All love comes from within.
Never tell that I revealed
this secret for humans to know.
I do not steal from others
Neither should you.
Even if it slipped between the lines
With the burden of love, the heaviness of the message,
And the light,
Only the hearts
That have it inside out
Will hear
Because it is not the air
That carries this secret
In words, spoken.
Rather,
It is the unsealed hearts and eyes
Sending it to self-conscious
Ears of love

Love is a monk in the human heart.
To meet that sanctuary
is the moment of coming to life.
Being alive, or alove
when it shines inside out:
only then, when it reaches the wind,
Does it not travel
Ear to ear,
Does it not whisper,
But conquer

Sumayya B. Sharaf

Whatever the circumstances of the coup, the president’s insistence on needing to root out the shadowy forces behind it were hard to argue with. In the days that followed, however, it quickly became clear that whatever prior knowledge Erdogan might have had of moves against him, he was well prepared with a very long list of people and institutions that, he insisted, needed to be purged.

If his attribution of blame to an unlikely religious civil society network beggared belief, even stranger was the extent and scope of the post-coup purge. Almost half of the military flag offices, the generals and admirals, were purged, along with one third of the judiciary, and thousands of academics, including every single dean and university president.  The rate of sackings, detentions, and arrests in the first ten days after the coup attempt was breathtaking.  The regime made no pretense of needing to investigate; it simply asserted guilt by association with the “terrorists,” and quickly and methodically rounded up “known enemies.” 

The purges began even as the coup attempt was being squashed, with the president urging crowds to take to the streets and stare-down the opposition. The response quickly took on the character of a witch hunt as neighbors, colleagues, and family members were urged to turn in the guilty, however slender the pretext. The accused were all declared guilty of supporting FETO, the pejorative term used to describe followers of exiled Sufi cleric Fethullah Gülen, even though many of those targeted in the purges, especially in the military, police, judiciary, and media were clearly Kemalist or leftist secularists with no religious affiliations of any kind.  In the months that followed the net was widened to include Kurdish activists and prominent dissidents of all stripes.   Guilt simply required being linked, in some way, with the “FETO coup plotters,” but no evidence or explanation was given. By year’s end, when the parliamentary commission to investigate the events of July 15 would be abruptly disbanded leaving behind many unanswered questions, the contradictions had piled up in accounts from officials of what had occurred.

Half a year on, the numbers purged are staggering – and are still growing by the week: over 124,000 people have been sacked, and of these, more than 84,000 have been detained. Around 43,000 people have been formally arrested. The number of academics sacked is now around 7,000 and they are joined by over 3,800 judges and prosecutors. Almost all of Turkey’s independent media outlets, in excess of 195, have been shut down, and over 145 journalists arrested. More than 2,100 schools, universities and associated colleges and dormitories have been shut down. And over 550 businesses, with tens of billions of dollars in assets, have been seized.

Within days of the coup attempt, the extent to which president Erdogan would “make good” on his “God-given opportunity” to cleanse and purge became clear as he declared emergency rule and suspended parliamentary government.   It soon became evident, however, that he was focused not on national security, but on consolidating personal power.  A measure of how far Turkey has fallen came on the 21st of October, when the World Justice Project (WJP) Rule of Law Index 2016 was released.  Turkey had plummeted to 108th place out of all 113 countries surveyed in terms of constraints on government powers and fundamental rights. 

By November, all hope for a quick return to democracy was lost.  On the 4th of November, nine parliamentarians from Turkey’s third largest political party, the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), were arrested in the wake of a series of purges against ethnic Kurdish organizations. Across the country, access to social media – Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp – was blocked, and in the Kurdish southeast access to the internet as a whole was cut-off. 

On the 8th of November, President Erdogan and his increasingly authoritarian and Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) lodged criminal complaints against Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the country’s second largest party, the secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP), as well as other senior MPs.  They were accused of making gross insults against the president.  In a statement the previous day that had triggered the legal action the CHP said that, "Turkey is now going through a dark and authoritarian coup staged by the presidential palace." The hitherto compliant left-of-center CHP issued the statement after an emergency party meeting called in response to the arrest of the HDP MPs and the October 31st detention of the editor-in-chief and eight other senior journalists of the sole remaining significant opposition newspaper, Cumhuriyet (the Republic – a paper closely aligned with the CHP). The statement added, "The current political situation poses a serious threat against the freedom of our people and future of our country."

On the same day, Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said of the purges, “These are methods, one must say this bluntly, that were used during Nazi rule. And there has been a really, really bad evolution in Turkey since July that we as the European Union cannot simply accept.”

Even before these events, on November 1st, the New York Times editorial team was sufficiently concerned about the situation in Turkey to write that, “The United States and Europe are horrified that Mr. Erdogan has strayed so completely from the track he was on when he first became the Turkish prime minister in 2003 and was hailed for building a model Muslim democracy.”  In the eyes of one of the world’s most respected newspapers, the situation was unambiguous:
“What is unnerving in President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s march to authoritarianism is   how dismally familiar it is: the coup that becomes a pretext for a massive roundup of real and imagined enemies; the claims to be the one man who can withstand the    onslaught of foreign foes; the invocation of purported historical slights; the silencing          of the news media. The world has seen this before in other countries. The pattern is        tried and true; the tough question is how to break it.”

At the same time, German Minister of State for Europe Michael Roth said his country would willingly accept asylum requests from Turks. He said Germany is “open to all those politically persecuted as a matter of principle.”

Finally, in its November 12th issue, The Economist published an article entitled ‘While you were watching Trump…Turkey locks up dissidents: President Erdogan keeps on purging.’ The article concluded with the line, “Turkey’s democracy is on life support. Mr. Erdogan is holding the plug.”

What was happening in Turkey was not lost upon friendly governments. Even as the coup-attempt was unfolding, there were reports of international intelligence agencies intercepting transmissions which suggested that the coup-attempt was being seized upon to consolidate the president’s authority.  

This was not entirely unexpected. Erdogan had for some years begun to act in a more overtly authoritarian fashion.  The decline began with the Gezi Park protests of mid-2013 and the serious corruption allegations against Erdogan and his family which surfaced in December 2013.  

In August 2014 Erdogan had transitioned from the office of prime minister, where he had substantial formal authority, to the office of president, where his formal authority was largely symbolic and insubstantial.  From the outset he made it clear that he intended to push through a constitutional referendum that would confer upon the office of president extensive executive authority.  Achieving this required the AKP to perform strongly in the 2015 general election, held in June.

Despite Erdogan’s creeping authoritarianism, as recently as these elections, most observers inside and outside of Turkey were optimistic that Turkey’s democratic cultural institutions would overcome the turbulence caused by one man’s ambitions, and would self-correct.

Unfortunately for Erdogan – and, it turned out, Turkey – the June 2015 election results saw the AKP losing support and dropping to just 40% of the popular vote, whilst at the same time the HDP Kurdish party finally crossed the 10% threshold required to take seats in parliament.

Tensions between the government and the large Kurdish minority were already high. On June 5th, just two days before the election, four people were killed and dozens injured when twin bomb blasts rocked a HDP election rally in Diyarbakir in Turkey’s Kurdish southeast. No actor claimed credit for the attacks but suspicions fell on both the PKK and ISIS.  The next day, a young Kurd, Orhan Gonder, was arrested.  He was from the southern Turkish town of Adiyaman, less than 200 km north of the ISIS capital of Raqqa. Later reports confirmed that he, like many in Adiyaman, had been recruited by ISIS, and, after spending months with terrorist group in Syria, had been sent back to carry out the bombing of the HDP rally.  Erdogan responded to the provocation of the Diyarbakir attack by resuming hostilities against the PKK, as ISIS had hoped that he would do. The resumption of open violence between the Republic and the Kurdistan workers party (PKK) was a clear harbinger of trouble to come.

