The ruler’s time was fading away. He needed to train soldiers and workers and find more resources. He also had to make some donations to the neighboring villages, as he knew that the more they all helped one another, the more likely they would be to defend their territory. Jack was still happy because they had at least put up walls around the village, built barracks for people, and two camps for soldiers. He was spending four or five hours checking the village every day, because he knew the ruler had to take care of his home. Suddenly, he heard the voice coming from the old and loyal tower. It was telling news of the war. Jack gathered all his soldiers because he was the only one to command them. Strategy was so important, because bad planning would mean the end of all the villages. After a brave speech, they started to march. All the soldiers’ attention was directed to Jack, waiting for his commands.

But suddenly, Jack lost all his soldiers. He was mad and ran away from his room to check the router and saw that there was no internet connection. What was he going to do now? Jack sighed. He supposed he would do homework instead. Exams were getting closer; all his enthusiasm faded away.

It does not matter what age you are, most people find it difficult to concentrate on the task they are required to do. There are books, seminars and many activities to motivate people to finish their work. These all show that we face an important problem with handling our responsibilities.

This is also one of the key issues in education. Much research has focused on how to improve the engagement and motivation of young people towards their school work. As you have probably heard, it’s almost a cliché that most parents complain about young people’s irresponsibility regarding school work and work around the home. While this has been a problem standing in front of us for a while now, we must ask: what makes these kinds of distracting video games so appealing?

The story told above is happening every day. That video game has been downloaded more than 50 million times and is being played every day by millions of people of various ages. The first time I had heard of this game was when I conducted interviews with children using a tablet PC in school. Although my focus of the research was not about mobile games, this was brought up when I wanted to make informal conversation before initiating the interview. One boy was so enthusiastic when we started to talk about this game, that he mentioned he would stop playing the game, go to sleep, but set his alarm for five hours later – his worker would have finished the task he’d been assigned, and the boy would wake up to assign a new task Not finishing such a task would mean lagging behind his peers, for his village would not develop.

I asked him, “what is so nice about this game? You are just building and upgrading buildings and fighting against others.”

The answer was, “I don’t know; it is just fun.”

I also installed the game. I had played it for two months until I woke up at 3 a.m. with a notification. One of my workers had finished his work and I assigned him another task. Then I tried to sleep. I opened my eyes again after a couple of seconds and saw my wife’s shocked eyes. She could not believe I woke up just for this. It was the last time I played the game. But the question was still in my mind: how could we trigger our sense of responsibility by exemplifying the methods of the game in real life?

We – people in education, parents – spend a considerable amount of time and resources to nurture children in a manner so that they become aware of their responsibilities. However, schools, teachers, homework, etc. are seen as boring and something to be escaped by most children.

Gamification is a trendy jargon nowadays. It aims at transforming real life context in a manner that adopts game thinking in online platforms. From this perspective, it proposes to increase motivation, engagement, sense of enjoyment, and the positive attitudes of people towards work (Huanng and Soman, 2013). While there is much research in the sector of business, gamification is also widely recognized in education. The educational purpose of gamification is that instead of blunting the way children best learn, the way they enjoy to learn should be adapted in an educational context. This is not a new idea, as this was also expressed in other contexts. For example, Said Nursi touches on a crucial point:

One reason why preachers’ advice is ineffective nowadays is that they invite people to change their nature. They advise: “Do not be envious or ambitious, do not feel enmity or be obstinate, do not love the world,” and so on. Such advice is useless, for it is against human nature. Instead, these energies can and should be channeled into good deeds and directed toward positive aims. (The Ninth Letter, p. 53)

If we want to apply this method in education, the first thing we should consider is what children like and enjoy most. Obviously, many of them enjoy playing games and any advice like, “Don’t play games! Don’t laugh during the lesson! Don’t spend time in front of the computer! Be quiet in class!” will be counter-productive. As in Said Nursi’s statement, this is asking the impossible from a child who is created to learn in an environment that offers play, social interaction, and competition.

Jean Piaget is a well-known theorist about play and the cognitive development of children. He emphasizes the importance of play and its contribution to healthy development of children (Sutton-Smith, 1983). Vygotsky (1967) also underlines social play and peer interaction in child development. However, while Vygotsky gives the example of a child who rides an imaginary horse with a stick, today’s children’s perception of play has changed and continues to change dramatically. Therefore, it should be understood how Jack’s and my sense of responsibility were piqued. While we both cognitively focused and spent a considerable amount of time on this game, we also enjoyed doing so.

From the perspectives above, the stimulating dynamics used in games could be transformed in a suitable manner into curriculum and the classroom environment could be redesigned. This can also be adapted into work environments, as in Google whose office buildings are colorful rather than plain, and there is even a slide for their workers to use instead of stairs. Their aim is to make the environment flexible so people in the firm do not perceive what they are doing as a work.

There is also educational technology that pays attention to gamification. ClassDojo is one of them. It is a simple but effective idea to attract student’s attention and change their behavior. Each student chooses an avatar that looks like a small monster and the teacher assesses various things on behalf of the students’ avatars. Teachers can give immediate feedback to students. For example, when a student shows a negative behavior in class or solves a question, students will see the changes in his/her ClassDojo app on their mobile device. The children I interviewed showed great enthusiasm about this application and interestingly, they perceive this application as a game, although the only differences between this application and normal assessment sheets were the avatars and the template. Kahoot and Socrative are two other mobile applications that these students have experience with. These mobile applications are also perceived as joyful, competitive, and rich learning platforms.

