Our world is more connected than ever before, yet at the same time we often remain strikingly distant from one another. Technology, careers, education, or other pursuits could all be to blame. The Pandemic only exacerbated this problem when it consequently forced all of us to shelter inside for over a year. Our shared humanity should always reign supreme over these obstacles as it is what allows us to go above and beyond. This issue of The Fountain consists of many remarkable and inspiring stories from your fellow “brothers” and “sisters.”

“Homo Covidicus – Who Are You We?” delves deep into the Pandemic and its many effects on society. Mariya Tytarenko offers a retrospective on our collective experience of Covid and how it has transformed our language, lifestyles, clothing, etc. to a point where we feel like a new species!

“Voices and Monsters: Putting My Postpartum Psychosis in Context” explores the horrors of a rare psychological disorder in which one or two in every one thousand mothers feel oddly detached from their newly born babies. Jan Kaneen recounts her own story in which as a new mother she did her best to show her innate loving care and the subdue the “voices” of a monster inside not to harm the baby. Jan’s is an eye-opening story where we learn to sympathize with mothers suffering from this disorder and that through therapy and family support they can handle their situation.

“The Snowflake and the Sun,” the winner of our 2019 – 2020 Essay Contest, expertly tells the story of a young girl, Hannah, that is separated from the mother that she loves. She is forced to adapt to a life in an orphanage without being able to fully understand why she cannot live a normal life. She is eventually reunited with her parents and does her best to adjust until her mother learns one of the worst news any mother should hear. It breaks her down completely and Hannah is then prompted to move to America and begin a new life in a faraway land.

“For My Brother” is a memoir written by another girl named Hannah for her autistic brother Matthew. His seemingly endless amounts of energy, noise, and lack of control requires constant attention and care, thus putting an immense strain on her life and the lives of her parents. However, she feels an immense bond towards him despite these difficulties and loves him just as many of us love our siblings regardless of their imperfections. It is a reminder that love can be stronger than anything else if we allow it to be.

I didn’t know what to expect when we landed in Athens. I knew we were going to be meeting with refugees and hearing their stories, but I did not expect what I saw and heard. For one thing, I may have expected a strong narrative of unbearable suffering that ran through every one of these meetings. A narrative of victimhood and helplessness. A narrative which wanted so badly to be heard and listened to so that it could expose its most tragic and historic aspects to create greater awareness and anger for it. I may have expected helpless, uncontrollable tears rolling down my cheeks in response to harrowing tales of torture, imprisonment, of separation – mother from child, husband from wife, brother from sister.

What happened, instead, has left me incredibly perplexed. I heard the harrowing tales of torture, imprisonment, separation, familial betrayal, the difficulties of escaping a brutal crackdown, and of near-death situations. But an almost unexplainable sense of calm ran through these people as they told their stories. A calm motivated by faith and the belief that God is with the Hizmet, or “service,” Movement and has already manifested His mercy by preserving the movement despite these hardships. These atrocities did not destroy the Movement or break its spirit; they look more united than ever.

The narrative that believers suffer at the hands of unjust oppressors, as many prophets did under the tyranny of various pharaohs, is all too common in the Abrahamic texts. But it is an entirely different experience to physically see and talk with someone who has gone through these kinds of traumatic experiences, who is still in the thick of trying to find a home for themselves and their family, to be able to tell their story while showing the utmost reliance on God’s plan. They were also weary of putting their experiences in the context of other refugees, as they understood that others suffered even more.

I believe that their reliance upon God, and their calm approach to faith in the midst of such turmoil, is real. And the reality is clear for all of us to see and hear. Reading about their stories through an article such as this one, or even hearing them speak on the news, pales in comparison to actually being with them during their greatest hour of need. I feel that my mind is not the same as before. I am not claiming that the refugees, the heroes who were persecuted and driven from their homes for crimes they never committed, are completely okay with their situation. What I am pointing out is that, even in the midst of their losses and suffering, they thank God and are not hopeless.

The hospitality with which they welcome guests is astonishing. Considering the fact that they were refugees, they still took the time to host us and make us feel attended to.