When a coalition government couldn’t be formed – this “failure” was demanded by Erdogan – snap parliamentary elections were set for November 1st, 2015. This vote was marred by irregularities and threats to free expression. The results, however, were very mixed for the AKP government. On the one hand, it succeeded in getting its popular vote back to almost 50%, where it had been at the height of its powers. On the other hand, the HDP, which the government accused of being closely linked with the PKK, managed to remain above the 10% threshold required to keep its parliamentarians in office. This meant that the path to a referendum that would confer upon Erdogan true executive powers continued to be blocked. It is not surprising then that the first half of 2016 witnessed a steady slide towards authoritarianism, with major media outlets such as Zaman newspaper and Samanyolu television being seized by the government, while trustees were being assigned to schools and businesses. Many of the media outlets and schools were supposedly linked to the Hizmet movement, inspired by Fethullah Gülen, which Erdogan accused of trying to overthrow his government even before the coup attempt. By now it was very clear the Turkish democracy was ailing as Erdogan was determined to let nothing stop on his way. The crackdown on schools and businesses linked to the Gülen Hizmet movement surprised outside observers who simplistically described Gülen as “a former ally” of Erdogan sympathetic to his Islamist politics. In reality, Gülen was never close to Erdogan and resisted Erdogan’s attempts to co-opt his support.  He also rejected Islamism and advocated democracy as being more true to Islamic values.

Erdogan recognized that the Hizmet was far and away Turkey’s largest civil society movement and that respect for Gülen’s religious authority unparalleled. He was desperate for Gülen’s public support but knew that Gülen’s sufistic, apolitical orientation was at odds with his own fundamentalist, Islamist convictions. Nevertheless, Erdogan’s AKP attracted many of the same small-town conservative, religious Turks that were drawn to the Hizmet. And throughout its first decade of the AKP government benefited from strong support from the broader Hizmet community, who saw in it Turkey’s best hope for reform as well as respect for religious values.

The simmering tensions between the Hizmet and the AKP, which finally erupted in 2013 with the Gezi Park protests, came not from the grass-roots but from the highly educated intellectuals who served in Hizmet-linked universities, civil society organizations and media outlets. For ten years, they had uncritically promoted the AKP government but slowly came to recognize that it fell short of the commitment to clean government and democratic reform that they had projected on to it. As they began to speak out tensions gave way to open confrontation.

At the end of 2013 Erdogan was rocked by a ten-billion-dollar “gas for gold” scandal.  On December 17, whilst the prime minister was on a state visit to Pakistan, 52 colleagues and associates were arrested, accused of assisting Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab in exchanging Iranian natural gas with gold bullion, in contravention of international sanctions.  Four days later 14 further arrests were made and eventually a total of 91 were taken into detention.  Prime Minister Erdogan, already smarting from critical reporting over the Gezi Park protests, was incensed by “treasonous” reporting on the corruption investigations by Zaman and Samanyolu. He responded by declaring the corruption investigation to be a “judicial coup” and ordered the issuing of government decree on January 7 that saw 350 investigating police officers purged. He accused Fethullah Gülen and “international conspirators” of being a nefarious plot to destabilize his government.

Subsequent allegations of supplying weapons to Jihadi fighters in Syria and of buying ISIS oil were also met with harsh crackdowns on the media outlets and journalists responsible. In 2015 it was the secular Cumhuriyet (Republic) newspaper that broke the news of the Turkish intelligence agency MIT being involved in the supply of weapons to Jihadi militia in Syria.

Even without the “gift from God” that was the July 15th coup-attempt, President Erdogan had no trouble steadily consolidating his power. His Western allies, though deeply concerned, had little choice but to watch on quietly and say little. The Turkish military, after all, was the second largest military in the NATO alliance – and this alliance was facing one of its greatest challenges in modern times, as it dealt with the horror of the civil war in Syria and the rise of ISIS in northern Syria and Iraq. Turkey was viewed as an important bulwark against the terrorist group.

This conflict, of course, not only saw hundreds of thousands of lives lost, but five million Syrians forced out of their homes. Turkey, to its credit, accommodated almost three million of these refugees. Nevertheless, many sought to find asylum in Europe, and Turkey became the key to regulating the flow of asylum seekers flooding across the continent.

At the same time, Russia, which had severed ties with Turkey over the shooting down of a Sukhoi Su-24M ground attack jet, by Turkish F16s above the Turkish-Syrian border on the 24th of November 2015, had begun to make overtures of rapprochement. In the wake of the July 15th coup attempt, Vladimir Putin reached out to Erdogan offering solidarity and practical friendship in the midst of trials. Suddenly, the prospect of Turkey turning its back upon Europe and the West became an immediate reality. The fact that most of the long serving Turkish generals working in NATO headquarters became victims of the purge along with fellow Western orientated generals back at home raises the real possibility that Turkey might even withdraw from NATO.

Given this precarious predicament, Turkey’s Western allies have been mostly muted in their criticism of the developments in Turkey – doing their utmost to keep the NATO alliance intact and to prevent everything from unravelling. By November, however, even this dynamic was not sufficient to mute the expressions of deep concern. The scale and nature of the purge was such that European officials began to draw parallels between what was happening in Turkey in 2016 and what had happened in Germany 80 years earlier.

When the civil war in Syria broke out in 2011, and al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) transitioned into the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Erdogan chose to turn a blind eye to the thousands of foreign terror fighters flooding through Turkey into Syria, believing that support for ISIS and other radical Islamist militia was the lesser of the evils so long as Bashar al-Assad, his erstwhile friend, refused to take his advice and step aside.

Under strong pressure from NATO partners, Turkey reversed its position in early 2015 and began to strongly oppose ISIS. Then, in mid-2016, Turkey swung again and aligned with Russia against the Salafi Jihadi militia in East Aleppo. This development in the second half of last year angered many in Turkey and appears to have been the motivation behind the December 19th assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey by a young police officer who reportedly had strong connections to Erdogan’s AKP party and had worked on numerous occasions in the president’s security detail. The incongruity of this is partly explained by the fact that even as Erdogan turned away from supporting Islamist extremists in Syria, he continued to use the rhetoric of Islamist extremism to bolster domestic support against those he accused of being behind the attempted coup.

This shooting wasn’t the only attack, as the last year has seen dozens of shootings and bombings committed by both ISIS and the PKK. Such attacks have been more frequent due to the shakeups in the Turkish military and police forces. The practical implication of these crackdowns has been that just as Turkey faces its severest challenges from both Kurdish and Islamist terrorist networks, it is at its weakest point in terms of capacity for counterterrorism.

This goes some way to explaining how the gunmen at the Reina nightclub was able to not only shoot his way into the club and murder dozens, but was then able to make his escape and disappear before being confronted by police. The ruthless efficiency of this killing spree meant that he was in-and-out in 10 minutes.  It suggests that the gunman likely had backup support and almost certainly had combat experience.

On this occasion, and during the nine attacks previously thought to have been the work of ISIS, the primary victims were not from the more religious half of Turkish society that strongly supports AKP and Erdogan. Indeed, the first attack in June 2015 was on ethnic Kurds campaigning for the June elections and appears to have been designed to restart open conflict with the PKK.

There is every indication that Erdogan will use this latest attack to justify his demand to be given strong executive powers. The media blackout that came immediately after this and previous attacks suggests that he would rather not confront the problem of radical Islamism. But if he thinks that ISIS can be contained and controlled, then he, and Turkey, are in for a year of further nasty surprises.  The sad reality in Turkey today is that the collapse of democratic good-governance has made Turkey more vulnerable than ever to threats that even strong democracies struggle to contain.

