“Nobles” is a title used for the “fortys,” or some among the “fortys” included in the “men of the Unseen.” According to verifying Sufi scholars, these are the heroes of altruism who have completed their ascension toward God by going down among the people to guide and spiritually educate them. They think of nothing other than guiding people to God; they encourage hearts always to do good, and they erect spiritual barriers before evils. They try to confront possible misfortunes through prayers and supplications and they are ready to sacrifice themselves for the good of people or to prevent disasters. Their hearts always beat with feelings of self-sacrifice, compassion, and tender care for others. Since they have dedicated their lives to the happiness of others, they live a life overburdened with the troubles of others and sigh for them. Even if there are times when they feel happy at the news of others’ happiness, they are always sorrowful because of what they have witnessed or heard concerning the sufferings of people. In respect of their mission, they are heirs to the Prophets.

Nukaba (The Custodians)

Nukaba are the saints who are always together with people, correcting their faults, and guiding all toward good with mildness and kindness. Although the term is used for those in the Sufi Orders of Rifai [1] and Badawi [2] who have completed their spiritual journeying and have begun the mission of guiding people to God, according to the verifying Sufi scholars they are the purified souls whose spiritual profundity and discovery transcend their scope of learning and sight and who always observe the spiritual domain or realm of existence; by God’s leave, they are able to penetrate the hearts of people and what occurs to them. They carry out the duty of some sort of translation between the physical and metaphysical realms, interpreting existence in accordance with their capacity and in consideration of the understanding levels of their audience, and persistently try to find ways to God through everything. In their view, the universe is a meaningful book which contains messages within messages, with all its parts making up the words, sentences, and paragraphs. In these ever-wakeful souls and truth-voicing tongues, the truth expressed herein shows itself:

The universe is a supreme book of God throughout,
whatever letter you study, you see its meaning is God.

Awtad (The Pillars)

Awtad are the four “men of God” who are so close to one another that one cannot do without the other. They make their spiritual journeying and carry out their duties under the shadow of the missions of Enoch, Elijah, Jesus, and Khadr, upon them and our Prophet be peace. According to the particular mission of each, they have the titles ‘Abdu’l-Hayy (The Servant of the All-Living), ‘Abdu’l-‘Alim (The Servant of the All-Knowing), ‘Abdu’l-Murid (The Servant of the All-Willing), and ‘Abdu’l-Qadir (The Servant of the All-Powerful), and they reflect the spiritual content of Prophets Adam, Abraham, Jesus, and Muhammad, upon them be peace and blessings, or represent the reflections of their truths. Their connection with God is through the lenses of the Archangels Gabriel, Michael [3], Israfil [4], and ‘Azrail [5], upon them be peace. They each correspond to a pillar of the Ka‘ba, which signifies the door or stairway to that station.

Muhyi’d-Din ibnu’l-‘Arabi is of the opinion that the pillars are the seven saints who carry out their duties according to a hierarchy that exists among them.

Some call all the saints of God—including the nobles, custodians, and pillars—the “men of God” in the sense that they are heroes of the truth with certain spiritual power. Their most distinguishing attributes are their deep reverence for God and their feeling of awe before Him; being overwhelmed by the manifestations of the All-Merciful; arousing God’s existence and omnipresence in the minds of those who see them; sobriety and dignity coming from their constant awareness of God’s company; being deeply ashamed of certain ordinary human acts and states—even though they are not religiously forbidden; being aware of God in everything in a different wave of sensation; self-forgetfulness when they are aware of God; continuous self-supervision and attributing to Him whatever gifts and blessings they are favored with; and remaining unknown by others. With respect to their being unknown, they are called “the men of the Unseen” or “the army of God.” In one of his poems, Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror [6] refers to those men who are endowed with a sacred spiritual power and asks for their prayers in carrying out the duty of serving God’s Word.

With respect to these men’s being able to make the Divine mysteries felt in the hearts of others, they are called “the men of conquest”; because of their being unknown or being known only by a few, they are known as “the men of the Unseen.” In regard to their generally living in ecstasy, they are called “the men of power,” and because they approach everyone with gentleness and tolerance and return evil done to them with good, they are “the men of kindness.”

Ghawth (The Helper or the Means of Divine Help)

Signifying help, coming to the aid of others, and giving spiritual help, the term ghawth is used by the Sufis to denote saints of the highest rank.

A person who has attained this rank has been honored with a particular Divine favor and, by God’s leave, hurries to the aid of those in difficulties. Those who do not have this capacity cannot be regarded as ghawth; any poles (qutb) who cannot be mirrors to reflect Divine help to others are not called ghawth.

One who combines the spiritual status of being a ghawth with the rank of being a qutb is called al-ghawthu’l-a‘zam (the greatest helper), and if the one who has been primarily favored with the rank of being a qutb is also honored with being a ghawth, he is called al-qutbu’l-a‘zam (the greatest pole). Each of these titles has aspects particular to itself.

Since those honored with these exalted ranks represent the shadow of Haqiqa Muhammadiya (the Truth of Muhammad) [7], they are in the company of the Prophet, upon him be peace and blessings, with respect to being mirrors to certain Divine truths. Because of this, they have a reflective part in the holy Prophet’s universal mission of being a mirror to God, which is expressed by Süleyman Çelebi as follows:

(God said to the Prophet): I have made your essence a mirror to Me,
and inscribed your name together with Mine.

The status described by Haqani in, “The Ultimate Truth has made him a mirror to Him / He has made him a mirror to His peerless Being,” primarily and with all its comprehensiveness, belongs to the master of creation, upon him be peace and blessings, who is the greatest of the perfect or universal men [8]. Each of the other perfect or universal men has a relative, particular part in this great honor.

The Sufis maintain that in every century there is a helper or means of Divine help (ghawth) who is the leader of all the contemporary men of God, the door among people to the attainment of Divine assistance, the moderator of the spiritual realm or domain of existence, and the pivot of Divine gifts and blessings. If a helper is also a pole, his title is the greatest pole, and his rank is the status of the greatest pole.

Such a hero of spirituality who is honored with this rank has such capacities that not only ordinary people like us, but also those who have reached the final point of spiritual journeying are unable to perceive them. This rank is the most comprehensive mirror to the Divine Names, the essence of existence, and the greatest focus of the Truth of Muhammad. By virtue of this distinction, and by God’s leave, such a one is an authority entitled to represent the implementation of the Divine decrees under the leadership and protection of Haqiqa Ahmadiya (the Truth of Ahmad) [9] and in the light of the Lamp of Muhammad [10], upon him be peace and blessings.

The scholarly people of sainthood mention the names of such great saints as ‘Abdu’l-Qadir al-Jilani [11], Abu’l-Hasan al-Harakani [12], Shaykh al-Harrani [13], and Imam Rabbani [14], as those who have attained this rank in the history of Islam. These personages, who have combined the rank of being a pole with that of being a helper, are mentioned with the titles of “the greatest pole,” or “the greatest helper.” As they represent the status of being the greatest pole, they are also called “the pole of the poles.”

With respect to being the representatives of spiritual perfection, they are also regarded as the true heirs to the duties of Prophethood and the special, most distinguished representatives of succession to Prophet Muhammad, upon him be peace and blessings. It is undeniable that the purification of the carnal soul, refinement of the heart, and spiritual struggle all have an important part in the attainment of this rank. However, it should also be borne in mind that this rank is a special gift of God which He accords to whomever He wills. God Himself declares: That is God’s grace. He grants it to whom He wills. Surely God is of tremendous grace (62:4).

This elevated rank has sometimes been represented by a single individual, sometimes by a collective personality formed around God’s good pleasure through a sincere brother/sisterhood, and selfless unity and solidarity, or, quite possibly, by a community of Muslims which serves the true faith and the Qur’an purely for God’s sake.

Qutb (The Pole)

Qutb is the title of one who is the focus of the views of the earth and heaven’s inhabitants, the perfect vicegerent of God, the Ultimate Truth, the heir of the master of creation, upon him be peace and blessings, and the perfect, universal man who always exists among humankind.

After the pride of humanity, Prophet Muhammad, upon him be peace and blessings, this rank was represented by the first four Rightly-Guided Caliphs in order of succession, who were true successors to the duties of Prophethood. They were followed by the greatest scholars or the founders of Islamic Schools of Law, who had the capacity to deduce new laws from the Qur’an and the Sunna, the greatest saints, and the saintly scholars.

Together with the rank of helper, the rank of pole is also the greatest of spiritual ranks. While a helper is primarily distinguished by coming to the aid of others who are immured in difficulties, a pole may also be favored with the rank of helper and become a source of spiritual radiance and a reflector of God’s gifts. Being heir to the Truth of Muhammad, a pole represents a reflection of the master of creation, upon him be peace and blessings, under his guardianship in the age where he lives, and is a successor to him in his duties as a spiritual master.

By virtue of the special gifts with which he is honored, and by virtue of having been equipped with a special capacity in accordance with his duty, a pole is, like the North Star, a singular, chosen one upon whom the views of all the inhabitants of the earth and heavens are focused. This mysterious power station, which is always open to the metaphysical realms, has effects on the human outer and inner faculties that resemble the spirit’s control of the body. This power of penetration comes from this person’s knowledge of God; this knowledge of God originates in God’s Knowledge, Which in turn is an Attribute of the Divine Essence. With respect to his own essence, or when left to his own devices, a pole is like a drop of water—but a drop that contains the entire reflection of the sun by virtue of God’s favors upon him. Such a one is nothing but an atom, but that atom reflects all of the heavens. For in their essential nature, poles are nothing—they are zero—but they are equipped with such essential values and qualities that they reflect eternity.

With one of their eyes always scanning the physical dimension of existence, poles constantly observe the realms beyond with the other eye, in unceasing pursuit of the radiance of recognition or knowledge of God. They weave the spiritual lacework of existence with the silky threads of wisdom that pour into their hearts and

give them to those around them. Like the sun, they always give off light and illuminate all that is around them. And like a surging ocean, they bubble over from within and diffuse life into hearts.

