A proper diet differs from person to person. It’s important to design your diet according to the genetic map of your family and characteristics of your body. By “dieting” I do not mean being undernourished, but eating a healthy balance of nutrients to supply your body’s daily energy needs. Balance is important, for if a person only eats protein, fat, or carbohydrates, after a while, the body’s organs can start to deteriorate.

Here are some aspects that should be taken into consideration while designing your personal diet:

Personalizing the diet

Not everyone should have the same diet. People come in different shapes and sizes, and they have different genetic makeups. A person must know how their body responds to certain foods. They must identify whether they (or their family) is prone to gain weight, whether they have a depressive or a nervous personality, or whether there is a family history of certain diseases, like diabetes, heart disease, or cancer. Families that are genetically susceptible to heart attacks should eat vegetables and fruits instead of too much protein or foods high in fats.

Maintaining an ideal weight range is important. While certain foods should be eaten in smaller amounts, this does not mean eating nothing. For instance, if a person has diabetes, they can’t have too much sugar – but no sugar is also bad for them.

A person who works hard outdoors will have a different diet from a person who works in an office. Some people are allergic to certain foods. Other people have a low basal metabolism or suffer from psychological distress. Food preferences also change according to cultures: a preferred food in one society may not be accepted in another.

Determining your ideal weight

Each person’s ideal weight is different. It differs depending on a person’s height, as well as the weight of their fatty tissues, muscles, and bones. A rough way to figure out your ideal weight is to add or subtract five from the last two digits of your height in centimeters. For example, someone who is 180 cm (5.90 feet) tall should weigh between 75-85 kg (165-187 lb). The most important thing is to set a healthy, ideal weight, and stick to it for life. Going over your ideal weight can lead to obesity and a slew of other health problems.

Determining body mass index

Obesity means an extreme excess of fat in a person’s body. Therefore, if your ideal weight is 60 kg (132 lb.) but you weigh 80 kg (176 lb.), knowing how much of the excess 20kg is fat or muscle is possible by determining your body mass index. If this excess of 20 kg (44 lb.) is 5 kg (11 lb.) of muscle and 15 kg (33 lb.) of fat, you can lose 15 kg of excess fat with a better diet and exercise. Losing mass from one’s muscles is harmful to the body, as it causes protein loss. Protein loss shouldn’t happen while you’re also losing weight.

The basal metabolic rate

This is the total energy, per 24 hours, that one expends while at rest. This changes according to a person’s physiological and biochemical structure. 30% of basal metabolism is used by the liver, 19% by the brain, and 18% by the skeletal muscles. Those with higher muscle mass index have a higher basal metabolism. If fewer calories are taken in than the basal metabolism needs, weight is lost; if more calories are taken in, weight is gained. Those with a higher basal metabolic rate lose weight much easier. One must take this rate into consideration when building their ideal diet.

Climate

Climate has an effect on one’s organs and metabolism. A change in climate conditions changes the energy demands on the body. The colder the climate, the more calories one needs. Gastrointestinal diseases are common in Siberian children who have diet-related malnutrition. Conversely, those living near the poles are less likely to have heart and vascular diseases, even though they eat diets high in fat and protein.

Age and gender

In the elderly, losing weight can cause urinary tract infections. A child under five on a long-term, low-calorie diet is at risk of pneumonia, low blood pressure, hypocalcemia, and abdominal swelling. Supplementary micronutrients such as thiamine, folic acid, vitamins A, C, E, and K, and iron should be given, along with carbohydrates, to children suffering from malnutrition. Care should be taken not to disrupt the balance of the basic substances in the body.

Balanced diet

Unbalanced diets cause functional disorders and diseases in the organs. In high protein diets, which are preferable for terms of fat loss, especially in diabetic patients, cardiovascular and nephritic problems have been observed when the metabolism of carbohydrates and fat have deteriorated. In menopausal patients who lose weight through high protein diets there can be a significant decrease in bone density due to imbalances in protein, sodium, calcium, and potassium, which can lead to fractures.

Imbalanced diets are often accompanied by diseases. Moderately high protein diets may increase the risk of metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes. Low fat, high carbohydrate diets may be more suitable for these people. Instead of a single type of food, the most favored diets are those which are more complex than others.

85gr protein + 116gr fat +   360gr carbohydrate/day   =   high carbohydrate diet
139gr protein + 82gr fat   + 181gr carbohydrate/day   = high protein diet
137gr protein +   140gr fat   + 42gr carbohydrate/day = high fat diet

Mixed diets do not reduce the risk of colon cancer. However, eating lots of fibrous, pulpy foods has been shown to reduce it.

Determining meal times

We eat more than we need to. True hunger is when stomach cramps begin, and this happens about 18-24 hours after one’s last meal. We should not confuse hunger and mild hunger. Mild hunger is not feeling full in the stomach. Long-term memory is facilitated in the case of mild hunger and molecular mechanisms are accelerated, and thus we become conditioned to eat at regimented times.

Physiological mealtimes should be preferred to traditional mealtimes. Foods that give energy, such as carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, can only be metabolized after a certain period of time. Since it takes the longest (8 hours) for fat to metabolize, it should be at least 8 hours between meals; otherwise, the body stores that excess fat. So someone who sleeps for 8 hours can eat two meals a day.

Duration of meals

The relationship between hunger, nutrition, eating speed, and putting on weight was studied in obese children, and it was found that the feeling of hunger and eating speed were four times higher in obese children than normal children. Therefore, that’s why they eat more and the feeling of fullness takes longer to kick in. Meals should be chewed for a long time: a brain’s satiety center only registers a feeling of fullness after around 30 minutes.

Amount of food

The volume of a normal stomach is 1000-1500 cc. It is necessary to leave space for the stomach’s contents to shake easily and for the stomach to add the enzymes and the slurries that break the food down and carry it towards the intestines. In this case, it is necessary to leave 2/3 of the stomach for water and food, and 1/3 empty. The total amount of food and water should not exceed 700-1000 cc.

Personalized workouts

Exercise strengthens muscles. During a workout, biochemical events in the body are accelerated, toxins are excreted more easily from the body, and weight is lost. Before determining a workout program, it is important to make sure there isn’t any significant abnormality in the body’s biochemistry, or an injury. For the best results, it is important to know which muscles work more in terms of energy spent during a workout. For example, the energy spent by the front thigh muscles and the forearm muscles is not the same. A workout should proceed gradually, so as not to cause injury.

Drinking enough water

The water lost by daily metabolic activities and sweating should be recovered. The amount of water consumed per resting day is 1800-2000 cc. A person will need more water if they are exercising.

A Prophetic diet

Certain religions have guidelines for which foods to eat together at the same time. For instance, in Judaism, meat and dairy products should not be cooked together; some Orthodox Jews would not combine meat and fish. Many Muslims look at the Prophet Muhammad’s (peace be upon him) diet and see that he did not eat the following kinds of food together: milk and sour food, milk and meat, or milk and eggs. He also avoided two hot or cold foods at the same time, as well as two fried or dried foods. The Prophet (pbuh) did not prefer to eat extremely hot food and said blessings would be with cooler food. Religious traditions also have certain dietary prohibitions. For instance, Judaism and Islam prohibit eating certain animals, and permitted animals have to be slaughtered according to the religious law.

Diet is an important part of one’s health, but it’s not the only factor. Health is determined by many things, including culture, genetics, education, and other lifestyle factors.  

Hizmet’s activities can be classified into four categories: business associations, interfaith/intercultural dialogue activities, education,[1] and relief work.[2] Its interfaith/intercultural dialogue activities provide safe zones where peoples of different backgrounds can come together and engage in friendly conversations in a peaceful atmosphere. Such meetings create constructive relationships and social capital.

The movement’s educational and relief work also engender dialogue, although indirectly. They have often helped communities who have historically had strained relationships come together under the tree of knowledge.

Hizmet pioneered dialogue activities in Turkey in the 1980s. This allowed different communities to search for solutions to common problems. When the movement spread worldwide in the 1990s, its dialogue activities reached beyond just the Turkish context and encompassed all major faiths and cultures.

With the growth of militant extremism dominating the international discourse about Muslims, Hizmet became a major moderate voice, condemning extremism and embodying Islam’s peaceful face.[3] It presents an alternative vision for Muslims, in stark contrast with the reactionary political Islamist movements. Hizmet encourages Muslims to peacefully but actively engage in all walks of life and with all types of people.

Fethullah Gülen, the key figure whose ideas have inspired the movement, “regards dialogue as an activity of forming a bond between two or more parties.” He also “specifies the humanitarian approach to dialogue, which manifests itself with tolerance and various tolerance-based concepts such as love, compassion, forgiveness, and humility” (Kim 2015, 35).

Kim has also called Gülen’s approach to dialogue “dialogic Sufism,” a reactivation of the Turkish Sufi tradition, one that has been specifically adapted for the contemporary world. “Dialogic Sufism opposes a dialectical approach to humanity which assumes an opposing and conflicting relationship between self and others,” Kim wrote (2015, 36). He adds that this approach is in contrast with the reactionary nature of political Islam: “Instead, it [Hizmet] interacts with any challenging condition and context to build a dialogical bridge between the past and the present, the East and the West, rationalism/materialism and spiritualism, and between different civilizations, religions and cultures, obliterating difference and distinctions between ‘[the] self and others’” (Kim 2015, 37).

Gülen has traced the idea of dialogue back to basic Islamic themes. Accordingly, he takes the “basmala,” the beginning of almost every chapter of the Qur’an, as a point of departure. The basmala is a recitation of God’s attributes, “the Compassionate and the Merciful.” According to Gülen, the recurrence of this phrase in the Qur’an is an indication “God wanted to teach Muslims, among other things, to be compassionate and merciful in their relations with their fellow human beings, and with nature” (Saritoprak and Griffith 2005, 333).