In a letter to G-20 leaders in 2013 Pope Francis stated, “It is regrettable that, from the very beginning of the conflict in Syria, one-sided interests have prevailed and in fact hindered the search for a solution that would have avoided the senseless massacre now unfolding.”  The head of the Roman Catholic Church proceeded to call for “a renewed commitment to seek, with courage and determination, a peaceful solution through dialogue and negotiation of the parties, unanimously supported by the international community.” In hindsight, his words were prophetic. It is now 2017. The atrocities of ISIL, and Boko Haram and the devastation from armed conflict world-wide have increased. The flow of refugees into Europe from Syria has reached epic proportions, testing the ability of diverse and at times conflicting religious cultures to establish mutual understanding and trust. But the situation of ethnic and religious conflict goes beyond narrow Muslim-Christian differences and extends to intra-religious, intra-ethnic, and intra-cultural hostilities.

Sustained commitment and constructive dialogue become difficult when one crisis supplants another in the non-stop flow of information-as-news. Real resolutions require diplomats and politicians to reach an (increasingly unlikely) agreement as to what is at stake, before rational decisions can be made about what to do.  With global political discourse focused on “country” and “region,” “national interest” and “homeland security,” responsive strategies lose sight of “the people” and their human right to life, safety, and self-determination. Military intervention does not honour that right; nor do Western strategies favouring partisan economic and geo-political options.

The degradation of human dignity and the apparent overwhelming power of evil is a cause of bewilderment for believers in a loving God, the all-merciful Lord of the worlds. From a Christian perspective the words of Pope Francis, in Joy of the Gospel, resonate with me. “Sometimes I wonder if there are people in today’s world who are really concerned about generating processes of people-building, as opposed to obtaining immediate results, which yield easy, quick short-term political gains, but do not enhance human fullness.”  

Homeland security or global solidarity?
None of us—neither Christian nor Muslim—stands outside this concern; none is unaffected by the suffering. In a 2013 vigil, Pope Francis prayed that God give all “Christians, and our brothers and sisters of other religions, and every man and woman of good will,” the resolve to “cry out forcefully: violence and war are never the way to peace!”  And he offered, in a non-particularistic phrase, the “goodness of creation” as the moral standard for judgment.  Those who call “Allah, the Lord of the worlds” and those who call “God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth,” appeal to a moral measure beyond national security or sectarian interests to a shared sense of humanity, whose dignity cannot be negotiated at the tables of political or economic power.

Against such a profound understanding of human dignity—a dignity that transcends even human legislation—it is difficult to argue in favour of bombing or boots on the ground, which will inevitably feed international crises, create divisions among groups, and erode human hope. It is equally untenable to stand by, numbed and inactive, in the face of the enormous and relentless degradation of humanity.

A creation perspective would allow governmental and legislative policy makers to let go of the Gordian knot of irreconcilable—because partial—positions on what ought to be done. It is difficult enough to define justice in peaceful times – and most difficult when the definition is skewed by particular interests and shared biases that pass for common sense.

On the Catholic side of the dialogue, Pope Francis stresses our moral obligation, not only to respond to violence, but to look at the prejudices that enforce and are enforced by entrenched positions, especially those of cultural and economic exclusion.

One of these prejudices is the idea of distance or of space or territory, where we view boundaries and borders as principles of containment or security—a notion pursued by both terrorists and anti-terrorists. “Giving priority to space means madly attempting to keep everything together in the present, trying to possess all the spaces of power and of self-assertion; it is to crystallize processes and presume to hold them back.” The Pope calls for “giving priority to time … being concerned about initiating processes rather than possessing spaces.” He readily concedes, however, that while easily imagined such hopes do not readily penetrate the heart and move the will. He blames a mindset that compromises truth and goodness through political self-interest, a “globalisation of indifference,” and an intellectual laziness that can no longer be bothered with authentic “dialogue and reconciliation.”

If the Pope appeals to the conscience of world leaders, he appeals more directly to the conscience of every person.

Both Christians and Muslims have substantive reasons for opposing war, not least of which is the economic hardships suffered by the poor in their respective nations. But we in the West are joined to the victims in the Middle East and Africa, along with all those following dangerous migration routes in hope of new lives. We are connected as well to the impasse to peace created by dominant economic and political structures benefitting the West. As Pope Francis says, “Today in many places we hear a call for greater security. But until exclusion and inequality in society and between peoples are reversed, it will be impossible to eliminate violence.” Economic and political structures have a causal relationship to the oppressive conditions and revolutionary anger that fuel violence not only in the Middle East, but across the world and within our own nation and neighborhoods.

While calling on divine intercession and protection is an authentic expression of religion, without meaningful deeds on the part of believers, these words become routine and empty. Moral outrage without decisive action toward significant resolution leads to hypocrisy. 

It is not enough to feel bad about the wanton violence and degradation of life that has become commonplace, or to make moral judgments about the failure of politicians and governments to act effectively. Pope Francis insists, “We need to give priority to actions which generate new processes in society and engage other persons and groups who can develop them to the point that they bear fruit in significant historical events.”

Only communicative action and authentic conversation can contribute to a satisfactory outcome—not one that brings about “eternal peace” (as was the dream of Kant), but that creates the conditions for human progress, an alternative to the current cycle of decline. Here is an appeal to conscience, a summons to act.

Conscience is more than a moral judgement about something “out there;” it makes a claim on the one making that judgment. We are not spectators in an evil world; we are connected to that world, and share in that evil—some by being its direct victims. The continuation of soul-destroying violence threatens to extinguish everyone’s sense of human dignity and the value of life.

Formation of conscience and the task of building a moral community
Conscience is often portrayed as a mysterious inner voice that tells us that what we have done, are doing, or thinking of doing is morally good or evil. The pinch of conscience, in this view, can torment a person until he or she repents. While we may try to dull it, conscience can never be totally silenced. Conscience is not a moral “app” that works like something independent of who we are. Its range is often limited by bias and culture to individual actions, choices, and attitudes. Moral education for most of us has not included weighing our relationship to or responsibility for the violence, suffering, and pain that is so real in the lives of millions.

However, the incessant reports of unspeakable violence and insufferable circumstances of the lives of countless others is a summons to find a space where we can leave behind the rhetoric that narrows our understanding and feeds the impatience and indifference that leads to the apathy of despair or the anger of militarism. But we must go further in order to become a strong social force.

Because the world’s Muslims and Christians do not belong to a single organization or community in the simplest sense of that word, one cannot expect a spontaneous emergence of a shared understanding and common will that leads to peace.  We need a process that fosters the development of a collective moral consciousness among and between Muslims and Catholics, and enables groups and individuals to make decisions and take actions that offer alternatives to war.

Religious leaders must lead and not just moralize. How can they demonstrate that believers are able to act with cooperative, conscientious responsibility? First of all, Muslims must dialogue with other Muslims, and Christians with other Christians, about how they can respond in faith to suffering and injustice. An internal discussion is not a substitute, but may be a condition for a Christian-Muslim exchange. It is also a prerequisite for dialogue with other citizens and the formation of public opinion with transformative potential in the face of current fatalism over the possibility of harmony in the world.

The kind of process and dialogue that leads to resolution and action requires structure and organization, which in turn depends on leadership and inspiration. If the religious leaders believe in what they preach, they will recognize this moment as a transformative opportunity, an opportunity to bring their followers together to think seriously about the senseless escalation of violence in our world.

The kind of dialogue that is needed will require coming together in prayerful resolve, to gather often and share at length in order to even begin to gain some understanding of what is happening. A transformative moral consciousness in Islam and Christianity can only take root in the lives of people.

