The second event The Fountain participated in was the Second Interfaith Conference at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, CT, US. Aimed to be a friendly conversation among Jews, Christians, and Muslims, the conference was hosted by Fr. Anthony Ciorra of Sacred Heart University and featured speakers from the three Abrahamic faith traditions in each of two panels: “Unity and Peace through Music” and “Love and Dialogue through Literature.” It was a thoughtful event with live and recorded mystic music and where we felt the word’s power  to evoke divine beauty in some of the best works of Rumi, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky.

The third event was the book launching of Moon Queen by Katharine Branning. Hosted by the Turkish Cultural Center in Manhattan, Branning spoke about her motivations behind writing this novel about Mahperi Hatun, the wife of one of the most notable Turkish Seljuk Sultans. While the novel’s center is a vigorous woman and her hunger for truth, wisdom, and honor, the book unveils many historical events during a tough period in Asia Minor, when its people were being beaten by the Mongols from the east and the Crusaders from the west. It was also a time which witnessed the birth of spiritual giants like Rumi and Yunus Emre, whose rays of hope still illuminate our world.

“Hope is not a feeling,” said Fr. Ciorra of Sacred Heart University. “It is a manifestation of belief.” In this issue, the story of Hassan Fofana from Togo is one such manifestation. Inspired by the generosity of his devout parents and of the people he met after migrating to America when he was a teenager, Fofana formed a foundation connecting student-athletes in West Africa with prep schools in the United States and Europe.

Karl Marx left an indelible mark in world history with his revolutionary ideas and social theories. Two articles in this issue by Mustafa Uzun explain the foundation of Marx’s ideology, his approach to religious thought, and how his views accurately diagnosed some of our current problems but were mistaken in their solutions. Marx failed to see the hope that a broad world view offers, choosing the narrowness of ideology instead.

Lastly, Mr. Gülen’s lead article reads like a manifesto on the hope offered by education. Gülen’s entire life is living evidence of his fight against ignorance, but in this article, he lays bare the danger ignorance poses to our world – but he also finds possibility in the devoted efforts of teachers to combat ignorance. With such teachers, our hopes for the future will always be high.

These situations entail the psychology of morality-an intriguing and growing topic of study. Significant and insightful research has been completed in an attempt to understand more about morality from a psychological perspective. Many questions have been raised in the realm of morality and ethics, such as: How do people think about morality? What are people’s concepts of a moral person? How do people apply morality in conflict and their everyday lives?

In psychologists’ attempts to answer these questions, we learn more about mankind as a whole and about our own individual selves. This article will summarize some of the most prominent studies in the field of morality psychology and use these perspectives to help attain a better understanding of who a moral person is and what they do.

Exploring differences in moral foundations between political liberals and conservatives is one interesting area of research in the psychology of morality. Graham, et al. (2009) established a definition of a moral foundation as consisting of five moral intuitions: harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, in-group/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. The researchers found that political liberals were likely to chiefly judge a moral situation along the harm/care and fairness/reciprocity aspects, while conservatives were more likely to use all aspects equally. The results of this study seem to agree with the ideologies of liberals and conservatives. Considering that conservatives are less receptive to changes in political policies and culture, it makes sense that they would place a high value on the authority of a government, and also that they would give more weight to protecting their in-group from outside influences. This ideology may in turn stem from a Hobbesian worldview (Thomas Hobbes, 1588-1679) in that everyone is at the most basic level self-interested, and therefore they must protect their own interests from the interests of others.

Liberals, on the other hand, would be more likely to go against the authority of the government or in-group concerns if they felt a moral injustice was being committed. This may be one reason why conservatives sometimes accuse liberals of not being patriotic.

As for the purity/sanctity condition, there is some doubt as to whether it can really be considered a moral facet. Conservatives seem to think that this is the case, but liberals on the other hand give nearly zero consideration to aspects of purity during moral judgments, as it seems to be an unrelated concept. Additionally, this idea may explain why conservatives tend to be against gay marriage, while liberals are more likely to support gay relationships.

Before moving on, let me pose another question: which action is more moral, volunteering time in a soup kitchen or keeping your vow to your wife not to go to the racetrack and gamble on payday?

Now we turn our attention to an enlightening study by Janoff-Bulman, et al. (2009) that analyzed morality in a different way: by categorizing it into two distinctive types, prescriptive and proscriptive. Prescriptive morality has a commendatory and encouraging nature, and it is characterized by taking positive action and the question what one should do to be moral. Proscriptive morality is more commanding and punishing in its aspects, and it is characterized by preventing negative action and the question what one should not do to prevent immorality. The distinction between the two can be states as helping versus not harming.

The researchers provide evidence for these two different types of morality in their studies. For example, in one experiment, participants were asked to describe what they thought it meant to be-depending on the manipulation-either moral or immoral. They had correctly predicted that proscriptive morality tended to have more concrete and defined language, so as to assist its adherents in knowing exactly what actions are wrong. Prescriptive morality’s language was more abstract so as to include more possible right actions.

It was also found that people were more disapproving when someone committed forbidden acts as opposed to someone failing to perform righteous acts. This finding-that it is generally more objectionable to see an overtly immoral act than to see a failure to commit a positive act-is strong evidence for the prescriptive/proscriptive distinctions of morality.

There are many more questions about morality researchers are asking. For instance, what lies behind the rationalization of a racist behavior or attitude? How are people’s moral principles influenced by the particular identity of the individuals involved? Uhlmann, et al. (2009) examined these topics. Most of us tend to think of ourselves as having a relatively stable moral standing, but this study showed that for most people, this simply is not the case. People were presented with different moral dilemmas that measured if they would support either a consequentialist solution or a deontological solution to the dilemma. According to the researchers’ hypothesis, changing some details of the scenario could influence people’s preference for either consequentialism (the idea that it is permissible to commit an action that would normally be considered immoral for the benefit of the greater good) or deontology (the idea that there are some actions that are morally wrong under any and all circumstances); this is in fact what they observed.

They observed that political liberals were more likely to sacrifice a white man to save a black group of people and less likely to sacrifice a black man to save a white group. The reverse effect was observed for conservatives in that they were more willing to sacrifice a black man to save a white group and vice versa. They also found that conservatives were more likely to endorse the unintended killing of Iraqi civilians by American forces than the unintentional killing of American civilians by Iraqi armed forces.

These results provides a striking example of how people’s moral concepts can change when the specifics of those involved in the moral equation change, which in turn suggests that people value some lives more than others. Conservatives, in particular, seem to value people who are part of the in-group over people who are not. This study also suggests that liberals may actually devalue in-group members in an attempt to maintain a non-racist morality.