Furthermore, Gülen has been inspired by the writings of Ahmed Faruqi Sirhindi (1564-1624), an Indian Sufi, who introduced the concept of loving friendship (khillah) and that each believer is to cultivate a spiritual friendship with all those who profess the faith of Abraham, both Muslims or non-Muslims (Saritoprak and Griffith 2005). Referring to love in the Sufi tradition, Gülen emphasizes one of the “beautiful names” of God, “al-Wadud,” or the Beloved One, and asserts that Muslims are expected to reflect this attribute in their lives by being a people of love. Gülen has found the roots of these themes in the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, quoting the hadith, “Whoever is humble, God exalts him; whoever is haughty, God humiliates him” (Saritoprak and Griffith 2005, 334). To Gülen, this idea is the heart of Islamic ethics. It is also the basis for interreligious dialogue, and he sees dialogue as the natural result of the practice of Islamic ethics. Humility leads to peace through dialogue, not violence through conflict.

According to Gülen, the Qur’anic verse 3:64, revealed in the ninth year of the Hijra (629 CE), represents one of the greatest ecumenical calls of Prophet Muhammad’s time and clearly indicates that Muslims are expected to treat People of the Book with respect and tolerance (Webb 2015; Saritoprak and Griffith 2005):

Tell them: ‘O people of the Book, let us come to an agreement on that which is common between us, that we worship no one but God, and make none his compeer, and that none of us take any others for Lord apart from God.’ If they turn away, you tell them: ‘Bear witness that we submit to Him’ (Al-Imran 3:64).

According to Esposito and Yılmaz (2010, 162), Gülen’s teachings are based on Turkish Islamic tradition inspired by Sufi figures like the poet and theologian Rumi (1207-1273) and the Ottoman Empire’s religious tolerance, as exemplified in the Empire’s community self-governance (also known as the millet system). In this respect, Saritoprak and Griffith (2005, 330) assert, “[t]he Ottoman Empire presented a great example of the Islamic understanding of tolerance towards non-Muslim subjects, in particular, the People of the Book. In our contemporary world, the issue has become even more relevant because of a tremendous need for interfaith dialogue and understanding.”

They argue that Gülen’s interfaith approach, in turn, is rooted in three Islamic principles: “a history of revelation and prophecy, the commonalities among faiths, and the Qur’an’s explicit sanction of interfaith dialogue” (Esposito and Yılmaz 2010, 162). The following paragraphs will present details of each of these, tracing them in Gülen’s writings.

First, Gülen’s commitment to interfaith dialogue emanates from his inclusive and singular approach to religion, in which Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, particularly – and even the non-Abrahamic religions of Hinduism and Buddhism – accept the same theistic source.[4]

Accordingly, a spiral understanding of history and religion in Gülen’s thought generates this approach, in which the universal principle of God’s existence is reaffirmed by messengers and revelations. “The divine revelation and prophecy establish both an axis for religious unity and a framework for religious diversity” (Esposito and Yılmaz 2010, 163). Since the Qur’an declares in verse 40:78 that God sent many prophets and the hadith tradition specifies their number as 124,000 messengers, Gülen is able to argue that the universality of religion is reflected by any religion, to a varying degree, and that all major religions are based on the shared divine revelation (Esposito and Yılmaz 2010).

Supporting his inclusive approach to religion and interfaith dialogue, Gülen draws parallels between the similarity of different religious teachings (Esposito and Yılmaz 2010). In this regard, he states that religions pursue the same universal goals. He also reiterates their shared source and emphasizes the commonality in generally accepted values across different religions, indicating the divine presence in all religions[5]:

The goal of dialogue among world religions is not simply to destroy scientific materialism and the destructive materialistic worldview; rather, the very nature of religion demands this dialogue. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and even Hinduism and other world religions accept the same source for themselves, and, including Buddhism, pursue the same goal. As a Muslim, I accept all Prophets and Books sent to different peoples throughout history, and regard belief in them as an essential principle of being Muslim. A Muslim is a true follower of Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, and all other Prophets. Not believing in one Prophet or Book means that one is not a Muslim. Thus we acknowledge the oneness and basic unity of religion, which is a symphony of God’s blessings and mercy, and the universality of belief in religion. So, religion is a system of belief embracing all races and all beliefs, a road bringing everyone together in brotherhood.

Regardless of how their adherents implement their faith in their daily lives, such generally accepted values as love, respect, tolerance, forgiveness, mercy, human rights, peace, brotherhood, and freedom [are] exalted by religion. Most of them are accorded the highest precedence in the messages brought by Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad, as well as in the messages of Buddha and even Zarathustra, Lao-Tzu, Confucius, and the Hindu prophets.

Lastly, Gülen believes in the Qur’an’s universal call for dialogue, though it primarily targets the Abrahamic religions and forms the first pillar of interfaith dialogue (Esposito and Yılmaz 2010). Verse 3:64 from the Qur’an is one example that Gülen quotes[6]: “O People of the Book, come to a word common between us and you, that we worship none but God, and associate none as partner with Him, and that none of us take others for Lords, apart from God.”

Gülen also emphasizes verses 2:3 and 2:4, which require Muslims to believe in scriptures that were sent to previous prophets as well as the Prophet of Islam (“…who believe in what is sent to you and what was sent before you”)[7]. Accordingly, by establishing the belief in earlier prophets and revelations, Islam lays out the foundation for interfaith dialogue. Further, based on verse 29:46, “And discuss you not with the People of the Book, except with means better (than mere disputation),” Gülen contends that the Qur’an bases that dialogue on finding common points rather than disputing others’ religious beliefs.[8] Yücel (2013), quoting Seker, asserts that “Gülen’s dialogue work is not un-Islamic or something new to Islam, but is rather based on the spirit of the Medina Charter, an agreement drawn up between the Muslims and non-Muslims (Jews and pagans) in Medina that granted rights and respect towards non-Muslims.” Seker adds that Gülen also draws from the spirit of the final sermon of Prophet Muhammad (Yücel 2013, 204).

According to Webb (2015), for Gülen, being human is sufficient enough to earn respect. Webb (2015, 16), in this respect, points to Gülen’s use of the hadith to justify his universalistic principle:

[The Prophet] one day stood up as a Jewish funeral was passing by. One of the Companions at his side said, ‘O Messenger of God, that’s a Jew.’ Without any change in attitude or alteration of the lines on his face, the Prince of Prophets gave this answer: ‘But he is a human being!’

In this respect, by pointing to enlarging the circle of Hizmet from the Abrahamic faiths to include religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism on the basis of human-brotherhood, Erol (2012) asserts, “the Gülen movement is eager to create further bonds just because they are human beings regardless of their faith, colour, language, culture or ethnic background. It is simply implementing the aforementioned famous saying of Yunus Emre: ‘We love the created because of the Creator.’”[9]

According to Kim (2015, 39), “[i]n Gülen’s diagnosis, most of the problems that contemporary human beings face result from the loss of true humanism, which causes and appears with widespread hatred and enmity,” and “Gülen is convinced that the only way to disentangle the real and critical danger to human beings is to revitalize humanism by means of love and tolerance.” Hizmet means “service to humanity,” and based on Gülen’s philosophy, “the real path of Sufis is to seek their spiritual progress in the happiness of others by living for others. This exemplifies what hizmet is” (Kim 2015, 38). Similarly, Al-Mabuk (2015, 29) contends that in Gülen’s thought, “forgiveness holds the promise to transform hostility, resentment and hatred into peace, love and harmony among individuals and societies.”

Yücel (2013), on the other hand, links Gülen’s dialogue efforts to Said Nursi (1877-1960), an influential Ottoman-Kurdish Islamic scholar and activist. Gülen is an ardent follower of Nursi, who initiated the idea of dialogue in his Damascus sermon in 1911[10]: “Said Nursi proposed dialogue and collaboration between Muslims and Christians before a congregation of over 10,000 Muslims, including 100 prominent religious scholars, in the Umayyad Mosque, Damascus” (Yücel 2013, 197). Nursi believed in this cooperation against materialism, which he saw as the source of the international aggression of his time; to him, greed, driven by materialism, causes the major conflicts that lead to destruction on a worldwide scale. Nursi suggested that Muslims and Christians should cooperate against common threats, including poverty, ignorance, and enmity between peoples. According to Valkenburg (2015, 53), “[i]t can be found in Nursi’s Damascus sermon and in some parts of his Risale-i Nur as well, where Nursi showed that negative approaches to people of other religions in the Qur’an usually apply to specific situations only, whilst the more positive evaluations of others have a more universal value. Something similar can be said about the quotation about loving good deeds and detesting bad deeds, since in the same Damascus sermon from 1911, Said Nursi stated that ‘the thing most worthy of love is love, and that most deserving of enmity is enmity.’”

According to Yücel (2013, 200), “Gülen has two aims for interfaith and intercultural dialogue. Firstly, he seeks a world in which civilisations do not clash. Secondly, he pictures a world where religious, cultural and linguistic differences are not denied or repressed, but rather expressed freely in the form of a civilisation of love. He dreams of a world without conflict and enmity. In such a world, people avoid hurting or annoying each other.”

References

• Al-Mabuk, Radhi H. 2015. “Fethullah Gülen’s Perspectives on Forgiveness.” Hizmet Studies Review. 2(2): 21-31.
• Barton, Greg. 2014. “How Hizmet Works: Islam, Dialogue and the Gülen Movement in Australia.” Hizmet Studies Review. 1(1): 9-25.
• Kim, Heon C. 2015. “Sufism and Dialogue in the Hizmet Movement.” Hizmet Studies Review. 2(2): 33-49.
• Saritoprak, Zeki, and Sidney Griffith. 2005. “Fethullah Gülen and the People of the Book: A Voice from Turkey for Interfaith Dialogue.” The Muslim World. 95(3): 329–40.
• Webb, M. O. 2015. “Fethullah Gülen’s Use of Philosophical and Scriptural Resources for Tolerance.” Hizmet Studies Review. 2(2): 9-18.
• Yilmaz I and Esposito JL. 2010. Islam and Peacebuilding: Gülen Movement Initiatives. New York: Blue Dome Press.
• Yücel, S. 2013. “Muslim-Christian Dialogue: Nostra Aetate and Fethullah Gülen’s Philosophy of Dialogue.” Australian e-Journal of Theology, 20(3).

[1] http://gulenschools.org/

[2] http://embracerelief.org/

[3] http://rumiforum.org/gulen-condem-isis-new-york-times-washington-post/

[4] http://en.fgulen.com/questions-and-answers/599-what-is-the-role-of-prophethood-and-of-prophets

(Accessed July 5, 2015).