Shaken by trauma, the brothers we spoke to find assurance by making dark jokes about their time in prison, or the difficulties they experienced while crossing over to Greece and other countries. Hours were spent strategizing ways to escape Turkey and flee to other countries or to reunite with family members that had already escaped. Their hopes hinged on the kindness of border police and passport patrol. There was rarely enough time to grieve about a father who might still be suffering in prison, or think about those in prison that were without medical attention, or the difficulty of having to share a single toilet among 50 people at a time. There was rarely enough time to grieve about the discrimination that they endured at the hands of their cruel jailors, who tortured and beat many of them until they went blind. I almost felt ashamed that I did not cry in front of them, however I did not feel that it would be respectful to show my pain in front of them when their suffering had outmatched mine so much more. So I sat there, listening quietly, waiting for their words to unfold into long complicated stories of imprisonment, release, escape, survival (or drowning to death), landing in Greece (or being caught), staying in a refugee camp, and then ending up with fellow refugees from Turkey.

The lessons that this experience taught me are too stark to ignore. It showed me that Hizmet is a movement that brings power into question. Every effort is made to mitigate whatever suffering and loss might come from the jihad of speaking out against injustice. But when it strikes, the experiences of those that are suffering, and have suffered, as a result of doing what is good remind us once again that to be comfortable, and to put all of our eggs in one basket, is not the way to live. We should not just strive to be productive people, and the best citizens we can be, even though this is incredibly important. We should also work within the social sphere to make active change to the way people think, and to the ways in which people oppress themselves and other people. And we must be prepared, as opposed to being scared, for a time in which we might need to make drastic changes to our lives. We might even be forced to do so. To work towards active change does not fit comfortably with people who are happy with oppression. As the common maxim goes, “silence is violence.”

Being as comfortable and privileged as we are in the United Kingdom, we need to remember that, even here, people are suffering. We must stand up for them.

I am still shocked that I had the honor of hearing these most intimate stories. I am also honored that Allah has given me the chance to see what real faith looks like. I say to myself that, if I cry, it should not just be because their suffering is too much to bear (not to say that we should not cry at all about this). But it should be because I have a long way to go to meet their level of faith and commitment to Hizmet and their service to humanity.

So when it comes to self identity, in what kinds of groups are we most likely to flourish? And if the sociological truism holds that we bond first with those who confirm our identities by being most like us, how large is that group likely to be?

Steven Pinker, in The Blank Slate, states that “The universality of ethnocentrism and other forms of group-against-group hostility across societies, and the ease with which such hostility can be aroused in people within our own society” is one of the greatest obstacles to the extension of identity communities.

Still, for an opener, you can see self and group formation at work in high school cafeterias as clusters of the like-minded create an identity by excluding outsiders, largely through gossip, sometimes around matters as trivial as a dress code, or who owns the latest electronic gadgetry. In effect, they are behaving like little tribes or nations. The fascinating part is the emotional drive to belong, and the fear of exclusion, even from groups arbitrarily defined and ephemeral, including those created in cyber space. These same principles pertain to the 700 gangs which form the social fabric of south-central Los Angeles. Yet, arguably, this same group-making process, through intellectual imagination, might be extended all the way up to the world nation or global community, with each echelon defined by shared interests, activities, values, and memories. A nation, among them, is a mutuality of thinking among persons sharing common purposes. Yet as a principle of social cohesion, it is also emotional, allegiance-oriented, exclusionary, and collectively administered. There is no nation without those who are not members. Nations may also entail chauvinism, loyalty tests in time of threat, and hostility toward non-members. Karl Deutsch famously defined a nation as “a group of people united by a mistaken view about the past and a hatred of their neighbors.” In his view, national groups lie to themselves about who they are as warriors or victims in order to justify their aggression. They can act as gangs. That is an unnecessarily dark view of the national experience, but it gets much brighter as we go along.

According to the traditional dictionary definition, a national bond arises, not only because people share a common geographical territory, but because they practice the same mores, speak the same language, worship the same gods, fight common enemies, participate in the same identifying rituals and traditions, share a common stock of stories and a common history, and are often related to each other through blood ties. Cohesion around sporting events and beer preferences is merely a parody of bedrock national identity, although in a self-effacing manner, Canadians like to start there. But it is inversely conceivable that diverse peoples with diverse allegiances may somehow share a common territory without a sense of national identity, because most of those listed characteristics typically defining a nation are simply not shared by the members of pluralistic societies. So if such populations are to find an identity center for themselves in a nation, they really have only three options.