Since poles have fully developed their innate capacities, they are heroes of extraordinary performance. They are perfect persons whose hearts are mirrors to the Archangel Israfil, and whose power of speech mirrors Gabriel, and whose power of attraction mirrors Michael, and whose power of repelling mirrors ‘Azrail. By virtue of this, they are each, in one respect, a focus of creation as a mirror to all realms, vicegerents of God in their age, special students and representatives of the Truth of Muhammad, rays of the first manifestation of existence beyond time, and luminous, transparent means for the conduction of Divine mysteries to all hearts. Being heirs to the Prophet, they establish new rules to acquire and deepen in knowledge of God and the Religion. The Shi‘a attribute this rank only to ‘Ali and the eleven Imams who descended from him through the Prophet’s beloved daughter, Fatima, and the last of whom is the Mahdi [15]; this is a restriction. God may accord this honor to whomever He wills among His servants who have been endowed with the necessary capacity and He may make Himself known through them.

The Sufi scholarly saints mention two types of pole, one being “the pole of guidance” and the other being “the pole of existence.” The “pole of guidance” represents the spirit of Prophethood as the owner of the greater rank of pole, while the “pole of existence” stands for the inner dimension of the Seal of Prophethood with the title of the Seal of Sainthood. The scholars who have expert knowledge of the matter hold the opinion that although in the same period there may be more than one pole of guidance, there can only be one pole of existence. The axis of whichever great angel honored with special nearness to God or whichever illustrated Prophet he journeys around, or the rug-seat of whichever saint he occupies, the Pole of existence always turns toward the light of the existence of the Pole of Prophethood, upon him be peace and blessings, and toward his spiritual assistance.

Although there are Sufi scholars who mention some people as the Poles of existence who have existed since the Prophet Adam, upon him be peace, this view has not received much acceptance. The majority of the experts in this matter agree that in every age the Pole of existence is mentioned with the title of ‘Abdullah (the

Servant of God) and ‘Abdu’l-Jami‘ (the Servant of the One Who Has All Excellences in the Infinite Degree).

All the information given so far is based on the spiritual discovery and observation of some talented saints. For this reason, more or less space can always be assigned to the subject. There may even be those who say different things on this matter. God knows best. Therefore, what I should finally do is to entreat God Almighty,

saying: “Our Lord, take us not to task if we forget or make mistakes! Our Lord, forgive us, then, our sins, and blot out from us our evil deeds, and take us to You in death, in the company of the truly godly and virtuous.”

O God! Show us truth as being true and enable us to follow it, and show us falsehood as falsehood and enable us to refrain from it. And bestow blessings and peace on the sole owner of the subtle essence and meaning of being Muhammad, the sun of the heavens of mysteries, the object of all lights, the pivot of the Divine Majesty, and the axis of the sphere of the Divine Grace and Beauty, and on his Family and Companions, the stars of guidance and the springs of assistance.

Notes

• Sayyid Ahmad ar-Rifai (1119–1183), the founder of the Rifai Order, and one of the greatest Sufi masters in the history of Islam, was born and lived in southern Iraq. He also had profound knowledge of Islamic religious sciences, including especially jurisprudence and Hadith. (Tr.)
• Sayyid Ahmad al-Badawi (1200–1276) was one of the most outstanding Sufi masters, to whom the Badawi Order is attributed. He was born in Morocco. When he was six years old, his family emigrated to Makka. He spent the greatest part of his life in Tanta, Egypt. He was also well-versed in Islamic sciences. (Tr.)
• Michael is the Archangel who supervises the earth with its grass, plants, and animals, and represents or presents to God their glorifications and praises of Him. (Tr.)
• Israfil is one of the four Archangels. He will blow the Trumpet just before the end of the universe and for the resurrection of the dead. (Tr.)
• ‘Azrail is the Archangel charged with taking the souls of human beings. He is the angel of death. (Tr.)
• Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror (1432–1481) was the seventh Ottoman Sultan, and conquered Istanbul. (Tr.)
• Haqiqa Muhammadiya (the Truth of Muhammad): This term is essential to Sufism. It may be translated as the “reality of Muhammad” as God’s Messenger, the most beloved of God, the best example for all creation to follow, the embodiment of Divine Mercy, and the living Qur’an or embodiment of the Qur’anic way of life. (Tr.)
• For a detailed analysis of the perfect or universal Man, see M. Fethullah Gülen, Emerald Hills of the Heart – Key Concepts in the Practice of Sufism, Tughra Books, NJ, 2004, Vol., 2, pp. 289–302. (Tr.)
• Haqiqa Ahmadiya ( the Truth of Ahmad) is the term used to designate the reality or the essence or the truth represented by the personality of Prophet Muhammad, upon him be peace and blessings, before his coming to the world and after his departure from the world. In one respect, it signifies the unparalleled sainthood of Prophet Muhammad. (Tr.)
• The Lamp of Muhammad signifies the light of Muhammad’s Messengership or the light of Islam or the way of Prophet Muhammad, upon him be peace and blessings. (Tr.)
• ‘Abdu’l-Qadir al-Jilani (d. 1166): One of the most celebrated Sufi masters. A student of jurisprudence and Hadith, he became known as “the pole” of his age and the “the greatest means of Divine help.” Among his well-known books are Kitabu’l-Ghunyah, Futuhu’l-Ghayb, and Al-Fathu’r-Rabbani. (Tr.)
• ‘Ali ibn Ahmad Abu’l-Hasan al-Harakani (963–1033) is one of the most celebrated saints. He was born and lived in Harakan near Bastam in Iran. He lived as a poor farmer. He was martyred in fighting in Kars, a city in the farthest northeastern Turkey, and was buried there. (Tr.)
• Shakyh Hayat ibn Qays al-Harrani (d. 1185), is one of the most outstanding saints in the history of Islam. He was born in Baghdad and lived in Harran near Urfa, in southeastern Turkey. (Tr.)
• Imam Rabbani, Ahmad Faruq al-Sarhandi (d. 1624): The “reviver of the second millennium.” Born in Sarhand (India) and well-versed in Islamic sciences, he removed many corrupt elements from Sufism. He taught Shah Alamgir or Awrangzeb (d. 1707), who had a committee of scholars prepare the most comprehensive compendium of Hanafi Law. His work Maktubat (The Letters) is very famous and widely known throughout the Muslim world. (Tr.)
• The Mahdi, literally meaning one who guides to truth, is the title of the blessed person whose coming toward the end of time to re-establish the truth of Islam and justice on the earth was promised by God’s Messenger, upon him be peace and blessings. (Tr.)

We had come to talk to him about dialogue and responsibility, and he was showing us what dialogue was about. At its heart is humility, a letting go of power. Focused on love, this approach recognizes and respects the other, not as one among many, but as a unique individual. Trust then grows with mutual assurance, and pathways are found together which respond to God and His creation, embodying hope. All of these virtues were not just discussed but lived in Hocaefendi, showing us, that dialogue is primarily about discovery of the self, each other, our world and God.

Fethullah Gülen’s contribution to Islam, to other religions and more widely, was precisely to show how truth could only be found through such dialogue. It is focused on our relationships, not in intellectual abstraction, enabling us to continually see the world differently (metanoia). This is why autocrats fear dialogue, seeking to silence different voices, and impose their perspective of the world, held in place by fear.

Because of that dynamic Gülen died away from his homeland, which in one sense is a tragedy. He did not get to see the reemergence of democracy in Turkey. In another sense though, the democracy he thirsted for never has and never will flourish fully in our world. This is democracy as dialogue, not simply representation, which seeks to engage everyone in sharing responsibility, a democracy which is always learning, always refreshing itself, always asking questions not just of those in power but of the ordinary person. Gülen gently challenged everybody to serve, to take and share responsibility for each other. Genuine dialogue nurtures freedom through relationships, freedom found in building peace. 

His enduring gift was the creation of the Hizmet Movement. The very term ‘service’ counters any temptation to reconfigure religion as a focus of power, nationalistic or otherwise. It looks outwards to share power and create, and so Hizmet’s home was always destined to move beyond national boundaries. But as Gülen taught us, global reach is not about elevation. Hence, he always resisted attempts to elevate himself, as leader or thinker. Instead, he brought people down to earth, the here and now, to the particular in which the universal love of God is to be found. For that, people of all religions and all nations owe him their gratitude. 

There are some exemplary people who we may call “embodiments of rectitude.” These exceptional people look at life with a holistic view. They see things correctly, they think correctly, and they attach their every initiative with a consideration for truth. They move forward between the carnal soul and what lies beyond their nature always with this consideration in mind. They turn the lens of their willpower and consciousness to behold their inner world and check with their essential nature; then they turn it to beyond and further beyond and open up to the Creator. They give an account of their situation to Him, renew their covenant, and humbly prostrate themselves. They are aware of the fact that they are mirrors to the Divine and that they are created as an index for all existence and worlds.

With such an all-comprehensive awareness, these people always endeavor to act in accordance with the purpose of their creation and frequently supervise their inner worlds. They come to grips with themselves and keep vigilant against contamination of their considerations. They live with an alertness to not allow any darkening of the heart and rusting of the spirit. Most of the time, with a concern for having contaminated them, they run to purifying basins of turning to God, and they constantly sigh with the thought that they failed to give the due of the honor of being the best of creation.

They never open the door of their imagination to any form of filth; let alone that, they shake like a leaf fearing the possibility of the least contamination of their dreams or conceptions and fog of stagnancy. In the face of such a possibility, they start seeking fresh means of turning to God. Their hands always on the knob of Divine mercy and forgiveness, they lead an angelic life. Given that they are heroes of closeness to God and are burning with a love for reunion with Him, then their way should be the lane of ardent longing for reunion with God. This should be the staircase of overcoming one’s own remoteness and attaining togetherness beyond forms with Him Who is closer than the closest to us!

Those who did reach the horizons did so with such resolution and great effort; as for those entangled by the web of their fancies, however, they remained halfway on the road.

Throughout history, those who took their shadow behind them and always walked with their face turned to the sun reckoned and came to grips with themselves with a different depth. They trembled with concerns for falling on account of things they saw or assumed they saw in their hearts, spirit, conception, and imagination. As their feelings, excitement and worries were reflected in their words, they kept sighing and sincerely implored God Almighty.

