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

The world has become very small.

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

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

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

First we must ask questions of history.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is what Osman Sahin does to relax. Dance. But he is no choreographer, he is a calligrapher-one who has mastered the art of Classical Turkish-Islamic calligraphy for over twenty-five years. He calls his calligraphy style “the dancing of the pen.”

His eyes, eagerly glued to the paper, anticipate his next move. His hands lift with each pen stroke, gliding to the rhythm of his breath, rising with every new thought and slowing to the pace of his heartbeat.

To many of us, calligraphy is merely fancy handwriting used to record information, but to a Turk calligraphy is much more. It is an art-a grand form of art-with its origins dating back many centuries. The Turks refer to calligraphy as Hat (pronounced like “hut”). In its literal sense, Hat means beautiful writing practiced and perfected throughout time as a way to combine spiritual and functional writing with the medium of art.

It is however the spiritual element of Hat that is most striking to viewers. Because the drawing of human figures is not favored in Islam, Muslim artists throughout time have channeled their talents toward the art of calligraphy.

“Hat is all about symmetry, harmony and measurements,” explains Osman Sahin. “It is the dance of the pen and paper. It’s music to the eyes. Hat is like composed music that soothes and refreshes the spirit and brings peace and harmony to the soul. It enables the person to reach inner tranquility.”

The origins of Hat date back to the early Islamic era when manuscripts of the Qur’an were being recorded and handwritten. However, at that time there was little emphasis on the style of writing but greater emphasis on the message being revealed. It was centuries later, during the Ottoman Era, that Turks focused on the style of writing.

It is a common saying among Muslims that “the Qur’an was revealed in Mecca, recited in Egypt and written in Istanbul.” The Ottoman Turks produced and perfected various styles of script that were passed on throughout the Muslim world.

They loved and respected the art of Hat as it flourished in the great city of Istanbul, which was at the time the focal point of the Ottoman State, and it was there that history’s finest works were produced.

Hat has been used throughout Turkey in enchanting ways to decorate palaces, mosques, museums and fountains for many centuries. The renowned Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, referring to the art produced by Muslim calligraphers during the Andalusian period, said, “Muslim calligraphers five hundred years ago reached where I want to reach today.” In present-day Turkey, there are over twenty million artwork treasures that bear witness to this history.

The beauty present in Islamic-Turkish calligraphy is said to be a direct reflection of the inner soul of the calligrapher. As Osman Sahin himself says, “Whenever I am stressed, I pick up my pen and draw. This is because the art of Hat has a therapeutic aspect to it. During the Ottoman era, some of the sick were treated by using fine arts like Hat together with soothing Sufi music and the art of Ebru (water marbling) drawing.”

This extraordinary art form can only be executed with the use of pens made of bamboo cuttings, preferably Balinese bamboo. “The bamboo is cut at a thirty-degree angle and split in half from top to bottom,” demonstrates Osman Sahin. “Even with the technology present today, it is not possible to write better or more beautifully using anything other than bamboo. The squeaking sound you hear when using the bamboo pen is said to be the weeping of the pen. It is said that the pen weeps so as to not fall into the hands of the ignorant.”

It is no surprise that there is wonder and magic in Turkish-Islamic calligraphy. It is almost as if the art moves and comes alive. Sweet appearance follows a slow, inner flow. There is silence, yet harmonious and metaphysical music echoes. However, this music cannot be heard by the ears but must be heard within.

He breathed in and leaned back comfortably in his chair, looking deep into his finished calligraphy as it stared back at him. The dance was over, the rhythm ceased, and the music was muffled. The bamboo pen lay there on the table, weeping with heartache, unaware of when the next dance will be.

The various eras

The prehistoric era is considered an unknowable time inhabited by primitive and brutal humans. This era ends with the beginning of Antiquity, which saw the rise of ancient civilizations in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and China. However, the West downplays them, as if they somehow damage its ego and pride.

Then comes late Antiquity, the era of classical Greece and Rome, a sort of golden age during which the West was enlightened by such philosophers as Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato, as well as by beautiful artistic and literary creations. However, these people worshipped deities, did not obey any moral codes, and also had a great thirst for stories about bandits. The Greeks of this time, however, failed to comprehend the reality of the miraculous incidents in nature and so worshipped the sun, wind, fire, and forests. Rome, a civilization based upon law, categorized people into social classes varying from superior to slave. In 380, it adopted Christianity as its official religion. Antiquity ended after the empire’s division into two and the collapse of its western portion not too long after the division.