Another major question is how do religious concepts and the knowledge that one’s actions are being judged affect how people behave morally? The following study (Shariff & Norenzayan, 2007) asked participants to play a game that would measure their generosity towards total strangers. The researchers discovered that people who were primed with words relating to God and religion were more generous on average than those who received no priming. The researchers also found that priming people with secular concepts of moral institutions had the same effect.

These results provide strong evidence that people will try to act more morally if they have some idea in the back of their minds, whether conscious or not, about being judged in some manner for their moral actions. This does not have to apply exclusively to religious concepts, as the results of this study show. As a matter of fact, related research conducted by Bateson, Nettle, and Roberts (2006) showed that just the indirect suggestion of being judged by other people was enough to reproduce this effect-an increase in moral behavior. Specifically, they saw a three-fold increase in the amount paid for drinks supplied on an honor system when the image associated with payment resembled human eyes versus a control image. Apparently, a pair of eyes is enough to trigger a conscious or subconscious idea of being watched and judged.

What is known about the neural activity of the brain itself with regards to moral judgments? What roles do cognitive and emotional processes in the brain play in thinking about morality? Greene et al. (2004) conducted detailed biological mapping of brain neuronal activity of individuals during their thought processes that went along with solving hypothetical moral dilemmas. It was observed that areas in the brain associated with abstract reasoning and cognitive control-regions noted included the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex-were found to be more active during very difficult moral judgments where utilitarian resolutions require violation of personal moral convictions. They concluded from their work that utilitarian moral judgments rely more on cognitive processes and abstract thinking, whilst more personal moral judgments relied primarily on social-emotional processes.

This is good evidence for two different types of moral processing-cognitive or more logical, and emotional or more personal. During this study, Greene and colleagues also considered the degree of personal relatedness of a scenario with the likelihood of utilitarian resolution, and therefore the associated cognitive processes and abstract-thinking brain regions. They looked at what happens when you alter the classic moral dilemma of the runaway trolley car (Thomson, 1986) by making it either more personal or less personal. It was observed that people were more likely to engage in utilitarian calculations when the harm was less personal-in the case, that involved pulling a lever to kill a person-as opposed to when harm was more personal, in the case requiring pushing someone off of a bridge.

Morality is often connected to religion and religious values, and a natural topic to investigate is the role that sacred values may play in moral psychology. Ginges et al. (2007) examined the Israeli-Palestine conflict in an attempt to answer the question of how sacred values are involved in the resolution of political conflicts. The researchers wanted to shed some light on several issues related to sacred values in political conflict – namely, how do instrumental incentives, such as monetary gain, affect compromise with sacred values?

Interestingly, they observed that adding instrumental incentives to hypothetical deals involving the forfeiting of some sacred value actually made the subjects who held sacred values more opposed to and outraged about compromise than if they simply offered the compromise on its own. They also found that these people were less opposed to compromise if the deal also stipulated that the opposing party would give up one of their own sacred rights.

These results are important in that they show how radically different sacred values are from instrumental values. Sacred values are, for the most part, non-negotiable, except in the cases mentioned above, and it seems as though the idea of offering something of instrumental value in an attempt to negotiate the non-negotiable only serves as an insult to those who hold these sacred values. It is only when some other sacred value is offered up that we see some willingness to compromise, suggesting that sacred values cannot be compared with instrumental values, but they can be compared to other sacred values. Because of this, one may wonder whether sacred values can really be considered truly uncontestable, as opposed to simply a different type of value that is not comparable with more material principles.

An important side of the psychology of morality concerns how people perceive the moral legitimacy of authority under different circumstances. More specifically, how much of a moral investment do the participants have in the moral issues. The researchers Skitka, et al. (2009) correlated an individual’s general degree of moral conviction with how much they either supported or agreed with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on physician-assisted suicide in 2006 that prevented the Attorney General from prosecuting doctors in Oregon who operated under state law. It was discovered that the degree of moral investment a person had about this decision increased the variance of people’s perception of the legitimacy of authority. More specifically, people who supported the decision with high moral conviction more strongly supported the post-decision legitimacy of the Supreme Court than people with lower moral conviction, and people against the decision with high moral conviction more strongly opposed the post-decision legitimacy of the Supreme Court than people with lower moral conviction.

These results are strong evidence for the idea that our perceived legitimacy of authority is intimately tied with our moral conviction on the issues that matter most to us. In other words, if the government made a ruling that we did not agree with, but did not care much about (for example, the ruling that pizza is a vegetable), we wouldn’t have much reason to deny the legitimacy of the government. However, decisions made about issues we have a strong moral standing on tend to either strongly reinforce or strongly undermine the perceived legitimacy of authority in our attempt to reconcile our moral standing versus the decree of authority. Additionally, a study could be run to test the hypothesis that liberals would be more willing to deny the legitimacy of the government, and conservatives would be more willing to affirm the government’s power.

We believe it is moral to care about others and give charity, but what motivates the moral response of giving? Some psychologists are interested in this question. Olivola & Shafir (2011) found that people were willing to give more money to a charity if they were required to run a marathon as opposed to simply attending a picnic. This finding shows that associating donations with self-sacrifice or suffering activates people’s concepts of morality.

How could we measure if having concepts of justice and fairness cause people to strengthen their moral responses as well? An experiment might be set up in this manner: one group of participants would be told that they would be donating to a village in Africa that is suffering from a drought, and as a result, running low on food. The other group would be told that local rebels are constantly raiding the village and taking their food, thus depleting their food supplies. We would then measure how much people would be willing to donate to the village in each situation. The condition of need arising from a natural disaster should not activate concepts of justice and fairness; however, even if some people think suffering from droughts is an inherently unjust event, the second condition – need arising from a military-type attack – should greatly outweigh the first in terms of justice/fairness considerations. Based on the results of the Olivola & Shafir (2011) study, it is reasonable to expect that people would donate more money to the people being raided, since that condition should activate moral concepts such as justice and fairness.

What do these studies tell us about what a truly moral person is? Let’s first look at the five moral foundations again, from Graham, et al. (2009). It appears that a truly moral person bases their judgments primarily on harm/care and fairness/reciprocity. This is because there can be situations where authority or in-group concerns can conflict with harm and fairness considerations, and in these situations the latter set of moral outlooks should prevail. One only needs to consider an example such as this: imagine you are asked to commit atrocities in the name of your country. It should be clear that these atrocities couldn’t be justified in this way. Based on the results of Skitka et al. (2009) such a request may even lead one to deny the legitimacy of whatever authority commanded this action-which is what a truly moral person would and should do in that situation. For reasons like these, harm/care and fairness/reciprocity should be on the forefront of one’s moral concerns.