From Prophet Muhammad the brilliant moon, peace be upon him, to the stars that gathered around his perfect guidance, all of the embodiments of rectitude have become loyal journeyers on the path of the Prophets leading to a reception with the Divine, and they have presented exemplary behaviors that will never misguide later generations who follow their footsteps. May their way be clear and may the All-Merciful Lord render us journeyers of that path, too!

Now, let us try to push a door to look at the example of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, who is for us the unique vanguard of this road, the most distinguished and blessed guide of all time. Let us have a vista to see his example and come to grips with ourselves, with the acknowledgement that our own situation could only be that of a drop in the ocean.

The Prophet, the blessed master of the created and who had the utmost closeness to God, would open up to Him with an expansive state of his spirit, attitude of self-possession, and a consideration of guiding those behind him; and thus, his morning was a separate session of vigilance, and his evening was a different time of turning to God. And he would pray as, “Glorified are You, O God!” And although sins did not visit him even in his dreams, he would say, “I seek Your forgiveness for my sins, and I ask You for Your mercy.” [1]

Thus, the Messenger of God would show the way to exercise self-supervision to his followers and present an astounding attitude of humbleness and effacement. Likewise, when daybreak drew near, his sincere petitioning was like a wake-up call for those who heedlessly indulged themselves in sleep and an admonition to the fluctuant. He would touch the doorknob of Divine mercy by beseeching as follows:

I seek refuge in You from wronging others and being wronged, from committing aggression and being the object of aggression, and from committing an error or committing a sin which is not forgiven. [2]

He did this even though these were miles and miles away from even entering his world of imagination. How I wish if only a quarter of this opening up to God were found within us and leaders of our nations.

Even before he was commissioned as a Prophet, and certainly after he was, at almost every phase of his blessed life he kept his carnal soul and fancies under control; in spite of this, he met every new sunrise with diamond words of supplication rising from his heart, in a manner of self-possession: “My Lord, truly if you leave me to myself, You leave me to weakness I cannot bear, an overwhelming need, sin and error.” After voicing his petition with these words of his vigilant soul, he would conclude his blessed appeal befitting him so well with the following expressions: “Truly I rely on nothing except Your mercy, so forgive me all my sins, for no one forgives sins except You” [3]. He prayed thus as if he ever had any sins!

He continued opening up to God and against the carnal soul and Satan, who could not even visit his world of imagination. He said the following, which I think was actually a way of giving counsel to his followers:

My God, I seek refuge in You from the evil of my self, the evil of Satan and his traps, and from committing wrong to myself or another Muslim. [4]

He would repeat these sincere sighs four times. Such a manifold degree of self-possession and deliberation! He would not suffice with these, holding the doorknob of mercy, Divine protection, and guardianship, he would pray as:

Ya Hayyu Ya Qayyum (O Giver of life and Who maintains it)! For the sake of Your Mercy, I beg for help. Rectify all my states of being and leave me not to myself even for the blinking of an eye! [5]

Let his example illuminate the blind eyes and deaf ears of those who stumble through their lives. He was so sensitive and vigilant against the carnal soul and fancies that even though he was miles away from them, they did not—could not—cast a shadow on his radiant world of thought. We take a step back again and once more give an ear to the deep sighs and petitioning of that sultan of speech: “I seek refuge in You from the evil of my soul and from the evil of every creature in Your grasp.” What vigilance! What an immense feeling of self-possession!

Even his archenemies did not, could not, dare ascribe the least degree of vice to him. Both before his mission as the Messenger of God and afterwards, he was acknowledged by all as the most trustworthy person. Yet, as if he had any shortcomings, he would pray, “O Allah! Conceal my imperfections and calm all my fears!” [6]. How exalted he is! He certainly did not have any shortcomings, but let us take this prayer as the guide’s counsel for us who need guidance.

In terms of his considerations of awe and reverence before Divine grandeur, he had a heart that always shook with fear of God. In this respect, he was marking the course leading to true virtue for those to follow his way. Saying that he would sleep at night like we do is gross disrespect against him, because he had settled this issue, too, by stating “my eyes do sleep, but my heart does not” [7]. However, even when that distinguished soul who surpassed angels was to enter his special sleep, he would earnestly turn to God wholeheartedly and say:

O God! in Your name have I laid down on my side. Forgive me my sins and drive away my devil; release me from my dependency (on others) and place me in the highest assembly! [8]

In spite of his much lauded and distinguished position, he was teaching so much to us even with that deep sigh. His Ascension to the heavens (mi’raj) was blessed with the gift of daily prayers (salah), and his prayers were each like a new Ascension [9]. While he was heading to perform his prayers, which is like an earthly ascension, he would be imbued with perfect goodness (ihsan) in all of his attitudes; and when he started the worship at God’s beck and call, the following blessed words would come out of his lips as a beautiful expression of the deed being observed:

O God, You are the Owner, there is no deity other than You. You are my sole Lord, and I am your servant. I have wronged my soul; I confess my sin—[O dearest innocent soul, which sin are you talking about!]—please forgive all of my sins; no one but You can forgive them. Guide me to good character, as only You can grant guidance! [10]

These prayers are meant to call us, too, to those horizons. May God also bless us with that complete guidance. His distance, from what he mentioned as “sin,” was further away from the distance between East and West, but against things he considered wrong—wrongs did not even visit his dreams—he opened up to God and moaned with utter self-possession and a vow of perfect goodness:

O God, distance me from my misdeeds as You have distanced the East from the West!
O God, wash away my sins with pure water, snow, and hail! [11]

What a profundity it is, my dearest beloved one! You are the one poets praised as:

You are the glorified sultan of the Prophets, my master
You are a majestic bestowal to helpless ones, my master
You are the chief in the Divine Council, my master
You are the one affirmed by God’s swear by your life, my master. (Sheikh Galib)

O the light of my endeavor and my shining sun, you are speaking in the first person and imploring God; yet, by doing so, if you are calling us to be ourselves on your blessed path, we have been alienated to those horizons with our degenerates and leaders. That being the case, our dreams are filled with hopes, and we are expecting your favor upon us; for the sake of God, do not make us wait further!

Just as you looked at those in your special circle,
Please grant a look at this humble one also,
And let me burn ablaze with your sacred love.
Let my atmosphere not be darkened with the sadness of being without you,
Please say, “he is also from me,” so that I do not remain distant from you. (F. Gülen)

We learned from you that prostration is the state when a person is closest to God [12].

Where the head meets the feet, kissing the prayer rug on the ground
Is the road that carries a person to closeness to God. (F. Gülen)

The Prophet used to put his head on the ground very humbly, his blessed head that never bowed before anyone other than the Almighty, and he would open up to God with different words and implored Him as follows:

My God, please forgive all of my sins [my innocent sultan of sultans, your Lord did not let you commit sins in the past, and with your loyalty He sealed all doors and windows to sin for you] [13]. O God, forgive me for all my sins, the greater and the minor, the first and the last, and the openly known and those kept secret! [14]

If only those who spend their lives in the filth of sins could also understand these moans and sighs loftier than breaths of angels! Unfortunately, those who said farewell to a life centered on realizing the heart’s potential are unaware of the horizons of the spirit and will neither feel nor understand these sighs.

As he knelt down during his prayer (tashahhud) where he felt to the core his closeness to God and realized peak spiritual delight, he moaned again to the profundity of his own knowledge of God and showed how unreachable his spirit is with the following words from his heart, which are in fact meant to be reminders for unknowing ones like ourselves:

O God, truly I have greatly wronged my soul, and no one forgives sins except You, so forgive me with Your forgiveness, and have mercy on me, for You are the All-Forgiving, the All-Compassionate. [15]

If only we could also moan wholeheartedly for our lagging so far behind that guide, the Messenger of God who would always woe for certain heart-darkening conditions, which might hold true for us any time and, yet, were so far away from his horizon:

O God, I take refuge in You from a hard heart, heedlessness, poverty, humiliation, and deprivation. I take refuge in You from want, unbelief, immorality, divisiveness, pretentiousness, and ostentation…[16]

I don’t know whether such degree of vigilance and sobriety is ever felt by anyone else in such an astounding profundity. I do not think so and nobody else can deem it possible…

At the end of our discussed topic, which is like a drop from the ocean in terms of the Messenger’s imploring and petitioning, I say, “the subject is not over, yet to be also covered are the purest souls from his circle. And I beg forgiveness from God on account of my mistakes…

1. Abu Dawud, Adab 107.
2. Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al-Musnad 5/191; Tabarani, al-Mu’jamu’l-kabir 5/119.
3. Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al-Musnad 5/191; Tabarani, ad-Dua, p.122.
4. Tirmidhi, Daawat, 105, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Al-Musnad, 2:171.
5. Abu Dawud, Adab 101; Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al-Musnad 5/42.
6. Abu Dawud, Adab, 100, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Al-Musnad, 2:25.
7. Bukhari, tahajjud, 16, tarawikh 1; Muslim, Salatu’l-Musafirin 125.
8. Abu Dawud, Adab 107; Tabarani, Mu’jamu’l-kabir 22/298.
9. One of the major miracles of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, was his journey from Mecca to Jerusalem, and from there to the heavens. In this miraculous journey into heavenly dimensions, he met with other Prophets and eventually God. One of the gifts of this journey is daily prayers (salah), which Muslims are commanded to observe five times a day.
10. Muslim, salatu’l-musafirin 201; Abu Dawud, salat 124.
11. Bukhari, adhan 89; Muslim, Masajid 147.
12. Muslim, salat 215; Abu Dawud, salat 148; Nasai, mawaqit 35, tatbiq 78.
13. Fath 48:2.
14. Muslim, salatu’l-musafirin 201; Abu Dawud, salat 118; Tirmidhi, daavat 32.
15. Bukhari, Adhan 151, Daawat 17, Tawhid 9; Muslim, Dhikr 48.
16. Ibn Hibban, Sahih, 3/300; Hakim, al-Mustadrak, 1/712.