[5] http://en.fgulen.com/about-fethullah-gulen/251-fethullah-gulens-speeches-and-interviews-on-interfaith-dialogue/1334-introduction

(Accessed July 5, 2015).

[6] http://en.fgulen.com/reflections-on-the-quran/4286-al-imran-3-64

(Accessed July 5, 2015).

[7] http://en.fgulen.com/conference-papers/peaceful-coexistence/2486-sacred-scriptures-and-interfaith-dialogue

(Accessed July 5, 2015).

[8] http://en.fgulen.com/conference-papers/peaceful-coexistence/2512-gulens-paradigm-on-peaceful-coexistence-theoretical-insights-and-some-practical-perspectives

(Accessed July 5, 2015).

[9] http://www.fethullahgulenforum.org/articles/32/the-contribution-fethullah-gulen-on-christian-muslim-relations

[10] http://www.saidnur.com/foreign/en/risaleler/sermon1.htm

A tornado that is bigger than the Earth: The Great Red Spot

The storms of a gas giant like Jupiter, a planet 1300 times bigger than Earth, are very fierce. Scientists who have studied Jupiter discovered that its high rotational rate – a day is only approximately 10 hours – leads to the formation of moving gas zones and east-west air jets. The air currents in these bands wrap the planet like colorful belts and they move in opposite directions at around 600 km per hour. The collision of these horizontal cloud bands leads to giant storms.

The most famous giant storm on Jupiter is the Great Red Spot. This giant anticyclone is three times bigger than the Earth. It rotates counter-clockwise and has existed for 340 years. Since Jupiter is made only of gas, it doesn’t have a physical topography. Therefore, the storm can’t find a place to empty its energy. The winds around the Great Red Spot, which looks like a red oval eye, have a speed of 400 km per hour.

It’s still a matter of debate as to how the Great Red Spot reached such a giant size. Scientists have argued multiple theories. One theory states that this giant storm has been fed by an internal heat energy and engulfs all the other storms it comes across. As the hot gases that comprise Jupiter’s atmosphere rise from lower levels to higher levels, eddies form and converge. As cooler gas falls back to the planet’s surface, it causes a swirling motion. These eddies can last for a long time, because there is no solid surface to provide friction. Many adjacent eddies are engulfed and merge with the spot, adding to the energy of the storm and contributing to its longevity.

Other scientists mention that the Great Red Spot has begun to shrink. While the spot was about 41,000 km wide in the 1800s, it had shrunk to 23,300 km in 1979, according to the measurements of Voyager 1 and 2. Recent Hubble telescope measurements report the storm’s size as 16,500 km wide. Another large storm, whose diameter is as large as the Earth’s, was observed below the Great Red Spot.

Winds twice as fast as sound

During hurricanes and tornadoes, the winds on Earth are strong enough to demolish buildings. Yet if we spent a day on Neptune, where the fastest winds in the solar system occur, we wouldn’t be so impressed with the Earth’s winds. Winds on Neptune can reach speeds of 2400 km per hour. This is twice as fast as the speed of sound (1235.5 km per hour).

Astronomers think that freezing weather conditions may lead to the strong winds on Neptune. As on Jupiter, there is no friction to slow the currents down – though here the culprit is an icy planet, not a gaseous one. The fastest jet streams are visible as dark spots. The most important ones were the Great Dark Spot, located in the southern hemisphere, and the Small Dark Spot, which was south of the great dark spot.

The Great Dark Spot was an anticyclonic storm and was first discovered by Voyager 2 in 1989. It was about the same size as Earth, and was very cold and dark. There were silky cirrus clouds around the spot made up of crystals of frozen methane. However, the Great Dark Spot was not observed by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1994.

The Small Dark Spot, also called The Wizard’s Eye, was a southern cyclonic storm. It was also observed by Voyager 2. But again, when the Hubble observed Neptune in 1994, the storm had disappeared.

In lieu of these two storms, a new dark spot was discovered in the northern hemisphere. This storm, whose width is almost 2400 km, is still active. Apart from this storm, there are also speedy and comparatively small clouds called “scooters.”

When observed at a distance, Saturn and its giant rings seem quite taciturn. However, beneath the surface are rough storms like the Great White Spot, discovered in 1990, and the Giant Storm, discovered in 2010. Although cloud zones that are parallel to the equator are observed in Saturn’s atmosphere, the color and contrast between the bands are not as striking as on, say, Jupiter. In these neighboring zones the clouds move in opposite directions at enormous speed. White spots are observed when some of them interact, creating storms that can reach a truly gigantic size.

These storms can reach speeds of 1800 km per hour, making them the second fastest storms in the solar system after Neptune’s. The most striking storms on Saturn are those observed above the North Pole. These storms have an unusual hexagonal shape, which is due to atmospheric vortices in the polar regions. The biggest of these storms has a width of about 13,800 km. Once again, the existence of these huge storms was proved by Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 in 1980 and 1981.

In 2009, the Giant Storm was observed more closely thanks to NASA’s Cassini Spacecraft. As a result of these observations, it has been revealed that the Giant Storm has existed for 30 years and has winds estimated at 480 km/ph.

When we look at other planets in the solar system, Venus has dramatic differences between high and low pressure in its atmosphere. The planet is covered by thick, heavy clouds made of sulfuric acid. Venus is made of active volcanoes, which produce toxic gases and constant heat; the planet is literally shaped by toxic smoke.

Mars is famous for giant red dust storms that blanket the entire planet and last for months. When Mariner 9 arrived on Mars in 1971, it found out that the atmosphere was thick with “a planet-wide robe of dust.” The only visible object was Mount Olympus Mons, which is nearly three times taller than Mount Everest.

Upon observing the atmospheres of nearby planets, and the enormous storms that torment them, it’s hard not to contemplate the enormous power that exists in the universe – and we find ourselves grateful that Earth was created in such a temperate manner. Without such an amenable climate, life wouldn’t be possible.   

However, the sun is not the only way humans can retrieve energy from nature. The use of fossil fuels as an alternative source of energy has been utilized by humans since the Industrial Revolution. Unfortunately, the use of fossil fuels has contributed to human-made climate change, which threatens all life as we know it. There are a number of effects of climate change, such as melting glaciers, a rise in ocean temperatures, drought and famine, and more frequent extreme weather events. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges humanity has ever faced.

Macquarie Island

Humanity can impact the ecology in myriad, profound ways. Macquarie Island in the southwest Pacific Ocean is an interesting case to exemplify this impact. After the discovery of Macquarie Island in 1810, people brought cats to the island to eat rats and mice that threatened the sailors’ grain stores. Later, in 1878, rabbits were introduced to provide food for the sailors. Unfortunately, the rabbits provided easy prey for the island’s cats, causing the cat population to grow; the rabbits also damaged the island’s native vegetation. People decided to reduce the rabbit population via a disease called myxomatosis, which was only fatal to rabbits. It did its work well and decreased the population from a peak of 130,000 to less than 20,000, and the vegetation recovered. However, with fewer rabbits, the cats began to hunt the island’s native birds, damaging their population. People decided to eradicate cats and the last cat was removed from the island in 2000. But with this move, the rabbit population increased dramatically and caused substantial damage to native vegetation. Human interference in the natural balance cost Macquarie Island around $16 million.

With the reserves of fossil fuels depleted, governments and companies have focused on alternative energy resources. In this regard, interest in renewable energy resources has increased, as they allow countries to both stay independent from fossil fuels and reduce the impact of climate change. Abundant energy from the sun, the wind, plants, and the Earth itself can provide some or all of our energy needs while also conserving the Earth’s natural resources without having any adverse effect on the environment.

Electrical energy

The need for renewables is more pressing than ever. With the Earth’s population continuing to grow, and many developing countries revamping their electrical grid, the need for electrical energy has continued to increase, too. In 2004, this demand was 17,450 TWh (terawatt-hour), but it is estimated that the world will consume 31,657 TWh by 2030. To date, most electricity has come from fossil fuels. To tackle this crisis, renewable energies such as solar, wind, biomass, and hydroelectric power will be necessary, and research must increase in proportion to need.

In the wind sector, energy management of power generated from wind turbines has become an important issue. Countries are already seeing the benefits – to their power grid and their employment numbers – from increasing their wind power capabilities.

Wind energy is another form of solar energy, as it is derived from the sunlight that heats up the Earth’s surface. Since land warms faster than the surface of water, the warm air above the land rises due to the lighter density of warm air. Cold air from the surface of the ocean moves in to the land to fill the gap generated by the rising warm air. This replacement creates wind, and it’s why we so often feel wind on the beach or lakefront. Moving air is strong and pushes the blades of the wind turbines, which are connected to the generator, which then produces electricity. Thanks to the low costs associated with wind power, wind energy is the world’s fastest growing renewable energy source.

Wind power has been used for decades, even centuries, in Europe, but it is only now catching on in the US. In March 2009, Vice President Joe Biden announced plans to invest $3.2 billion in energy efficiency and energy conservation projects in the United States. If implemented correctly, this plan could decrease the demand for electricity by 50% across the country. This would result in achieving more than $500 billion in net savings over 20 years and reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those from 90 million vehicles.

Using wind energy would be a tremendous way to begin cleaning the Earth. Considering the population growth and increase in energy demand in the coming years, switching to wind energy is be a viable move. Countries like the USA, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Turkey, Australia, China, Japan, and South Korea are doing a good job developing energy policies that favor wind turbine manufacturers and encourage wind energy. These policies may include tax reductions or exemptions, a quota system, or research. Therefore, these policies may help develop awareness of the wind energy industry and help humanity stop the coming climate catastrophe.

Caring for the environment in the holy scriptures:

The Qur’an 2: 205: “When he leaves (you) or attains authority, he rushes about the land to foment disorder and corruption therein, and to ruin the sources of life and human generations. Surely God does not love disorder and corruption.”

Genesis 1: 26-28 and Psalm 8: 6-8: “Because they were created in His image, God gave men and women a privileged place among all creatures and commanded them to exercise stewardship over the earth.”

Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7:28: “See My works, how fine they are; Now all that I have created, I created for your benefit. Think upon this and do not corrupt and destroy My world. For if you destroy it, there is no one to restore it after you.”

The Suka Sutra: “The taking of lives causes the soil to be saturated with saline, and plants cannot grow. Fourth, lying contaminates the physical environment, causing it to be filthy and smelly.”