While considering how to transfer the strategies of the game into the real life context, it should not be forgotten that there are parents and teachers who have serious reservations about games, as some of their children are addicted to these kinds of games. They are right to have these doubts and I do not think games are absolutely innocent. In fact, most strategy games, including the one that me and Jack became addicted to, have many negative messages, from stealing to killing people. But when it is impossible to avoid them completely, it is best to focus on the positive themes and actualize them for productive outcomes in schools and family life.

All in all, I am still thinking about the situation of my village and neighborhoods. The rulers of neighboring villages were sad and angry when I said that I was leaving: “Winter” was getting closer and they needed my donations and the soldiers I trained. I am now consoling myself as my wife, who is a child psychologist, assigned me to do cleaning and made me think of all the bacteria as my enemies and a big threat to our lovely village (home). As parents and educators, it is our duty to discover the way your children and students learn and produce your own real games.

Ahmet Tugra is a PhD candidate in the department of Learning, Technology and Education in the UK.

I, the protective system that you call the “immune system,” am divided into different groups and sections, each of which has its own area of expertise. Just like a military unit, each of my groups has to be partially or fully trained before it begins life in my system so that it can properly fulfill its defensive function. “Soldiers” in this protective troop work according to what expertise they have and the type of “enemy” (alien microorganisms) they encounter. Some are equipped with heavy weapons against tough enemies; some produce a special poison with which they kill their enemies by injecting it into their bodies, some work like a waste disposal, smashing up the dead bodies of the enemies, and some of them eat the alien intruders alive when they attack your body. Others produce raw material to arm your body, some turn that material into weapons, some work as defenders, some are signalers, some are rangers and some are equipped with a special intelligence which allows them to recognize the previous invaders and destroy them more easily at their future encounter. In this intelligence system, which works like an information center, the soldiers check the dangerous invaders and remember their previous experience with them. Then, they develop a strategy to fight against those invaders. If the enemy is known well, the defense against it will be easier.

Now, using this analogy, I will talk about your enemies and the features of my soldiers that are placed in your body to fight against them. However, I have to remind you of something first: as you know, every army has to have a top commander. Similarly, there is someone who has placed such a perfect system like me in your body, someone who has boundless knowledge and power, and has no one else superior to Him or has no one to receive orders and instructions. That is our Lord God Almighty. Since He knows very well what kinds of enemies you will face, He has created me with all my troops so that you can be defended against those enemies.

The enemies of your body are germs, which enter your body through different passage ways, including digestion, respiration, excretion and the skin. “Germ” is a general term referring to many kinds of micro-organisms. Some of them are bacteria, some are fungi and some are viruses. Your body needs different special tactics to defend against each group of germs and my soldiers are quite talented in those tactics. I have to be always watchful against germs coming from outside. Not only that, but I also have to be careful about inner enemies, that is, the cells in your body which suddenly turn into “terrorists” becoming harmful and spoiling the system. You call those cells “cancerous.” It is a great challenge for me to cope with those cells because they originate from among your very own cells and they know our tactics very well. Nevertheless, with God’s help, we can defeat them. However, when too much stress and anxiety weaken me I might miss some of those cancerous cells, which will grow and become tumors. In fact, cancerous cells develop much more in number than is commonly known. But my soldiers constantly check every single cell that is formed in your body and try to see whether it is normal or not. As soon as they discover a cancerous “terrorist” cell, they try to quickly destroy it. However, some cancerous cells are disguised like a wolf wearing a sheepskin so that they can avoid detection. My soldiers make rounds and check the cells from outside by only looking at their skin. Thus, they can be manipulated. All of your cells, including those with germs or cancer, contain protein with a special code which identifies the cells as being yours. When my soldiers encounter our fellow cells carrying those coded proteins, they release them. But the enemies who do not carry this code (or password) are immediately caught and destroyed. When we have diseases like cancer, however, the cancerous cells may evade our “rounds man” because they know this password. Sometimes the opposite may happen: my soldiers get confused and cannot identify their fellow cells despite carrying the right password, assume that they are enemies and start to attack them. These types of diseases, called Autoimmune diseases, emerge with a quite complicated mechanism which is a puzzle even for me! For example, during rheumatoid arthritis, which is among the many long-lasting and unrecoverable diseases, my soldiers attack and gradually destroy the tissues like cartilage, cardiac muscle, eye lenses, and the tubes of the kidneys with which they share a body. In fact, when we are created as a whole system (when you are only an embryo in your mother’s womb), some of my soldiers make an agreement with the other cells of your body, announcing that they will forever stay friends with them, will show tolerance to them and will only attack the enemies. But, somehow this agreement is broken later; my soldiers do not obey me anymore.