In its capacity to manifest Divine Names and the many duties assigned to it, earth is as worthy as all the heavens. Each time the outer crust of the earth comes into contact with the atmosphere, it undergoes a mysterious process of formation, layer after layer, to warmly embrace plants and animals so they can exist and survive. Earth is prosperous, mothering billions of lives even in a single milligram of its mass. It is magnanimous, housing tons of bacteria, tiny insects, and worms which constantly penetrate it to fulfill their assigned duties. It is a mirror of countless Divine manifestations, a magnificent workbench, and a fascinating laboratory of chemistry and biology.

It can be said, thus, that earth is the most valuable asset and the most magical part of the whole universe, particularly of our planet. Air, water, and light, as it were, sustain with it and exist for it. This is why, this “down-to-earth” yet “significant-beyond-the-heavens” element, in whose embrace we and millions of other beings arise and grow, is mentioned quite often in the Holy Qur’an. It is virtually held equal to all the heavens, glorified as our origin, and presented to our attention as a bridge, a port, a launching platform that leads to the worlds beyond. In between the lines of verses, one is reminded of the knowledge the wisdom, and the blessing and favor of God:

“And after that He has spread out the earth. Out of it, He has brought forth its waters and its herbage. And the mountains He has set firm.” (an-Naziat 30-32)

Many verses in the Qur’an remind us of the relationship between the earth and the atmosphere, the precise arrangement of the layers of the Earth’s crust that enables them to preserve water inside them, then the spouting of that water according to a certain order and balance, the formation of that water into rivers, the irrigation of vineyards and gardens with these rivers, and finally the vaporizing of all these sources of water so that they are ready for service once again.

Earth displays special care and diligence in terms of its content and richness, and it has been made a place of joy through life and has been made valuable beyond all else, especially through human life. This can be seen as the most significant of events and happenings in our world—in fact, in the whole universe. Even so, these features and the system of order and wisdom, balance and Divine aid that these features embody have not been comprehended in full, but God Almighty, in His timeless declaration, always emphasizes these features and their different dimensions, and reminds us and other conscious beings of His profound and endless bounties. He opens gateways in our world of reflection and contemplation, gateways to existence and to what is beyond the veil of existence, taking us out on a stroll in the peaceful and prosperous environment of belief and contentment. “And it is He Who has spread the earth wide and set therein firm mountains and rivers, and of fruit of every kind He has made mated pairs. He covers the day with the night. Surely in that are signs (manifesting the truth) for people who reflect” (ar-Ra’d, 3).

It is possible to point out many more verses from the Holy Qur’an in which these features are expressed in different styles and manners. Nearly every one of these verses shows us that in order for the world to be a suitable and convenient place for human life, the earth has had to undergo constant change and transformation. The Infinitely Powerful One blessed with joy every different phase of this long process with living beings of sorts of species dwelling on the land. He manifested His Divine attributes of knowledge (‘ilm), free will (irada), and life (haya) to make the rivers and seas into cascades of life, and specifically turned the layer of earth, both under and above the soil, into a place of exhibition and gathering for all living beings.

Earth has a magical content and internal structure. It’s possible to view it as a single living being, or a live chemistry or biology lab. Indeed, earth is the point of convergence and cohesion between air, water, and light. It is the operator and central line through which all of these are transported to us in a useful and rewarding way. And finally, it is a factory of transformation in which everything is made into a useful substance and presented to us for our benefit and enjoyment. In this respect, we can see it as the focal point of everything else—the most vital part of life. Gases and lava, the foundational elements of the planet, reached their first phase of perfection through becoming earth and completed their natural ascension by transforming into it. At the end of that process, the road leading to the human being started with earth, finished with earth, and, by attaining a state above earth, turned the human into a celestial being.

With its colorful prairies and meadows, breezy gardens and vineyards, its mountains and hills that make you tremble, and its seas and rivers that send a wave of astonishment to our hearts, the earth has almost always reminded us of the heavens we have been separated from and has always been a source of consolation against the passionate longing of our hearts for their true home.  Looking at its features, we have always become sorrowful, remembering the heavens we lost, and, at the same time, we have found consolation in it, thinking of the gardens and vineyards of the Hereafter, which the earth’s enchanting beauty brings to our minds.

It has taken millions of years for the earth covering the face of our world to reach its present stage in the hands of the All Powerful One. It has taken millions of years for it to become ornate with a cover of vegetation and plants, to fill with the joy of living beings. Through human beings, earth has become something that is felt, life in it truly experienced, sharing with us everything it possesses.

Nowadays, right when it has reached the right consistency to reflect the grandeur of the heavens, I wonder if those who are turning its balances upside-down and destroying its harmony are aware that they are destroying the result of a process that has taken billions of years—billions of years of manifestation of the Divine. The destruction has reached a stage beyond imagination, and with the elimination of certain important elements from the face of the earth, the balance between the living and non-living elements that were left behind has been altered. Once again “mother earth” has come face to face with the betrayal of her own children.

Indeed, the fact that the overall balance has been altered through the extinction of certain living and non-living species—whether intentional, due to economic inevitability, or caused by ignorance—it is an outright betrayal to the world in which we have come into existence and grown. It is nothing more than turning our own shelter into a place in which we cannot sustain our lives. Sooner or later, the laws of creation will respond to this betrayal and will certainly punish us for this atrocity. It will punish and completely turn away from us, and, living or non-living, every single being will take its share from this resentment. The atmosphere will weaken due to harmful gasses. Rains of acid will fall from the skies in place of mercy and abundance, and when rain does fall it will sweep the soil in front of it and will drive it into the seas. The vegetation and plants will be scattered to and fro with the gusts of autumn, taking with them our every expectation of spring. And our Earth, always more compassionate than a mother, will let itself go, turning into a hell-like desert and sending its children to and fro as if trembling from a blow of the horn of Israfil.

By nature, earth, which stands shoulder-to-shoulder with air and is locked in a close embrace with water, has always, as part of its duty, cosseted us like a mother. With its prairies and meadows, its gardens and vineyards, its silver streams and golden pastures, it has stood with the strength of a father in the face of our mistakes, and it is such a warm, faithful, and sincere source of life that has kept alive the thoughts of Paradise we once lost. Those who have failed to see the fact that earth is actually an officer on duty ready at our disposal with firm loyalty, have associated it with a kind of mystery and magic beyond what it actually possesses. Just as the people of the Ganges Basin have sanctified the Ganges River, and the people of the Amazon have deemed the Amazon sacred, and certain natives of Canada have associated Niagara with certain Divine features, they have accepted the earth as having the power to create.

Both our world and the layer of earth covering it are merely mirrors of Divine manifestations, and the brilliance we witness in them are the embodiment of Divine possibilities. According to Bediuzzaman, just as the Earth is the heart of the universe, the element earth is the heart of our world. Earth is the symbol of the roads that lead human beings to the grandest of goals, roads such as modesty and humility. In fact, when compared to the highest of skies, earth is a more direct way of reaching the One who has created those skies: for earth is the most appropriate, the most convenient foundation for the manifestations of the names Hayy and Qayyum (the One who gives life and sustains it) and for the signs of God Almighty’s Lordship throughout the universe and the head-spinning events that are carried out through His Eternal Power. God Almighty’s superiority in mercy is manifest in water, and His superiority in life and giving life is manifest in earth—and earth is the most brilliant, the most lucid mirror for every manifestation of the Divine.

The more delightful and pleasant the mirror is when held to an opaque substance, the more visible the shapes will be that form in that mirror. The more opaque the mirror held to a heavenly and graceful being, the brighter it will reflect the manifestations of the Divine Names. For example, only a weak radiance of light from the sun is visible in the air; in the mirror of water, however, there is an even brighter reflection. When earth reflects the light, one can witness the seven different colors of sunlight.

Despite its profound content and richness, earth, or the soil, has always been a sign of humility and modesty, and its lips have always been at the soles of our feet. There are those who feel the humility and modesty of the earth in their very souls and who connect their feet and head at the same point, forming a kind of circle; the earth kisses them on their foreheads and lets their souls fill with the secrets of being close to the Ultimate True One. It whispers these poetic phrases to those who wish to turn their hearts into gardens of roses: Be like earth so that you can grow roses, for it is not possible for anything other than the earth to truly nurture roses.

Hopefully, the days are near when a fresh breath of air will embrace our souls; when trees, humans, earth, water, land, and sky will flow into our hearts and take us to a new wedding with the Beloved.

As an instructor of statistics, I sometimes cannot help but explain the phenomena of the social sciences through mathematical expressions. This is especially true when there is almost complete correspondence between the two. One such topic is the “powers” of ignorance. When I say “powers,” I obviously do not mean how “mighty” ignorance makes a person. I mean the exponential expressions of ignorance:

Ignorance to the power of one (ignorance¹);

Ignorance to the power of two (ignorance²);

Ignorance to the power of three (ignorance³).

Powers of ignorance

Let us start with the simple definitions of these three powers:

Ignorance¹: Does not know;

Ignorance²: Does not know AND does not know that s/he does not know;

Ignorance³: Does not know AND does not know that s/he does not know AND insists that s/he does know.

Among the three, the first power is the most powerless in terms of leading the person to mistakes. The person is aware that s/he does not know. The solution to this case is simple: the person would go after the needed knowledge and acquire it, remedying this form of ignorance.

The second power is not that bad, either. The person does not know AND is not aware of the knowledge s/he lacks, either. Therefore, this person, when alerted to the necessity and existence of the knowledge in question, would acquire it, successfully ending the ignorance. In this sense, this power is also not that powerful in terms of leading the person to mistakes.

The third power is the most powerful at fooling its owner. The person does not know AND does not realize that s/he lacks certain knowledge. What is more, when alerted to the necessity and existence of the knowledge in question, s/he insists that s/he has nothing to learn. As you can tell, the ignorance cannot be eliminated easily—if at all—in this case. Such ignorance cannot be overcome by alerting the person to the knowledge in question and/or providing it. This is an attitudinal problem that “guards” the person against learning.­ ­

Now, let us return briefly to the math. Just as the magnitude of the difference between the consecutive powers of a mathematical entity increases as the powers increase, the differences between consecutive powers of ignorance are also different. For example, while the difference between the first power of two (2¹) and its second power (2²) is two (four minus two), the difference between the second power (2²) and the third (2³) is four (eight minus four). Likewise, there is a bigger leap in the severity of the problem from the second to the third power of ignorance, compared to the difference between the first and the second.