Harm/care and fairness/reciprocity are also probably closely related to each other, and in many situations, one moral concept is found with the other. Consider an instance where a person beats his wife in an act of drunken violence. It’s clear that harm/care are involved in this situation, but also consider that we could say that what he is doing is an injustice to his wife. Similarly, suppose an example where a banker swindles a client for thousands of dollars. It’s clear this has to do with fairness/reciprocity, but we could also consider this action as a way of harming somebody else in a non-physical manner.

Research further clarifies a truly moral person as one who leads a disciplined life that builds off of the proscriptive, preventing immorality, and subsequently the prescriptive, acting morally. Such a person must be a role model for everyone else to follow. For this reason, a truly moral person is careful not to commit proscribed acts. A person who performs many good deeds, but also many bad deeds, will appear insincere and hypocritical. In other words, a truly moral person does their best to not mix the good with the bad. Once a person has built a strong moral foundation of avoiding proscribed behaviors, he or she can branch out and help others with ever-increasing frequency. Furthermore, with regards to the study on the effects of being watched, a truly moral person acts in every situation as though he or she is being watched or will be judged later on, even if they know that they are alone. This is because they know that any action they do may have consequences at some point, either immediate or distant.

Work in the area of the psychology of morality sheds some light on how a moral person behaves, however an ideally moral person does what is right with 100% accuracy, and no matter what the circumstances. This is an ideal, and very few people can be considered to be ideal moral examples. Prophets are the only people who could be considered to be morally infallible. Prophets like Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad, peace be upon them, serve as examples of perfect moral conduct. Even though none of us can hope to attain the rank of a Prophet, every person ought to strive for this ideal and be the best person they can be. If we hope to have any positive impact on the world we must first start by changing ourselves for the better. Only then can we attempt to sincerely help other people around us, starting with our close family and friends, and later on, the larger world.

M. Tarik Ozgur is a graduate of Lehigh University Physiology Department in 2013.

References

• Bateson, M., Nettle, D., & Roberts, G. (2006). Cues of being watched enhance cooperation in a real-world setting. Biology letters, 2(3), 412-414.
• Ginges, J., Atran, S., Medin, D., & Shikaki, K. (2007). Sacred bounds on rational resolution of violent political conflict. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(18), 7357-7360.
• Graham, J., Haidt, J., & Nosek, B.A. Liberals and Conservatives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 96 (5), 1029.
• Greene, J. D., Nystrom, L. E., Engell, A. D., Darley, J. M., & Cohen, J. D. (2004). The neural bases of cognitive conflict and control in moral judgment. Neuron, 44(2), 389-400.
• Janoff-Bulman, R., Sheikh, S., & Hepp, S. (2009). Proscriptive versus prescriptive morality: Two faces of moral regulation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(3), 521-537.
• Olivola, C. Y. (2011). When noble means hinder noble ends: The benefits and costs of a preference for martyrdom in altruism. The Science of Giving: Experimental Approaches to Study of Charity, 49-62. New York, NY: Routledge.
• Shariff, A. F., & Norenzayan, A. (2007). God Is Watching You Priming God Concepts Increases Prosocial Behavior in an Anonymous Economic Game. Psychological Science, 18(9), 803-809.
• Skitka, L. J., Aramovich, N. P., Lytle, B. L., & Sargis, E. G. (2009). Knitting together an elephant: An integrative approach to understanding the psychology of justice reasoning. In The psychology of justice and legitimacy: The Ontario symposium (Vol. 11, pp. 1-26).
• Thomson, J.J. (1986). Rights, Restitution, and Risk Essays, in Moral Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Uhlmann, E. L., Pizarro, D. A., Tannenbaum, D., & Ditto, P. H. (2009). The motivated use of moral principles. Judgment and Decision Making, 4(6), 476-491.

‘Ashq, which the spirit feels outside the intervention of free will, cannot be controlled by the person so affected, for its real source is God, Who loves Himself in a way special to His Sacred Essence and is essentially independent of the created. In addition, it is essentially different from the love felt by the created for the created or the Creator. This sacred, essential love of God for Himself is the reason why He created the universe and why He caused humanity to appear in the world. It is also this love that manifests itself in human beings as love for God, as the most essential center of humanity’s relationship with God.

‘Ashq is the final step leading to God, and a lover who has reached it almost has no further steps to take. God manifested Himself first as this sacred, essential love required by His being God. I particularly avoid attributing to Him ‘ashq (passion or esctatic love) in the absolute sense of the word, and prefer using the word mahabba (love).

Some tend to call this Divine Love Knowledge, as Knowledge is the first manifestation of the Absolute Divine Being, Who is infinitely exalted above having any equals or likes. Every manifestation of the Divine Being is a condescension. This first condescension is called “Knowledge,” as it is God’s Knowledge. It is also called “the Sacred Love” in the sense that God loves to observe and to be “observed;” or “the Tablet” as it comprehends or contains all of existence; or “the Pen,” as it handles all things in existence in all their details. Jabarut (the Realm of the Transcendental Manifestation of Divine Attributes and Names) and the Truth of Ahmad (the Prophet’s Name before his coming to the world) are other titles of this condescension.

Sacred Love is a mystery peculiar to the Divine Essence. Other Attributes of His are appended to or dependent on this love. It is for this reason that those who fly with the wings of ‘ashq directly reach the Divine Essence and attain amazement, whereas others have to pass through the intermediate realms of the worlds of things and Names. The ways leading to God are almost beyond number. Sufism, the science of truth, contains the food, light, and other necessities travelers need for the journey, and the (spiritual) orders (tariqas) are the ports from which they set out, or the schools in which the principles of the journey are taught.

The ways to the Ultimate Truth can be divided into two main groups. The first is the way in which the wayfarer is offered or taught such principles as eating less, drinking less, sleeping less, increasing contemplation, and refraining from unnecessary social intercourse. Almost all Sufi orders are based on these practices. The main invocations recited by followers of this way are the Seven Names: There is no deity but God, God, He, the Ultimate Truth, the All-Living, the Self-Subsistent, the All-Overwhelming. By reciting these Names, one seeks to pass through the seven steps of the human self or soul: the Evil-Commanding, the Self-Condemning, the Inspired, the Serene and Peaceful or the Soul at Rest, the Soul Well-Pleased (with God), the Soul Pleasing (to God), and the Purified or Innocent Self or Soul. To these seven Names, some add such Names of Majesty as the All-Powerful, the All-Strong, the All-Compelling, the Master, and the All-Loving; others add such Names of Grace as the All-Independent, Single One; the One (having no partners or equals), the Unique One, and the Eternally Besought-of-All.