Now it is time for my group of soldiers to introduce themselves:

The most general term by which we are identified with is white blood cells or leukocyte. We appear approximately 6,000 to 7,000 times in each cubic millimeter of human blood. The other blood cells, which are called red blood cells (erythrocyte) are red in color; it is for this reason that we are called white. Since blood vessels can reach to the remotest edges of the body, we roam around the body through those vessels and look for work to do. Of course, not everyone can do everything. So, we are first divided into two sections. The cells in the first section contain microscopic granules, so they are called granular leukocyte. The cells in the second section do not contain such granules, so they are called agranular leukocyte. Those sections are divided into groups among themselves. The first section has three groups: neutrophils, eosinophils and basophils. The second section has two groups named monocyte and lymphocyte.

Eosinophills: You may not know much about these soldiers that make up 12% of the whole protective body. However, during allergic reactions and diseases caused by parasites, the number of these soldiers increases. They complete the effect of the antibodies produced against the antigens. Some chemical substances like histamine appear as a reaction to antigens, such as itchiness, rash, and swelling. Eosinophils reduce the effects of those substances and the symptoms.

Basophils, which are the least in number, make up the 0.5% of the body. Those soldiers are present mostly in the scars that are healing or in highly infected areas. The granules inside basophils contain two very important substances called heparin and histamine. Histamine helps expand the blood vessels and accelerates the release of active substances within me from the blood vessel walls, enabling them to reach to the affected area. Heparin also prevents the blockage of blood vessels because of blood clot.

Lymphocytes of the second section are the group of soldiers which goes through special training and has expertise in many subjects. They make up 20-25% of the soldiers in my system. Those soldiers detect antigens and germs and remove them from the body. Every soldier has a detector which identifies a certain antigen. Therefore, in your blood, there are millions of lymphocyte soldiers, which are different from each other and do not have a pair. For any antigen of a germ, you will definitely find a lymphocyte that finds and kills it. Those soldiers can be grouped according to their appearances, as small, medium, and large lymphocytes. Each group has different special features. We can also divide them according to their maturation and training process as B-lymphocytes and T-lymphocytes. Although both of them originate from stem cells in the bone marrow, T-lymphocytes mature in the thymus before they move to the other lymph tissues such as the spleen, liver, and tonsils (Thymus is a gland in the chest that talked about itself in the previous issue). B-lymphocytes, however, mature in the bone marrow, and go directly to the tonsils, appendicitis, spleen and other lymph tissues. When the T lymphocytes mature in the bone marrow, they acquire different new features. Some of them work as T helper cell, some work as natural killer T-cells and some work as suppressor T-cell. A helper T-cell, which is triggered by an antigen that is specific to it, secretes lymphokines, which makes B-cells produce antibodies. Among those lymphokines, interleukin-2 activates the natural killer T-cells, which kill the infected cells. The killer T-cells do not bind directly to an antigen. Rather, they secrete a substance that kills the infected cell after joining with the antibodies that were previously bound to the infected cells. On average, T-cells live 2-4 years; some, however, live more than 10 years. Today, the defense mechanism of the T-lymphocytes creates an issue in terms of organ transplantation. If, for some reason, a foreign organ (a kidney or heart, for example) is transplanted into the body, the T-lymphocytes attack that organ immediately. Those “headless” soldiers do not know that the body really needs that organ and try to eliminate it, therefore, leading to transplant rejection or tissue incompatibility. The T-lymphocytes treat the foreign organ the same way as they do to the cancerous cells: they attack and try to destroy it. For this reason, the immunologists are trying to discover medicines that will help them control the soldier T-lymphocytes whenever they need to be stopped.

Dear Peter, have you ever thought about how all this happens? While you have no idea about a germ that might enter your body, those memory cells, which are placed in your blood with a boundless compassion by our Creator, remember an enemy that they saw years ago, and begin to make weapons right away. Since those cells are devoid of reason and consciousness, to operate them there has to be Someone with a great knowledge and will.

The lymph nodes are production centers for the lymphocytes found at some particular places in the body. They resemble variously sized military headquarters. The lymphocytes are produced mostly at infection sites, which are the little lymph tissue groups located under the epithelium that lines along the walls of the digestive tube, respiratory track, and the bladder. When fighting with bacterial infections the lymph nodes swell and enlarge as much as 1–2 cm. In addition to the lymph nodes that extend through the lymph vessels, the areas such as nape, groin and the axilla (underarm) also contain lymph nodes. If you get an upper respiratory tract infection, the lymph nodes at your tonsils and neck areas become swollen. If you get a urinary track infection the nodes in your groin area become swollen. As for digestive track infections, it is the responsibility of the lymphocytes in your appendix to fight against germs. Some scientists view this organ, which is an extension of the cecum (the blind gut), as a “dead” piece of intestine. Both the appendix and tonsils are quite useful organs that produce lymphocytes in normal circumstances; they are not some useless remnants. For that reason, it is not right to remove them when it is not really necessary. However, we have to remember the proverb that says, “We salt the food so that it does not smell bad; but, what do we do if the salt itself smells bad? Then, we have to get rid of the salt.” Similarly, in some bodies where my system is weak and so is lymphocyte production, those areas become home to germs and you have to remove them.

Other than the soldiers of the immune system, several organs in your body have their own ways of protecting your body. Those organs do not have soldiers like in my system; theirs are like a “civil defense.” Chief among those are your skin which works as a natural barricade against the entrance of the germs, the mucous membrane that lines along the walls of your mouth and inner nose, interferon which is a substance produced by your cells against viruses, and an antibacterial substance called lysozyme which exists in your tears and sweat. Therefore, sweating, crying, and runny nose are not things to be ashamed of; they are only the protective systems that have been naturally placed in your body by our Lord God.