Known unknowns vs. unknown unknowns

I believe this hierarchical definition of ignorance might provide some insight into the relationship between the teacher and the learner. From the perspective of the constructivist theory of learning, the best scenario for a learner is to be the architect of his/her own knowledge palace. In this approach, the teacher is a facilitator of the learning process while the learner builds his/her knowledge palace piece by piece. For a learner who smoothly goes through this process, the first power of ignorance can easily be eliminated without much assistance, especially in this information age. In other words, in this kind of ignorance, there are “known unknowns” that can be learned.

Some initial guidance might be needed to eliminate the second power of ignorance. The learner might successfully decorate the existing rooms of her/his palace by herself/himself, yet might be unaware that there might be brand new rooms that can be added. At this point, the teacher might provide guidance and vision to the learner, so that s/he might start sailing in these uncharted territories. Once new land is discovered, the teacher might return to the role of facilitator. While there are “unknown unknowns” in this case, there is no resistance to the realization and acknowledgement of this situation by the learner.

The biggest challenge we face nowadays is undoubtedly around the third power. The teacher facing the third power of ignorance is helpless in helping the learner. In addition to “unknown unknowns”, there is this denial of the “unknowing”. In old times, the difficulty in overcoming ignorance was mostly about accessing knowledge. People who appreciated knowledge used to get very happy when they attained it. They also mostly exhibited the attitude that the more they learned, the more they realized how ignorant they were. In this sense, it is very odd that we can now access knowledge in seconds, yet we do not appreciate it. Nor do we have the wisdom that the more we learn, the humbler we should become about our knowledge.

Such an attitude also has a high potential of hurting the teacher-learner relationship, since the learner denies the fact that s/he sometimes needs guidance. Such learners only seek “depositories” of information, with the thinking that they, by themselves, can correctly and sufficiently process and digest all the information taken in. In this sense, they are closed to any advice, guidance, perspective, or vision provided by the teacher. Their approach implicitly says, “Just give me the information I am asking for and shut up!” This is where wisdom is lost between generations.

The missing link: wisdom

This might remind some readers of movies or TV series that depict the wisdom exhibited by a Far Eastern master of martial arts. The master would accept a Western person as his apprentice. Yet, he asks the apprentice to do extremely difficult and exhausting chores that are seemingly unrelated to the martial arts. Moreover, these chores appear as if they are geared towards the comfort of the master. Yet, as the apprentice proceeds in her/his training, s/he realizes how vital those chores have been in acquiring the necessary skills as well as attitudes, such as stamina, perseverance, and patience. Only then does s/he realize that it should be the master, not the apprentice, who defines the format of the master-apprentice relationship.

The more learners see knowledgeable people as only “depositories of information”, the more damage is done to a productive and meaningful teacher-learner relationship. Learners start to think that the second they acquire the information they lack, they become “even” with their teachers. And this exactly is the way of thinking that is a major source of the third power of ignorance.

Let us give a simple and practical example to illustrate this phenomenon. Think of a learner who wants to cook a dish. In response, the teacher provides the learner with the full list of ingredients for the dish. The learner, in turn, adds this to her/his library of information. As a second step, the teacher attempts to explain how and when each ingredient should be added to the pot, at what heat the dish should be cooked, and suggestions to add more flavor, etc. However, the learner declines this offer, claiming that s/he can handle these by herself/himself. Just like in this example, obtaining information about a topic is just the beginning. Applying this information to various situations, analyzing or synthesizing it, and comparing it with similar information are examples of tasks that require experience and are more important than simply depositing unprocessed information into one’s library. What is needed is to continue the learning process during these stages as well. This is only possible if the learner exhibits humility through awareness that s/he has yet learned little and keeps the channels of learning open.

Two disclaimers are in order here. First, this article is not to discredit learner-centered learning; rather, it seeks to highlight some points during the process where the teacher’s guidance and vision should play a critical role in the learner’s healthy progress in acquiring, digesting, and internalizing information. Second, it is not the intent here to imply that it should be the teacher alone who shapes the format of the learning-teaching process, and that the student should only be the object of it, as has been the case in many traditional educational systems. There is no doubt that a successful teacher will continually gauge the learner’s progress and gather constant feedback about the strengths and weaknesses of the learner and use these to provide proper guidance and vision.

It is crucial to help learners acquire the right attitude towards learning and knowledge. In an era where individuals are flooded with information and asked to mostly make pragmatic use of it, it is of the utmost importance to caution learners against the pitfalls of this approach and guide them towards successfully turning it into internalized knowledge. That would also bring about the wisdom and humility necessary for learners to continue to build their wonderful palaces of knowledge.

In the early decades of the twenty-first century, strong-men like Okonkwo, the tragic character in Nigerian author Chinua Achebe’s classic novel Things Fall Apart, appear to rule the world. From Russia to Turkey, from North Korea to the United States, men driven by fear and a need to demonstrate their masculinity through power control armies and nations. Okonkwo, Achebe tells us, was an athlete – a wrestler, a hard worker, rightly proud of his achievements – and yet he was also a man who treated people “with a heavy hand.” If you know the novel, and every literate person should, as it is truly one of the world’s classics, you know the story. Okonkwo breaks the Week of Peace by beating his young wife, Ojiugo. He cuts down with his machete his adopted son, Ikemefuna, whom he loved, because, Achebe tells us, Okonkwo “was afraid of being thought weak.” And then, when the British arrive with their “peaceful administration” (Achebe was a master of irony), Okonkwo responds first by killing one of the government messengers and then commits an offense against the Earth, tragically hanging himself from a tree. This “strong man” was driven by fear.

And strong men like Okonkwo do seem to rule the world. Yet I want to offer an alternative point of view, based in part on a recent trip to Nigeria. At almost the exact center of Things Fall Apart, Achebe has one of the wives of Okonkwo, Ekwefi, tell an old Igbo folktale that can highlight what happens when strong men rule. Every Nigerian child knows the story. It’s the story of how the tortoise got a cracked shell. The birds of the Earth were invited to a great feast by the people in the sky. There was a drought and famine on the Earth, and Tortoise was hungry. He heard about the feast for the birds and wanted to go along. So, Tortoise persuaded the birds to each give him a feather. Tortoise then made those feathers into two wings, so that he could go to the feast, and he flew with the birds to the banquet. On the way he told the birds that the people of the sky gave guests new names, and that his name was “All of You.” So, when the feast was served, Tortoise asked the people of the sky, “For whom is this great feast prepared?” And the people of the sky answered, “For all of you!” Tortoise then told the birds, “You remember that my name is All of You. The custom here is to serve the spokesman first and the others later. They will serve you when I have eaten.” Tortoise ate the choicest foods, leaving the birds only bones. The birds understandably grumbled. One by one, they then took their feathers back from Tortoise. He could not fly back to Earth. So, he asked Parrot to take a message to his wife, to put out all the soft things from their hut. Parrot agreed, but then when he returned to Earth, instead he told the wife of Tortoise to put out all the hard things, like the machetes and guns and even a cannon. When Tortoise fell, he landed on these hard things, and his shell cracked into many pieces. A very strong traditional doctor was nearby, allowing Tortoise’s wife to gather the pieces of his shell and glue them back together.

I’ll return to this story near the end of this essay, but my main point in what follows is that despite all appearances to the contrary, I believe the era of the so-called strong man is coming to an end. It is not going to end easily, because when they feel threatened, such men react with displays of pride and force. But as Mohandas Gandhi and Desmond Tutu and other nonviolent peacebuilders learned, “when people decide they want to be free there is nothing that can stop them.” And strong men, too, can learn to change their ways. For as Jesus put it so clearly, when his disciple Peter reached for his machete, “Those who live by the sword, die by the sword.”

The way of the future, the alternative, is the way through what Muslims like Fethullah Gülen know as istishara, or mutual consultation. The way is through what political scientists know as democracy. The way is through what economists call social enterprise. The way is through what educators know as universal literacy. The way is through what biologists understand as cooperation. The way is through what theologians call trust. The way is what I call “deep peace.”

Among the most important books I have read in the past twenty years is a book by Harvard neuropsychologist Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. It’s a big book, and it deserves to be read critically. But Pinker’s main point is that statistically – and actually – we live in the most peaceful era of human history, ever. We experience today the longest life-expectancy, greatest creature comforts, least international warfare, lowest infant mortality rate, least food insecurity, and so on, of any era in human history. When we look at our lives objectively, compared to the lives of our ancestors even fifty years ago, life is good.

The world may seem like it’s controlled by so-called “strongmen,” but Jon Pahl believes faith, humility, and cooperation are set to bring about a new order of peace.

What has produced this peace, according to Pinker, is mutual consultation – the growth in democratic states, honest trading, and participation in international organizations like the UN. What Pinker fails to recognize is that the 20^th century also saw a dramatic resurgence of religion around the globe, especially in the global South. Pinker sees this resurgence of religion as an obstacle to peace. I see it as the single most important reason for expanding peace. Our faith traditions are the most profound causes of peace on the planet. Our religions, within their discrete domains, and increasingly across their domains through interreligious cooperation, generate deep peace.

Peace cannot be merely the absence of war. Although it is much to be desired, the absence of war is what I call “basic peace;” it is the bare minimum required of any government. Beyond that basic absence of violence, though, there is a peace that stems from the collective decisions that people make through our governments. I call this “policy peace.” Economic policies that fairly distribute resources produce peace. Policies that support the arts and sciences and education produce peace. But beyond basic peace and policy peace is “deep peace.” Deep peace is the inner courage to face one’s fears without violence. Deep peace is the calm confidence to trust another human being and to live and work together with them, no matter what.

Our religious traditions foster deep peace. That is why they have survived far longer than any nation. Our religious traditions, each in their own way, engage us in discourses and practices that foster the trust that makes cooperation possible. Across traditions, we learn to pray, fast, give thanks, dispense justice, and reconcile with our enemies. These practices build the trust that flows from deep peace and that leads to all the other kinds of peace. Our religions, in other words, foster the most crucial evolutionary survival mechanism: cooperation. They have power that no dictator can stop.