Confucius: “Be lovingly disposed to people; be kind to creatures and things. Within three months of spring, none is allowed to cut trees during their growth period.”

References

• Federal Energy Management Program (2003). Retrieved from www.eere.energy.gov
• Graedel, T. & Crutzen, P. (1989). Policy options for stabilizing Global Climate. National Service Center for Environmental Publications.[Electronic version]. Retrieved June 16^th, 2011 form http://nepis.epa.gov
• Hyslop, B., Davies, M., Wallace, A., Gazey, N.& Holroyd S. (1997). Effects of colliery waste on littoral communities in north – east England. Environmental Pollution. [Electronic version]. Retrieved from www.sciencedirect.com
• Jobert, A., Laborgne, P. & Mimler, S, (2007). Local acceptance of wind energy: Factors of success identified in French and German case studies. Journal of Energy Policy, Elsevier. [Electronic version]. Retrieved January 29^th, 2011, from www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol
• Leggett, M. (2006). An indicative costed plan for the mitigation of global risks. Elsevier. [Electronic version]. Retrieved January 29^th, 2011, from www.elsevier.com/locate/futures
• Milici, R. (2000). Depletion of Appalachian coal reserves – how soon? International Journal of Coal Geology.[Electronic version]. Retrieved September 15^th, 2011 from www.elsevier.com
• Stracher, G.& Taylor, T. (2004). Coal fires burning out of control around the world: thermodynamic recipe for environmental catastrophe. International Journal of Coal Geology. [Electronic version]. Retrieved January 29^th, 2011, from www.elsevier.com/locate/ijcoalgeo.
• CNN (2009). CNN world news network.
• Buddha (2011). Retrieved from http://www.blia.org/english/publications/booklet/pages/33.htm
• Judaism (2011). Retrieved from http://jewishveg.com/schwartz/hlydytu.html
• Confucius (2011). Retrieved from http://religion.answers.wikia.com/wiki/What_does_Confucianism_say_about_stewardship_and_the_environment    

Imagine the volume of learning that must take place while travelling from a dark and small room of several square inches to a most sophisticated world, which is beyond comprehension for even the most intelligent and educated human beings. But fortunately, she has somehow been granted the capital of enormous motivation allowing her to set out on this journey.

A great deal of learning takes place during the first couple of days or months, and it happens with almost no help from grownups. This initial burst of learning might never be equaled later in her life.

Her motivation and curiosity make such quick learning possible, but she is also aided by the gift of a wondrous computer with an excellent processor and vast memory – the human brain. These are the major resources in place when grownups begin to intervene in (or should we say interfere with?) the child’s learning.

There are two main possibilities for how parents, caretakers, teachers, and other adults might influence a child’s learning. The first is to optimize the use of the two capitals mentioned above, paving the way for continued and meaningful learning that has been going on successfully since birth. The second is to interfere with this natural progress with aimless, and sometimes forceful, attempts to feed the child with information. Parents or caretakers may not realize the enormous impact their approach will have on a child, especially one at the beginning of their journey. Yet the approach they choose significantly influences the habits of a child’s mind.

Let’s illustrate this with an analogy. If we think of every stimulus a child receives as a Lego piece, then the job in front of the child is to connect these pieces in a meaningful way. The goal for the child, then, is to continue to build a magnificent “knowledge palace” made up of these Lego pieces. Naturally, only the Lego formations toward this goal that are meaningful, self-coherent, and inspiring would be helpful and cognitively valuable.

Following the same analogy, it can be said that there are two main functions grownups can meaningfully perform in the child’s progress in building her knowledge palace. The first is to introduce the child to a great variety of Lego pieces, so that the palace does not become a narrow, dull, and uninspiring construction. This can be accomplished through providing the child with the most comprehensive sample of the world she will be experiencing and living in. Such a sample should include objects, phenomena, thoughts, and feelings reflecting as full a picture of our world as possible. The second is to be a role model and help the child connect the Lego pieces so that she learns to always make connections between the stimuli she comes across. By doing this, adults help the child meaningfully connect the Lego pieces, continually expanding and beautifying her knowledge palace. Otherwise, the stimuli will be left unprocessed, unconnected, and meaningless, cluttering the child’s mind.

What is worse is that for the child, piling up meaningless stimuli will become a habit of her mind. Such disorganization of the mind will, in turn, significantly damage the development of holistic and coherent thinking, undermining the child’s reasoning and problem solving skills. A thorough discussion of these extremely undesirable outcomes is beyond the scope of this article.

Grownups might facilitate the child’s true learning through a successful combination of the two functions mentioned above. Trying to keep the curiosity of the child high while not providing enough Lego pieces will not help. Dumping lots of Lego pieces in front of the child, but not caring about whether they are properly connected by the child, will not mean much, either. Parents, caretakers, teachers, and other adults should try to maintain the child’s motivation and curiosity while guiding her to connect the Lego pieces in a meaningful way. This is only possible through letting the child enjoy learning on her own terms. In other words, grownups should not try to build the knowledge palace for the child. They should not leave the child alone with the Lego pieces, either. Rather, they should serve as role models for learning and allow the child to become the architect of her own knowledge palace.

These guiding principles, though seemingly simple, have huge implications for raising children. Things like how a household is arranged, what toys parents choose for their child, and how to design classroom activities have a meaningful impact on how the child learns. Only two examples will be briefly given here. The child’s room or even the entire household should be a heaven for exploration, with a wide variety of toys or objects serving as a mini replica of what exists and happens in our world. Especially at the beginning of her exploration, the child should be served a full menu of materials, activities, games, hobbies, etc., so that she will have the opportunity to envisage as many different parts of her future knowledge palace as possible.

To present material to be learned while maintaining the curiosity of the child, the grownup should let the child taste the pleasure of learning. In this respect, an ideal setup for learning would be to present most of the material about the topic, while leaving room for the child to do some investigation on her own. Likewise, the child should be guided to do self-reflection after processing material, allowing her to reach her own conclusions and interpretations. This is an effective way for the child to connect the Lego pieces and beautify and expand her knowledge palace.

It should be kept in mind that the child arrives in this world with no prior cognitive preferences or habits. Therefore, continued successful employment of the approach presented above will establish and sustain a sound way of thinking and learning in the child’s mind. Every single effort to use these strategies will create a brilliant mind, always ready for true learning.   

“They possibly felt that there was nothing left for them to do, nowhere else to go,” I suggested.

“Perhaps that is true,” she said. “After all, they above all others are aware of several unanswered questions. I supposed that for an intellectual, especially a scientist, the unexplained is irresistible.”

“The realm of metaphysics…?” I prompted.

“Quite! It is as if their chosen fields had somehow become secondary. They now all seem to be after that which makes everything, or in fact anything, possible.”

“You mean that which enables a scientist to undertake science.”

“Yes, that about sums it up. The which, or Who, that enables.”

Knowledge and truth and belief are matters that are personal to us, at least until we are blessed with being able to hear that Biblical “still small voice,” or as given in Islam, the “whisper from the soul.” One is then removed from the machinations of this world. Belief is subsequently a natural conclusion, methinks.

Nevertheless, belief – or faith if one so will – requires cultivation and adherence, or the wish to adhere, to the received Word. Scientists, who are unable to really deny their own inner worlds, are obviously also subject to knowledge, truth, and belief. This is because however high our aspirations, we are bound by the common denominators of all humanity. The need to eat, drink, sleep, and find protection against the wiles of nature. These are the levelling factors, one might surmise, however lofty our thoughts, however high our aspirations.

The trick, it would seem, is to be in the world but not of it. In a sense the rigorous endeavors of our scientists is a step in the right direction. They want the facts and nothing more. And yet, to deny God’s part in their endeavors seems a shame, because what they are really looking for, and this has been shown among them at Cambridge, is God Himself. That which I would contend is His moving Spirit.

Belief for most of us must naturally run hand in hand with experience. We feel that it is pointless and unscientific to believe in something nebulous, something that is merely a word. Yet it is false to see mysticism as a vague, non-scientific, otherworldly pastime, something for dreamers or non-doers. There are ways, some call them paths, which could bring one to the contemplative proximity of a mystic experience. The thrust of one’s endeavor, however, could be a hindrance. Nevertheless, anyone who has undertaken the fast of Ramadan or has been led to a contemplative life, may have received the blessing and grace of true submission.

The key word is humility. The reason that the prophets, who I believe were all mystics in their times, were persecuted was because after receiving divine affirmation they “told it like it is,” to use modern parlance.

Many years after encountering the professor and his wife at Cambridge, I became a writer on religion. There had been my own search of sorts, almost a scientific one. I had been struck by the book A Quiet Mind, written by John Coleman. The author had also searched, in his case for a quiet mind, in what may seem to have been a contradictory undertaking – using the mind to find a way to quieten it. He attended the meetings of a number of different spiritual organizations and then ticked them off his list when he had not found any answers among them. His search had been dogged and perfectly rational. Mr. Coleman finally found his answers in a Burmese jungle.

There has always been talk of God. God this and God that. His name was juggled seemingly at random, but I wanted something concrete, something more than “God is love,” because I rather felt that God makes love possible and then the rest is up to us. Not dissimilar to Coleman, I therefore became a searcher who was a researcher, an investigator searching empirically – one might almost say scientifically. I became a sober seeker for God. All the while, however, I could not deny the feeling that my search was not of my doing.

As an aside I must mention a personal encounter with a scientist, a German physicist whose book I translated into English. My friend’s conjecture was that the Big Bang never happened. Although a physicist, he offered no scientific alternative to the big question. One could hardly resist asking that if perhaps it wasn’t a bang, was it possibly a whisper that started it all?

“Oh no,” he said. “The universe was simply there.”

I wonder if he felt my glow of appreciation as we spoke on the phone. How absolutely gorgeous. Here was a man of science who had no answer and was not prepared to invent one. I felt the enormity of the myriads of universes at our disposal, giving us “something to think about.” I was rather inclined to giggle!