One is to redefine themselves around more vague, generic and inclusive categories of nationhood. Another is to impose uniformity through the melting pot, the Lord Durham solution, through enforced and universal education, imposed official languages, an official history, and official social rituals in the search for a common brand of allegiance. A third is to choose a new concept under which they can unite themselves as a secular community and forget about being a nation altogether. In my view of Canadian practice, we are currently pursuing all three solutions at once. The third option entails falling back upon the universals of our humanity. We might simply acknowledge the common desires and instincts of all humankind as members of the global village, and we might view Canada as a piece of this village in which we listen to each other’s first national stories in a spirit of good will. Is that not the mandate of the Canadian ministry of multiculturalism? To be sure, it would seem only right that we remain free to express the national imperatives of our birthplaces, our mother tongues, our religions, and our respective ethnicities, yet such practices appear to obstruct the formation of a specifically Canadian national identity-or maybe not? The point is very much up for discussion.

Let’s return for a moment to the second option, the nationalist teach-in for all citizens. While recognizing diversity, national governments may also recognize the value in proactively promoting a national brand, but it is a challenging enterprise, because a meaningful nationalism cannot be bought with jingoism, cheerleading, and trinkets, or bread, circuses, and revisionist history. Identity as a mind-state entails a combination of pride and duty that is somehow earned and experienced, who knows exactly how? It is something we instinctively desire, yet identity arises only when we feel emotionally drawn to the collectivity of minds, values, and practices that constitute a nation-the argument becomes circular. We may well wonder how such emotional allegiances may best be fostered. It is a point to which I will return. But it must also be lamented that nations may also include stories of failure; in fact, our literature is full to overflowing with them, and they are studied in our university classrooms with empathetic attention. From that perspective, a lament for our national failure to create a national home for new Canadians may be our most common and unifying characteristic; it is an obsession among our literary critics.

There are many stories to choose from, but I am most immediately reminded of a touching personal narrative written by Elena Maccaferri and translated by her sister as A Bench on Which to Rest. Maccaferri came to Canada from a small village above Bologna, lured to a better life by an Italo-Canadian who promised marriage, but failed to meet her at the dock upon her arrival. A hard and lonely life followed, until she was at last found by a man who had also come from her village. She went on to raise children here, who grew up Canadian in soul and spirit, but Elena could never find a true home away from her native mountains, and was overwhelmed by nostalgia. At last, when her children were grown, she returned to Italy, only to discover that all she once knew had vanished. Canada had found no place in her emotions, but had succeeded only in alienating her even from her own children.

Thomas Henricks stated that “for the most part, people experience personhood in the terms that their host societies offer them.” But that does not always happen, and when that host society somehow fails to offer acceptable terms around which personal values can flourish, the story becomes tragic, as it was for Maccaferri. It was a crisis in personal identity in relation to a nation. And while I’m telling stories about the inability of a host nation to inspire allegiance, I’ll mention another, which goes back to my bachelor days as a young Carleton professor. I had just exhausted my resources on a six-bedroom fixer-upper in Ottawa south with rooms left over to rent out to students. In that little community we had a mysterious roomer who never joined in our collective kitchen exploits and conversations. That was not a problem in itself, but his place in the household came to a strange crisis, nevertheless, when one afternoon a couple of the other students found him in the kitchen counting out huge piles of change. He explained simply that if the laundromat owners were so stupid in their choice of coin boxes, they deserved to be robbed. In no time I had a report upstairs, and went down for an account of my own. It was a sad litany: that his father had come to Canada with promises and expectations, and that to his mind this country had ruined him, giving him only custodial work to do. In his disappointment, he had trained his children to blame the entire country, giving them carte blanche to recover his losses any way they could. The laundromat theft had been conducted as a grievance against the nation. Any Canadian was thus a fair target, and revenge could be taken indiscriminately. What bizarre turns the idea of nation can take; it is a reminder that dialogue can help.