Resistance to the radical rejection of life inherent in escalating global violence is not just a matter of religious morality. Wherever people of conscience raise their voices and act against the de-humanizing intent and consequences of terrorism, we are all summoned to stand with them. Standing up to any threat to humanity is not a “Christian” or “Muslim” issue. But it is one that challenges all believers to make clear what faith means in terms of the real lives of people in tangible solidarity with the victims of violence.

More than a war for territory or property, this is a struggle for the minds of people. It requires an acknowledgement of the feelings, and even despair, of heartbreak and compassion as a necessary prelude to talking about how to respond. We don’t need simplistic or naive ideas. We don’t need to fall into hasty reductionisms that reduce “the whole problem” to this or that. Dialogue must be patient, and, as Pope Francis suggested, it needs us to not be overwhelmed by the urgency, so that we do not lose sight of the other and not hear what they are saying. If neither side learns from the other, nothing is accomplished.

Such a process is risky and can get out of hand. It may be subject to conflict between people with entrenched or simplistic political opinions. But the development of a moral will for peace requires leaders who can help participants learn mutual respect and gain the capacity for conversation.

The hope, however, is that as we learn to listen to one another and that the bonds of inter-religious community will, in the vision of Canadian philosopher Bernard Lonergan, “make the experience of each resonate to the experience of others and arouse in all a drive to understand and an insistence on behaving intelligently that generates and implements common ways, common manners, common undertaking, common commitments.”

In the face of the atrocities multiplying daily in centres of violence around the world, Catholics cannot be spectators; they must be actors. For moral opinion to become formative of public will, and for social justice to become a mass social movement, something has to change. The process of creating a truly human moral consciousness, capable of peace-making, with the credibility and persuasiveness to influence world politics, begins with the recognition that we are not spectators.

The people of a peaceful and prosperous past, or to be more precise, who believe they had such a past, may occasionally plan journeys into their history within their inner worlds and constantly roam the meadows and fields of the past. But they are never truly successful in exceeding the boundaries of history.

Today, due to the expectations of life, the young, dynamic, and globalized generations, who are unaware of the past and after fanciful thoughts, submit themselves to their dreams of perfection and excellence, and pursue the climates of tranquility that they are unable to find today, in the coves of the future. 

Indisputably, there is a degree of truth in each of these observations; however, conveying the past, with its own values and dynamics, into the present – as well as the ability to enter the future – depends on efficiently analyzing the present without overlooking a split second of it. Indeed, we can better begin the plans, projects, strategies, and implementations for the future if our emotions are purer, our hearts are more joyful, our souls are more enthusiastic, our bodies are healthier, our time is more abundant, our economy is more dynamic, and where our relationships among nations are more consistent and desirable. If we are successful in implementing what is required in every stage of life, then the past-future-present will become the three angles of a single unit, and we will be able to experience each period of time with its own depth.

The golden ages of human history have always been experienced when the concept of time has been perceived as such. At the present, if we can reclaim our own historical perspectives by keeping quiet and motivating our memories, then once again we will be able to recompile and listen to our own words, which once spread throughout the whole world; we will be able to sense the intensity of eternity from the air we breathe; and according to the scale we experience, we will absorb the spheres of security and tranquility of our good fortune, transforming these things into joy in our inner worlds in the same way that we breathe oxygen into our lungs. This abundance cannot be attained otherwise even if all contingencies overlapped for a colossal total and all complementing sources of blessings merged to pour to the same direction.

At one time, we became so alienated from these spiritual values that our emotions and thoughts turned uncivilized, to the degree that we were unable to foresee this separation and were incapable of displaying our sense of loyalty. We weren’t even able to say farewell to our superior ideals! Farewell to the consciousness of being a great society! Farewell to being a balancing power! Farewell to the souls who blow the perception of independence, truth, and justice into the spirit of history! Farewell to a legendary people bearing gowns of compassion, kindness, and integrity! Farewell to our philosophy of life and our social conceptions! Farewell to our values and superior principles.

Despite this, we remained silent about the abandoning, the pillaging, of a great history. Furthermore, while this world was weakened by the most uncouth transgressions, we were totally unaware of the numerous precious aspects of our own essence being rejected every day, as well as the cries of fear.

If only we realized from the very beginning that one by one our principle dynamics were gradually being weakened, that our dream of being a great society was gradually fading, and our standards, values, and glory of thousands of years were being destroyed and cast away like logs being carried away by flood waters! If only we could have foreseen that our many heritages of spirituality, each a component of excellence – as well our concept of civilization which emerged from the joint, collective perception of our people – would collapse, change, and eventually self-destruct!         
If only we were capable of expressing our loyalty during the period when our collective and spiritual characteristics were taken and concealed within the depths of history! Alas, the mental faculty of the people was transformed into a storage of unrealistic dreams and our collective spirit was entrusted to Satan.

During that inauspicious period, our society – which was once bonded with spiritual love, affection, and sincere loyalty – was constantly weakened by a sense of decline and transience. The people pleaded with immense desperation before the painful manifest of fate as Jacob, who said, “I only disclose my anguish and sorrow to God…”

If the past is a blend of knowledge, thought, morality, and culture, then it is still fresh. Its spirited and relevant aspects should be restored in today’s society and made “present.” If this is not done, then speaking only about the unpleasant aspects of the past and seeking retaliation are neither possible nor beneficial.

After years of oppressiveness, deprivation, and misery, today, many high-spirited souls are enthusiastic to move forward. We must face the challenges of our time with determination and consciousness, and, by maintaining our own spiritual essence, hope for a transformation of the world. This is the perspective that will determine the future. This aging, inconsistent, and exhausted world is in need of a revival. And who knows? Our revival may revive the entire world.

Today, time blows like a breeze, inspiring and conveying the past into the present. Events are calls which arouse our hope and determination, and strike our hearts as if reflecting the sounds of the gates to Paradise. It is as if we are journeying into the depths of the blue skies on a rocket, and existence finds sustenance on the path leading to the One. On this path, great prosperity flows into our souls. Our tongues cry out in ecstatic love, a sweet sense of freshness transforming our grievances into a reunion with the Beloved. The pangs of separation are transformed into companionship and solidarity. Then, within our own existence, we experience a spiritual realm opening the gates to a creation beyond time and space.

In fact, the world of today has the blush of springtime being nourished from the past; we look to the future and see towns of the most enchanting colors and sounds appearing on the horizons of our faith and hopes; places where the divine benevolence can be heard showering upon each and every pasture and valley, like the raindrops on the wings of the angels. It is a time when we feel we are being embraced with compassion protected from thunderstorms and lightning streaks.

Many of our world’s most precious historical geographies and their most precious people have always been underappreciated. It is necessary to have due awareness and analyze the world accordingly. If we are capable of perceiving ourselves and our world to this degree, then I believe that there will not be a reoccurrence of the disloyalties and disrespect displayed in the past. I believe that the extremely aggrieved, victimized, and deprived generations of the past, as well as the future laborers of thought, will have a greater awareness of the beauties of their own environments; that their relationship with the One of Eternal Power will deepen and they will be able to pass all the ridges of “historical deceptions”; and that they will eventually become successful in overcoming all of the past negativities.
On those colorful days in the future when we will be nourishing ourselves with undefiled resources, the pleasure, fragrance, color, and language of existence – and the significance it conveys – will surge from the great walls and towers, and flow into every village, town, and city, and according to the degree of our worthiness, will convey the joy of its celebrations even into our homes.