At the start of course, came literature. Aristotle called God the “Prime Mover,” and Dante agreed. D. H. Lawrence spoke of a “Great Life Force,” and so did George Bernard Shaw. Well, both of the latter gents called a lot of things a lot of things. Zeno of Cyprus gave us the Stoic philosophy and maintained a concept of universal spirit. In the “Gospel of St John” 4:24 we learn that God is Spirit, and your correspondent has accepted the plausibility of the notion. I had naturally moved on, but only to the extent of a single word. The word God had become Spirit. Spirit is what God is apparently all about, but I couldn’t prove it. Scientists do need proof, don’t they? I wondered if the Cambridge intellectuals had also tossed around the idea of Spirit. But Spirit seems so intangible, so un-recordable, a word and not much else, although we researchers suspected that it was indeed of the essence. But how does one write a scientific treatise on Spirit, even assuming one has experienced it?

Sooner or later I was bound to read about The Way, the Life, the Truth. The Way seemed easy enough to explain: one tries to be like Jesus; or as one mystic (a Muslim, in this case) maintained, “You can do anything you like in this world as long as you don’t hurt anybody.” The overwhelming challenge of that idea will set most people back on their heels and have them wondering how they were to get through a single day without in some way or other hurting somebody through a rash word, a lack of consideration, or a sudden outburst of emotion fostered by personal frustration.

I felt that the Truth is simply what is. You could take it or leave it but it won’t simply go away. The Life, on the other hand, is something of a puzzle. It seemed too much of a vague idea to use “life” to encompass our vastly complex, everyday endeavors. I became convinced that the Life is what scientists, and yours truly, are actually looking for. I began to see Life, which I now translate as Spirit, as something like Aristotle’s Prime Mover.

One requires, for example, some sort of fuel to run an engine. What I was looking for was the fuel of the universe. In other words that which makes everything go – and not only that, but also what put everything there in the first place. The substance that keeps us, and everything else, up and running.

The trouble is that Spirit, in a spiritual sense, does not appear to be a substance. However, I rather fancy that it is this form of energy that the scientists are yearning to pin down. The mystic would offer a warning because such a search can, and often does, drive people crazy because it would be of the mind and not undertaken through genuine humility.

God enables an action, but permission to act in a certain way is something we are responsible for – and as history has shown God must be disappointed, even appalled. After all, if God is Life, then anything contrary to life – the notion of Life being Logical is appealing – will automatically engender a form of crisis. After Albert Einstein had split the atom he was heard to comment (rather worryingly), “God, what have we done?” You know the rest.

What remains to us is imagining the future. What an undertaking! One is reminded of the German phrase “Man denkt, Gott lenkt”, which more or less translates as “Man thinks, (but) God is at the helm.” In other words, we can think, consider, plan, imagine, and then hope for the best – or as our religious brothers and sisters may be inclined to put it, hope that He agrees. Moreover, humans have not been terrifically famous for their capacity for vision. If we wish to remain reasonable our endeavours are restricted to one step at a time, a slow plod forward into a barely discernible next few minutes. Well, we may well be able to go a bit further than a few minutes, but not much, and even then our plans are subject to the whims of Mother Nature, who often does not see things our way at all.

One supposes that we should attempt to define whether the world is coming at us or we are going at the world. Events are what happen to us, but we shouldn’t forget that we also engender them. One wonders if imagining the future can go beyond wishful thinking. One may even wonder whether our imaginative apparatus is free of past events. Is our imagination really imaginative, or merely a rerun of old data?

My personal sense of unease had been with me for some time, although unease is putting it mildly. There have, however, been milestones of relief, little landmarks along the way. These are often books. I think again of The Quiet Mind. I found the title riveting. Something inside me rose in affirmation, but it was not me who had reacted. No, it was something else. I had read from a mystic that real prayer is not done by the person. You can make like you are praying, but real prayer is something the prayer does all by itself. With a little grace you might be able to get out of the way. That is the most you can hope for.

Writing took over. I could put down a thousand words in one sitting. Some of it even got published. My wife found it reassuring because most writers are not famous for making money. Translation filled some of our wider gaps. Somehow we got by.

There occurred a telling late-afternoon incident. The kids were not home from school. My wife was still at work. I was deep into a translation. An immense calm arose. I remember the mystic saying that meditation is not something you do; you must get very quiet and “feel how you feel.”

How did I feel? My feeling was cradled in something sublime. My mind dulled into abeyance. I looked up from the keyboard, tentatively, almost afraid of breaking the spell. The quiet was huge and the room seemed to be at a perfect temperature. The air felt unaccountably clean, somehow intangible but definitely felt. I remember a sudden feeling of isolation, a feeling of worry, which melted and dispersed. I realized that it was all right to be me. Moreover, that I had no choice. Something tingled above my heart and below my throat. My chest felt the way you feel when you drink a glass of cold water and you feel it going down. I turned to the translation. Something inside prayed that there would be nothing crass to disturb the spell. I remembered Patrick-Leigh Fermor’s A Time to Keep Silence. The author had entered a monastery to work on a book. He related of first being bored to desperation because nothing happened, then the bubble of boredom broke and he felt perfectly at ease. But he did record a changed state to a fine degree of sensitivity. When he left the monastery he found driving along a freeway appalling because even the most innocuous advertisement placards along the way were an insult to his sensibility.

My wife arrived home. She looked into the room in which I was sitting like a stunned ox. She said, “Gosh, the house feels nice.”

The Fountain: Do you think religion and belief are still relevant in twenty-first century Western society?

Paul Weller: Certainly in terms of Europe in relation to matters of law and public policy, religion and belief are often focused on. In this context, by “belief” is meant nonreligious beliefs that are founded on ethical systems or presuppositions and are included alongside what is more traditionally understood as “religion.” So certainly, at the level of society, state, and law there is a presence and relevance of religion and belief.

In terms of the reality of religion and belief as lived, clearly in many societies the numbers of people who say that they belong to a particular religion has reduced in the Western world compared to what it was ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. But that of course doesn’t always tell you about the nature of their connection to religious tradition. They may have only had a very broad cultural connection rather than one with which they were personally engaged. I think one has to understand what is meant by these terms and how they function in individual lives.

Some tend to call themselves spiritual rather than religious, or faithful in higher values but not in God. Why is religion less appealing to many people, especially the young?

Yes, I think this is connected a little bit with what I was saying in relation to the first question because I think there are indeed many people who do affirm themselves to be “spiritual” but don’t want to use the word “religion.” We did some research four, five years ago for the Equalities Challenge Unit that looks at equality issues in higher education. We looked at religion and belief in higher education and very interestingly the descriptor that quite a significant proportion of students wanted to use was not one of the religions, nor that of “no religion,” but was “spiritual.”

In the national census in the UK, where I live, that option is not given: the options are no religion, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, etc. But when we gave the option “spiritual,” a significant percentage of students chose that.

Why is this? I think it’s because of a suspicion towards organized forms of religion, partly because organized forms of religion are themselves always ambiguous in terms of the good they do and sometimes unfortunately the not good or the bad that they also do. And this embodies some people’s experience of organized religion… So they distinguish or they start to distinguish between the historical organizational form of a religion that they’ve encountered and had a bad experience of, and what they think the religion may be pointing towards. Thus they might say “well, I’m a spiritual person” … but they don’t want to buy into the package of a historical religion or religious organization because they see mixed things in that.

But there’s always this spiritual side continuing…

I think so, yes… But I mean clearly there are people who also would speak against that. So there are also strong atheists – you know that’s a position in itself, but I think many people, as I say, when given the option of a choice between “are you religious – Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh; or are you no religion” would say something in between, [like] “I am spiritual, but not religious.”

How were you drawn into religion and religious scholarship?

There are two questions there: one about being drawn into religion and one [about being drawn into] religious scholarship. In one sense, I could say I was born into a religious context because my parents were Christian believers. Indeed, my father was an ordained Christian minister in the Baptist tradition. So I could say I inherited it, but for me that’s not enough. That is not a full description because I had to affirm that for myself. Nobody, in my understanding, can be religious for another person. Therefore, while I need to acknowledge what my parents gave me in terms of my religious tradition until I affirmed it for myself, it wasn’t active in my life. It was maybe dormant in my life though.

At a certain point… I was baptized – not as a baby but when I chose to be baptized, to make my own commitment to my Christian tradition. That was at the age of 14. So it was a self-conscious decision, commitment, and choice. …[A]lthough I, too, have a sometimes conflicted relationship with organized religion. Just as some people who stand outside of religious traditions do, it is partly because I can see that many things done in the name of religion seem to be contrary to the spirit of Jesus and so I don’t adopt the word religion unproblematically, even for myself. Rather, I would say that the earliest name given to Christians, that is recorded in the book of the Acts of the Apostles, was of followers in “the Way.” I like to describe myself simply as that – so as one who tries to be a disciple of Jesus, a follower in “the Way.”

In terms of scholarship, where we are conducting this interview now is at a College in Oxford that has a Baptist foundation. I came to Oxford to study theology as an academic subject but also with my personal religious commitment and conviction [in mind]. That was at age 18, and I am now nearly 61. So since then I’ve been engaged in various ways in academic scholarship around the study of religion – partly from within my own tradition in terms of Theology and how the Christian tradition relates to other traditions; some of the other work I’ve done has been more sociological or social scientific, looking at how religion functions in the world – not necessarily evaluating it but trying to understand it and describe it… In relation to that, sometimes having a relationship myself with religion as a living tradition is seen by some people in the study of religion, or in the policy world, as being problematic. But for me it’s actually a positive benefit because I think that in my more social science research, I can connect with what religion as a lived reality is for the people who live by it and not just [view it] as a set of external descriptions about it.

You have been an active member of the interfaith community for many years. Do you think these efforts have yielded anything? Or is it a fantasy among religious leaders or elites, which does not reflect much in the grassroots? Do you think it has been worth it, whatever the consequences?

