After the exhausting hustle and bustle of the day, you finally throw yourself into your seat and take a deep breath. For a while, you keep on staring at a point, and your past life, which you are about to leave behind, plays like movie scenes in front of your eyes. Eventually you tell yourself, “It’s over,” without realizing that, in actuality, it is just starting.

After a several-hour journey, the plane lands at your new destination and you face your new “homeland.” You assume and hope that, that this place will become your new homeland. The most remarkable thing you notice is the condensation of your breath due to the cold weather. It’s one of the spring months, and everywhere is as green as can be. You have great expectations, and your heart is full of hope. Everything appears “rose pink,” like a dream you never want to wake up from. It feels as though everyone around you will vanish as soon as you open your eyes, revealing the “truth.” You observe everyone smiling and laughing, even for simple reasons. You dismiss others’ descriptions of the people in that country “as cold as its weather.” Many would describe it as a fragment of Heaven.

You finally decide that you have found your new homeland. This decision feels good for a while, silencing the voices whispering for you to wake up. However, the sweet dream doesn’t last long, and gradually you start realizing the “truth.” Your inner voice repeatedly whispers that something is going wrong. Even though your satisfaction is gradually declining, you try not to surrender. An indescribable feeling makes you perceive that everything is not as it seems. Under the bright sky, with a sweet breeze and drizzling rain, you see a small pit where a little water has accumulated, reflecting your image on its surface. You begin to question your reflection: “What are you doing here?” “Do you really belong here?” “Don’t you ever feel like you are suffocating in the black hole of loneliness?” “Is it necessary to be liked by people to have them around? Why would they betray and backstab you?” These questions bombard your mind, threatening to drown you in an ocean of interrogations.

Suddenly, you find yourself in a world full of noises, laughter, screams, flashlights, and crowds. Everything revolves around you at high speed. You can’t do anything but stand and stare, wondering about your purpose of existence in that place and the reason behind the circumstances you’ve experienced so far. You conclude that you haven’t found what you were looking for there. The way people treat each other and their actions make you feel even more detached from that place. The strong desire for belonging and the longing for a homeland lead you to seek another place where your heart feels at home. This yearning intensifies your longing for the land where you were born, spent your childhood, smelled the roses, and touched the soft snow. The loss of your loved ones, one after another, adds to your sorrow. Although you are aware that they are no longer with you in this world, accepting their absence remains difficult. You recall the truth of “death” when observing the snowman in your garden, melting in front of your eyes each day. Eventually, only the carrot nose and olive seed eyes are left. Tears fill your eyes with a childish sadness for reasons you can’t quite explain. Just a few days ago, the snowman was there, smiling at you from outside your window, but now it’s gone.

Life and death, two words that complete each other, are truths that you witness and cannot avoid. You often hear the phrases, life before and after death. Yet, you still desire to keep the candlelight of hope burning within you and avoid falling into despair. You need a branch to hold onto in the stream you’re drifting through.

You recall someone asking you who has the most hope: the rich or the poor, the strong or the weak? Are wealth and power the only sources of hope? Are all the others in a pitiable condition? Are these things necessary to have hope in life? When everyone comes onto the stage, plays their role, and then leaves, what is the reason for taking ownership of certain places in the world and pretending you will never die? Is there a need to be so greedy and selfish?

When everything around you has a purpose of existence and life, even a tiny earthworm adding nutrients to the soil and the delicate stapes bone in the human ear sending sound vibrations, is it reasonable to live without understanding your own life’s purpose? Is being social the only difference between you and an animal? Is life meant only for eating, drinking, and enjoyment? When plants and animals aren’t given the ability to think and seek answers, why do human beings have that potential?

Still searching for a place to belong and seeking satisfying answers to your questions, you can’t even find what you long for in your homeland. Nothing is the same as it once was. The laughter of children is no longer heard, the roses have faded, and everything has turned dark as if touched by a witch’s magic wand. You can no longer sense the sweet breeze carrying the scent of your homeland. The craving for the “eternal” one is never satisfied with the mortal. Pain is what remains with you when happiness disappears. The awareness that even worldly happiness is transitory fades the smile on your face. You accept and surrender to the truth that wherever you go in this world, you will never truly feel a sense of belonging. And that’s when the last candlelight within you extinguishes…