The emotions, thoughts, interpretations of life, and ideas of eternity, which were unable to develop due to various suppressions, will flourish once again with their own specific depth of spirituality. They will bloom like buds of prosperity and will present everyone with their fruits of charm and excellence. Indeed, when the season arrives, everyone will be able to savor the pleasure of existence, of being alive. They will attain divine knowledge and proximity with the One, recognizing and loving Him with great devotion and sincerity. Amidst the melodies of spiritual elation, they will overcome all of the pain, afflictions, despair, and disappointments, and will continuously contemplate their vibrant fate with total submission to God. They will perceive the world in which they live, a narrow passageway towards the Hereafter, as a journey across the slopes of Paradise.
Indeed, the hearts of belief and the souls that perceive their own spiritual depth will submit to everyone they meet and every scene they observe with the compassion of a sincere companion and utter melodies of this solidarity. Experiencing the spirituality flowing into their souls everywhere they roam, they will say: “I did not know myself as I see me now. I wonder whether He is me or I am Him? This is the point where lovers lose themselves…” (Gadai)
Their emotions will turn into a poetical array and their reflections will transform into spiritual pleasures. They will embrace their entire essence.

And those emotional, loving, and gentle days will each be like the eve of a great celebration. Those prosperous and radiant nights, in an atmosphere which transforms everything into joyfulness and pleasure, will enable everyone to come and go between the sense of astonishment and admiration with the following observation: “There is nothing more appealing and more delightful than what we are experiencing.” It will adorn the scenes of their own fate.

Even during the prosperous periods, the environment can appear to be somewhat dark and cloudy. What really is happening behind these dark clouds is in fact the diversification of the blessings constantly showered upon us. Going through such ordeals is how we can overcome the weariness caused by monotonousness. This is how we can always sense the pleasures and enjoyment to the same extent in the positive sense. This is in fact the transformation of difficulties and afflictions into spiritual prosperity. After all, these kinds of difficulties and sufferings have occupied a marginal position in comparison with the long days of prosperity. As one of the great poets said, “Grief cannot be eliminated by judgment; it passes with the smile of joy.”  All misfortunes come not as a whole but one by one and are in fact not beyond the limits we can endure; and they only disappear after they leave so much for us to benefit from.  

In fact, humans expand in the pleasures, delights, and joys of spiritual elation in life to the degree that they perceive the relationship of existence and events with God. If everything they see, hear, and analyze opens the many gates to wisdom; if they constantly divert their thoughts to the realities beyond existence – to such an extent that every day, every week, these individuals awaken to life once again; if they constantly walk upon the paths of light; if they come and go continuously through the tunnels between the shores of this world and the hereafter, and share everything they relish with a pledge of bliss… then their emotions will be exposed to the blessings of the Creator, and He will constantly convey confidence and peace into their souls. Occasionally, events caress their strings with the language of the heart in order to convey the melody of life, like the strings of a plectrum; and this inspires them with such pleasures and such delight, like the joy of a child, the elation of a besotted heart! In their eyes, every season arrives with the magnificence of the break of dawn; every moment is bright and mild, and the relief conveyed by what they pledge is immense.
These individuals are happy with their lives, are content with their fate, and they open their hearts to God in supplication and attain a soundness of spirituality unattainable with any psychotherapy. On occasions when the atmosphere becomes dark and the skies appear gloomy, they change suddenly in their speech and manner; they hold their hands up in supplication, pleading to God. They bow their heads in fear and respect; they seek refuge in His compassion and convey ballads from the language of their hearts to Him. In the clarity of their hearts, amidst the depths of their desires and fantasies, they always live their lives in aspiration of the eternal life and in a state radiance and excellence, like the stars in the sky.

Occasionally, there are such exceptional periods where the full pleasures penetrate into the societal environment, to the extent that individuals feel as if they have been granted a great blessing. Undoubtedly, if we are heedful, we can continuously experience the cascade of this exuberant life. And the souls can pass over to the realm of spirits at any time, where the light always defeats the darkness and shines within the pavilions of our souls; where the souls yearning with passion can always taste the sherbets from the realm of the eternal union. As long as the direction of spirituality is defined and the balance of the heart is adjusted accordingly, we can live in such a time.

In a time of strife, believers can find spiritual refuge in the “Emerald Hills of the Heart.”

First of all, we should accept the “Emerald Hills of the Heart” as a horizon and a goal. We should try our best to at least glimpse those sacred spaces, even if it is through a crack in the door. Then we can see their glory: their stars twinkling, the moon and sun rising and setting.

It is important to outline basic principles for reaching these targets. For example, habitual prayers and remembrances are one of the most important vehicles. Another vehicle, one that enables us to sense the divine, is prescribed prayers observed in due reverence to the One Who cannot be known. Deep contemplation is yet another vehicle, especially when it takes us to reach an awareness that “we are unable to know Him as duly as He should be.”

Sometimes a person can reach the target quickly because the intermittent distance is short. Sometimes, due to the hardness of his heart, his being not open to spirituality, and other obstacles, like giving importance to appearances, not even forty years is enough time to reach the goal. The great mystic Junayd al-Baghdadi said that according to his internal observations, the maximum period was 60-70 years. Imam Ghazzali’s assessment of the matter is a little different. In his memoirs, which were related to the development of his awakening, he wrote, “In my first 40-day spiritual retreat I had some awakening. In my second retreat I saw that what I had observed in my first retreat was wrong and I became aware of more profound things. With my third retreat I was able to catch the real horizon.” According to him, three spiritual retreats are needed to reach the desired depth.

Yes, fortification of one’s will is the ticket and documentation for the journey embarked upon to discover the secrets of the spiritual realms. This ticket, which can be obtained by forty-day spiritual retreats, will dry up the roots of one’s inclinations towards evil and invigorate their tendencies toward goodness. After a retreat, perhaps a door to the realm of meaning can be opened and a message of transition to other realms can be received.

What really matters is a person persevering on their journey, even if it takes years. There is an anecdote related about Jalaluddin Harzamshah: Every day, a dog came to a garbage dump; after foraging for food, the dog left. Aware of this situation, Jalaluddin Harzemshah followed the dog for days. One day, he asked the dog, “What is the secret of your coming here and searching for something every day, even though you never find anything?” The dog replied, “I once found a bone here!” In order to reach the divine horizon it is necessary to touch the doorknob of His door and not leave until an answer is given.

While journeying on this path, one must do so in accordance with the proper rules of conduct. Otherwise, it is possible to become stranded on the way. For example, in this realm of causes, it is not possible to get anywhere with prayers made haphazardly. Of course, God’s grace is boundless; if He wishes, He can even reward any particular person for what may seem so insignificant to us. However, it should not be forgotten that everything has its own rules. From this respect, those who do not act within the prescribed limits, but who say, “I have not been awakened to anything; I did not sense anything,” should first be told about methods that will take them to the target.

If someone cannot attain any awakening, it does not mean that they are of no value and are unable to experience the pleasure of being open to the beyond. God’s mercy is broader and deeper than everything. Perhaps with His mercy He can transport even those who can fulfill only the minimum requirements to summits beyond our imagination.

In summary, the Emerald Hills of the Heart are a goal that must be reached. In order to do this, believers must have faith in the goal and then must trod the path in accordance with the rules, unhurriedly, without compromising and without becoming fed up. Yes, the Emerald Hills of the Heart show the way to, in the words of Bediuzzaman, freeing ourselves from our animal state, abandoning corporeality, and rising to the life stations of the heart and spirit.