Yes, it’s a difficult question to answer because clearly there are some initiatives that are more fruitful than other initiatives… I think the effort to engage inter-religiously must be worth it. First of all, it is important because otherwise there are dangers [arising] from the distance between people of different faiths and beliefs. These can lead to conflict. Not always, but it can, and therefore to hear and understand the other as they see and understand themselves is an important thing to do, even if one doesn’t get further than that. That is actually a long way to have traveled. So that a Muslim no longer sees a Christian as perhaps more general Muslim populations do, or only as Muslim tradition has sometimes described a Christian, but actually listens to how a Christian explains themselves and vice versa. I think it is very important that people give witness to their own faith and that then the other person has to come to terms with that, which is sometimes challenging…

Sometimes in things like Christian-Jewish relations a number of Christian-Jewish organizations are criticized for being apparently superficial in their inter-religious dialogue and for being just a kind of tea [party]… But if you understand the history – certainly of Christian-Jewish relations in Europe – to actually be doing that is far better and far more important, given the history that resulted in the Holocaust. So, small things that don’t appear significant can actually be very significant. There is of course a danger that some inter-religious initiatives can be just talking shops where you go over the same territory again and again, without making progress. And sometimes some of the most profound inter-religious encounters are in normal life, not “constructed” encounters: for example, the neighbor who invites the other person into their home when a relative is ill and says prayers from one tradition to the other, or that celebrates a wedding… I think sometimes those of us who work in academic life focus on conferences and events and such things. But there is also what the American scholar of religion, Diana Eck, a number of years ago called “the dialogue of life,” and I think that’s equally important.

With respect to religious communities, is their faith rather traditional instead of conscious? Do the faithful practice as a part of their culture or do they consciously believe and know what they believe and practice?

Yes, this is very important and a very complicated question… This is because on the one hand there is clearly a difference between faith as personally appropriated and culture, but on the other hand you cannot [express] individual faith without it having some kind of cultural clothing because we all live in historical and geographical circumstances…

We don’t live in a vacuum; we don’t live in a bubble so inevitably there is a relationship between the two. I think what is important is that faith does not become reduced to culture or culture take over faith. So, there’s a dynamic tension between the two. Otherwise what happens is that culture tends to want to defend itself and sometimes to attack others when the lines of faith and culture become confused. This tends towards religions becoming – in a kind of Indian terminology – “communalistic” and setting up barriers against each other. This understanding of religion and culture does reflect my own roots in the Baptist tradition which has always made a distinction between belonging to a civil community and the culture and belonging to a religious community. So this goes back to my biography when I was saying that I acknowledge that I inherit something from my parents. But until I appropriate it, it’s not fully mine, and that part of appropriating it is as an individual who can stay critical of the cultural forms that it takes.

A scholar of religion who was both a scholar studying Islam, but also later of inter-religious things, was Wilfred Cantwell Smith. He used to talk about religion was made up of “personal faith” and “cumulative tradition,” and how one handles that balance is very important for the future of religious traditions in the globalized world. This is because with the globalization of the world, cultures are no longer geographically separated from each other, therefore inevitably the question of sorting out faith and culture becomes stronger than when one lived in an environment where everybody at least seemed to be of the same religion and the same culture. Though of course they never really were because even apparently the same religion or the same culture is never actually singular; it always has lots of sources underneath it, as well as differences.

What is the outcome of interfaith dialogue for you on a personal level? What has changed for you after you started engaging with the “other”? New knowledge? Surprise? Disappointment?

I think a number of things. I can illustrate it by two or three little stories. One was when I was a teenager, I got to know my best friend at school. He was Orthodox Jewish and his family had been in slave labor camps in Poland during the Nazi period. And I remember his mother asking me two questions as a young evangelical Christian. It was already quite strange that as a young Christian, the son of a Baptist minister, I had become friends with an Orthodox Jewish boy – for both sides it was a little strange. Yet we were good friends at school. His mother asked me two questions which have stayed with me in different ways through my inter-religious encounters. One was why did “the Christians” bully my friend? As a Christian who wanted to argue that not everything that’s done in the name of Christian history is really Christian, this question helped me to understand that whether or not I wanted to make that distinction, for others it is a problem. It is just like people who are not Muslim say today, you know, that all Muslims are terrorists and Muslims have to live with that distinction… It’s very difficult but at the same time one can’t completely cut oneself off from this. So it helped me to understand something about what I would now call the “socio-political” dimensions of inter-faith dialogue in which I can try to do what “I” as an “individual” might want to do, but others around me will see things differently.

The second question she asked me was why do Christians call our Bible “old”? Because often Christian popular understanding talks about the New Testament relative to the Old Testament Hebrew Scriptures. And at that time, I’d never really thought about that question. And of course for her, that seemed to imply that the “old” was no longer of value and that the “new” had replaced the “old.” So that made me start thinking at a theological level about the relationship between truth claims and revelation in one tradition and in another. And how one has to be careful about the ways in which we express what we believe we have received from God – whether we are Christian, Jewish, Muslim – and how other people understand what they have received by way of revelation. So, those two stories from my teenage years in many ways have determined my engagements in both the theological aspects of inter-religious engagement and also its socio-political aspects.

On another more personal level, it’s profoundly moving when people of other traditions relate to you as a human being. Several years ago, my wife to whom I was married at that time died. But while she was ill in the hospital Muslim friends came and recited the Qur’an and prayed with us and came and spoke at her funeral. These things are often more powerful than many of the international colloquia on inter-religious relations. I’m not saying those are unimportant but I am saying in terms of my own experience, these kind of things make me reflect. I know, for example, that many of my Muslim friends are far more dedicated in prayers than I ever am and that makes me ask questions of myself. So I think where one is open to it, getting to know the other helps you to be more self-critical and also to ask the question of what is it, if anything, that I have in my religious tradition that’s distinctive that I have to offer? This is because there are many things that are shared – but perhaps there are some things that are distinctive, and that actually engaging in inter-religious dialogue with the other helps to sort those things out.

We know your research on Fethullah Gülen, and you call it a “biographical theology.” What do you mean by that?

This is what I’m literally now just beginning on, so I haven’t fully worked out my description of what I mean by it. But fundamentally, I think that a body of theology – by which I mean the work of people who write in a disciplined way in their tradition – is not something that only comes out of the tradition as an abstract. I think that while it partly comes out of the inheritance of the wider tradition, it also reflects the way in which an individual appropriates that tradition and also the circumstances in and through which they live. So, to me, in trying to understand something about Fethullah Gülen’s theology, it’s something about how that fits within the broader inheritance of classical Muslim tradition, but it’s also something about how a person who has so deeply drunk at the well of that tradition, has done so in a [specific] environment. And he did so initially in a particular national environment in Turkey where, among other things, the relationship between religion and the secular took a particular form; and where the flavors of Islam are affected by culture; and his personal biography – having been imprisoned, and [surviving] the context of military coups. To me all of these things are not irrelevant to a person’s theology and thus in trying to understand the theology, one should not seek to understand it just as an historical inheritance or as an abstract set of logical conclusions… but also in engagement with the individual. This doesn’t mean that it’s individualistic, necessarily. But it does mean that I think that for a rounded understanding of a person’s writing and teaching, one has to understand where they come from, how they’ve lived, and what has affected their life. Because it’s in dialogue with that context that they articulate and develop.

After two worlds wars and the cold war, we have lived through a relatively peaceful few decades… Yet, authoritarian leaders seem to be on the rise, and there is a tendency of polarization which is being openly displayed and expressed. Where do you think we are heading? What will be the role of religion in these circumstances?

In my memory and in my lifetime of course the world was divided into two power blocks, and I was very much engaged in East-West relations in the 80s and before the fall of the Berlin Wall. I think [after the fall] there were many people who wanted to argue that okay well, everything will be alright now. But yes, clearly there is a rise of authoritarian leaders at present and new polarizations are forming. I think… new polarizations formed – so that in place of the East-West confrontation in the eyes of many (not only in the “Western world” but sometimes in the so-called wider “Muslim world”) the confrontation between Islam and the West or Islam and Christendom took the place of the previous confrontation between capitalism and communism. So that’s been there for some time.

I think what’s happening now, the so-called “populism,” is very worrying and very dangerous. It’s dangerous for religions because there can be religion as a cultural identity which is often invoked by populist leaders. Superficially this can be attractive to religious people who are concerned that the place of their religion has been marginalized and this strong populist leader will come along and bring religion back into its rightful place at the center of their national life. But this is a dangerous misuse of religion. One can’t separate religion and politics if one means politics with a small ‘p’ – in other words a concern for the public life – because all religions are concerned for more than the individual. That’s part of the nature of religions. But as a writer (Achin Vanaik) on Indian communalism put it some years ago there are politicians who use religion for instrumental purposes and there are religious people who use politics and politicians for instrumental purposes: neither is beneficial and both can be dangerous. There is a proper relationship between religion and politics, if by politics, is understood the ‘life of the polis’ – in other words of the wider community. This is because religions are not only concerned with the individual, but are also properly concerned with how lives are lived in community. But what can be dangerous to religion, civil society and the state alike, is an instrumentalization either of religion in the service of politics, or of politics in the service of religion, and certainly any equation between a religion and a particular political party. Such thinking is, at least in my understanding, not dissimilar to what I personally see as being one of the most important contributions that Fethullah Gülen’s thinking makes about the place of Islam and Muslims in the various states and societies of the world.

On the night of January 13, 2017, eight people were kidnapped at gun point in the Ogun State of Nigeria,[1] by masked members of a group calling itself “The Delta Militants.” Those kidnapped were students and employees at a private school run by Turkish immigrants located near Lagos. These include three female students, aged eleven, fourteen, and fifteen years, who were seized from the girls’ dormitory. The five women included two supervisors, one headmistress, one cook, and a teacher, and all are Nigerian, except for the teacher, who is Turkish. Beaten and threatened with their lives, the victims were released relatively unscathed twelve days later, and all of the girls returned to their school within days, as did their teacher. I was able to meet all of the children and their teacher only a month after their ordeal, during a visit to their school, and over a meal at the teacher’s home.

When the girls sat shyly in front of me, two of them wearing green and pink skirts and the third dressed in grey, purple and white, I took a deep breath, shocked, and thought, “These girls are way too young to have experienced what they went through.” One, with enormous sad eyes, and a solemn, yet stunned expression, sat silently and did not answer any of my cautiously-framed questions, but occasionally nodded in agreement, or smiled briefly. The other two did speak to me, but were understandably reticent. After telling them I thought they were brave survivors, I asked where they had slept while in the forest, and whether or not they were bothered by insects. The silent one nodded, affirming that insects had pestered her at night. Another girl, the fifteen-year-old, explained that after being led out of the compound at night, the students and teachers just had to sleep either on the forest floor, or squashed together on an old mattress. I asked her if there was any silver lining to her ordeal, and her answer surprised me. She replied earnestly, “I learned that some people are really poor and that makes them do bad things,” a lesson she should not have had to learn at that age. All of their faces lit up with smiles when I asked them if they had wanted to bathe after they were released—after an exuberant and emotional meeting with their family members, it was the very first thing they wanted to do.