When social groups are organized around adhesion to extended clans or tribes, as they were among the First Nations of the New World, we have an early example of the tribal-nation as a tight working survival community sharing a single culture, and calling for unflinching loyalty. But it was only after the long hiatus of the Dark Ages, and a pre-Renaissance period characterized by city states and assorted feudal principalities that the modern nation emerged in conjunction with the political institutions that framed the autonomous state.

The sixteenth century was the first great age of nation building, with England leading the way under the Tudors. And what an experiment it was. A poem I teach nearly every year is entitled The Faerie Queene, written by Edmund Spenser. It was, unabashedly, a national epic which, by chivalric and allegorical example, set out to teach its readers the great civic virtues upon which the new nation could build, including loyalty to the queen and a sense of duty in the cause of right and justice.

Of course, there is nothing like war and the threat of invasion to quicken a sense of common cause and rouse a sense of national fervor. This is simply a by-product of the craving for self- protection which can only be realized where there is a feeling of all-for-one and one-for-all. Canadians still construct some of their strongest moments of national identity through recollections arising from the First and Second World wars. They are noble stories in which we all can share, dealing with a nation coming of age through the baptism of sacrifice. And we have been reminded at times that the nation expects such matters to be treated with ultimate respect and honor. On these occasions the self is lost for a moment in the experience of the nation, and in that regard it is an experience of extended identity, a national ritual that contains the self within the group. The spiritual philosopher, Fethullah Gulen, extends that loss of self in a nation into a hope for a collective future: “Any nation that liberates itself from the deadly web of selfishness and egoism, stereotyping, excessive entitlements, fear of the future, long-lasting hatred and hostility, and at the same time respects the freedom of ideas and beliefs, while turning away from oppressors, as well as giving rights to the innocent, will surely experience long life.” That requires not only self-investment, but collective monitoring and the mastery of the dialogic self in each member. Such a nation must seek to amplify the positive qualities of experiential identity at the national level. But how to extend that experience to the optimum level of respectful allegiance is a challenging formula to meet.

We are, in fact, discussing a rather elusive state of mind. What is it like to experience an ideal national allegiance? How will it feel to be a participating member? One part of our nature seeks a spontaneous glow of unconditional brotherhood in a community of homogenous values. Another part realizes, intellectually, that we have a mutually beneficial contractual arrangement with fellow citizens only at a legal and organizational level. The German terms for these, often employed by scholars, are gemeinschaft for the former, and gesellschaft for the latter. The contrast can be understood historically. In the Middle Ages, rural populations spent their entire lives within view of their parish church steeples; their thought preoccupations were concerned with fixed or received views invested in work, rituals, and customs which remained unchanged throughout generations. Such communities had little need for debate or discussion, because everyone knew what the others were thinking. These were societies entirely integrated through common religious festivals, language, history, and traditions. These were experiential quality nations generating a sense of gemeinschaft.

Renaissance societies worked outwards from this communal base toward new identities based on restraint in a secular, legislated, legal, and impersonal society. This new order we might call a second experiential quality of nation, conceived as a partnership or a social contract to promote political and economic order. Both the communal nation and the legal nation are principles of group organization and experience, but they do not share a common ethos. For better or for worse, the modern plural nation has been compelled to redefine itself as a society regulated by law, charters, and citizenship-a gesellschaft. My point is that as societies foster libertarian individualism, much of that intuitive and communal sense of the first experiential quality of nation disappears. We have heard much, since the nineteenth century, about alienation, solipsism, existentialism, the anxieties of modernity, the breakdown of the nuclear family, rapid mobility, and transnationalism.

The longing for a tribal structure in size and cohesion prevails even in modern societies. We might try to replace that feeling at the national level through an equitably administered legal society, through education, and through health and welfare support. But that returns us to the awkward crux. Does a true sense of brotherhood and identity emerge only when there are collective bonds that include language, religion, customs, food and festivals, and life on a village scale? States may structure themselves around welfare nets, global educational systems, and the legal protection of opportunity for all, but there remains intense anxiety over the oneness of our collective national experience.