The next approximately 1,000 years are known as the medieval era. It started off by destroying Antiquity’s intellectual and artistic works and forbidding independent thought. The Christian church, after closing down Athens Plato Academy in 529, turned toward monasticism and rejected Greek philosophy. Monasteries soon gained a monopoly over education, thought, and meditation. This is why the times became dark, for the clergy monopolized science, culture, art, literature, and thought. Religion, which provides people with peace, happiness, and security, was distorted and, assuming a personalized form, became a means of torment, oppression, and harassment through the above-mentioned bans, church taxes, and the Inquisition.

During this era, which considered such moral values such as equality, justice, love, and respect outdated, people were classified as clergy, which produced nothing but confiscated and controlled everything; nobles, who owned and exploited the land and treated the peasants as serfs; peasants who worked but could only silence their hunger; and slaves. The medieval era ended with the advent of the Renaissance (rebirth or revival), which began in northern Italy in the late fourteenth century and spread north thereafter. Antiquity’s thought, art, and culture were revived, and people tried to free themselves from feudalism and church authority.

What really happened during the dark ages?

The Dark Ages are often ignored. However, this was the time when Europe rediscovered Antiquity’s accomplishments and thought due to its contacts with Muslim Spain and Byzantium. Given this reality, why does the typical timeline skip over this period, especially since it was far from dark outside of Europe? One case stands out: the Arabian peninsula, where a new religious movement (Islam) and the beginnings of its civilization had appeared by 610. In stark contrast with Europe, it proclaimed that people were obligated to seek knowledge, fight ignorance, and improve their condition in life.

Islam’s Prophet, Muhammad, accepted Judaism and Christianity as true and set about re-establishing belief in God’s Oneness. He preached the freedom of conscience and religion by declaring there is no force in religion and that people should embrace Islam only if they sincerely believed in its truth. The Qur’an rejected all humanized angels and rejected Original Sin by stating that people would be rewarded or punished only for their own deeds in the afterlife.

The security of life, goods, and honor were accepted as basic human rights, and thus guaranteed protection. All people, without exception, had specific property rights. Each person’s rights were guaranteed by being considered halal (lawful) or haram (unlawful), with various gradations in between. Social solidarity was ensured by zakat (obligatory charity) and sadaqah (voluntary charity). This also prevented the formation of social classes and any possible class hostility. Addressing humanity as O people to show their equality, the Qur’an rejected medieval Europe’s social stratification by proclaiming that superiority depended upon belief, God-consciousness, good conduct, and helping others.

In the pre-Islamic period, women were viewed as property and daughters were considered a source of shame for their fathers. Islam made them revered spouses and beloved daughters, superior to men in being mothers, and equal in obtaining property and justice. Islam sought to abolish slavery, a universal norm at the time, gradually by introducing various sanctions. First of all, it recognized slaves as full human beings who had to be treated according to the dictum Let them eat what you eat, and let them wear what you wear. Moreover, God ordered the freeing of slaves to atone for some sins.

Islam emphasized the wrongness of medieval Europe’s social stratification by stating that everybody was equal before law. The principle of freedom from obligation, which states that everybody is essentially innocent until proven guilty, was also established. All of these practices, which have existed from the first day of Islam, have not been cancelled just because many Muslims have not observed them.

Conclusion

While Europe remained in the dark on all of the above issues, the sun of Islam was beginning to illuminate many other areas of the world. Thus, humanity’s progress toward real civilization was led by Islam during an era that was supposedly dark. As Islamic history shows, that classification betrays some obvious personal or civilizational bias.

Europe’s Dark Age was a time of great intellectual ferment in the Islamic world. Many philosophical, mathematical, medical, astronomical, and medical works produced by classical Greece and Rome, as well as India and other civilizations, was translated into Arabic by Muslims, Jews, and Christians. Among them were the works of Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Hippocrates, Euclid, Galinos, Ptolemy, and Archimedes. Such translations had a major impact upon Europe when they finally reached its shores, for they were instrumental in starting the Renaissance.

The present division of history into certain eras is based upon a Western view of history and what is important. The church rejected Antiquity’s accomplishments and caused it to be forgotten in Europe for many centuries. However, religion cannot be condemned for this, for the people who did such things deviated from its teachings. While Europe was lost in darkness, Muslims were busy creating an Islamic civilization that first enlightened their own lands and then spread outwards Spain (Andalusia). Muslim Spain eventually became a bridge between the Islamic world and Christian Europe.