Small molecules as therapeutics
The identification of active compounds holds the key to the future development of therapeutic agents.  Upon synthesis of the analogs of these compounds, derivatives of the initially identified compound could be selected for increased activity. 
Initially, scientists investigated peptides or oligonucleotides, hoping they would have some therapeutic qualities. However, poor oral activities, rapid clearance from the body, and limited bioavailability meant that peptides were not good candidates.
Small molecules, however, which generally have molecular weights smaller than 600-700, presented themselves as interesting candidates for therapeutic use. Screening these small molecules and forming a catalog of them become a major goal in molecular biology, with the hopes of developing new treatments for various diseases.
Small molecule stimulation of nerve stem cells to maturation
It had been believed for decades that the adult mammalian brain could not grow new brain cells. Thus, learning and memory were thought to be due to new connections created between existing cells in the brain.  It is now well-established that new nerve cells are being constantly created in the brain. Scientists know that when a nerve cell sends a neurotransmitter to a stem cell it generates new nerve cells, but researchers are not sure which signaling pathways or genes are involved in this process.
Researchers at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas have discovered a small molecule called Isx-9 that stimulates nerve stem cells to maturate into nerve cells. Dr. Hsieh and her colleagues demonstrated that Isx-9 behaves like a neurotransmitter signal. Compared to other commonly used neurogenic simulators, Isx-9 was three times more efficient in the generation of nerve cells while also preventing the stem cells from transforming into non-nerve cells. When they cultured cells from the hippocampus with Isx-9, the researchers found that stem cells formed clusters along with the development of spiky appendages called neuritis. Their finding provides a new opportunity to investigate the signaling circuitry specifying the fate of neuronal cells and offers potential new approaches for neuro-regenerative drugs.  Using this approach, it might someday be possible to do a stem cell therapy using a patient’s own stem cells that could be grown in a culture and transformed into mature nerve cells by using small molecule induction. These could then be transplanted back into patients to treat various neurological disorders.
Development of neuroprotective small molecules
The degeneration of the hippocampus and loss of neurons occurs in the early phases of Alzheimer’s disease. Current approaches are often inadequate to treat symptoms associated with Alzheimer’s. As such, scientists are frantically searching for novel therapeutics.
The hippocampus plays a critical role in learning and memory. Researchers screened a library of 1,000 different molecules to identify the ones that can enhance neuron formation in the hippocampus of mice. This quest for a drug that could keep brain cells from dying led to the discovery of a compound: a study by doctors McKnight and Pieper found that a small molecule called P7C3 may protect newborn neurons from dying.
One advantage of such a small molecule as a drug is the availability of means to modify the compound to improve its actions. Further studies are needed, however, to see if P7C3 can block the death of mature nerve cells. Modifications may allow its usage in treating different types of diseases such as Huntington’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. As a small molecule, P7C3 has the ability to penetrate the blood-brain barrier. It achieved stability in animal models and cell culture settings, and activity even at nanomolar concentrations.

Cardiogenic small molecules for heart regeneration
The current treatment for heart failure is transplantation. Unfortunately, only about 30% of patients survive until they can get new hearts. The major problem in cardiac dysfunction is the death of muscle cells after a heart attack. Cardiac regeneration is the key to a non-transplantation form of treatment for heart failure following myocardial infarctions. Use of novel small molecules could help to fight one of the deadliest diseases of modern times.
The search for small molecules that enhance myocardial repair has led to the discovery of a number of potential cardiogenic small molecules. Stem cell therapies for heart regeneration rely on understanding how cells differentiate into cardiac genes from stem cells. Researchers identified small molecules that involve the activation of a cardiac gene called Nkx2.5 in various mouse stem cells, including human mobilized peripheral blood cells. This family of small molecules, called sulfonylhydrazone (Shz), was tested in bone marrow cells and transplanted into rat hearts. This procedure improved heart function after cardiac injuries. 
Fighting cancer using small molecules
Some cancers are known to depend on certain genes for their survival. Pancreatic and a particular lung cancer known as non-small cell lung cancer are particularly dependent on TBK-1 activity for growth. Researchers believe that a number of lung and pancreas cancer patients would benefit from the inhibition of TBK-1 activity. The researchers tested about 250,000 compounds for their effectiveness at fighting tumors in mice. Three and half years of investigation led to the discovery of a highly effective compound called 6-aminopyrazolopyrimidine. This small compound inhibited the activity of TBK-1 by about 50 percent in lung cancer and pancreatic cancer tissue cultures, resulting in a reduction of cancer growth.  This is an important finding for the future of fighting cancer, as this could potentially turn off a gene that cancer cells hijack to survive. Though it happened to be effective in reaching different parts of a mouse’s tumor, researchers are not yet sure whether it will penetrate solid tumors in a human body.
Quest for drug sensitizers: microRNA inhibitors            
MicroRNAs are non-coding small RNAs that regulate protein expression. These RNAs form tiny RNA strands that make complexes with proteins and target another mRNA to negatively regulate its translation (its generation of protein). MiRNAs are involved in various cellular pathways, and a miRNA can elicit multiple effects in a cell. 
Aberrant microRNA expression in cancer has been well studied. MicroRNAs are involved in tumor progression and metastasis through various mechanisms involving migration, invasion, cell proliferation, angiogenesis, and apoptosis (cell death). MicroRNAs are thought to be potential therapeutic targets for personalized cancer treatments. Different cancer types and patients demonstrate different levels of response/resistance to chemotherapies. This resistance could be correlated with the expression of a microRNA profile, and studies are being performed to increase drug sensitivity toward the treatment of cancer. For example, paclitaxel, a mitotic inhibitor used in chemotherapy, is used, along with a library of chemically synthesized inhibitors that contains all known microRNAs, in non-small cell cancer cell lines. This will hopefully identify microRNAs and microRNA inhibitors that modulate cellular viability and sensitivity.
As humans, we inevitably face diseases, some of which do not have any treatment options. To understand the epidemiology of these diseases, as well as to develop treatments, researchers have pursued different approaches.  Understanding and discovering novel compounds, especially small molecules, may help us to better treat disease in the future.

References
1.  Pieper et al. Discovery of a proneurogenic, neuroprotective chemical. Cell. 2010 Jul 9;142(1):39-51.
2.  Ou et al. TBK1 Directly Engages Akt/PKB Survival Signaling to Support Oncogenic Transformation. Molecular Cell. February 2011.
3.  Sadek et al. Cardiogenic small molecules that enhance myocardial repair by stem cells. PNAS. April 22, 2008 vol. 105 no. 16.
4.  White et al. Metastamirs: a stepping stone towards improved cancer management. Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology 8, 75-84 (February 2011).
5.  Paclitaxel. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paclitaxel
6.  Schneider  et al. Small-molecule activation of neuronal cell fate. Nature Chemical Biology, 15 June 2008.
7.  Researchers create molecule that nudges nerve stem cells to mature. http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/utsw/cda/dept353744/files/468005.html
8.  Small Molecule. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-molecule
9.  Neuroscience. 2nd edition. Purves D, Augustine GJ, Fitzpatrick D, et al., editors. Sunderland (MA): Sinauer Associates; 2001.)
10.  Pertsemlidis Lab. http://compbio.swmed.edu/

Zhu et al. Immunosuppression via loss of IL2rγ enhances long-term functional integration of hESC-derived photoreceptors in the mouse retina. Cell Stem Cell, January 2017.

Your ability to read these words relies on your retina, the eye’s nerve center. Light passes through the lens and iris and strikes the retina at the back of the eyeball, which consists of light-sensing rods and cones. This process allows you to see these letters. When things go awry in the retina, people experience partial or complete loss of vision; to date, no efficient treatment has been found to stop or reverse blindness. Researchers have been trying to transplant new photoreceptor cells into the retina for the last decade, but the success has been very limited, and the transplanted cells usually did not survive long enough to restore vision. In a recent study, researchers were able to restore vision in completely blind mice by transplanting photoreceptors derived from human stem cells. They demonstrated that the blind mice were able to perceive light as late as 9-months following the transplantation. The key to their success was simultaneously blocking the immune response that causes transplanted cells to be rejected. The researchers determined that the mice which lack the immunodeficient IL2 receptor gamma (IL2rl), a specific immune cell receptor that rejects transplanted foreign cells, experienced longer-term survival of the transplanted cells. These findings give a lot of hope that the same stem cells used to cure blind mice may also be used to treat humans. It is now possible to identify other small molecules or recombinant proteins to reduce interleukin 2 receptor gamma activity in the body, increasing the possibility the body will accept transplanted stem cells.