Donald A. Beecher is Chancellor’s Professor at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.
(Editor’s note: A follow-up of this article can be find in the 100th issue of The Fountain Magazine)

Despite the extraordinary details, my story is quite ordinary. It is a story as quintessentially American as Henry Kissinger’s tale of arriving in New York after fleeing Nazi persecution or Madeleine Albright’s experience of seeking political asylum from the Czechoslovakian Communist Party. I was born in a Chicago hospital in the immediate days after my family fled Communist Vietnam on a 35-foot fishing boat. My mom gave me the nick-name “Nam-My,” literally “Vietnam-America” for being her first-American born child. Thus, I was different from the rest of the kids-simply by virtue of being born here. Unlike my siblings, whose early childhood memories consisted of eating plain rice with salt and hiding in underground shelters during bombings, I watched Rainbow Brite and Transformers before going to school every morning, ate Fruit Loops for breakfast, and had a regular supply of FDA-approved whole milk at my disposal- a luxury from the standpoint of my siblings who fled Vietnam with my parents in the early 1980s. My care-free childhood was like any other American kid – roller-skating madly up and down the two blocks outside of my house that made up my entire universe of a playground, playing Slip n’ Slide in my Latino neighborhood, fluent in Spanish slang phrases I did not know the equivalent to in English or Vietnamese, and catching fireflies at night on my porch. My childhood was bright and sunny and I had no idea at that time how different life would have been if it had not been for the heroic but excruciatingly difficult choice of one man out at sea nearly 30 years before: Captain Bell.

Captain Bell was a U.S. Navy captain aboard the USS Morton DD 948, an anti-submarine weapons destroyer ship deployed during the Vietnam War. His life intersected with mine on a warm day 100 miles into the South China Sea on June 9, 1982- the day he decided to defy the Navy’s orders not to pick up Vietnamese refugees. The orders he received to not pick up Vietnamese boat people made perfect sense: such practices would encourage people to continue risking their lives at sea to escape Vietnam. Yet, Captain Bell chose to defy these orders that day and through his single decision, I was born. After Captain Bell brought my family along with the other seventy other boat people to a Filipino refugee camp, my parents spent 8-9 months awaiting relocation to the United States. In the meantime, I must have been conceived because just days after leaving the refugee camp and arriving in the United States, I was born in Chicago without a single glimpse of this stormy chapter in my family’s history.

For as long as I can remember, mom went door-to-door in the freezing Chicago snow to clean homes and dad fixed bikes. Despite growing up in what later became a single parent household of four children with barely enough funds to rent someone’s basement to live in, I had always felt lucky to inherit all of the anecdotal stories my mother recounted of her life back in Vietnam. But just like many first-generation kids from an immigrant family, I struggled to figure out how to truly live up to my family’s expectations. Was I supposed to grow up and open a nail salon as 99% of the Vietnamese did in the United States? Was I supposed to do something more interesting with my life, something that would make my mother’s tumultuous journey here worth it? Should I spend my life fulfilling my filial duties to my family or go off on my own, become a self-made [wo]man and pull myself up by my own bootstraps? The burden of the past weighed heavily on my shoulders and I was desperate to find answers to my questions.

I searched far and near for answers, insight, and clues to unravel the past that I barely understood as a child. At 15 years old, I traveled and lived in Beijing hiking up the Great Wall of China and back down to the Yangtze River in search of any clues that would solve the mysteries of my past. In college, I lived in South Korea and stood at the edge of the demilitarized zone peering into North Korea to catch a glimpse of Communism at its best. Throughout my adventures, my family’s story motivated me to overcome poverty and racial discrimination in Chicago’s inner city, graduate cum laude from Northwestern University, and become the first in my family to attend law school. The stark contrast between my privileged life and that of my relatives left behind in Vietnam motivated me to later work with Vietnamese sex trafficking victims in Taiwan and to attend law school to continuing helping the most vulnerable segments of our society. From conception in a Filipino refugee tent to becoming the first attorney in my entire family lineage, I realize now that I would not be here at all had it not been for Captain Bell’s decision, a decision which altered the trajectory of many lives out at sea that day.