In order to feel safe after the kidnapping, they pray, keep the lights on at night, and sleep with others in the room. The youngest explained that her mother was going to purchase a “Sadness” doll for her, a figure from the Disney film Inside Out, to help her feel safer as she tries to cope with her emotions. All three conveyed that they had really, really wanted to return as soon as they could to their school, which they did only a few days after their release. While I avoided asking the children questions about the worst parts of their ordeal, the Turkish teacher explained that during the first few days of the abduction, the militants hit them and constantly threatened to kill all of them. Mercifully, none was sexually abused. Prayer and the responsibility of caring for children during the painful experience helped the teacher keep her strength, although she was almost certain she would not survive. Like the children, she returned to her school only five days after the attack.

Their own school negotiated to pay their ransom, saving eight lives. Sometimes, kidnappers sell their victims to other more brutal militant groups; these eight survivors were indeed fortunate they were released alive. Here I shed light on the mission, reception, and challenges of these schools, and offer greater context for why the kidnapping occurred.

Much-needed schools, challenging circumstances

The school is affiliated with the Hizmet Movement (also known as the Gülen Movement). Hizmet is a civil society organization, inspired by Sufi Islam, which was founded in Turkey around the ideas of an Islamic cleric, Fethullah Gülen (b. 1941), and participants began to launch businesses, as well as educational, and interfaith projects, in Nigeria in the 1990s.

Hizmet is the Turkish word for “service,” and indeed, this school’s mission is to “produce intelligent, enlightened and highly socialized individuals (youths), who are fit to pursue higher education and become effective, integrated and productive members of the society.”[2] Towards that goal, Hizmet schools in Nigeria provide instruction to around 5,000 students, regardless of their religious, ethnic, or tribal affiliations (there are over 250 ethnic groups in Nigeria).[3] The movement has also established other partnering institutions in Nigeria, including a university, hospital, consulting agency, examination preparation center, and a dialogue foundation (which hosts interfaith dialogue events). All of these are located in Abuja, but representatives from these institutions are found across Nigeria.

The schools are widely lauded for their academic success,[4] and Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari thus far supports their presence in Nigeria.[5] After the July 15, 2016, attempted coup in Turkey, Turkish President Tayyip Erdoǧan blamed the plot on Hizmet. He did so without evidence, scapegoating participants and labeling them traitors and terrorists, apparently in order to increase his own authority. While Hizmet has over 2,000 schools around the world, Erdoǧan has recently pressured foreign governments to shutter these schools, in some cases succeeding. However, Nigeria’s Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, has stated that given the frivolity of the request and the lack of evidence confirming any complicity on the part of Hizmet in the plot, the schools, which employ around 2,000 Nigerians, would remain open.[6]

Operating in Nigeria poses Turkish Hizmet participants unique challenges, although those interviewed also spoke of their love for their students and their appreciation for the beauty of Nigeria. However, challenges include obvious and serious security concerns, and a “very high” risk of major infectious diseases including malaria, meningitis, hepatitis, dengue fever, lassa fever, AIDS, and typhoid.[7] Participants also suffer from isolation from their families and friends back in Turkey, which has become especially acute since the attempted coup in Turkey. Since then, all affiliated with Hizmet have been widely ostracized in their homeland, and in many cases shunned by their own friends and family members. In Turkey, thousands have been detained, arrested, fired from their jobs, or forced to flee the country because of Erdoǧan’s “purge” of the movement.

Adding to this crisis, the Turkish government, according to those I interviewed, has refused to renew the Turkish passports of those abroad, or to give new passports to Turkish babies born outside Turkey. At a dinner in Lagos, one young woman laughed wryly, raising her baby up for me to see, and exclaimed, “No passport! He is a citizen of the world!” Absurdly, many of these babies do not hold citizenship anywhere. The danger of arrest and the passport issue have made it dangerous, and for many, impossible, to return home. Those few that have been able to go home for a visit spoke to me of strained relationships in their families, or of family members in jail. Without a doubt, many Turkish Hizmet-affiliated teachers and administrators in Nigeria are homesick, worried about relatives at home, and grieving for Turkish staples such as feta cheese and olives that are hard to find in some regions of Nigeria. Turkish delicacies aside, their religiously-inspired hizmet, or service, has required quite a sacrifice.

Why kidnap little girls?

The short answer is that some poor people do carry out criminal activities to access resources, and some wealthy people do as well, in order to hoard those resources. Nigeria has suffered for decades from acute corruption, economic inequality, and state instability. Even the recently-elected President Muhammadu Buhari acknowledges Nigeria’s tradition of bribery, skimming, and overcharging, and laudably, has recently launched anti-corruption measures.[8] With all of its human and natural resources, the West African country has witnessed its share of Christian/Muslim conflict, the violence of internal displacement, poverty, and forms of social injustice. Reflecting this, life expectancy at birth is only 52 years,[9] and the literacy rate stands at 59.6 %.[10] Over two million internally displaced persons languish in camps.[11]

Oil is Nigeria’s main export, and a primary area of conflict is who will exercise control over the oil-rich delta.[12] The self-termed “Delta Militants” responsible for the abduction are likely one of the many Niger Delta militant groups, who have stated that they are fighting to force the government to grant more resources to local communities.[13] It is also possible that they were mere criminals, using kidnapping as a means to make easy money. It is hard to pin the blame for the abduction on any one party; the eight were kidnapped because of the instability in the country.

Political scientist William Hansen explains that for some radical extremists in Nigeria suffering from poverty and life in rural regions, violence is a form of class warfare and an expression of anger against the state.[14] While the Niger Delta Militants may perceive themselves as “avengers” against those who have wronged them first,[15] these militants are perpetuating, along with the state, Nigeria’s dialectic of violence which leaves the country impoverished and its people psychologically traumatized. Unfortunately, in this case, innocent young schoolgirls and their caretakers paid the price. Terrorized, the girls will likely sleep with the lights on for a long, long time.

Conclusion

While I will not soon be able to forget the anxious expressions and courageous smiles of those girls and their teacher, it gave me some pleasure to hear that their school recently threw them a “survivors’ party,” celebrating their will to move forward. Hizmet’s projects in Nigeria, including high quality educational institutions and centers for interfaith dialogue, are also moving forward and will contribute in positive ways to Nigeria’s future. However, Turkish participants there were shaken by the ordeal of those kidnapped, and likely concerned for their own security and that of their students in the future months. Many of the Turkish Hizmet participants with whom I spoke expressed gratitude that the Nigerian government continues to allow them to reside and work there, despite any challenges. “I am Nigerian now!” more than one Turkish person claimed during my visit.

The monstrous abduction of the schoolgirls represents only a fraction of the hundreds of abducted persons in Nigeria every year. Solving this predicament requires training the next generation to run the country efficiently and fairly, the equitable distribution of resources, and job creation. While their Turkish friends contribute modestly towards the development of Nigeria through educating some of that country’s youth, it is the Nigerians, with the support of the international community, who will have to come together to achieve this goal in their own way.

[1] Population 186,053,386. CIA World Factbook: Nigeria, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ni.html.

[2]Nigerian Tulip International Colleges,“About Us,”http://www.ntic.edu.ng/.

[3]CIA World Factbook: Nigeria.

[4] Executive Administrator, 20 Best Ranked Secondary School in Nigeria,” Good Schools Guide Nigeria, October 5, 2016.

[5]MisbahuBashir,“Nigeria: How Govt Snubbed Turkey On Schools Closure,” allAfrica, August 18, 2016, http://allafrica.com/stories/201608180108.html.

[6]JerrywrightUkwu, “Coup: FG ignores Turkey’s request to close Turkish schools,”Naig.com, July 26, 2016, https://politics.naij.com/933492-coup-nigerian-government-ignores-turkey-find.html.

[7]CIA World Factbook: Nigeria.

[8]Robyn Dixon,“The aftermath of Nigeria’s fight against corruption: Officials have luxury cars, but can’t afford gas,” Los Angeles Times, December 27, 2016, http://www.latimes.com/world/africa/la-fg-global-nigeria-corruption-2016-story.html.

[9]UNData: Nigeria, http://data.un.org/CountryProfile.aspx?crName=NIGERIA.

[10] CIA World Factbook: Nigeria, 2015 estimate.

[11]“Annual Report: Nigeria,” Amnesty International, https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/africa/nigeria/report-nigeria/.

[12]FinefaceOgoloma, “Niger Delta Militants and the Boko Haram: A Comparative Appraisal,” AFRREV IJAH An International Journal of Arts and Humanities,Vol. 2 (1), Serial 5, February, 2013.

[13]Justice ChidiNgwama, “Kidnapping in Nigeria: An Emerging Social Crime and the Implications for the Labour Market,” International Journal of Humanities and Social Science 4:1 (January 2014), 135.

[14] William Hansen, “Boko Haram: Religious Radicalism and Insurrection in Northern Nigeria,” The Journal of  Asian and African Studies, 2015, 2-3.

[15] Hansen, “Boko Haram,” 3.

Answer: Stagnancy or complacency must not have any room in a believer’s worldview. From human to soil, and from things in existence to time, everything is active. A believer must be spirited and active in their pursuit of good deeds, and that money, soil, time etc. must be used in the most fruitful way possible.

The essentials of faith are the most important issues a believer must be lively and spirited about. For this reason, we always say in our prayers, “Our Lord! Increase us in knowledge, faith, and certainty.” To achieve these ends, believers should utilize books and consider the fruitful lives of the Righteous Believers of the classic period, sometimes by reflections, and sometimes by remembrance and recitations. Concentrating on prayers will open very different horizons before them.

Being spirited, vigorous, and active will enable us to solve the century-long problems which have harmed our world. It will allow believers to live their lives without being crushed and dominated. Unfortunately, when vigor and liveliness are lost, societies fail to save their position as a factor of balance between world powers. This will eventually cause them to lose their position, and then will bring them under different sets of domination in political, cultural, economic, and other fields.