The moon may be formed from a group of smaller moonlets

Rufu et al. A multiple-impact origin for the moon. Nature Geoscience, January 2017.

The moon’s formation was a unique event, but it remains poorly understood. However it came to be, our moon – like all the moons in the solar system – has a stabilizing effect on our planet. Scientists have always been puzzled why Earth only has one moon, while other planets have multiple – for instance, Saturn and Jupiter have 62 and 67 moons respectively. A new study suggests that the Earth may have had numerous smaller moons at some point, but they crashed together to form our current moon. Earth was born about 4.5 billion years ago, and scientists think the moon began forming a short time later. The leading explanation for the moon’s origin, known as the giant-impact model, suggests that our moon formed when a large protoplanet, Theia, crashed into Earth 4.4 billion years ago, tearing out a moon-sized cloud of debris. But the new study ran 1000 sophisticated simulations modeling this ancient impact and found that instead of one giant collision, the Earth likely experienced many smaller ones. Each of these smaller impacts would have torn away debris that could have coalesced into a moonlet. The current moon was likely formed by the combination of 20 moonlets over the course of 100 million years. While the new model proposes some compelling ideas, it cannot explain how the Earth got its tilted axis, which was also explained by the giant impact model. Experts say more lunar samples through the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program will help us to differentiate between the two models in the near future.

Food poisoning bacteria eat cancerous tumors

Mehta et al. Bacterial Carriers for Glioblastoma Therapy. Molecular Therapy – Oncolytics. December 2016.

Who doesn’t hate food poisoning? Salmonella is responsible for more than a million cases of food poisoning every year. But a team of researchers found that Salmonella might be our best ally in fighting the most aggressive form of brain cancer known to man, glioblastomas. Glioblastoma is an extremely aggressive form of tumor. Patients diagnosed with it have a mean lifespan of only 15 months. The cancer is protected from conventional drug and radiation-based therapies due to the blood-brain barrier. Surgery is also an imperfect option, because if even a single cancerous cell is left behind, it can spawn new tumors. In a recent study, scientists genetically engineered the bacterium Salmonella typhimurium so that it does not attack the human gastrointestinal tract, but rather the glioblastoma tumors. Specifically, they made the bacteria deficient in the crucial metabolite purine. Since tumors are packed with purine, genetically engineered bacteria were attracted to the tumors like flies to honey.  Scientists also integrated two new genes into Salmonella to produce the compounds Azurian and p53, which both cause cells to self-destruct, specifically in low-oxygen environments such as the interior of a tumor, where bacteria are rapidly multiplying. With this method, both the tumorous cells and bacteria eventually die off over time. A major challenge in treating glioblastomas is that the tumors spread with no clear edge, making them difficult to completely surgically remove. So designing bacteria to actively move and seek out these tumors, and to express their anti-tumor proteins only in hypoxic, purine rich tumor regions, has great therapeutic potential. In rats, the treatment basically doubled the survival rate and lifespan of those suffering from glioblastoma. Although success in rodent-based trials does not guarantee the same for humans, the results are nonetheless impressive and promising.

Michel, a Catholic priest, has studied the Gülen movement for decades. As an outside observer and religious scholar, he’s able to both verify Hizmet’s extraordinary contributions to the world of education and service, while also explaining its ideology and history to readers who might not be familiar with the context of Islamic civil society groups.

The book is a collection of essays, speeches, and articles Michel has written over the years, and they encapsulate his knowledge of, and interactions with, Hizmet. Broken into two parts, the book begins by placing Gülen’s work as thinker and teacher in its proper context. Gülen has been called many things over the years; none of them, Michel argues in his first essay, quite accurate. Despite the claims of his critics, Gülen is not a politician, and he is the antithesis of an extremist. Though he shares elements with traditional Sufi sheiks, Gülen is not a traditional Sufi, either. Instead, Michel posits, he follows in the footsteps of many great thinkers. Chief among them are Bediüzzaman Said Nursi and Rumi, whose faith and devotion, as well as their commitment to love and acceptance, deeply affected Gülen and his philosophy.
Michel also draws on Gülen’s extensive connections to thinkers from the other Abrahamic faiths, including Pope John Paul II. He examines the strong commonalities between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, and the way Gülen’s open, tolerant teachings have sought to build bridges between the faiths – an important task when too many people are seeking to exploit differences.

Of course, the differences in modern society are not just between faiths, but between ideologies. One of these major differences would seem to be between religion and science. Too often, people of faith and people of science are placed on opposite poles and held up as combatants. Gülen, however, believes differently. He believes that reconciliation is not just possible, but necessary. From page 65:
[Gülen] asserts that a new style of education is necessary,
one “that will fuse religious and scientific knowledge together with morality
and spirituality, to produce genuinely enlightened people…”

Education is key to understanding any of Gülen’s writings, and the first section of Michel’s book builds neatly to the final two chapters, which examine Gülen’s role as an educator. Michel first encountered Gülen’s writings, as well as the Hizmet Movement, through the network of schools, in around 160 countries, that have been opened by friends and admirers of Hizmet. These entrepreneurs have taken to heart Gülen’s belief that education is the best weapon against hatred, enmity, and ignorance.
Michel has visited many of these schools, and he recounts his experiences with them. Not surprisingly, the so-called “Gülen” schools tend to be very strong in the sciences. And though Michel finds their staffs to be guided by a deep personal faith, he also notes that the schools are not religious schools. In fact, every institution fulfills the legal requirements of its host country.

Once Michel has established the foundation of Gülen’s philosophy in the book’s first section, he examines the Movement known as Hizmet – or, alternatively, the Gülen Movement – in its second. As with the section on Gülen, Michel traces in this section the origins of Hizmet, from its humble beginnings in Turkey, where Gülen established “lighthouses,” which were safe havens for people of faith during the tumultuous 1970s, to the multinational civil society movement of today. This piece does a good job of charting Hizmet’s history.
Of course, history is nothing without context. In the rest of this section, Michel roots the humanitarian and educational efforts of Hizmet in Said Nursi’s teachings – in particular, his belief that humanity has three “common” enemies.” These three enemies – ignorance, poverty, and disunity – are shared across religious, racial, and national bonds. As such, diverse groups of people should be able to come together and make common cause to battle them.

This, as Michel shows, is exactly what Hizmet has done. Though much of Hizmet’s humanitarian work has been done in the name of fighting ignorance, the Movement has also fought poverty through its aid organization, Kimse Yok Mu? (Is Anybody There?), and disunity through the many dialogue centers it has opened. These centers have hosted countless multicultural and diversity forums, conferences, and events, and have worked hard to perform community outreach in their host communities, cities, and states. Many of Michel’s speeches come from such events, and his essays explore his own associations with a variety of Hizmet organizations.

Though Michel’s book hasn’t been updated with the most recent information, including last summer’s attempted coup in Turkey, he manages to address the questions some people, especially those unfamiliar with Hizmet, have asked about the movement. By examining both Gülen’s focus on peacebuilding and education, as well as the diverse makeup of Hizmet – the Movement includes doctors and lawyers, civil servants and business people, teachers and journalists – Michel easily lays to rest any doubts certain people have about the intentions of the Movement. Gülen’s entire career, and all of Hizmet’s activities, have been devoted to humanitarian, not political, ends. The Movement has no interest in power, but instead strives for peace – and does so with humility.