Most recently, this investigative process of piecing together my family history has helped me uncover the most valuable treasure I ever expected to find: Captain Bell himself. A casual internet search led me to discover that Captain Bell is still alive and living in sunny California. I recently emailed him to introduce myself as the product of his heroic decision in 1982. Nearly 28 years later through finding Captain Bell and uncovering more facts about what happened that day out at sea, I am discovering how much of a difference one person can make with even just one decision. My mother took a leap of faith by risking her life and fleeing Vietnam so that she would not have to live in a society without choices. Captain Bell defied orders to save a group of complete strangers in need. Suddenly, I realized that Captain Bell’s rescue story was not just another one of my mother’s Vietnam War stories of the past. Captain Bell was alive and by taking my own leap of faith, I could meet this man who caused my life be possible and now make his story a part of my own.

With only 72 hours left to live, the only conceivable way to spend my time would be with the two superheroes who literally and figuratively opened me the doors of life: my mom and Captain Bell. As a single mother of four-children and a hard-working nurse now in her fifties, my mom spends all day and night taking care of sick people. She deserves the world and has dreamed of visiting the hometown she left behind in North Vietnam in the 1970s. I would book First-class tickets to Vietnam to tour the town she left more than 40 years ago and has not had the time nor funds to return. The best part of this trip would be that it could allow me to spend meaningful time with my mom, writing down the tremendous war stories she’s lived through, using my art skills to draw a life-size portrait of the survivors aboard the USS Morton DD 948 on that day of their rescue, and passing my family history down to the next generation of Vietnamese-Americans. Next, I would give Captain Bell a ring and invite him to travel with me to see Vietnam, which has changed completely from the dark memories he likely remembers from fighting the Viet Cong during the war. I would organize a worldwide reunion for all of the ship-mates, refugees, and families connected to the USS Morton. The seventy Vietnamese boat people Captain Bell saved in 1982 and their children, grandchildren, maybe even great-grandchildren would all be in attendance. Aboard a beautiful ship docked near Vietnam, we would share our war stories, our sea stories, and our dreams for the future as Captain Bell’s rescue story is really simply a variation of the same stories many Americans have been telling for the past two hundred years. Yes, despite all the extraordinary details, my story is simply ordinary. And through my 72-hour trip to Vietnam with my mom and Captain Bell, it would all end the same way it began: complete strangers out at sea connected together by the fragile threads of history.

There are books that I have always kept within arm’s reach on my desk-books that I have enjoyed rereading over and over again, and from which I draw the strength, joy and peace of the heart. Many of the selections from the Mathnawi-the magnum opus of Rumi, the world-famous Sufi master and poetic genius-included in Tales from Rumi, were the first of his stories that I read in Turkish many years ago. Going back as far as I can remember, I was aware that I was reading stories from the celebrated Rumi, who lived and died centuries ago in the Seljuk Turks’ capital of Konya in the heart of Anatolia. Yet, I had no idea then that I was in touch with “world literature.”

I never thought that I was not reading the Mathnawi stories in their original language; instead, I read them in an abridged version in modern Turkish-a book that greatly broadened my perception of the world. I do not think that any of my peers had the language skills to read the original Persian, or even Ottoman Turkish, versions of the Mathnawi. Indeed, many of the world’s literary masterpieces are not read or offered in their original language, and except for a small subset of world literature, most works are unknown outside of their culture. Moreover, when they are translated and read beyond the author’s environment, they require so much local knowledge to be understood that they lose their flavor.

However, Rumi is one of the rare literary figures whose works have circulated beyond their culture of origin, either in translation or in their original language. Now, there are a substantial number of his works that are available in many languages. The Tughra Books has recently published Tales from Rumi, a selection of Rumi’s stories from the Mathnawi, which have been adapted for young readers. This collection of accessible and abridged tales makes the Mathnawi available in an attractive 130-page hardcover book in the English language. The range of stories is admirably broad; each tale in this collection-from “The Rabbit and the Lion” to “The Teacher’s Fear”-has a fascinating, action-packed plot and ends with a moral that reinforces the message. It is most likely that readers will come away with a burning desire to read more of Rumi. Its intended audience includes readers interested in exciting tales and in world literature, especially younger readers, who wish to eliminate barriers and to broaden their perspectives.