The second way is based on strict adherence to the Qur’an and the Sunna, and the encouragement of certain recitations. Those who follow this way strive to comply with the Sunna in whatever they do. Rather than reciting certain Names, they follow the methods used by God’s Messenger to worship, invoke, and pray, reflect on His Acts and creatures, and mention Him with all of His Names. Joining these activities with a meticulous following of the commandments of Shari’a, they are firmly attached to their guides or teachers and abandon themselves to the tides of ‘ashq and spiritual attraction toward God.

Once they have attained ‘ashq and attraction, existence with its outer dimension vanishes from their sight. They are annihilated with respect to the carnal aspect of their existence and begin to feel and observe the absolute Divine Unity. At this point, they immediately come to their senses without becoming confused or going to extremes in the relationship between the Creator and the created. In such a manner do they complete their journey.

The basic principles of this second way are regular worship, love, spiritual attraction toward God, regular recitation, and the companionship of one’s guide or teacher. In this context recitation, in addition to mentioning God with all of His Names, involves study or attending classes in whatever leads one to God. This is what the Prophet, upon him be peace and blessings, meant when he described this kind of recitation: They study together. At times, a lover finds himself or herself in the stream of joyful zeal and yearning, regarded as another dimension of ‘ashq.¹

O God! Guide us to what You love and are pleased with, and bestow blessing and peace on Muhammad, the one with whom You are pleased, and on his faithful Companions.

1- Muslim, “Dhikr,” 11.

Matter and Beyond explores a wide range of ethical, philosophical, spiritual and scientific questions through interviews with leading scholars and scientists on compelling topics such as: mysteries of consciousness, the healing powers of music and sound, love, ecology, astronomy, artificial intelligence, cosmology, quantum mechanics and free will, spiritual capital, bioethics and unity of knowledge.

What follows is an interview with Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr, one of the world’s leading experts on Islamic science and spirituality. He is professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University. Professor Nasr is the author of numerous books including Man and Nature: the Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man (Kazi Publications, 1998), Religion and the Order of Nature (Oxford, 1996), and Knowledge and the Sacred (SUNY, 1989).

M&B: You study mathematics, physics, geology, and history of science. In what way does this benefit you?

Bismi’llah al-Rahman al-Rahim . Let me begin with the Name of God. I was gifted when I was a young person in science and mathematics. After I came to America to study I received the highest grades in many national tests in these fields. So everybody thought that I should be a scientist. And I had a great deal of love for science and a wish to understand the real significance of what nature is. Furthermore, I loved mathematics. Consequently I went to MIT, which was the leading scientific institution at that time, and still is today in this field. I was studying physics and mathematics, but concentrating on physics. Soon, however, I realized that in fact modern physics, not only quantum mechanics but going back to Newtonian physics, does not deal with the nature of things. It deals with mathematical structures related to the quantitative aspect of phenomena. You will never come to know the actual nature of things by studying physics. So I lost interest in becoming a physicist. And then I went from there, after studying mathematics and physics at MIT, to study geology and geophysics at Harvard. The reason I did that is that I wanted to know also a descriptive science. Now, during all those years that I was studying the sciences, in parallel I was studying philosophy a great deal. The scientific discipline of my mind served me in a very positive way later on.

First of all, throughout all the criticism I have made of modern science in the last fifty years, nobody has been able to say that this man does not know anything about modern science because I do know something about this science. Secondly, it has of course given me mental discipline and, I hope, some clarity, which I try to reflect in my writings and my lectures.

M&B: For most people those disciplines are separate. What are your comments about that?

I believe that one of the greatest tragedies that has happened in Western civilization after the Middle Ages, and has resulted in what we see today, is compartmentalization, that is, a separation of various modes of knowing, various forms of knowledge, from each other, so that few matters are known in a complete way. Here I am, a professor at a major American university, and the students who come and study with us-their minds are like drawers in your bedroom. You put socks in one drawer, underwear in another, shirts in another… So they go from one class to another, they learn certain things, but there is no connection between various subjects that they learn. It is not only I who say this; the great English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said this over a half a century ago. This compartmentalization is one of the greatest dangers facing modern civilization. In traditional civilization there used to be a unity of knowledge. Of course, Islamic civilization is based upon tawhid, upon unity, and in the framework of the Islamic sciences all the different disciplines, from poetry to music to philosophy to history to geology to medicine to physics and mathematics, all of these have some kind of interrelation. There has always been an overall world view that has embraced them.

Now, that has been destroyed, but there have been some attempts to try to create a metaphysical basis to reintegrate the sciences. For example, Whitehead was interested in this matter and he tried very hard to do this, but none of these people really succeeded because the whole education system in the West is now based on this kind of specialization and unrelated disciplines that have nothing to do with each other. So what to do? You end up with a scientistic positivist claiming that nothing unscientific is important, that there is no other mode of knowledge but science-that is one side. On the other side for now we see those who emphasize only the outward meaning of religion with little interest in its intellectual and spiritual aspects. And other people fall in between.

What I have tried to do in my life is to resuscitate a vision of the unity of knowledge based on a metaphysical foundation and, more particularly, within the Islamic tradition, where this has been so important.

M&B: Was knowledge compartmentalized like that in the past? Could you give us some examples from history?

No, it was not. Let me mention the field of art which in traditional civilization was related to knowledge, to the science of forms. Now that link has been largely severed as has the link between various branches of knowledge. It is a modern illness that has deprived poetry and art of their intellectual function, that is, their relation to knowledge at the highest level. In the nineteenth century, when a lot of the Romantic poets of the English language such as Wordsworth depicted poetically beautiful scenes of nature and were against the vulgarization, the destruction, the ugly landscapes that resulted from the Industrial Revolution in England, their poetry was taken simply as sensibility, as emotion; it was not allowed to challenge the science of the day, which reigned supreme as the only legitimate form of knowing and in fact continues to do so.