Along with this trust, our religious traditions build habits of humility. From our faith traditions, we learn that we do not stand at the center of the universe, able to control it. When we consider the God who created the universe, we learn to say, “Allahu Akbar.” When we consider the God who sent Jesus (pbuh) to live among us, we learn to say, “Lord, have mercy.” When we consider the God who lives in and through our ancestors and the Earth itself, we recognize how fragile we are, and we come to say, as Okonkwo put it in a moment of lucidity in Things Fall Apart, that “the world is large.” Deep peace stems from humility. And humility fosters trust like a cassava produces fufu flour.

It was this kind of “deep peace” that Nobel Laureate Leymah Gbowee drew upon in her work with the Christian and Muslim women of Liberia to end that nation’s long civil war. If you have seen the documentary film by Abigail Disney, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, or read Leymah Gbowee’s memoir, Mighty Be Our Powers: How Prayer, Sex, and Sisterhood Saved a Nation at War, you know what happened. Leymah Gbowee stood up one Sunday in Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in Monrovia, and said, “Women, wake up! We have a voice! We want peace. No more war.” And that day a police sergeant and Muslim, Asatu Bah Kenneth, heard her, and then took the microphone. She pledged that just as Leymah Gbowee was going to organize the Christian women, she would organize the Muslim women. And then the Christian and the Muslim women got together. And when they got together, they consulted with each other, planned with each other, debated with each other, strategized with each other. And then they protested with each other. And at those protests they sang, and danced, and prayed: “We want peace. No more war.” And their prayer was answered.

Practically, peacebuilders like Leymah Gbowee engage what Fethullah Gülen has called istishara, mutual consultation. I am nearing completion on a biography of Mr. Gülen, or, as he is known to his students and followers, Hodjaefendi, honored teacher. Most of his life has been spent in prayer and preaching, not politics. He practices deep peace. But he has also inspired the global Hizmet movement. And that movement grew, and continues, through istishara.

I saw the results in Nigeria. Despite pressure from the so-called “strong men” of the Turkish government, the work of people committed to deep peace in Nigeria, begun with a single school in 1998, continues. Seventeen different Hizmet agencies operate schools, dialogue programs, and a hospital. All feature some of the best facilities in the country. I visited the Nigerian Tulip International Schools in Abuja, Lagos, and Kaduna, and Nigerian Nile University and Nizamiye Hospital in Abuja. They are thriving in their missions to promote literacy and health through compassion and trust. And they are growing through the joint efforts, the mutual consultation, between people of Turkish and Nigerian descent.

It may seem, then, that in this age of ruthless weak men – for that is what they are – that we are all like tortoise, divided into many fragments and tribes. But there is another tortoise tale worth recalling, which may be as ancient as that told among the Igbo. It is one of Aesop’s Fables.

There once was a speedy hare who bragged about how fast he could run. Tired of hearing him boast, Slow and Steady, the tortoise, challenged him to a race. All the animals in the forest gathered to watch.

Hare ran down the road for a while and then and paused to rest. He looked back at Slow and Steady and cried out, “How do you expect to win this race when you are walking along at your slow, slow pace?”

Hare stretched himself out alongside the road and fell asleep, thinking, “There is plenty of time to relax.”

Slow and Steady walked and walked. He never, ever stopped until he came to the finish line.

The animals who were watching cheered so loudly for Tortoise, they woke up Hare.

Hare stretched and yawned and began to run again, but it was too late. Tortoise was over the line.

After that, Hare always reminded himself, “Don’t brag about your lightning pace, for Slow and Steady won the race!”

It is my conviction – rooted in my faith as a Christian and in my awareness of global trends as a social scientist – that despite superficial evidence to the contrary, the age of so-called strong and greedy men who are in fact fearful and short-thinking men is coming to an end. Slow and steady integrity will win the race.

“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.”

Speaking about altruism, Ronald M. Green, a professor of religion, said, “Humility and selflessness, we know, are the very center of the moral life.” [1] According to James Ozinga, a professor of Political Science at Oakland University, altruism is, “Simply doing for others at some cost to oneself, and selfishness is doing for oneself at some cost to others.”[2]

In this article we will not embark upon complex debates whether altruism itself is a self-consistent concept, or if the very readiness to give away is an indicator of impossibly pure altruism (for “altruism,” by definition, ought to be totally about “other people,” and extend not an iota’s weight of importance to the “I-ness” of a person). It is clear from the viewpoint of pure logics, though, that we have to identify ourselves as independent agents in order to grasp the meaning of anything, as it is precisely this that distinguishes us from animals who are unaware of themselves and, thus, unable to think. Nor will we consider the problem of the performer of the altruistic act deriving out of it some intrinsic pleasure, thus flouting his initial “other-regarding” impetus, the idea that the famous English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was ever eager to accentuate. For Hobbes, if you relieve a beggar, you do it to relieve yourself of the distress at seeing the beggar’s distress.[3] It is enough to adhere to the aforementioned definition of “altruism” in order to check these kinds of debates. Thus, the aim of this article will be to shed light on the religious understanding of altruism in conformity with the definition of altruism as “doing for others at some cost to oneself,” as well as to find out whether secular and religious approaches to the issue are mutually exclusive or not.

The founding father of the term “altruism” was Auguste Comte (1798-1857), the initiator of modern positivism and, thus, one of the leading figures of modern science. In fact, he was the first to coin the term “altruism” itself. As he wrote, “the being, whether man or animal, who loves nothing outside himself, and really lives for himself alone, is by that very fact condemned to spend his life in a miserable alternation of ignoble torpor and uncontrolled excitement.” [4]

“Altruism” was part of his grand project of a completely new-fangled worldview. He envisioned this as “the Religion of the Great Being, Humanity,” whereby the principle of human rationality was asserted to be sufficient enough to invest humanity with all possible material progress and physical strength, but with no recourse whatsoever to the centuries-revered religious institutions. According to him, the Church’s institutions were irrelevant as far as meeting humanity’s real needs were concerned. Moreover, religion in any of its manifestations, and as the most authentic philosophy of life, had grown out-of-date, and would eventually be supplanted by positivistic science, with the rationalistic ethics being the culmination. Society, he believed, cannot be without ethics, and ethics cannot be without holding selfish instincts in check, thus tempering one’s egoistic personality with a desire to live for others. Regretfully enough, by tolerating no sense of individualism, Comte was extreme, the dictum of social duties in his philosophy being always prioritized over any particular and quite natural considerations pertaining to each and every person.

Another prominent philosopher of that age, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), came up with his own notion of altruistic relationships, which was close to the Comtean one. Although he did not use the term “altruism” in his treatment of the issue, for him the most important fact about the moral nature of man was the so-called “Moral Law,” which, similar to the Comtean philosophy, was determined solely by human minds and was autonomous from God or any religious tradition. The Law was, or is, universal in its nature and perfectly reasonable, though somewhat strained as far as its practicability was concerned. Kant wrote that, “I ought never to act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal law.”[5]

He thought that humans can govern themselves merely by the power of intelligence, and thus be held fully responsible for all actions, including any indulgences in animalistic or all-to-human inclinations – things the ultimate source of which are not, Kant believed, our intelligence. To make it clearer, the formulation of the same Law can be described as, to “act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.”[6]

According to this, before undertaking any course of action regarding another person, we have to deliberate what would happen if the action were implemented unto the whole of humanity. If our conscience assures us of the action being equally beneficent in both cases, then it conforms with the Moral Law and is morally acceptable; if it does not, it is denuded of any virtue. Say, for example, that we have to produce evidence against our own brother in a court. The radical rottenness of human nature could easily induce us to tell a lie in order to release our brother. But if we are decent enough to remember Kant’s Law at such a critical moment, we will understand that telling a lie can inflict definite harm on our brother’s plaintiffs, and that acting here as a false witness will be a means to achieve some further goal; namely, the welfare of the brother, but not the end-in-itself, which is – as far as this case is concerned – the confirmation of truth.

According to Kant, people are too clever to engage themselves in self-contradictory enterprises, which can do harm to nobody but themselves. Thus, the Moral Law – when deployed before any action as a heuristic devise – divests us of fallacious predilections that affect us due to our base humanity; it also reveals to us the ideally impartial and fair state of human interactions. Our intelligence and ability to reach these conclusions enables us to transcend our base humanity.

General and abstract as the nature of the law is (it is to be filled with concrete schemata of actions in each and every case of its real-life implementation), it is of great avail in the sense that it helps us distance ourselves from evil commands of our self-indulgence, which may go unnoticed, and allows us to assume both a proactive and beneficent course of action towards others.[7] In other words, it should be the well-being of others, as shown to us by the impartial judgments of the Law, that drives our actions, not our self-interest.

However, the surrounding people’s whims and fashions, ages-old traditions and the shortage of certitude in our philosophy of life may well distract us from that rationalistic predisposition of ours to be compassionate and altruistic. Moreover, not all human beings can be motivated to be altruistic by reason alone; it is obvious that a great majority of people may need to pass through a long process of moral self-cultivation, constantly performing good deeds and listening to good advice, in order to become attuned to Kant’s mode of action. Also, many people would not adhere to the results of their sound reasoning to be altruistic; after all, practically, we know that humanity’s crooked nature is not conductive to an impartial attitude towards everyone; even if we can be altruistic to people dear to our heart, it does not mean that we will be equally good to everyone. Also, would self-sacrifıcing for others have any limits, whereby one could duly stop and give free reins to his egoistic pursuits? Do we not need some degree of self-prosperity, and, thus, a healthy deal of self-regard?[8] The American political philosopher, Jean Hampton, said, “If we are so ‘altruistic’ that we become unable to develop and express ourselves properly, we become unable to give to others what they may want more than anything else.”[9] These ideas of the philosophers of the Renaissance and Enlightenment mirrored the then-popular and almost unimpeded belief in human abilities to succeed in all possible enterprises solely by the means of their intelligence and personal initiative, as opposed to the total submission of the Medieval European human’s mind and heart to the dictates of Church organizations and traditional ways of living.    