Greek civilization established the beautiful, Romans established the law, and the Semites contributed religion. The Chinese actualized the useful, India gave humanity its imagination and mysticism, and Europe gave science. Islamic civilization assumed its rightful place among the world’s civilizations by exhibiting an intrinsic and original style in areas such as thought, science, art, culture, and literature. Such a magnificent civilization, if it is to be divided into eras, should be divided according to its own history, and not by the West’s criteria. Just as the West arose again, thanks to Islamic civilization, so will the Islamic world rise again, God willing.

The primary reason for this misunderstanding is the modern “scientific” worldview, which is based on the modern scientific approach of restricting existence to its material, visible dimension. As a result, a human being is seen only as a material or biological entity. Such a view ascribes all human intellectual products and spiritual experiences to one’s physical and biological composition, thus reducing a human being to only his or her physique. In addition, since this approach labels as unscientific that which cannot be established in the laboratory, religious facts and beliefs have no scientific truth. This leads to the assertion that religion is a set of dogmas that only demand belief, whether they are scientifically true or not.

This approach has caused knowing and believing to be separated from each other. According to it, something is known when it is established in the laboratory. In other words, knowledge is that which has been established and obtained in the laboratory through experimentation. This scientific attitude limits our ability to research ourselves, and put insurmountable limits to existence. If only it had admitted that there may be truths outside its reach!

By presenting whatever is outside its reach as impossible to establish scientifically and therefore devoid of any truth, science has made the universe the subject matter of, say, physics or chemistry or astronomy, and humanity the subject matter of biology and materialistic psychology.

A human being is no longer a being composed of a body, spirit, and soul. Whatever people conceive of, think and feel, as well as their emotions and beliefs, are products of their biological composition. In addition, the subject matter of psychology is human behavior only, which does not accept any meta-physical dimension of human existence. By doing so, the modern scientific approach has promoted itself to the rank of being the sole criterion of truth, and has reduced existence to the field of its study. It was natural for this approach to see religion as a human product, and so it did.

The second fatal blow was delivered to religion by Darwin’s theory of evolution. When this biological theory was applied to humanity’s history and products-as if there were and could not be an eternal, unchanging dimension of human existence containing certain perennial values and principles that govern human life-religion was subjected to this evolutionist approach.

WESTERN POSITIVISTIC AND MATERIALISTIC VIEWS OF RELIGION

According to modern Western assumptions, which are based on scientism and evolutionism, humanity is in a continuous, irresistible, and irreversible movement toward what is better. During this progress, it has gone through certain stages of intellectual and civilizational development. Many people have studied the origins of religion. Anthropologists have concentrated on the theory of the evolution of religion. For some, such as Sir James Frazer (1854-1941), religion’s origin can be found in magic; others proposed animism or preanimism, totemism, fetishism, or polytheism. Later anthropologists concentrated more on religion’s role in society than its origin. Social anthropologists saw religion as part of society and concentrated on field studies of particular tribes or analyzed myths, rituals, and symbols. Cultural anthropologists saw it as a set of beliefs, rites, and institutions.

To illustrate the differences of opinion that arise among such “experts,” Jalal al-Din al-Rumi, a famous thirteenth-century Muslim Sufi, made this analogy: Some blind persons encounter an elephant and, on touching different parts of its body, offer their partial and contradictory definitions of what an elephant is: one finds it to be a heavy, thick column, while another thinks that it is a hard, flexible pipe, and so on. This is the situation in which Western scholars who study the origin of religion find themselves.

Just as anthropologists drew different conclusions, sociologists also put forward different opinions about the origin of religion.

The sociology of religion found its leading analysts in Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) and Max Weber (1864-1920). The former stressed religion’s social functions by considering it a stabilizing factor created by a given society to express its ideals and unify itself. Weber, more dynamic and positive, saw religion’s prophetic side as an instrument that could shape and change society, and tried to discern what aspect of Western religious attitudes or culture gave birth and then shaped capitalism. Other sociologists focused more on particular religious groups and institutions.

The psychology of religion centers upon the individual and personal religious experience. William James (1842-1910), one of its main exponents, described the “religion” of the healthy-minded and the sick soul, the “religion” of the once-born and the twice-born, and the psychological basis of prayer, meditation, mysticism, and conversion.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), whose research was based on theories of infantile sexuality and opposed by friends, patients, and medical colleagues, emphasized the importance of childhood sexual experiences and regarded religion as necessary illusions (delusions) and projections. He also argued that dreams, like neuroses, were disguised manifestations of repressed sexual desires.