This situation goes back to Galileo and Descartes, who took away from nature all quality and said everything-beauty, other things-are subjective and the object of scientific knowledge is ultimately pure quantity. Modern science still suffers from that myopia, whereas external reality is not pure quantity. Let me give you some examples. Take one of the great Ottoman mosques such as Sultanahmet. Now, when you stand on one side of the square before you get to the mosque, you have trees, and you have cars going by, you have before you a space-a space that you experience. You can describe that space from the point of physics-Cartesian coordinates, measurements, and so on,-but your immediate experience of that space is still there. When you go across the square and into the mosque, you again experience a space but it is a very different space. You have the same situation in the sacred architecture of Persia, in the Arab world, of the Taj Mahal in India, and in other places. The great architects who built these edifices provided for you an experience and a vision and another aspect of the reality which we call space and they did so on the basis of a science which was not divorced from other forms of knowledge. They did not create only a subjective space but one as real as the space across the street that we can measure with Cartesian coordinates and that cars drive through without ever thinking that this is a different space, qualitatively speaking, from the space of the mosque. Both the immediate experience of the space in the street and the sacred space in the mosque prove the poverty of the reduction of space to pure quantity á la Descartes.

It is the same with music. Music takes you out of your ordinary experience of time. So does poetry, but especially music, and it makes you experience time in a different way. Now, that other time that you experience is not simply a fantasy; it is not simply subjectivism; it is another aspect of reality. In all traditional arts there is a science that reveals another dimension of reality without this science being completely divorced from other modes of knowledge. A traditional mosque or cathedral is related to cosmology and theology as well as the science of forms, materials, colors and optics. Such edifices are themselves testimony to the unity of knowledge and the necessity to reject the compartmentalization of various modes of knowing.

M&B: In what ways can we relate human and experiential aspects of knowledge to scientific knowledge?

As you sit here, you have a single center of consciousness. Otherwise, you would be mentally ill and you would be taken to see a psychiatrist. A normal human being, who does not have a mental illness, has one single consciousness although it can partake of levels. In our everyday life we try to relate the different things that we do and think and say to that center determining who we are. So the yearning for unity is within the very nature of the human state.

When we do a lot of irrelevant things, totally separate things, what happens is that gradually we become compartmentalized ourselves; we become scattered. That leads actually to a kind of psychological dislocation and a house divided against itself, as Christ (pbuh) said, shall not stand.

There are many people who, in order to live with themselves, have divided their mind into several parts. With one part they pursue science, with one part they pursue art, with one part they pursue religion, and with one part they pursue this and that other activity. They are not integrated. But the goal of human life on earth is to become integrated. The consequence of this lack of integration, this lack of unity, is to be seen in so many fields today, for example in modern medicine. That is why we are talking just now about holistic medicine as embracing all the different elements of our being-our body, psyche, soul, spirit-that must be taken as interdependent realities whose harmony is necessary in order to have real health.

More and more people are also now speaking of a holistic worldview whose loss has caused the environmental crisis. Ecology by nature is a discipline that brings things together. If we destroy the Potomac River here, we do not know what effect it will have on the fish in Mexico. But it might have an effect of which we are not as yet aware. Now many are beginning to realize more and more that on the earth everything is intertwined and our experiential knowledge cannot be divorced from scientific knowledge and vice versa.

Today even some modern scientists are beginning to realize this truth, but they still exclude the spiritual world and the psychological world from their science. At least on the material, however, level they are realizing that this cutting of things from their natural setting and analyzing them and getting knowledge about them is not the whole of knowledge. There is also crucial knowledge based on the interrelatedness of things. And I think it is here that Islamic thought can make a very important contribution to contemporary thought.

M&B: In what way is acquiring that kind of knowledge about the interrelatedness of nature different from the design argument in theology?

First of all, the design argument may also be found in Islam in another form. We have it in all religions. But putting all the theological aspects aside, if you find a watch on a table, you would think that someone designed it and that the person had the intelligence to design a watch. When you see things much more complicated than the watch, working in a remarkable fashion, it creates in you an awareness of an incredible intelligent design and a sense of awe, of wonder. That is what modern science has for the most part tried to destroy. Einstein, one of the greatest scientists, had this sense of wonder-but ordinary science as it is taught in schools is against encouraging this sense of wonder. Rather, it has tried to equate to explain with to explain anyway, providing a view in which there is no sense of wonder. The enchantment of nature, wonderment, they have been all cast away. Now, all religions emphasize the human soul’s experience of wonder. For example, the Qur’an speaks so much about God’s creation and asks us to think, to meditate upon and to wonder about God’s creation. That is impossible without accepting the remarkable design in God’s creation.

M&B: Do you think that becoming aware of ecological problems is related to realizing human responsibility? A crisis can always be positive in a way in that it can force us to re-examine our position. When the earth trembles under your feet, you are in a different frame of mind than when you were walking on solid earth and you did not think about the earth. When you are sitting here you do not even think about the floor, but if the floor begins to shake, if there is a big earthquake, you will immediately think about the floor.

Now, the environmental crisis has caused many people to realize that modern science and technology by themselves are not going to solve all the problems of the world. It is true that greed, domination, and power politics have all played a role in this crisis, but they were always around. Such things have been around since time immemorial. What has changed is what modern technology and science have made possible-the destruction of all of human life, the destruction of whole ecosystems. Attila the Hun, Julius Caesar, Darius the Great or other great conquerors had vast armies consisting of hundreds of thousands of men but those armies could not destroy nature in the way one single chemical plant, one single oil spill can do. So a lot of people have become aware that there is something wrong; there is something seriously wrong. And that is the only positive aspect of this crisis because it makes us aware of the threat to human life.

I have written for fifty years on this matter. I am one of the first Muslim thinkers to have written about such subject is and one of the first to predict the environmental crisis and I stand by what I said but this matter half a century ago. Every kind of trying to save the planet by recourse to only good engineering or economic planning is just cosmetic. I just had a discussion, which is coming out in the next issue of the Islamic Science journal, in which I said that if someone has cancer as a result of which his skin turns yellow, if you just put some cosmetics on the face of woman so that her cheeks seem rosy, that is not going to cure her cancer. We need to do something much more profound than this.

M&B: Do you think developing religious and artistic views of nature, as you have described, and finding various ways to gain knowledge to reach God will affect people’s responses to the global environmental crisis?

Ordinary people are drawn by their inner nature to the beauty of God’s creation. In Washington, D.C., in the beginning of April, you have the cherry blossoms. I know you have seen cherry blossoms-one of most beautiful natural manifestations in big cities anywhere in the world. There are hundreds and hundreds of Japanese trees which were presented to the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century and which are found especially around the basin near the Thomas Jefferson Monument and certain other places in Washington. They are very beautiful when in bloom, and people are drawn from all over to their beauty. So, there is still certainly attraction to the beauties of nature. But the problem is that modern education and culture have eclipsed or lessened the awareness of human beings of the relation between this beauty and the Beauty of God. So many people will say, “Oh, what a beautiful tree!” But that does not usually remind them of God because of a secularized culture that has dominated the West for the past few centuries. But the natural inclination toward beauty is always there.