Recently, there has been a growing global perspective and the increased awareness of the need to expose children and teenagers to world literature and to broaden their understanding of the larger world. In this age of globalization, while acknowledging the cultural perspectives of Rumi’s stories, young readers will become better aware of the commonalities that exist across the boundaries of various cultures. The stories in Tales from Rumi are selected from among numerous stories in the Mathnawi, adapted and edited by Professor Ali Fuat Bilkan, and translated into English by Jeanette Squires Okur. The stories will provide an enjoyable avenue to this great work of world literature and will offer a truly global perspective for this age group as well.

I would like to especially point out the potential benefits of incorporating this world classic into a secondary education curriculum. Other than recommending it for a list of suggested reading at secondary education institutions, I think that this collection of selected and abridged translations of stories from Rumi’s world classic could also be successfully used in school character education programs, which focus on personal, social, and global dimensions. The classroom study of Tales from Rumi-in an explanatory manner, respectful of cultural and linguistic diversity-will offer teenage students excellent opportunities to discover similarities in values across geography, culture, and time. Rumi’s tales have a variety of vivid human or animal characters portrayed with all the character, wit, and failings of humans. The spectacular and amusing illustrations and snapshots throughout the book are also moving and meditative-bringing the tales to life.

Native and nonnative English readers can understand the virtues and vices of characters in the tales and draw important lessons by making use of their reasoning skills and their appreciation of the book’s enlightening and comprehensible morals. Indeed, there is always more to be found in all the tales when they are read and reread, told and retold, visited and revisited, and mediated upon. In this manner, the tales’ messages may reveal themselves variously at different stages of human development. The tales could provide younger readers with the key to a better understanding of the elements of a good character and provide them with an understanding of the universal traits of respect, modesty, generosity, and the need to learn from mistakes-wisdom that have been revered by the generations of the past and acknowledged by those in the present.

Tales from Rumi is surely a marvelous introduction to one of the best books of the world literature for the youth audience, readers who do not wish to be myopic but want to see more of the world and cross borders they have not yet crossed.

Huseyin Bingul is a staff editor of The Fountain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

Considered from various angles, the contemporary era is not one to be proud of; doomed peoples of the past would no doubt be embarrassed if they were to witness many of the atrocities we no longer feel moved watching on the news on a daily basis. As the Lead Article asserts, “Communities and diverse groups within communities live with apparently endless anger, hatred, and detestation, pursuing plans of murder and complete destruction that would never previously have been held possible.” In the face of such vices, the noble prophets always acted with compassion and strived to soften the hearts of those who challenged their message. In fact, compassion is the “essence of all existence,” and despite the gloomy skies of our time, rays of a bright sun are visible on the horizon: “Hopefully, we are not distant from the coming days in which we shall be roused to a feeling of compassion in our hearts, by the grace of God.”

Thomas Petriano observes the same horizon, and he seeks a closer tie between two great religions of the world while speculating on the compassionate example of their prophets: “It is not hard to imagine Jesus and Muhammad as friends, linked by their love of God and their vision of a world characterized by justice, compassion, and equality” (may peace be with them).

Hurisa Guvercin illustrates another portrayal of compassion in her piece where she discusses an Islamic perspective on people with disabilities. It is very refreshing to find such examples from human history giving us a good reason to be proud of our past.

Roberto Colella expounds on an age-long debate on science vs. faith, and he asks, “Is it possible for a scientist to believe?” His is an interesting contribution that increases our hopes for a world where faith and science can coexist, not as contradicting phenomena, but as two inevitable components of the same truth.

The day that my daughter and I were headed to the airport, my new Turkish friend, Abdurrahman, who has been visiting our church for the last two years as a gesture of peace and global tolerance, asked me about the word “tolerance.”

It had come to his attention that tolerance can mean something negative. “I want more than to have someone simply tolerate me!” a colleague told him.

The conversation stuck with me on my flight to Istanbul and for the next couple of days. Then somewhere near the ancient cities of Lystra, Derbe and Iconium, my thoughts took shape and I wrote this essay entitled “Tolerance.”