Dear Peter, I think I should stop here although there are still so many features of me that you have to discover. After all, beneath all diseases and deaths you will find disorders related to me. The biochemical processes in which many of my soldiers operate are not exactly known yet. If those are revealed, doctors will likely succeed in healing many other diseases. However, sooner or later you will reach the destined end: death. No creation can be immortal; there will definitely be a problem and you will have to leave this world, wherein you are only a guest. If you carefully contemplate the works of art in your body, in the hereafter you will have solved the riddle of the delicacies of those works. Of course, everyone’s time of death is unknown. Therefore, in this limited time, give your organs their due and give thanks to the God Almighty who gave you those gifts. Live according to His will, and always remember to glorify Him. Goodbye, Peter! May you and your troop be healthy!

Irfan Yilmaz is a professor of biology at Dokuz Eylul University, Izmir, Turkey

Montaigne says that the main motivation for writing his famous Essays was to end his great solitude. Why was he lonely? Why did he feel alone and prefer conversing with his readers in an attempt to reduce his isolation? The answer to this question again can be found in his writings. He came from a wilder region of France, from behind the Alps that divided Western Europe. Thus, he was protected from the ills that the Italian Renaissance had imposed on European mentalities. What made him feel lonely was the meeting of his country with these new ideas and sects, the murder of thousands of people in the war of Saint Bartholomew (1572) on religious pretexts, and the arrival of this “European” attitude to his hometown²

This isolation preserved Montaigne from the mental crisis that his contemporaries were experiencing. He looks at both the past and the present and future within the possibilities that exist in the “thought from the wilderness.” It is for this reason that he has no prejudices. He is a free man of the world. This fact is demonstrated in his attitude toward the Orient and in particular to the Ottomans, whose images had been so distorted because of established prejudices.

Islam in European Culture

The thesis that supports the idea that there were vital differences between European and Ottoman societies and cultures and the politics of positioning them as opposites who were not willing to come to an agreement should give way to the thesis that there are more complicated and closer relationships between them. A deeper investigation will even allow us to trace signs of a “modern” mentality in the Ottoman culture that reaches all the way back to the beginning of the sixteenth century³ The Ottomans were interested in European affairs. Many historical readings bring us to a point that the survival of Protestantism owes itself to Ottoman support. It is not too difficult to find other examples.

It is known that Postel and Jean Bodin admired the Ottoman state and its administration in the sixteenth century and they were desirous to transmit these thoughts to their political theory. Likewise, Alan Grossrichard had already demonstrated that the image of the East, which was the “tour de force” of Montesquieu in his Persian Letters, was the representative of a popular ghost-that of despotism-in Europe during the seventeenth century. There are many researchers, from Bryan S. Turner to John M. Hobson, who have stated that both the negative side of European thought, like Hegel, Engels, and Marx, and the positive side, like Max Weber, shared the viewpoint of Orientalism that was against the East and Islam, particularly against the Ottomans. Even now it is questioned whether there is implicit Orientalism in the writings of European travelers-including Lady Montague, who was a most objective person. This list can be easily extended: despite his play Mahomet, which took a very negative view of the East, Voltaire was an admirer of the morality and discipline of the Muslims and the Ottomans. Lord Byron was a lover of Ottoman and Istanbul civilization, despite his political animosity that derived from his love of Hellenism. The “poet of the lakes,” Lamertine was awarded with a farm house by Sultan Abdulmecid, as a sign of appreciation for his book A History of the Turks. The father of Jean Jacque Rousseau was a repairer of clocks in Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. Goethe learned to read the Qur’an and pray from the Bashkird Turks, who were among the Russians who invaded Germany. Campanella said in his La Citta del Sole (The City of the Sun) that the utopia he had fictionalized had been realized in this world by the Ottomans. The writer of Don Quixote, Cervantes, lost one of his arms in the war of Lepanto, which he fought against the Ottomans; he wrote his novels during his imprisonment after this war inspired by Algerian scholars. The philosopher Leibniz presented a treatise of conquest to the French King in which he discussed how to destroy the Ottomans.

Montaigne

We have to add a new name to this list: Michel de Montaigne. In spite of having a few prejudices, Montaigne was one of the few modern writers who did not let prejudices dominate his view. In the first sentence of his Essays he promised that this book was going to be an honest one. Indeed, he continuously revised and edited his books before each new edition was published, including his essays on the Ottomans. He questioned his thoughts with reference to new sources he read and added new essays⁴

In the revised and extended 1595 edition of his book, which was published after his death, he advised French soldiers, whose laxity he had observed during the civil war in Perigord, to take Turkish soldiers for their model. He said that all young French soldiers should learn discipline from the Turkish armies:

Their discipline is very different from and superior to ours. At times of war, our soldiers are more irresponsible and disorderly than at times of peace; on the other hand, Turkish soldiers are moderate and reluctant to behave so, because stealing from the poor is punished with a few lashes in peace time, but very severely at war. Taking away an egg by force without paying money for it is punished with 50 lashes. Moreover, those who steal the most insignificant thing that does not even satisfy hunger nor have any value whatsoever are sentenced to death. I am surprised to read about Selim that when he conquered Damascus on his campaign to Egypt none of his soldiers took anything from the peerless gardens of this city, even though they were unprotected⁵

Montaigne, then, was not aware of “Eastern despotism,” a thesis that had been influential since the seventeenth century. Distanced from the influence of this thesis, he mentions how the philanthropic activities of the Turks extended to include fauna and flora, stating that the Turks had charities and hospitals even for animals.