In this context it is interesting to note that many people who are atheists are also environmentalists. They want to preserve nature. They want to preserve the forests and the mountains. That, for them, is “God,” without realizing that they are seeing God’s Theophanies, God’s creation, in these beautiful, natural scenes that are for them “sacred” and “sacrosanct.” In a godless cosmos that dominates over the mindset of so many in the West, however, there is no room for the presence of the sacred in its true sense. Furthermore, there is no way of solving the environmental problem without realizing that nature is sacred in the religious sense of this word. Therefore, you have to first of all revive awareness of the sacred, which I have tried to do in several of my writings.

It is important also to realize that the sacred is not only a category pertaining to the Torah, the Gospels or the Qur’an, a church or a mosque. Of course, they are the heart of the sacred for the followers of these various religions, but the sacred also exists in God’s creation, in planets and animals, in the mountains, deserts and seas, in the firmament and the stars. It is crucial to treat nature as something sacred if the present environmental crisis is to be overcome. Unless we do not do that, nothing else is really going to work.

M&B: That seems to be a common point between all the religions. May be something around which people can come together?

I wrote a book called Religion and the Order of Nature that was translated into Turkish two years ago. It is one of my major books, one in which I speak precisely about how all the religions of the world, despite all their different languages and forms, have a remarkably similar view towards the order of nature, where the order of nature comes from, why this order, and how important it is in this domain for the religions of the world to work together. That is perhaps the best hope that we have because in most places in the world people still listen to their religious leaders, whether they be imams, priests or rabbis. If on Fridays the imams in mosques would concentrate on the importance of treating nature as God’s sacred creation, within a few months such teachings would affect what the people do.

A few people will say, “We do not care,” but the vast majority of ordinary people would listen, and so I think that all the religions of the world have a responsibility and all the religions of the world can work together very closely in this vital matter. Furthermore, members of the Abrahamic family have to realize that the love for nature is not pantheism. It is not the negation of the transcendence of God.

Let me end with this famous poem from Rumi. It says, “If only the world of existents had tongues, so with those tongues they could unveil the mystery of existence.” I have always said, echoing Rumi and our other sages, that everything is alive, everything bears within itself a divine mystery, but it does not have a tongue to speak to us in such a manner that we can hear its call. We have to learn its language expressed through what appears to us as and from the ordinary human point of view as eloquent silence. 

Interview conducted by Mustafa Tabanli for Ebru TV for the television show Matter and Beyond, episode 23.

There are close spiritual relations between the Cave of Hira in Mecca and the Aqsa Mosque, and between Mecca and Jerusalem. In Mecca- to be more specific, in the Cave of Hira-Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, devoted himself to worship, and the Revelation started there, while the Prophet’s journey from the Sacred Mosque (in Mecca) to the Aqsa Mosque ended in Jerusalem. The Aqsa Mosque was also the place from which the Prophet started his heavenly journey. In addition, the Aqsa Mosque was the first of the two qiblahs to which Muslims directed themselves in prayer, and it was the place where Prophet Muhammad led the other prophets in prayer. Mecca, on the other hand, is the place where the first of the Two Honorable Mosques lies, to which every Muslim pays a visit at least once in a lifetime if they can afford to do so. It is also the place where the Cave of Hira is located, where the Glorious Qur’an was revealed for the first time. This is why Muslims love and concern themselves with all these sacred places equally.

The Ottoman conquest

Jerusalem was under Mameluke rule before the Ottoman era, which lasted from 1517 until the downfall of the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In 1517, Sultan Selim I put an end to the reign of the Mamelukes in Egypt, and consequently the same in Jerusalem, which was also under the Mamelukes’ sovereignty.

Once Sultan Selim I had established authority over Syria, Egypt, including the Two Honorable Mosques (the Sacred Mosque in Mecca and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina), and the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, he decreed that no new churches or places of worship were to be built in the cities, the towns, or the villages of these areas. However, the places of worship already built were to be maintained in order to ensure that they were used according to their original purposes. The old buildings could be demolished only if they were rebuilt in their original places and in the same style of construction. By making such a decree, Sultan Selim I followed the example of the Commander of the Faithful, Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab, who, in 15 AH (637), acknowledged the due rights of all non-Muslim sects in writing. This conduct was likewise repeated by Sultan Selim I when he conquered Jerusalem; he proclaimed a written decree (firman) stating that all the rights of the Christians and Jews were to be observed. He thus ensured for all the sects of non-Muslims the right to practice their rituals freely. This decree, which was penned by the then judge of Jerusalem, was copied out by the Armenian Sarkiz Karakoç, from the original copy, which is found in the State Archives of the Armenian Patriarchy in Jerusalem. It is also found in the Book of Churches in the Prime Ministerial Ottoman Archives in Ankara. In the abovementioned decree, Sultan Selim I defined the rights of the non-Muslims and forbade any violations of such rights.

The following is a translation of the Arabic text of the decree, which in turn has been translated from the Turkish version of the document.

The Text of the Decree of Jerusalem

“Let this decree be duly abided by.

This honorable decree, decreed by His Majesty, bearing the monogram of the Sultan, with God’s help, states that:

With God’s help, we have arrived in Jerusalem on 25 Safar (the second month of the Arabic lunar calendar) 923 AH (1517). In the company of the other priest, the Armenian Patriarch, Sarkiz, who came asking us to grant his followers favors, in which regard they requested us to let them keep under their control the churches and other places of worship which from ancient times have been under their administration, as well as to renew the covenant granted to them by Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab and Salahuddin al-Ayyubi. Thereupon, it has been decided that the Armenian priests will continue to be authorized to hold under their control-as they have been doing-the Church of Qiyamah, the Cave of Bethlehem, where Jesus Christ was born, the keys of the gate to the north, the two candle-sticks and their candles at the gate of Qiyamah, the great churches, Mar Yaqub, the Churches of Dayr Az-Zaytun, Habs al-Masih and Nablus, including the churches of the Abyssinians, Copts, and Assyrians.