Needless to say, as a founder of the “positivistic” scientific worldview, Comte has played and is playing a great role in the way we perceive things today. The same goes for Kant, who – in his various interpretations – was and still is the main proponent of the agnostic attitude of many Western people as far as belief in God is concerned. But was humanity truly oblivious to the acute necessity of altruism, all the way from antiquity through Comte’s epoch? Surely it wasn’t. And the reason why people didn’t think of altruism until the Renaissance was simple: the absence of the notion of egoism! The religious frame of mind so characteristic to the pre-modern epochs was the main reason behind the proliferation of selfless individuals and communities – at least within common cultural boundaries. Thus, it was the notion of “egoism,” as elaborated by Thomas Hobbes, which triggered a powerful reaction in other rationalistic and not-too-religious thinkers. This “reaction” led to the widespread adoption of the secular notion of “selflessness” or “anti-egoism,” eventually leading to the term “altruism.”

Yes, this drastic division between the good (altruistic) and bad (egoistic) dispositions of human nature was drawn in a full-fledged manner for the first time by Hobbes, who tried to show that egoism and altruism are conflicting parts of one and the same human being. In his Leviathan, he maintained that altruism is impossible at all because, by nature, humans are possessors of a strong bend towards assertiveness. Hobbes believed that human nature is “essentially individual, non-social, competitive, and aggressive.”[10] As opposed to an altruistic society, Hobbes saw a daunting chasm, across which nothing could be handed, gaping between human nature and human benevolence. It is this chasm that has led to power struggles that then engulf the whole of society. It is only out of this inauspicious state of things that the necessity for social pacts and conventions arise; they are finally agreed upon by nothing better than formidable state machinery. Hobbes believed that this was the only way the intrinsically self-regarding nature of man could be persuaded to live in a mutually beneficial state of coexistence with others. Through the suppression of individual desires, man can attain a degree of security and welfare, thus fulfilling some of his egoistic desires. As Hobbes put it, “We gain by it the largest scope for action our crowded world permits.” [11]

After Hobbes, it took a whole series of English philosophers (Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Butler, and others) nearly a century to get around to the idea that the nature of man is not that egotistic. Still, they failed to explain the dualistic (altruism vs. egotism) nature of man. Hartley (1705-1757) and Mill (1806-1873) said that the two inclinations of our souls could be fused by the way of association – we may be self-regarding when harrying for the aid of others (as Hobbes said), but, in due course, our thoughts grow to be so submersed in other people’s welfare that we start to regard them and not ourselves as a primary object of our attention and assistance.[12] Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) upheld a so-called “quantitative view.” Due to the mirroring capability of our conscience, we can see others as a huge bulk of our own emotional world; thus, the happiness of the maximum possible number of people is highly conducive to the accruing of our own happiness, the latter playing a role in Bentham’s philosophy; he believed it to be the key motive behind human behavior. Adam Smith (1723-1790) was another thinker who contributed ideas to the discussion. For him, sympathy played an enormous part in our lives; we just cannot stay uninvolved in other’s sufferings or happiness. For him, man’s ability to share feelings with others, and even to identify with others, is something agreeable, invigorating, and contributes to man’s overall well-being.[13]

The Islamic solution to altruism encourages people to see everything as reflective of a sacred, divine oneness of being. There is no reason to be egoistic, for the Divine Presence is overbearing, insofar that any claim one could lay to existing apart of that Divine Reality is moot. On the other hand, a relative degree of existence is still warrantable for man, as far as his duties before the Super-Being are concerned. The primary duty is intellectual and spritual love of the Real Source of all existence and ever-readiness to sacrifice the very idea of one’s own autonomous existence in order to comprehend His Existence unhindered by one’s ego. Man must follow, most unfailingly, His will in every passing moment. These acts are supereregatory and are considered to be among the most important spiritual stations of the Sufic tradition of Islam – “isar,” or the “preference of others, first and foremost, God’s desires and orders, to one’s own desires.” This was eloquently described by the Islamic mystic, Rabi’ah al-‘Adawiyah (d. 801):

O Lord, if I worship You out of fear of hell, burn me in hell. If I worship You for hope of paradise, forbid it to me. And if I worship You for Your Own sake, do not deprive me of Your eternal beauty.[14]

In the Islamic world-vision, Kant’s impartial stance to others is enforced by the Sacred Law itself in such verses of the Quran, including:

“Say, each works according to his manner, but your Lord is most knowing of who is best guided in way” (17:84); “And we have certainly honored the children of Adam and carried them on the land and sea and provided for them of the good things and preferred them over much of what We have created, with definite preference” (17:70); “O, mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you different peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you. Indeed, Allah is Knowing and Aquainted” (49:19).

According to these and others, every man is a bearer of God’s spirit:

“And when I have proportioned man and breathed into him of My spirit, then (o, My angels!) fall down to him in prostration” (15:29). To accept and, eventially, love every human being as he is means exactly what the German thinker meant by his imperative “not to take any human being as a means to accomplish some further goal.” The meaning of humanism, then, finds its expression in the Islamic revelation, although it is “theocentric” – deriving its meaning from the Holy Scripture, not the human intellect.[15] Still, to follow the idea is a supererogative act, for not everyone can relinqish his egocentric desires. Our altruistic feelings will anyway stem from our initial understanding of ourselves as independent, and, therefore, egoistic or pragmatic agents.[16] We ourselves are the first baseline of our self-perception, so without self-love, we cannot understand what it means to love others. The benevolence of others unto us may well enslave us, but this is because our ego is enamored with those who do good to it. However, as the famous Islamic theologian Imam al-Ghazzali (1058–1111) put it, those whose aethetic and moral predelections are of a higher level, cease to love themselves and, as it were, become dissolved in their love for abstract kinds of beauty and benevolence.[17]

A critical verse reads, “Those who fulfill their vows in full and fear a day whose ill effects will spread afar, who feed, for His sake, the destitute, orphan, and captive, they declare: We feed you only for God’s sake; we do not desire recompense of thanks from you” (76:7-9). In this, we can see that Muslims were entreated to embody the ideal of altruism within the Islamic World through the institutions of “Waqf” – charitable trusts. This Arabic word means, “to cause a thing to withhold, to stop and or to prevent”; the word also means, “to endow the property rights of a good to the public service perpetually, and to prevent others from obtaining its property rights.”[18]

Such foundations were usually open to everyone in need. Notably, 75% of such trusts in the Ottoman Empire of the 18^th century devoted substantial funds to serving outside constituencies, and 18% were precisely charitable ones. “Waqf” is also defined as “the detention of an object from possession for good, by considering it God’s property, and devoting all of its conceivable favors of revenue to different kinds of charitable purposes for the benefit of the public.”[19]

Muslims founding these institutions believed that this worldly existence is a temporary one, and one needed to devote one’s income for the betterment of other people’s lives, so as to make safe the blessedness of the next, eternal life.[20] All over the huge Islamic lands, from the Pacific to the Atlantic, countless amenities vital to social life have been funded and upheld through “waqfs,” some of which have even survived more than a millennium,[21] providing the penurious with basic needs such as food, shelter, education, and improvements like cemeteries, lighthouses, public baths, aqueducts, fountains, bridges, mosques, roads, and so on, augmenting amity and concord.[22]

Religion is clearly not antagonistic to altruism, even in the Comtean sense of the latter. Surveys conducted by the European Value Systems Study Group and the British Household Panel Survey reveal that churchgoers are some three times more likely to be involved in voluntary service for others than are non-churchgoers.[23] Love for humanity can be induced not only by the secularist or humanistic tendencies of modern Western civilization to exalt human beings to the highest ontological level, but also, and even primarily, by the religious injunction to love humanity as the best pattern of God’s creation. In fact, any monotheistic religion and humanism agree on this point, the difference being that the first is believed to arrive at it by virtue of a transcendent, supernatural source, and the second, by man’s independent reasoning. However, contrary to philosophical humanism, which is always open to unceasing doubts and critiques as to its intrinsic logical consistency, the religions of monotheism, resting upon articles of immutable and certain faith, have centuries-old social institutions and meditational practices which provide humanity with the priceless spiritual rationale for altruism. As the authors of the book, “The Altruistic Species,” Andrew Michael Flescher and Daniel L. Worthen concluded:

Altruism is neither a given nor an impossibility for human beings, but rather an ongoing opportunity in which to participate. Being more a matter of skill than talent, and therefore largely the result of hard work, it is something we should regard as contingent on our moral development.[24]

[1] Green. Ronald M. 1979. Religious Reason: The Rational and Moral Basis of Religious Belief. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 188.

[2] Ozinga. James R. 1999. Altruism. London: Praeger, p. xvi.

[3] Neusner, Jacob, Bruce Chilton. 2005. Altruism in World Religions, Georgetown University Press p. 50.

[4] Comte, Auguste. System of Positive Polity, Volume 1: Containing the General View of Positivism & Introductory Principles. Translated by John Henry Bridges. New York: BurtFranklin. (Original work published 1851), p. 565–56.

[5] Kant, Immanuel. 1964. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. H.J. Paton (New York: Harper and Row, p. 67.

[6] Ibid, p. 91.

[7] Hill, Thomas, Jr. 1993. “Beneficence and Self-Love: A Kantian Perspective,” in Altruism, ed. by Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller Jr., and Jeffrey Paul, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 13ff.

[8] Flescher, Andrew Michael, Daniel L. Worthen. 2007. The Altruistic Species: Scientific, Philosophical, and Religious Perspectives of Human Benevolence. Philadelphia and London: Templeton Foundation Press, p. 186-193.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Singer, Peter. 1981. The Expanding Circle: Ethics and Socio-biology. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, p. 50.

[11] Palmer, George Herbert. 1970. Altruism: its Nature and Varieties. Westport: Greenwood Press, p.4.

[12] Ibid, p. 6.

[13] Ibid, p. 7.

[14] Sells, Michael (ed.). 1996. Early Islamic Mysticism. Translated by Paul Losensky. New York: Paulist Press, p. 169.

[15] Kim, Heon Choul. 2009. Gülen’s Dialogic Sufism: A Constructional and Constructive Factor of Dialogue. Conference proceedings. Washington D.C. pp. 520-547.

[16] Robert M. Berchman, p. 23.

[17] Çağrıcı, Mus­tafa. 1982. Gazzali’ye Göre İslâm Ahlâkı, Is­tanbul, pp. 139-143.