Montaigne was influenced by the unfavorable winds that blew against the Ottomans through France, but he desired to use the Ottomans against his own despots as a mirror. In other words, he used a method that was similar to that of most other French intellectuals, like Montesquieu, after him.

He was aware of the power of habits and how they can capture people and he emphasized how wrong it was to label everything that is opposed to local habit as barbarism. To quote Dr Zeynep Sayin of Istanbul University:

The universal certainty that Descartes tried to find seems impossible for Montaigne because he is not in favor of certainty that is independent from conditions. On the contrary he analyses humans and societies in their differences. “I am not mislead to think that everybody should be like me…It seems reasonable to me to think that there are thousands of different lives.”⁶

Finally, Montaigne was aware of the fact that judgments do not carry the claim of universality; they are limited to the conditions in which they emerge. He was not bounded by Eurocentrism and was aware that there are different worlds and different life-styles. He did not try to regulate world according to himself, but rather realized that it is essential to recognize differences. It is probably because of this attitude that Montaigne stands in an exceptional place in Western thinking and why he does not find a place in books of “history of Western philosophy.”

Montaigne and the Ottomans

It is thanks to the magnificent study of Clarence Dana Rouillard⁷ that we learn that in the great world of Montaigne the Orient was identical with the “Turk,” i.e. the Ottomans. We are able to see that the Ottoman grew like a flower in Montaigne’s works and that he revised his thoughts and prejudices with new contributions and information with every new edition.

According to Rouillard, Montaigne-like P. Villey who prepared Essays for publication-believed in the necessity of knowing something well before judging it. More importantly, the Orient he identified with the Ottomans played a significant role in terms of widening his vision as it broadened the horizons of his era. According to Rouillard, Montaigne owes the wide vision and pluralism in his essays to the Ottomans to a great extent.

Rouillard, who surprised us with this striking information, firstly analyses Montaigne’s acquaintance with the Ottomans. According to him it is very interesting to observe the development of Montaigne’s knowledge about the Ottomans. Prior to the first publication of Essays in 1580, the only information that we get about Montaigne’s readings is that he got his information on Turks from the Italian history of Guichardin, not from the classics or chronicle writers and historians like Joinville or Froissart. The only reference to the Turks in the 1580 edition was that they partook of food by reclining on comfortable sofas and their belief that Paradise was a sensual abode. However, Montaigne’s curiosity was not confined to the borders of Western Europe and was open to all human activities experienced in modern history.

It seems that Paul Villey, a Montaigne specialist, did not study the 1582 edition of Essays attentively enough. Though rare and insignificantly small, there are some new additions to this edition. We are able to conclude from some points in this new edition that Montaigne read a new study that had been written directly about the Ottomans. Thus we got a clue that Montaigne’s interest about the Ottomans had increased.

As a matter of fact, the number of these clues increases in following editions. For the first time Montaigne encounters direct material concerning the Ottoman world in a Polish history book that he studied and used in the third edition. In this book was an engraving that displayed the celebration held on the occasion of the circumcision of Murad III’s sons. This engraving made Montaigne to think of the Ottoman world, their costumes, and context in a different way. In the last edition to be prepared before Montaigne passed away, his interest in foreign places was at its peak. In this last edition, Montaigne found, read, and analyzed books in Latin that had been written, directly or indirectly about Ottoman history, including the book of Halkokondil on the foundation and rise of the Ottomans and Postel’s De la Republique des Turcs. (He knew Postel-one of the significant intellectual of his time-personally.) There were nearly 50 references to the Ottomans in the last edition of Essays.

“The Turk the warrior!”

It seems clear that Montaigne did not believe in theological explanations concerning the defeat or victory of the Christians against Muslims. For example, he commented very dryly-which is not what one would expect from a European-on the war of Lepanto in 1571 in which the Christians won and which was followed by days of festivities:

A maritime war was won against Turks in the preceding months under the commandership of Don Juan d’Austria; but God was pleased when we saw the reverse many times in the past.

Montaigne desired that his fellow countrymen not put so much importance on this victory because the Turkish army was still standing. He recognized explicitly that the Turks had developed a considerable military force that could only be explained on the basis of material and human power. He related the Turkish ability to establish such a great army to their discipline. According to him, the Turks knew how to use their minds as much as they knew how to fight and this is what made them different from an army of barbarians.

Montaigne thought the acts of the Turks were not restrained merely because of the heavy punishments that were imposed. They were also accustomed to rigid physical discipline and sobriety. This quality made them superior to Western soldiers. He expressed his thoughts as follows:

In order to verify to what extent Turkish armies are more intelligent and behave more reasonably than ours it is enough to say that besides their other virtues they drink only water and eat rice and salty meat. Thus, each of them can carry one month’s provisions with them.