“No!” your still-alive inner voice, which had been whispering quietly until then, yells. “You can’t give up this easily! You can’t surrender to self-despair! Wake up and come back to your senses! Be like a honeybee that sits on every flower but never hurts any of them, even if they might hurt you. Enter every garden and ignore the trash in the corner. Because you can’t perceive the meaning hidden behind existence, you look for what you desire in the wrong places—those that are mortal and fading. You consider them faultless at first glance, but realizing their defects gives you more pain. Redirect your aims toward the right one and head down the right path. Leave the wrong, find the truth. Stop looking for satisfaction among mortal things because even if you were given the whole world, you wouldn’t be satisfied. Choose the Enduring One. Love for the sake of the Eternal One. With everything you love, you open different windows to the same Beauty. Even if people and places seem to make you suffer, you won’t get hurt because you will say, “I loved you for the sake of the Eternal One.” Long for the day you will reach the endless destination you can truly call your homeland, “where no one will ever be discriminated against…” “Wake up from your unawareness,” exclaims the inner voice, bringing you back to your senses. “But how?” you ask. “How do I achieve this, and reach this endless destination?”

“You must develop your abilities and reach your full potential. You have taken on a heavy burden that even the enormous mountains could not bear; you have committed to the great duty of being a steward on earth. Each day, strive to grow a little more. Shake off the dust and let yourself shine like a diamond. Your biggest mistake is focusing on material things while ignoring the art within you and all around you. Learn more about your Creator and observe the signs of the hereafter in this world, as you long for the ultimate union.”

“Wake up, wake up,” the sounds grow louder gradually. You feel someone shaking you. When you open your eyes, you see someone trying to wake you from your deep sleep. You regain consciousness and a smile forms on your face. “I’ve finally found it,” you whisper, even though the person in front of you can’t understand what you mean. Under their surprised gaze, you sit up, staring at a point in the distance. With a determined tone that indicates hope in the core of your heart, you say, “I have woken up, and I will stay awake no matter where I am or what troubles I face, until the day I reach my true destination…”

The Iberian Peninsula in Europe was such a home for many different nationalities and religions when centuries ago it was Al-Andalus. Quoting from Maria Rosa Menocal, Yukseldi notes that “Al-Andalus (711–1492) was a ‘utopian-like’ society in which Jews and Muslims lived side by side in peace and cooperation in what is now Spain.” There are others who object to this argument, and in this issue Yukseldi presents a panorama of Al-Andalus, discussing the differing views of the tolerant policies Muslims held during their sovereignty.

The atheistic world view nowadays is being propagated by authors like Dawkins and Hitchens. Bayram Yenikaya confronts several of Dawkins’s arguments that he has put forward in his book The God Delusion. Is religion evil? Can we prove God’s existence and non-existence by scientific methods? Yenikaya’s article “Dawkins’ Delusion” is certainly something that must be read if these are questions that you are interested in.

Efforts devoted to exploring Fethullah Gulen’s thought and vision are gaining pace. The latest example of this is the conference in Cairo: Future of Reform in the Muslim World: Comparative Experiences with Fethullah Gulen’s Movement in Turkey. The Fountain was there to observe the three-day conference, and a report on this event is available in the following pages. For those of our readers who are interested in what is known as the Gulen Movement, this report is worth perusing, with its information on this conference that was a first in the Middle East.

Can you draw parallels between human behavior and cancer? Sebnem Unlu believes there are universally governing principles which apply in the human body as well as in our behavior. Unlu informs us that cancer cells are constantly being created, even in a healthy body, but in a healthy body they are destroyed by specialized immune cells. In a similar way, we have to correct our mistakes and sins as quickly as possible, without allowing them to grow like cancer, to destroy our moral integrity.

Upon their death, the victims found themselves in another world. Now, they tried to understand what had happened to them. First, they realized that they had been terribly deceived by the murderer. As a lesson from this unfortunate experience, they also realized that their inherent love for eternity had been abused by the murderer. Days passed, but they did not receive any word from their Lord. The burden of being away from the abode where they were in touch with Him became unbearable. They understood that where they came from was actually the land of eternity.

In later times, they would recall those past days, and they would feel an expansion and serenity in their hearts, feeling apart from the passage of time. So, they started to associate the things of this world with things from their homeland. Thus, they cherished their memories of when they were in the eternal land. Most of all, they each recognized the other as a mirror to remind them of the Eternal Beloved. So, everything they loved in this new place gained a sort of eternity with their longing for the eternal homeland and the Eternal Beloved.

