Mohammad, M. Abu Arabi, A comprehensive review of nanofiltration membranes: Treatment, pretreatment, modelling, and atomic force microscopy, Desalination (2004), 170, 281-308.

11) A. Gorenflo, D. Velazquez-Padron, F.H. Frimmel, Nanofiltration of a German groundwater of high hardness and NOM content: performance and costs. Desalination (2002), 151, 253-265.

12) M.E.Williams, A Brief Review of Reverse Osmosis Membrane Technology,EET Corporation and Williams Engineering Services Company, Inc., Harriman, TN, 2003.

13) K. P. Lee, T. C. Arnot, D. Mattia, A Review of Reverse Osmosis Membrane Materials for Desalination – Development to Date and Future Potential. J. Membr. Sci. 370 (2011) 1-22.