Montaigne explained another influential factor in the success of the Turks which was the Sultan being in command of their armies. Selim I thought that victories that had been won without the sultans leading the armies were not complete and thought it was shameful to be proud of such a victory. However, Montaigne did not treat all sultans identically; he did not have a holistic perspective. He was well aware of the fact that all sultans had different tendencies. According to him, surprisingly, Beyaz›d II and his contemporary Murad III’s excessive fondness for natural sciences (s’amusants aus sciences) caused harm to their countries; they not only failed to lead their country, but also caused harm.

Montaigne was closely interested in the opinion that espoused that warriors should abstain from the fine arts. He returns to this subject again in his essay “On Pedantry” in which did not only criticize the mistakes and uselessness of a few scientists, but also went further to argue that all kinds of education are useless, if not fatal, especially if education goes beyond the scope of a very few aristocratic minds to reach the general public:

Examples show us that learning the sciences does not make hearts rigid or inclined to fight, but rather more effeminate. The most powerful state nowadays seems to be that of the Turks, and they value weapons and humiliate the arts and sciences.

Montaigne can be excused for this mistaken final sentence, as he was then too distant from the time when samples of Ottoman-Divan literature were to be made available to the European public.

While his contemporaries were calling this so-called aspect of the Turks barbarism-we will not discuss whether this argument was valid or not-Montaigne looked at the issue from a very different perspective, which he claimed was essential for a people to survive. This is an example of Montaigne’s contradictory opinions.

In his essay “On Virtue” Montaigne wrote about the story of a young Turk who dared to challenge the Hungarian King Hunyadi Janos at war, despite lacking experience. This youth, when questioned by Sultan Murad, answered that he learned to be courageous from a rabbit. Fate protected the rabbit from 40 arrows he had shot and allowed it to escape the hunting dogs. The young man believed that the arrow and sword could only function if this was written in fate, and thus fought fearlessly in wars from that day on. A belief in fate was widespread among the Turks. Turkish historians wrote that soldiers felt secure against danger because they believed that the days which they would live were immutable and had already been established.

What Montaigne did was not to accumulate systematic information on a certain topic, but rather he involved in mental exercises. He lists these as the basis of the Turk’s successes in the sixteenth century.

Moral aspects of the Ottomans and Islam

Montaigne preserved his objective standing toward the Ottomans at different times. Although he was critical of many aspects of Turkish society and character, he still did not adhere to extreme definitions or popular descriptions, like the “Barbarous Turk,” or the “Lover Turk.” He even tried to alter the image of the cruel Turk in his other essays. He emphasized, for instance, that the Turks had established charities and hospitals for animals.

The only reference to Islam in the first edition of the book is concerned with worldly heaven. Montaigne was an intellectual whose eyes had not been blinded by religious prejudices and he did not refrain from calling some of their religious bigotry “stupidities.” Even when he wrote about the superstitions of the Turks he did not explain the issue in defense of Christianity, but saw such things as errors that could be found on both sides. Thus he was able to preserve the balance that he wanted to establish in his book.

Montaigne was a devout Catholic. He not only dealt with Islam, but also Calvinism and Protestantism, which came to his country from behind the Alps and he criticized the translation of the Bible into local languages, praising the Turks for their respect of the original language of their sacred revealed text. In the end, in one of the best examples of tolerance in Essays, he reminds his countrymen that the Ottomans outstripped them in terms of some Christian values.

Do you want to see it with your own eyes? Compare our traditions and customs with those of a pagan or a Muslim. [You will see that ours is beneath theirs] Although his doctrine is superior, a Christian has to accept the fact that a Muslim we underestimate can teach him many things in terms of justice, affection, and virtues.

The references to Turks increase in later editions of Essays. An interesting letter sent to Mehmed the Conqueror by Pope Pius II and the response sultan gave him is contained in one of them. Another example is Bayezid I’s and Timur’s rejection of mutual gifts. As an example Montaigne shows the pride of Turks in the leader of the Janissaries Hasan Agha, who preferred to die after he had been severely reproved by Sultan Mehmed.

The virtue of the “eye of the wilderness”

What are the results that we may extract from Essays?

First of all, Montaigne was not looking at the problems within a fixed framework. He examined the Turks, arriving at rich observations and interpretations. He was basically interested in human nature, not religious doctrines. Was he not a believer then? Since it is impossible to call anyone who fought for the Catholic cause an unbeliever, we should rather say that Montaigne did not look at Islam and the Ottomans from the perspective of the prejudices of popular theology and religion. Though there are some fictive and incorrect statements in his essays, his perspective about the Turks and Ottomans is not derived from a single source. He was not bound with a systematic connection to a doctrine and he did not have an idae fixes. He came with a new perspective and a new interpretation every time. He learned long before Nietzsche not to look at information as natural facts. According to him there are only interpretations and the interpretations of these. He approached his subject knowing that most of the information he took in his book concerning Islam was not facts, but rather interpretations.