[18] Akgündüz, Ahmet. 1996. İslam Hukukunda ve Osmanlı Tatbikatında Vakıf Müessesesi. 2nd Ed. Istanbul: Osmanlı Araştırmaları Vakfı, p. 77.

[19] Bilmen, Ömer N. 1969. Istılahat-ı Fıkhıyye Kamusu. Vol. 4., p. 294.

[20] Yediyıldız, Bahaeddin. 1996. Place of the Waqf in Turkish Cultural System. Translated by R Acun and M Oz. Istanbul: Second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II). http://www.history.hacettepe.edu.tr/archive/waqfkultur.html.

[21] Çizakça, Murat. 2000. A History of Philanthropic Foundations: The Islamic World from the Seventh Century to the Present. Istanbul: Bogazici University Press.

[22] Yalawae, Asming, and Izah M. Tahir. “The Role of Islamic Institution in Achieving Equality and Human Development: Waqf or Endowment.” Universiti Darul Iman Malaysia (UDM). http://www.capabilityapproach.com.

[23] Gill, Robin. 1999. Churchgoing and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 174-5.

[24] Flescher, Andrew Michael, Daniel L. Worthen. 2007. The Altruistic Species: Scientific, Philosophical, and Religious Perspectives of Human Benevolence. Philadelphia and London: Templeton Foundation Press, p. 239.

Gifted education involves several procedures such as testing, identification and tracking students to challenge their potential to the fullest. Initially, students take several tests including tests of intelligence, creativity, and motivation and must perform well enough to get into a gifted program. Following this testing, they have a label that they and others know quite well, gifted. Frequently, this means grouping them separately from their non-gifted peers. Accordingly, they follow a different curriculum, and attend different programs that are not available to others. Also, some practices that often occur when teaching or interacting with gifted students, such as a teacher’s or parent’s praise, convey direct and hidden messages. These messages, in essence, consistently remind them of how superior they are. Ultimately, they are taught to enjoy their superiority with a minimal or no clue about being virtuous. Most educators pay a great attention to increase their self-esteem while they were indifferent for the possibility of arrogance and conceit. Nevertheless, the “privilege” of being in the top 5 or smaller percent dramatically shapes the identity of the gifted individual from early ages. With the self–esteem enhancement movements in 80’s, the importance of humility as a significant virtue has been ignored among educators. They mostly perceived lack of self-esteem as a big problem whereas lack of humility was rather acceptable. However, potential of the gifted individuals, like any other person, deserves a more gracious treatment that regards them as human beings rather than better human resources for the nation and economy.

Corollary to the deficits in educators’ approaches to the gifted individuals, their emotional and moral development have been omitted. When one searches the studies on the development of positive moral characteristics of the gifted, such as, humility, there is almost no study on those issues. Humility in itself is a crucial virtue for several reasons. First, humility allows gifted individuals to recognize that they cannot control everything in every situation. Their superior abilities compared to their peers become a huge burden because others and their own expectations about themselves are mostly quite high. Failures and unexpected academic performance are less tolerable for the gifted. Crucially, humble gifted individuals can successfully handle challenging situations because their moral development valuing humility functions as a buffer zone and make them more resilient against challenges of life. People can have a more realistic view of themselves as long as they are well aware of their real inadequacies.

Vera and Rodriguez-Lopez (2004) pointed to the positive role of humility on competition in the organizations. They argued that fear of failure impedes people from taking initiative and humility helps people to reduce their fear of failure with the premise that people with no experience of failure are unlikely to try again. Secondly, humility helps gifted individuals to have a better and more realistic understanding about one’s self. Humble gifted people can realize their own weaknesses. This is also important for the gifted because very few people criticize them while many others praise their ability. In such a social climate, a true understanding of oneself is not an easy task. Thirdly, humble people can empathize with others easily. Gifted individuals mostly have concerns for others and have a keen moral sensitivity. However, feeling of superiority can hurt their healthy relationships with others; thus, other people become less likely to enjoy being together with them. Humble people have an increased valuation of others without a decrease in their valuation of themselves (Means & Wilson, 1990), and, thus, the need for humility is even more important for the gifted individuals.

Humility represents a major dilemma of gifted education: Although several procedures, facilities and resources are developed and implemented for the gifted, they inherently trigger a grandiosity effect. As a result of that, usual practices in the gifted education seem to nurture a less realistic view of self which is not less dangerous than the lack of self-esteem. Unfortunately, educators tend to ignore the presence of the dilemma and insist on particular practices without pondering upon the potential damages. What kinds of precautions can be taken to raise humble gifted individuals? What other messages should be given to them? Among many possible methods to overcome this problem, the following recommendations can be taken into consideration in educational and psychological practices.

1. Giftedness as a responsibility

Conceptualization of the giftedness needs fine-tuning. Traditional perspectives that seek the differences between gifted and non-gifted individuals have created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Gifted individuals have been marginalized and alienated. So-called unrealistic perception of giftedness has led to a perception of “superiority” over others. Remarkably, giftedness, as a concept, implies being the one who was awarded with some qualities which other people do not have. The concept also implies the passivity of the gifted because he was given, not necessarily because he deserves it. Corollary to this, gifted individuals should be taught about the responsibilities along with the gifts. Unlike the current practices, educators should emphasize the individual and social responsibilities corresponding to giftedness.

Individual responsibilities of the gifted individuals are related to the importance of realizing their personal strengths and skills and investing for their potential appropriately. In educational context, many gifted students tend to take the classes easy and pay attention to other “more interesting” things. They tend to make no effort beyond what the classes require, and their potential is not challenged. Individual responsibility defined as fulfillment of one’s own potential should replace externally defined responsibilities which are neither challenging nor motivating for the gifted.

Social responsibilities are critical for the gifted individuals because their potential can lead to both positive and negative changes at the societal level. Many scientific innovations facilitating our lives today are the gifted minds’ contributions to human beings. On the other hand, they could have devoted their potential to harmful innovations, too. The gifted individuals, therefore, are those who can build the civilizations with all advanced systems of technology, transportation and communication, and destroy them with mass destruction weapons, such as atom bombs. Employing the strengths and capacities to the benefit of human beings should be set as a basic goal for the gifted individuals.

2. Importance of effort over ability

Overemphasis on abilities and consideration of abilities as fixed traits tend to block gifted individuals. If people think that they possess a superior capacity and this is more or less stable, they may have difficulty in making for their goals. They often compromise their high ability with less effort that may result in underachievement and dropouts. The importance of effort and struggle over ability and performance should be integrated to the educational system.

Valuation of effort can be achieved through differentiating the curriculum for the gifted students. For example, the research indicate that easy learning materials and having a better standing in the class with respect to school achievement lead to ability attributions while mental effort and task commitment induce effort attributions (Dweck, 2006, Nicholls, 1978; Schunk, 1994). That means students tend to attribute the achievements to their abilities in easy tasks while they tend to attribute their performance in hard tasks to their hard work. Preparing the curriculum at an appropriate level of difficulty, by which students can be challenged but still can comprehend the content with some effort, should be a major task for the educators. In this way, the frame of reference for the gifted becomes the degree to which they struggle toward their goals rather than the gifts, capacities and strengths they possess.

3. Learning goals instead of performance goals

Goal setting is a crucial aspect of the education of the gifted people. Goal setting is influenced by the way educators assess student performances. There has been a tendency to evaluate school performance through objective, psychometric measures. Even though those measures are more reliable, the information gained from those measures are restricted, comparing the gifted with their counterparts instead of indicating the level at which the gifted fulfill their potential. Learning goals which can be set through individual projects should be the focus of evaluation rather than performance goals which tend to reduce the evaluation to the numbers. Learning goals also seem to be safer for the gifted since it focuses on the discovery of strategies that lead to desired outcomes whereas performance goals tend to have deleterious effects as people are preoccupied with the end result. Therefore, a third task for the educators is to preserve the gifted students from the detrimental effects of mechanical measurement of the performance. In this way, students have criterion set at their own pace for their success rather than external criteria set by others.

The above suggestions, which can be the basic steps of the fundamental changes in the system, can be further enumerated. The dilemma with the gifted education mentioned above is institutionally induced; therefore, the solutions should be addressed at the institutional level. By virtue of those changes in the educational settings, the programs for gifted education can become more individual-based and less mechanical, ultimately caring more about the critical human virtues such as humility. The political developments helped the gifted education programs to blossom, but it brought some side-effects. Educators must see those gaps and generate solutions that care about the gifted individuals.

References

• Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York: Random House.
• Nicholls, J. G. (1978). The development of the concepts of effort and ability, perception of academic attainment, and the understanding that difficult tasks require more ability. Child Development, 49, 800-814.
• Schunk, D. H. (1994). Self-regulation of self-efficacy and attribution in academic settings. In D. H. Schunk & B. J. Zimmerman (Eds.), Self-regulation of learning and performance: Issues and educational applications (pp. 75-99). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
• Vera, D. & Rodriguez-Lopez, A. 2004. Strategic virtues: Humility as a source of competitive advantage. Organizational Dynamics, 33, 4: 393-408.

In a harsh, corrupt and unforgiving land,
came a mercy and salvation.
Warring tribes and fierce factions,
he united into one nation.
And to the women at the bottom of the tribal castes,
he brought liberation.
He was. The best of creation.
A people so lost in ignorance,
they required a complete transformation.
When they prayed to many gods,
he insisted on unification.
With divine unity at its core,
he built a solid foundation.
He was. The best of creation.
When forced from his home land,
he made patient migration.
But his was a mission of mercy,
there would be no retribution.
What less would you expect? From the best of creation.
While Kings lived vain glory,
he was humility and moderation.
He had no need for worldly goods,
his purpose was to save his nation
Whatever he had he would give away,
yet he was richest in God’s estimation
He was. The best of creation
Now 14 centuries later,
he remains an inspiration.
In a world of darkness and delusion,
his way is illumination.
O God! If you grant me just one wish,
let him know of my adoration.
Your beloved one, the best of creation. 

This is the winning poem in a recent competition organized by ISRA, Islamic Sciences and Research Academy in Sydney, Australia, dedicated to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.