When Bediüzzaman said, “O you miserable walking dead who abandoned Islam, which is like the spirit of the two lives! Do not stand in the way of the coming generation. The grave awaits you. Step aside and make way for the new generation who will wave the truth of Islam over this universe!” he was drawing attention to this reality: The universal religion cannot be represented by worn-out people, stale thoughts, and those of minimal effort. It is for this reason that Bediüzzaman demanded slothful souls devoid of excitement who could present a bad example for the future generation to get aside; so that the active and lively generation to come after them can take the right shape and carry out the right actions.

What lies behind the stagnant and passive state of a generation is, in a way, the failure of previous generations who could not surpass simple patterns of thought when evaluating the world and failed to catch up with their time’s horizons of comprehension.

God endowed humans with willpower. People are neither beasts nor inanimate creatures. As long as individuals give their willpower its due and use their God-given power and strength effectively, then—with God’s permission—they may blow breaths of resurrection to the entire world. Like in the story of Nasreddin Hodja, they can use their willpower to ferment all seas to make them into yogurt. When willpowers are spurred and others’ torches are kindled, then the whole world can be illumined like a place of festivity.

The essentials of remaining spirited

As for the essentials of remaining active and spirited, the following can be mentioned concisely:

1. Showing everybody a lane they can walk, giving them a field of activity, and saying “here is your task” is one of the most important factors for keeping people active. Even if a person breaks free from arrogance and acts in the name of the collective, one still wishes to know the frame of the work he or she carries out and the point it reaches.
2. Receiving appreciation for one’s personal endeavors spurs that person’s zeal and enthusiasm. Even though some grow more arrogant as they make different achievements, it is necessary to guide them to the thought of sincerity in an appropriate fashion.
3. On the other hand, if you help bring others to life, you also help yourself to stay alive in spirit. It is unthinkable for a person who resurrects others to personally remain dead. If you help some others to their feet, give them a start, and make them run like a marathoner, then you cannot just stay behind and look at them as they run.
4. Knowing the true worth of time, which is but a relative line, is also very important in terms of remaining active and spirited. We usually fail to recognize that time itself corresponds to a certain worth. However, given that it is wisely used, it is a matchless treasure by which Paradise is gained. If it can be wisely used, a person steps to timelessness within a short and narrow segment of time, and gains eternity with it. In this respect, knowing the essential value of time and blowing life into every moment with good deeds and positive action is an indispensable essential for the sake of a life of serving faith in an active and spirited way.

This journey moves between light and darkness. Along the way, one might come across small packages of epiphanies coming from the ultimate goal; but it is also possible that all destined rewards be put off until the completion of the journey, when one receives a special accolade.

During the trip, every traveler is sometimes filled with awe by an indistinct ray of light that flashes in the distance. Sometimes, as if being tested on the strength of their loyalty, one does not come across even a single ray of light their whole life; other times, one witnesses that the roads they pass have been illuminated with light all around. Sometimes, one is inspired as though they are being watched through unseen blinds, and with awe they grow attentive in all their senses. Considering this surveillance which has been opened to them by their faith as a sign of growing closer to the Divine Presence, one’s excitement and zeal grows even stronger, as in the case of a runner who has come close to the finish line. In fact, with the feeling of having joined the angels, their excitement grows to such heights that the harmony of the skies can be heard in the rhythm of their hearts.

During this journey, the manifestations that come to those who have understanding and insight are sometimes in the form of sprinkles and dew; other times, they are showers. They do not always arrive with the same degree, same quality, same color, same dialect, or even the same wavelength. Every rise and manifestation throughout the journey is a special gift to every traveler and giver of service.

The gifts are determined, first of all, by the extent of one’s faith and sincerity, then by the purity of one’s horizon, the clearness of one’s heart, the vastness of one’s understanding, and the depth of one’s metaphysical aspect. Some of these gifts are obvious through their outer packages and the instant they meet with one’s senses they transform into gratitude; others are packaged with certain motifs and symbols and can only be deciphered through the light of attention and insight. Still others crash into the limits of the body and physical world and clothe themselves in a black veil; they expect us to renew our relationship with God and open the doorways to positive interpretations. And while some others make it all the way down to one’s hopes – by virtue of the vastness of the Divine mercy – more often than not, they end up being imbued by one’s despair and sorrow, and flow as tar into one’s thoughts. This is in a way dependent on the victory of either “fear” (khawf) or “hope” (raja) over the other, the result of which may change the picture of the journey significantly.

No matter the wavelength of these gifts, this attitude shapes one’s behavior into a certain framework. These warnings and instructions happen to come through, and individuals consider the victory of traveling down such a road a kind of invitation to reunion. They will certainly wake up one day, even if they are in the deepest of sleep. They will hear the call of the Eternal that their souls have forever been acquainted with, and will, to the end of their lives, run towards this complimentary call. Like trained athletes ready for action, if every hero of the heart sees those nights, where the breeze of Divine manifestation blows gently as a pier, a harbor, a kind of launching platform for the journey leading to The Ultimate Truth and Ever-Constant, then there should be no doubt that the Divine throne of mercy will pour down its compliments upon them.

Is it ever possible that the Eternally Merciful One, who grants compliments to every individual many times above their merit, would remain indifferent to those faithful travelers who ardently run towards Him? Would He not treat with a particular favor and kindness those who turn towards His most special intimacy with their utmost sincerity?

Actually, even if there were not such a grant of Divine compliments, and no one was promised such a blessing, every individual should accept their connection with the Eternal Sovereign as an advance given beforehand, and, with each new breath of air should, like a hero of faith and loyalty, breathe Him in. One shouldn’t resort to childlike sulking, saying “Things didn’t go as planned; blessings and compliments didn’t rain down from the sky.” One shouldn’t grow sad or disappointed in a manner fit for characterless and ungrateful individuals. One shouldn’t be defeated by distances by thinking too much about the hardships and length of the journey.

Instead, one should “overflow like the waters, shed tears like Job,” setting one’s heart on Him and only Him in every place one wanders. One should live every moment with the thought of seeing, hearing, and knowing Him so that they do not waste their credits worthy of the Eternal on attaining certain childlike ambitions; so that they do not narrow through their own senses and fancies the vastness that God has bestowed upon them; so that by responding to the all-exceeding mercy with an all-embracing favor and zeal they are able to fulfill the requirements of the implicit treaty made with the Divine. All of this is done in accordance with His greatness and one’s smallness.

Every individual on this long journey leading to Him may sometimes change position due to the elements that give shape to their character. In fact, because they may be subject to certain slips during this change of position, one may not always be able to maintain their situation and may sometimes stray so far off center that they may crash into the most outward part of the circle. It’s possible that, while a world full of people are delighting in the showers of Divine compliment, they may regard the continuous developments as congestion, the conquests as retractions, the ceremonies of victory as a kind of show, and the chants of joy as the consolation of the defeated.

In almost every period of time, there have been, and there will always be, such bewildered individuals who have temporarily wandered away from the rest of the caravan. However, most have jumped back into their positions near the center, and, with the warmth that comes after a separation and longing, they have achieved a brand-new integration and maturity.

Yet, in order to attain such a spiritual awakening and alertness, one cannot approve a willful separation from the group, for every separation is a kind of slipping and can, in fact, result in one being caught in an irreversible current. Therefore, it is certainly not permissible for one to take up such an uncertain adventure by trusting in the thought of being able to horizontally overcome the abyss of distance that forms between them and the rest of the people. Though there is an aspect in every involuntary lapse and turnover that holds the promise of “revival after death,” as we have pointed out above, it may not always be possible to achieve the desired outcome. I believe that one’s conscience cannot say “yes” to such a seemingly certain disaster, only for the sake of a possible feeling of enlightenment and spiritual maturity.

Even if a person is sometimes shaken in their connection with the center, by staying within the community, maintaining the path, and following the signs and guides, they may come across certain enlightened souls whose gravity pulls them in. They may always stay alive, refreshed, and strong by sharpening their consciousness along the road. By virtue of moving together with a society that is always advancing, one may feel a new joy of revival effervescing in their souls every day, every hour, and every moment. They feel it as they jump from one peak to the other, and are filled with the desire to move towards the source of light that the sign and signals along the road point to.

Such a heroic traveler will never leave oneself to the wavering flow of coincidences. They reach out to those who utilize the innermost consciousness that will not lead to a troublesome path. They follow behind the ever serious, dignified, cautious leaders whose depths of their souls are visible in the smiling features of their faces, line by line. They line up behind the altruistic souls, the heroes of fidelity, responsibility, and duty. They strive hard in all their work with full sincerity as their hearts beat in palpitations of going forward. As they battle with both vertical and horizontal distances to the best of their skills, they are in full consciousness of the honors they are entitled. They experience multiple dimensions of time as their actions and thoughts are intertwined, and they feel they rotate around themselves like the North Star.

In short, one must have the patience to endure along the path. If thoughts of the journey can fulfill the hope of reaching the ultimate goal and the role of guidance, the whole group and the individuals acting as its molecules will, tomorrow if not today, reach the ocean that the river of these conscious and non-conscious groups all flow into. The drops of sweat and perseverance on their foreheads will turn into the fountain of Paradise which they will drink in. There have been many times where the collective advancing of the crowds who outwardly seemed as though they were being dragged on by the incentives of the masses rather than their own free will have won many victories and reunions they could not have achieved by any individual act, owing to the effect of a consciously conducted central plan of action.

These actions, which may seem still on the outside, are constantly repeated along the journey and thus are only able to be distinguished by conscious looks: these little motions squeezed into narrow spaces; light and quiet progress; these efforts that are appealing to people…

All of these feature in their apparent shallowness the chilling depths of the oceans; in their silence, the movements and vastness of the sky; and in their simplicity, the heavenliness of spiritual beings. They will no doubt eventually pay off to these heroes at an expected place with surprises that are beyond one’s expectations. All of these efforts, struggles, and sacrifices will flow and boil, and will come to the right consistency when the time comes. The truth for whose sake lives are given will rise like a full moon behind the hills in the distance, carrying hundreds of cheerful tidings of dawns that will break, slowly rising like the sun that we have awaited. It will smile into our eyes and will whisper the prosperity of our lives. It will flow into our beings with its beams of light and imbue our features with its own color. It will take and blend us into its world.