This honorable decree states that nobody from other religions shall interfere with them. I have issued this decree ordering this: let it be duly abided by. The control and disposition of the abovementioned great churches are to be for their owners. Similarly, this applies to the churches located in the suburbs and inside the borders of the Armenian Patriarchate in Mar Yaqub. The same also applies to the places of worship of other sects, such as the Abyssinians, Copts, and Assyrians, i.e., they also have the right to practice their rituals therein, and control such places of worship themselves. Further, no one has the right to interfere in appointing or dismissing those who are in charge of religious affairs and those who supervise the monks, priests, metropolitans, and bishops. Again, all their religious affairs, their churches, temples, monasteries, and other sacred places are under their authority, and no one has the right to interfere.

People of all sects have the right to enter the Church of Qiyamah, to go to the center and the tomb of Virgin Mary in the suburbs of Jerusalem. They also have the right to visit the Cave where Jesus Christ was born, the keys of the gate in the north, the two candlesticks at the Church of Qiyamah, the lamps inside the cemetery, and the candles. This may be done by keeping the ceremonies and acts of worship in the church Qiyamah performed according to the agreed beliefs.

Thus, people of any nation have the right to enter the Church of Qiyamah, walk around it, visit its door, see the gold and the precious stones in its windows, watch and visit the temple inside, and to visit all the wells and the shrine of Mar Yuhanna in the yard of the Church of Qiyamah. People also have the right to visit Habs al-Masih, which is located near Mar Yaqub in the suburbs, visit the rooms of Yaqub, which is also located in the suburbs, and visit the rooms and the guesthouses near the Cave of Bethlehem.

Furthermore, the previously mentioned Armenian patriarchate has the right to manage all the gardens and olive farms, and in general their churches, temples, monasteries, and shrines. They also have full control over all their possessions, their endowments, and whatever they own. No one should obstruct any Armenian person who comes to visit the Church or the Well called “Zamzam.” Similarly, no one is to cause any harm to their farms, their place of worship, or their shrines; no one has the right to forbid them from reaching such places.

From now on, this decree of the sultanate is to be abided to according to the way explained. No one from any different religion should interfere in their affairs. Let my honorable children, viziers, pious tutors, judges, beylerbeyis (governor general), governors of sanjaks (i.e. subdivisions of a province), voyvodes (native princes; governor or mayor), subashis (policy superintendents), and the like act by this. Finally, no one should oppose any of them, whatever the case may be, and nothing of what has previously been stated is to be altered or changed. If any one interferes, changes, or alters something, they will be considered to be among the criminals and sinners in God’s sight.

All should know that my orders, and my decree which bears my monogram-I, the conqueror of the world-will be certified, and let the content of this decree be duly abided by.

This is written in 923 after Hijrah.”

From this we can see that Sultan Selim I, having arrived in Jerusalem, received the Armenian patriarch, the clergymen, and subjects; he granted them safety, treated them generously, and, further, renewed Umar’s covenant and Salahuddin’s treaty.

It is worth mentioning that such treatment was not restricted to Jerusalem alone, but rather was introduced in many other places. For instance, Sultan Selim I also issued a similar decree for the monks of Saint Catherine Monastery in Sinai once he settled in Cairo in 1517. In this decree, Sultan Selim granted the monks of Saint Catherine the same rights he had previously granted to the Armenian patriarchate, the Abyssinians, and the Assyrian Copts in Jerusalem.

It is noteworthy that throughout history there has been no single incident in which a Muslim leader has besieged a church or a place of worship, attacked it, or forbade water or food to be taken inside such a place of worship. Never has a Muslim army or security force pursued anyone sought refuge in a place of worship.

The document presented here and many other documents remained in force throughout the ages. Even the decree of Selim I to the monks of Saint Catherine Monastery was preserved there until the Israeli occupation of Sinai; its whereabouts are now unknown to the author.

The Golden Age: Suleyman the Magnificent

Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent (1520-1560) showed remarkable excellence in the field of construction after he had ascended the throne; he also excelled in the field of lawmaking. After 55 years, all the Arab lands, up until Telmisan in Morocco, were within the borders of the Ottoman Empire.

Sultan Suleyman bestowed much of the spoils he gained in wars on the Two Honorable Mosques, as well as the Aqsa Mosque. He covered the external walls of the Dome of the Rock Mosque with flagstones made of ceramics of superior quality instead of using mosaic, which would have needed to be repaired from time to time. The result of this process was that the mosque attained a blue ceramic covering, instead of a mixture of red and green; this tiling has given the mosque its magnificent appearance, which has remained for many centuries. Also, instead of mosaic, Sultan Suleyman had the lower part of the walls covered with marble and surrounded the building from above with a girdle of dark blue ceramic with inscriptions in white. He further ordered that colored glass be fixed in the windows, which were firmly placed within cavities in bright white gypsum and plaster.

In addition, Sultan Suleyman ordered that all the walls of Jerusalem be repaired, to give them the appearance they maintained until recent times.

It is worth mentioning that the Church of Marqad Isa had no bells until 1545, so he commanded that bells be hung there. In 1555 there was a small building over the shrine in the circular part of the Church of Qiyamah, so he commanded that another structure, which was to be well designed and suitable to the shrine, be built instead of the older one.

At this time, the church was divided between various discordant Christian denominations. Such discordance prevented the necessary restoration and reconstruction from being carried out and thus no bell tower had been constructed. This was the case until 1719. By a government order, all the drawings, figures, and styles had been preserved as they originally were when the tower was being built and during the necessary restoration work. In fear of changing the original appearance, renovation work that should have been done to the Church of Qiyamah was abandoned. In 1808, a fire broke out in the Armenian Church, which led to the destruction of its entire western section, and it was agreed that the Armenians themselves would handle the necessary restoration and renovation work, by virtue of a decree issued by Sultan Mahmud II (1808–1839). According to existing texts, the gilding of the Dome of the Rock Mosque was renewed and the Sultan ordered that the Mosque be restored from the outside. It was the Christian denominational differences that prevented the Church of Marqad Isa and its ornaments from being renovated, and it would have been possible to make use of the remaining places so that the church may be turned back to the state it had during the Crusades.

The nineteenth century witnessed many events that disrupted the peace and tranquility of Palestine, in general, and Jerusalem, in particular. For instance, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), who was under siege in Egypt, attacked Palestine. As he set siege to Acre, he sent some French troops to attack Jerusalem. So the Turkish and French troops fought in front of Yisra’il; that is in front of Marj bin Amir, but the French troops were defeated. Then, in 1831, Palestine, in particular Jerusalem, was captured by the troops of Muhammad Ali Pasha, and this city came under Egyptian rule until the Egyptian issue was solved. Shortly after the enthronement of Sultan Abdulmecid I (1839-1861), the great powers at that time put pressure on the region. Eventually, France joined these nations and a treaty was convened in 1840 that forced Egypt to leave Palestine. After that, England and Austria exercised substantial pressure to restore Jerusalem to Ottoman rule. This continued until the end of World War I. However, during the last stage of the war, namely on December 8, 1917, Jerusalem was occupied by the British. Thus, this sacred city which had enjoyed an independent administration during the Turkish Ottoman era now was under British administration until 1948.