Because the book is a collection of pieces, and not a standalone book, it can, at times, be repetitive. One area of commonality that Michel doesn’t address but that is increasingly important is that of climate change. It makes sense that Michel wouldn’t talk about climate change, since the book is an introduction to Fethullah Gülen and Hizmet, but moving forward, one of the main areas of agreement between almost all of the world’s religions is the belief that our world is sacred, and humans are simply its stewards. As the effects of global climate change become more and more apparent, it is incumbent upon the faithful people of the world to set aside their minor differences to achieve the common goal of protecting God’s gift to us. This is one of the areas where Hizmet’s idea of dialogue could be most effective.  

Any criticisms of the book are minor quibbles, though. The themes Michel returns to, time and again, are worthwhile themes – and necessary, at this time of great division. Near the end of his book, Michel writes about the continuing need for finding common ground. In Fethullah Gülen and Hizmet, he finds a prime example of dialogue, consensus building, and unity. It is an example that we should all try to heed as we move forward into a divided, uncertain world. Both Michel and Gülen are reminders that despite superficial differences, we have the most important things in common.  

Dark matter, the mysterious unseen mass, and dark energy, the universe’s mysterious force, comprise the rest of the unknown universe. We still know very little about dark energy and dark matter. Dozens of institutes and thousands of scientists have organized international collaborations in search of both. In fact, scientists hope the biggest energy particle collider [1], the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, will help solve the puzzles of dark energy and dark matter.

            It is common for people to ask, how did the universe begin? After decades of observing and measuring, today the majority of scientists explain the beginning of the universe via the Big Bang theory. Two astronomers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, established the Big Bang theory of cosmology by observing the cosmic background of radiation [2]. According to their theory, everything in the universe was contained in one single mass and there was no space or time. Everything started with the explosion of this extremely dense and hot mass. This explosion was not like an explosion into an empty space; rather space itself began with this explosion.

The idea that led scientists to the Big Bang came from observing the universe’s expansion. Edwin P. Hubble found that almost all galaxies are moving away from the center of the universe [3]. He did so by measuring the light from these galaxies to determine their velocities. This proved that the universe was not static, but was instead expanding. After scientists realized that the universe is expanding, they thought that there must be a beginning to this expansion. Then, using the speed of this expansion, they calculated the life of the universe. Through this, they were able to show that the universe has a beginning. Today, almost every scientist agrees with the Big Bang, and they can support it with scientific evidence.

The idea of the universe, let alone an expanding universe, can be pretty incomprehensible. Let me make it a bit more comprehensible. Think about a balloon. There are two spots marked on this balloon. When you inflate the balloon, you’ll see how these two spots are moving away from each other. The balloon is the universe and the two spots are matter in that universe. This example shows how matter “rides” the expanding universe.

Until about 20 years ago, most scientists thought that the expansion of the universe was getting slower. In 1998, observations of the Type la supernovae revealed the existence of dark energy. Dark energy, scientists found, was one way to measure the expansion rate of the universe over time. This discovery was proof for the universe expanding at an increasing rate. Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt, and Adam G. Riess have been awarded the Shaw Prize in Astronomy in 2006 [4] and Nobel Prize in Physics in 2011 [5] for their breakthrough study on this topic. But though scientists know the universe is expanding faster and faster, no one yet knows why.

Let’s go back to the beginning of the universe and see how everything was induced into a perfect order. At the beginning, when the Big Bang (BB) occurred, one might think that this came with chaos and disorder. The perfect design of the universe came from that mess.

If we could get precise information all the way back to the Big Bang, it would help us to solve many outstanding mysteries. Unfortunately, we are unable to gather this information because the cosmos, in its infancy, was foggy and full of light rays. After about 300,000 years, the universe became transparent and many particles fell away; the furthest distance we can see across space is 13.7 billion light years, which is when the universe became transparent.

Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) was formed almost 380,000 years after the BB. That is the cosmic background radiation, or thermal radiation, and it is believed to be a leftover from the BB. The CMB is the source of the oldest light in the universe and it represents the kernel of stars and planets.

In the early stages of this CMB time, elementary particles were formed. These particles acquired mass while passing through the Higgs field and interacting with the Higgs boson [1]. These particles are mainly divided into two categories: fermions and bosons. Fermions are the most fundamental particles, known as quarks and leptons. The quarks and leptons are further divided into six flavors and corresponding antiparticles. Bosons are photon, gluon, W-Z bosons, and graviton. They carry forces, included the four main forces in the universe – electromagnetic, strong, weak, and gravitational.

The basic building blocks of matter are two composite particles, baryons and mesons, which are formed by the combination of quarks. Baryons are made of three quarks, such as protons (two up and one down quarks) and neutrons (two down and one up quarks), of the atomic nuclei. Mesons are usually found in cosmic rays and are composed of quark-antiquark pairs. Today, more than 200 subatomic particles have been discovered at sophisticated particle accelerator laboratories. Most of them are composite particles, composed of other fundamental particles.

After the creation of these elementary particles, stars, galaxies, and planets were formed, step-by-step.

First stars: 200,000,000 years after Big Bang
According to the results of NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), the first stars were formed 200 million years after the BB. The clumps of matter were brought together with the gravitational force and they grew like a growing snowball until they have enough energy to start nuclear fusion process, which is the main process behind the shiny stars up in the sky.
First Galaxies: 1,000,000,000 years after Big Bang

1.6 million galaxies have been identified according to the location of the Milky Way Galaxy by The 2 Micron All-Sky Survey (2 MASS). Figure 1.1 is a computer-generated map of our surrounding universe by the 2 MASS, which shows nearly 50,000 galaxies near our galaxy, Milky Way (2 MASS/ J. Carpenter, R. Hurt & T. H. Jarrett).  

The Milky Way, which includes our solar system, began to form 5 billion years after the BB. There are approximately three hundred billion stars in our galaxy, and there are estimated to be 100 billion galaxies in the universe. Scientists do not know the structure and features of these galaxies. But then, they don’t even know everything about our galaxy.

How big are objects in the Milky Way? Everyone knows about the moon and the Earth, as well as the other planets in our solar system. The largest star in the Milky Way is VY Canis Majoris, a Red hyper-giant. It has a diameter of 280 million km, which is so big that an airplane flying at 900 km per hour would need 1100 years to circle the star. There are approximately 200 billion stars in Milk Way alone and the sun is only one of them.

When thinking about all the space in our universe, it makes the order of our own solar system and galaxy seem quite extraordinary.

A solar system in general consists of a star at the center and rotating astronomical objects (planets, moons, etc.) around that star. In our solar system, the object in the center is the sun and everything orbits around it. There are eight planets including the earth and their natural satellites orbiting the sun. So far, 3946 comets, many asteroids, and thousands of near-earth objects and minor planets have been discovered [6] around the sun. The sun is attracting all these objects with the gravitational force and they counter this attraction by means of their centrifugal force. These forces are balanced and keep the objects in their orbits. All of these are formed and located perfectly with a magnificent balance. How does this kind of order form from a disorder spontaneously?

References:

[1]       Kara, Cihan, "Will CERN Reveal the Origin of the Universe or Cause the End," The Fountain Magazine, Issue 92, 2013.
[2]       The Large Horn Antenna and the Discovery of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation,             https://www.aps.org/programs/outreach/history/historicsites/penziaswilson.cfm
[3]       Hubble Space Telescope,             https://www.spacetelescope.org/about/history/the_man_behind_the_name/
[4]       The Shaw Prize in Astronomy in 2006,         http://www.shawprize.org/en/shaw.php?tmp=3&twoid=51
[5]       The Nobel Prize in Physics 2011,      https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2011/  
[6]       The Minor Planet Center: http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/