Sometime later, they had children. As the children grew up, the parents related their stories to them, and talked about the homeland with their voices longing for return. The children also took on this behavior from their parents. Just like when their parents expressed their yearning for the homeland, whenever the children talked about loved things or whenever they were with people they loved, time would pass like lightning, and they would wish that those moments would not finish. As new generations followed, the expectation of eternity from the transient beloveds of this world evolved into a subconscious associating of eternity with them.

We do not know exactly how many years have passed since the time of Adam and Eve. Today, in spite of diversity in the definitions of love and the literature about it, there is a certain aspect of it which is the same for everybody who loves. Love changes our experience of time because we subconsciously associate it with eternity. Through this association, love motivates our actions. The limited time spent with the beloved seems very small compared to the human heart’s hunger for eternity. So, we strive to extend those moments-the lengthy phone calls and the long eye-to-eye gazes stretch out between lovers.

Eternity in the realm of the heart reflects itself in the form of continuity with the material world. Similar to the desire for the eternity of the beloved, we would like the continued existence of our loved ones. For example, the first experience of love each one of us feels in this world is the affection of our mothers. The initial manifestation of this love is breast milk. It not only provides the nourishment we need, but also contains the materials and the live cells that supplement our immune system. Thus, breast milk serves the continuity of our life in this world. Later on, our mothers provide intense protection and give us our first education. Both of these form the basis of our continuity in this life. And similar to our mother’s care, when we grow up, we too try to meet the needs of our loved ones in order to ensure their continuity.

In effect, we humans try to bestow continuity and eternity as a manifestation of love in accordance with the powers we are given. The love we feel is a projection of the infinite love that God has for His creation. Just as we strive for the continuity of our loved ones, God endows continuity on His creation by feeding and protecting us in this world, and granting us eternity by opening the hereafter to us. Since our existence is a temporary and dependent one, the continuity we ourselves give is also transient. However, God’s existence is eternal and He is the Self-Subsistent; therefore, the eternity He gives will be an actual one.

In this life, we realize that love bears a seed of continuity in it. We feel the beauty of eternity hidden in the lovely memories of our very first ancestors. Our visions fill with the fruits of the tree of love that fosters such long-lasting relations. However, the conditions we live in today are not coherent with those delightful sensations. When we look around, we see love affairs that last only a very short time. Many people conduct their love life by changing their partners periodically instead of remaining faithful to their spouses for all their lives. The meaning of contemporary love is being reduced to “temporary mutual interest,” obliterating the important notion of a “fellowship on the way to the Eternal Beloved.” This drastic change points to the fact that, along with the passage of time, we have forgotten the heavenly stories told by our common parents.

What is it that we need in order to re-discover the seed of eternity in our hearts? It may be that we all need to retreat to our childhood to find the pure love depicted by the naivety of children. Maybe we need to forget the turmoil of daily life, and focus on the lesson that comes at the end of virtually every one of the bedtime stories told by our beloved mothers, “And they lived happily ever after…”

Seth Mette has a PhD in Aerospace Engineering and is currently working as a postdoctoral fellow at West Virginia University. He has a special interest in psychological fiction.

Notes

1. Based on the story of Adam and Eve according to the Qur’an (2:35–37, 7:19–24)
2. The reason for the choice of the word “murderer” for Satan is as follows: Death is in essence a change of residence (Nursi, S., Letters, First Letter, Second Question). One who dies in this world goes to the heavens. Similarly, one who dies in the heavens comes to this world. According to the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), death will be brought in the form of a sheep on the Day of Judgment, and will be slaughtered, which will mean that death is dead (Bukhari, Tafsir, 1, 19). This will render the people of hell totally hopeless; because until then, they will be crying for another chance in this world. The death of death will imply that return to this world is no longer possible. This explanation supports the idea that death in the heavens may be understood as coming to this world. Accordingly, since Satan is the one who is the apparent cause of the death of Adam and Eve in the heavens, hence the start of their story in this world, he is their murderer.
3. Nursi, Bediuzzaman Said, The Gleams, Third Gleam.
4. Karabuga, Veli, “How Are Babies Protected?” The Fountain, Vol. 50, Apr–June, 2005.