The story of Sultan `Abdulhamid II and what he did to protect Jerusalem is a long story that needs an entire article devoted to it.

Why, then, is your face still veiled?

The years pass while we, in pangs of separation,

Go on waiting and waiting for ‘spring’.

Rise again with the proof from God’s Throne;

Let the world resound again with your message!

Inspire people to life through the fragrance

You spread everywhere in the name of Truth!

Speak so that other ‘speakers’ mind their place;

That people, revived by your Divine breath

May rise again, as before, to their highest-

That is also the desire of those in heaven.

O Sacred Book, O Eternal Light,

Reaching to every place with radiant peace-

It is end of time, appear to us once more!

Already light has begun to remove darkness…

Even if it is not to be as gorgeous as ‘spring’,

Still may the world be filled with your voice!

Nay everyone hear it and come to know you

Before all are carried to the eternal abode!

***

First of all, every individual is a traveller and therefore, in some sense, an emigrant. His journeying starts in the world of spirits and continues through the stations of his mother’s womb, childhood, youth, old age and his grave, and from there to a completely new world, Although he is among millions of people, each individual is born alone, lives his own life. endures his own death, and will be resurrected alone, Likewise, each of those men of high stature who throughout history have guided mankind started his sacred mission from his single self, then disseminating light from the torch be carried and illumining the minds and hearts of others, inculcating hope and faith in his followers and transforming the lands once submerged in darkness into pools of light. And each one of these guides had to emigrate from one place to another for the sake of his cause.

Belief, emigration and holy struggle are the three pillars of a single, sacred truth. They are the three ‘taps’ of a fountain from which the water of life flows for the ‘holy ones’ to drink from so that they may convey their message without being wearied, and, when the opposition is too formidable to overcome, set out for a new land without regard for their home, property or family.

However sacred the cause, however useful and original the thoughts or brilliant the message, those who hear it for the first time are naturally bound to question and oppose it. For this reason, the one who wants to arouse the people to new sentiments, new faith, new love and new ideas must, either persist in his mission in his homeland in the face of all kinds of resistance, or set out for new minds and hearts to pour out his inspirations, to offer his message.

Every new idea or message has always been resisted where it has appeared, and those who have offered it have usually been welcomed in new places where their pasts were unknown. It is for this reason that the fate of the ‘holy ones’ is almost the same: they begin with belief and love, followed by struggle against the deviation and error of the masses, and then comes the turn of emigration for the sake of the well-being of mankind, even at the cost of sacrificing their own homes and families.

In every movement of revival, prior to emigration, two stages are of great importance. In the first stage, a man with a cause develops his character, overflows with belief and is inflamed with love, and surpassing his own self, grows into a passionate slave of The Truth, He struggles, in this stage, against the temptations of his carnal self to build his genuine, spiritual character. This is called ‘the major or greater struggle’- al-jihad al-akbar. Then he rises, in the second and stage, to radiate the lights of belief to the world around him, this stage is, in fact, the door to emigration.

Emigration should not, of course, be understood only in the material sense. Rather, a man experiences emigration throughout his life in the spiritual sense. Each inner intellectual or spiritual transformation, from indolence to action, from decay to self-renewal, from suffocation in the atmosphere of sinfulness to exaltation in the realm of spirit, may be regarded as an emigration. It is my conviction that only those who have been able to actualize these inner emigrations can find in themselves the strength and resolution to leave their homes and families for the sake of a sublime ideal. It is almost impossible for those who have not succeeded in emigrating’ from the carnal self to the realm of spirit, from the pomp and luxury of the world to the riches of intellect and spirit, and from the pleasures of selfhood to an altruistic life, to emigrate for the good and welfare of humanity.

Emigration with its two dimensions, spiritual and material, was first represented by the great Prophets, Abraham, Lot, Moses and Jesus, upon them be peace, who shone like suns, on the horizon of humanity, and in its most comprehensive meaning and function, was realized by the greatest of them, namely the Prophet Muhammad, who is the pride of mankind, upon him be peace. The door to emigration has since been open to all those who would walk in his footsteps.

Emigration in the way of Truth and for its sake is so sanctified that the community of holy ones around the Last Prophet, who sacrificed their possessions and souls for the sake of the cause they believed in, and of the matchless representative of that cause, were praised by God as (and have since been called) ‘the Emigrants’. We can see its importance in the fact that the beginning of the sacred era of this holy community was marked, not by the birth of the Prophet or by the first revelation or such victories as Badr or the conquest of Makka, but by the emigration to Madina.

Every individual who has emigrated for the sake of a sublime ideal will always deeply feel the pressure of the ideal which urged him to emigrate and design his life according to that ideal. Secondly, be will be freed from the criticism regarding some faults he might have made in childhood or youth. Whereas, in his own land, be is probably remembered and criticized for past faults, and has little influence upon people because, besides the factors mentioned, he is an already familiar one in his society, in the land he has emigrated to, be will be known for his spiritual brilliance, unadulterated ideas, pure intentions and extraordinary sacrifices. For these and other reasons, it has almost always been emigrants who changed the flow of history and started new eras in the life of humanity.

Toynbee, the renowned British historian, mentions twenty-seven civilizations founded by nomadic or migrant peoples. This is because no one can overcome such dynamic people. They are not habituated to ease and comfort, are ready to sacrifice everything worldly, used to every kind of hardships, and always ready to march wherever their cause requires them to go.

The ‘holy ones’ around the Last Prophet, who were elevated from the darkness of ignorance and savagery to become the founders of the most brilliant civilization in human history and the first teachers of a universal religion, which is still the hope of mankind for a happy future, set the best example in this mater for those coming after them. Those who later walked in their footsteps found ease and serenity in fighting with difficulties, and found vigour and life in despising death and everything worldly, and eternity in constant renewal in thought, spirit and action. They migrated from land to land to convey knowledge, morality and civilization everywhere that they settled.

It is incumbent upon us to save the young generation from indulgence and attachment to the comfort of life, and in doing so to equip them with lofty ideals so that they know how to suffer with the pains and sorrows of mankind. It is only when this is accomplished to a significant degree that our old world will be able to witness an over-all felicity.