This is the privileged standing that differentiates Montaigne from others. Maybe this was the point that made him so alone-he had no one except his friend La Boetie. We owe Montaigne’s Essays to this solitude. Though he thought that his loneliness derived from his melancholic psychology, his seclusion could have been caused by his differences in his mode of thought and perception. He refrained from lies, i.e., the knowledge of his contemporaries, which he said were interpretations of interpretations, he focused on the knowledge of objects and directed his attention to the truth. He said that “we are making interpretations of the interpretations of objects.” He transmitted the information written in the books on the Ottomans, their histories, cultures, and moral qualities, but he did not adopt them, calling them rather “our stupidities.” He tried to pass beyond this wall of information that he felt had been built around him and to hear the voices of objects. This should be one of the virtues of the eye from the wilderness that he possessed.

Notes

1. Tugrul Inal, “Denemelere bir giris denemesi” (An Introductory Effort to Essays), Frankafoni, n. 5, 1993, p. 12.
2. Semiramis Kantel, “Montaigne ve dil” (Montaigne and Language), Frankafoni, n.5, 1993, p. 33.
3. Cemal Kafadar, “The Ottomans and Europe” in Handbook of European History, 1400-1600, v.1, ed. H. Oberman and others. (Leiden: Brill, 1994), p. 622.
4. Montaigne published his Essays four times with different and extended versions each time. Corrections and editions in the fifth edition (1595) were made by his adopted daughter after his death in 1592. Thus, the book extended to 3 volumes. See J.M. Cohen, “Introduction” in Montaigne, Essays, (London: Penguin books, 1966), p. 20.
5. Ali Celebi, “Montaigne’de Turkler” (Turks in Montaigne), Frankafoni, n. 5, 1993, p. 26-27. This article uses Rouillard, whom we will touch upon in depth in the following pages. Unfortunately, this study cannot go beyond a mere translation to become an original study.
6. Zeynep B. Sayın, “Yenicağ: Descartes ve Montaigne,” Cogito, n. 10, 1997, p. 158.
7. Clarance Dana Rouillard, The Turk in French history, thought and literature (1520-1660), Ancienne Libraire Furne, Paris: 1938.

As religion cannot be the source of happiness and misery at the same time, we examine these two perspectives. Among the examples typically cited to support the misery argument are Islam’s expansion (seventh to sixteenth centuries), the Crusades, and Europe’s ‘religious’ wars. While seemingly plausible at first glance, further analysis reveals that this argument overlooks key historical information and misrepresents others. In the following article, we examine this argument from a theological and historical perspective.

The Holy Scriptures

First we look at the religious sources: the holy Scriptures. The Qur’an condones war only in self-defense and preventing injustice and aggression, and equates killing one person unjustly with killing humanity (5:32). Examining early Islam’s so-called ‘religious wars’ reveals that each one was fought in self-defense or to prevent injustice. The total number of people killed in any battle of Prophet Muhammad never exceeded several hundred.(1)

The phrase holy war, the common translation for jihad, is a misnomer. Jihad essentially means struggling in God’s cause, of which war is only one form and allowed only under clearly defined circumstances. The New Testament tells victims to embrace aggressors with love or restore justice in the most appropriate manner (Matthew 5; Luke 17:1-5), while the Old Testament says: ‘Thou shalt not kill’ (Exodus 20:13, Deuteronomy 5:17) and ‘He that kills any man shall surely be put to death (Leviticus 21:17).

Any aggression not conducted for self-defense or preventing injustice is not based on true religion. A good treatment of this in the context of Islam can be found in Prophet Muhammad as Commander.(2)

The Twentieth Century

The claim that religion is responsible for much of the bloodshed and death from a historical and statistical perspective is incorrect. The majority of deaths throughout history occurred during the twentieth century, and the majority of those happened during wars stemming from nonreligious motives.(3) World War II tops this list: 15 million soldiers and 25.5 million civilians. World War I is a close second: 9 million soldiers and 9.7 million civilians. Other examples include the Russian civil and the Russo-Polish wars (1917-21: 2 million soldiers, 7 million civilians), the Korean War (1950-53: 2 million soldiers and .9 million civilians), the Franco-Vietnam and US-Vietnam wars (1945-73: 1.3 million soldiers and 1.4 million civilians), the Sino-Japanese War (1937-41: 1 million soldiers and 1.2 million civilians), and the Soviet-Afghanistan War (1979-89: 500,000 soldiers and 1 million civilians).(4) These wars, which are responsible for the great majority of human loss through history, cannot be attributed to religious zeal.

The Soviet Union

While the motives of certain wars and other acts of aggression can be debated, certain self-proclaimed atheist, fascist, or otherwise nonreligious regimes, such as pre-World War II Germany and the Soviet Union, committed unprecedented crimes against their neighbors and citizens. According to Laqueur: ‘One of the cardinal features of the totalitarian dictatorships of the twentieth century was internal terror, the huge number of ‘enemies”and potential enemies’interned and executed. A striking example of this phenomenon is the era of Lenin and Stalin in Soviet Union. The atrocities committed during the time of Stalin are well documented.'(5)

According to the most conservative figures, allegedly based on secret KGB archives, between 510,307 and 1,727,970 Soviets were in labor camps between 1934 and 1950. A further 457,000 to 1,145,000 people were sentenced to labor colonies during roughly the same period. According to numbers released by Major General Anatoli Krayushkin, head of the Ministry of State Security’s archives, 3,853,000 arrests and 827,995 death sentences were made between 1917 and 1990. According to official KGB sources, 681,692 persons were killed between 1937 and 1938. In addition, 1,053,829 persons died in the Gulag between 1934 and 1953. To these numbers, one should add such figures as the Polish officers killed in 1940 in Katyn and other camps (15,000 to 20,000), and the Kazakhs who disappeared during the 1930s (1.5 to 2 million).