More recent work in the psychology of religion has centered upon such issues as how different religious people or institutions really are, what is mature religious faith, what are the spiritual potentialities of human nature, and what are the stages of religious development in children and adults.

The common denominator in any Western analysis of religion is that religion was invented by people either to project repressed desire or weakness, or to represent an individual or collective effort to systematize a particular community’s beliefs and rites. The corollary is the following: As science develops, humanity’s need for religion will continue to decrease and eventually disappear. According to Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-72), religion is a dogma contradicted by modern society’s fire and life insurance policies, railways and steamships, military forces and industrial schools, theatres and science museums. Karl Marx (1818-83) proclaimed that it is the opiate of the masses and inevitably will become a thing of the past.

Auguste Comte (1798-1857) divided human history into three eras. The first era is the period of religion, when primitive people feared natural events and forces, and so needed to believe in a Supreme Being. The second era is the period of metaphysics, when humanity reached a considerable level of intellectual maturity. And the last era is the period of science, in which there is no room (or need) for religion, because reason and science will solve all human problems. Some people may continue to follow a reduced religion, comprising very basic moral and spiritual principles, to satisfy their emotional and spiritual needs and lead an upright life. But religion should not transgress its limits, and must not interfere in society’s collective-especially political-life.

According to Ferdinand Buisson (1841-1932), the secular approach to life will not wipe out religion altogether, but will diminish it considerably and destroy the force of its dogmas and the basis of its doctrines.

Before proceeding to criticize Western (materialistic and evolutionist) views of religion, we should summarize other definitions of religion by various Western thinkers or philosophers.

Georg Hegel (1770-1831) maintained that religion is a certain view of the universe. Benedetto Croce (1866-1952), an Italian follower of Hegel, defines religion as a philosophy that is incomplete. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) deals with religion from the viewpoint of social morality, and thinks that religion means considering all of our responsibilities as Divine ordinances. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) sees religion as no more than a feeling or excitement, an emotion or noble sentiment, felt for eternity. According to Ralph Otto, a contemporary theologian, religion is a mysterious fear combined with awe that causes people to tremble and yet attracts them to itself.

CRITICS OF THE WESTERN VIEWS OF RELIGION

The positivistic and materialistic view of religion, promoted by modern Western attitudes and directed by the dogmas of science and technology, is highly questionable. The positivist line, which regards the West’s sociological and economic, as well as its military and political, levels as the ultimate human achievement, has been criticized severely even by Western thinkers. Such a view engenders existential tension and anxiety. Toward the end of his life and despite his view of religion as a mode of thinking or being belonging to the second (long past) era of human history, Comte tried to establish a humanistic religion. This shows that religion is not something to be denied or dismissed as belonging to some long past phase of human development.

Also, despite the huge recent advances in science and technology, extreme sexual freedom, high living standards and education levels, there is a growing global interest in and turning to religion. We have seen the emergence of new, primitive religions such as devil worship, as well as the quest for contentment through certain authentic or such false supernormal phenomena as telepathy, necromancy, sorcery, and fortune-telling.

Moreover, as Erich Fromm puts it, we still see the pursuit of security and guarantees for the future through increased association with insurance companies and trade unions, mighty governments, and holdings and pacts. We have seen the almost-global collapse of communism and a return to religion in those countries.

All of this shows that the scientific theories of Western researchers in the field of religion have proven to be false. These events and trends also demonstrate that, whether sociological or anthropological or psychological, Western studies of religion are based on wrong premises.

Whereas religion is a rising global value and more and more people are turning to it, modern Western civilization is being questioned severely and shows signs of inward decay while outwardly it is at the peak of its dominion. Like many others, Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), a famous German sociologist, prophesied the collapse of this civilization with all its skyscrapers, huge metropolises and railways, and foretold that it would be an ethnographic museum.

Such “refined” Western intellectuals and scientists as Rene Guenon, Alexis Carrel, Max Planck, Boris Pasternak, and James Jeans (1887-1946) have argued that religion would allow humanity to live in another era of happiness.

Also, the ongoing re-emergence of missionary churches in increasing numbers in Christendom and the return to Islamic values all over the Muslim world, despite the stern measures taken against Islam by native governments for several decades, demonstrate that it is almost impossible to defeat religion.

REFERENCES

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• Fromm, Erich. Psikanaliz ve Din. Trans. Istanbul: n.d.
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