These are conservative estimates, given their source. Some researchers put the total number of deaths under the Soviets at between 10 and 20 million. According to Alec Nove, there were some 11 million ‘excess’ deaths between 1927 and 1937. Steven Wheatcroft, another Soviet-era researcher, says between 4 and 5 million people died.(6)

While Stalin remains notorious for internal terror, Lenin has been viewed differently’as a visionary whose ideals were betrayed by his followers. Is this correct? Recently declassified Soviet documents tell a different story. The following is a letter from Lenin to his comrades in which, appallingly, he mentions a specific number of people to be hanged: ‘Comrades! The uprising of the five kulak districts should be mercilessly suppressed… Hang (hang without fail, so the people see) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks.'(7)

In 1922, Moscow sought to confiscate all valuables of the Russian Orthodox Church and its monasteries to secure badly needed assets and to break the Church’s power over the peasants. Lenin hoped that the terrible famine sweeping Soviet Russia and Ukraine in 1921-22 would turn the peasantry against the Church. In the industrial city of Shuia, soldiers fired and killed several civilians (devout Christians) trying to protect their church. This event prompted the Politburo to delay further confiscation. When Lenin learned of this, he urged Politburo members to continue the campaign ‘mercilessly,’ as the time was ripe for such an action:

It is precisely now and only now, when in the starving regions people are eating human flesh, and hundreds if not thousands of corpses are littering the roads, that we can (and therefore must) carry out the confiscation of church valuables with the most savage and merciless energy… to secure for ourselves a fund of several hundred million gold rubles.

One wise writer on matters of statecraft (8) rightly said that if it is necessary to resort to certain brutalities for the sake of realizing a certain political goal, they must be carried out in the most energetic fashion and in the briefest possible time because the masses will not tolerate prolonged application brutality…. the struggle against us will be made more difficult if right at this moment, precisely in connection with the famine, we suppress the reactionary clergy with maximal speed and ruthlessness.

Therefore I come to the categorical conclusion that precisely at this moment we must give battle to the Black Hundred clergy in the most decisive and merciless manner and crush its resistance with such brutality that it will not forget it for decades to come.(9)

In another letter, Lenin openly instructs his comrades to terrorize the state’s enemies:

To Comrade Krestinsky:

I propose to form a commission immediately (initially this can be done secretly) to work out emergency measures (in the spirit of Larin: Larin is right). Let us say you+Larin+Vladimirsky (or Dzerzhinsky)+Rykov? Or Miliutin.

It is necessary secretly’and urgently’to prepare the terror. And on Tuesday we will decide whether it will be through SNK (the Council of People Commissars) or otherwise.(10)

These letters demonstrate that Stalin’s internal ‘cleansing’ campaigns of the 1930s and 1940s only continued Lenin’s policy and practice, and were not, as some claim, a betrayal of his high ideals.

While love and respect for fellow human beings is an essential principal of all major religions, in practice this has not always been the case. Aggression in the name of religion has long been exploited to show that religion brings tyranny and misery. Certain individuals, organizations, states, and regimes have used religion to justify the suffering they have caused, but this does not prove that religion by itself is to blame. As a matter of fact, nationalism, ideological extremism, or simple greed for power and material gain have caused incomparably larger suffering, as shown by documented statistics of wars and internal terror.

Conclusion

We looked briefly at the former Soviet Union, an atheist regime that committed some of the worst crimes against its own people in the name of communist ideology.

The twentieth century saw unprecedented advances in science and technology and, unfortunately, unprecedented human misery and suffering. Most crimes against humanity, as documented by statistics and recently revealed secret archives, were committed by totalitarian regimes during the twentieth century. Thus it is to claim that religion is responsible for most of history’s bloodshed and death. This responsibility lies with modern racist, atheist, or simply greedy regimes and not with religion, which was revealed to guide people to true happiness in this world and in the next through their own will.

Footnotes

1. Ali Unal, ‘Killing for Religion?’ The Fountain, no. 2 (Apr.’June 1996), 14.
2. M. Fethullah Gulen, Prophet Muhammad as a Comman der (Truestar: 1998).
3. Richard F. Mollica, ‘Invisible Wounds,’ Scientific American (June 2000).
4. Ibid.
5. Walter Laqueur, The Dream That Failed: Reflections on the Soviet Union (Oxford University Press: 1994).
6. Ibid.
7. Letter to V. V. Kuraev, Ye. B. Bosh and A. E. Minkin, August 1918. Located in Richard Pipes, The Unknown Lenin (Yale University Press: 1996).
8. Editor Note: Lenin is referring to Machiavelli (1469-1527), an Italian political philosopher and statesman synonymous with placing politics above everthing else.
9. Ibid., Letter to the Politburo, March 1922.
10. Ibid., Memorandum to N. N. Krestinsky, Sept. 1918.