“What is tolerance?” It is not all good. At its basest level – Level 1 – it is putting up with another, sitting on clenched fist. It is not trust. It is not friendship. It is a truce. “If I let you be, will you let me be?” And this is what we call tolerance.

Sometimes, and these times are beautiful, tolerance reaches a second level – Level 2 – it is talking. It may not seem like tolerance. Sometimes it is loud. Sometimes it is awkward. Sometimes it is offensive. It is like learning how to dance, but it is growth.

“This is who I am. This is what I believe! This is what I eat! This is how I dress and worship!”

We learn a little about each other. And this is tolerance.

Quietness sets in, and then, almost as if on its own, tolerance grows – Level 3. It is listening. Trust has begun to replace suspicion. Question marks replace exclamation points. “Tell me about yourself: What is your family like? Your faith? Your home?”

Jaws relax. Hands open and sometimes are even clasped together rather than clenched. Smiles replace suspicion, and we learn. Most people see this as tolerance, but there are more stages, more beautiful, relational transformations.

As stone silence gives way to talking and talking yields to listening … as hands go from being clenched to opened to clasped, another level of tolerance emerges: Level 4. It is respect.

There is an appreciation for the other. You are just as much a person as I. Your family has fears and hopes even as mine does. You cry and laugh and worry and pray as I do. The balance has shifted to where we see eye to eye without condescension. This is tolerance.

Respect is a beautiful stage in the process of tolerance. As it grows and stories are shared, we reach another level of tolerance, almost by accident – Level 5 – it is our story. Somehow as I told you my story and you told me your story, we were writing our story. We shared watermelon on the rooftop. We sang songs in the night air. Remember, we started singing separately, but ended singing together.

Our story. Our memories. Community. Tolerance.

It has come so far, this concept of tolerance, from truce to trust, from respect to relationships, from sharing stories to shaping stories. And yet there is more: Level 6. It is friendship. Solidarity. I now like you and you like me. I think of you when you are absent. I smile when I see you, and you smile, too. Handshakes have given way to embraces; nods are replaced by pats on the back and the mussing of hair. Reunions are arranged, future contacts desired.

I am no longer curious; I care. I truly care for you my friend, for your family, for your country. And this is tolerance.

Seven is the perfect number. There are seven days of the week, seven seals in Revelation, and there are seven levels to tolerance. Level 7? It is love.

Walls are removed, suspicions are relaxed, reservations are repealed. Eyes sparkle with delight rather than peering for inconsistencies and flaws. Your pain causes me to hurt. Your joy causes me to laugh. Your pleasure brings me delight. Hands are held, not just shaken. Souls embrace as well as arms. We are brothers, sisters, siblings. We are certain that God loves us and that God expects us to love each other, and we are elated to comply.

Tolerance has been made complete in love and perfect love casts out all fear.

“What is tolerance?” I was once asked.

It is truce: Sitting on clenched fist.

It is talking: Claiming my rights, my story.

It is listening: Being open to your story.

It is respect: Clasping hands together in trust.

It is one story: Creating shared moments.

It is friendship: Genuine caring.

It is love: Expressing complete, mature, perfect love.

It is God’s desire for our world. It is our world’s only hope and it is my desire. Tolerance.

Originally published at www.theeagle.com. The Bryan-College Station Eagle.

Pre-school children and reading

Reading books to little children is one of the best ways of spending time with them. What we tell them at this period has a greater influence on them, because this is the period when their personalities are developing. It is a very remarkable fact that Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) counseled Muslims to whisper the adhan and iqama in a baby’s ear as soon as he/she was born; from this we can infer that we should start talking to our child from the very first day. Today, researchers who study child development have reached the same conclusion.

As soon as our baby can differentiate colors and shapes, we can begin to communicate with him/her using books. A picture will catch a child’s attention. It is better to explain something to a child with a picture or a photograph, for it is recognized that learning is more effective with visual support. Our child will be interested in books at an early age if we show them the pictures in a book and talk about them. Such a practice is useful in terms of language development and establishing a dialogue between parents and their children, as well as making children feel that their parents love them. A further benefit in introducing books to children at an early age is that it raises their interest in books. In time, books become their close friends and reading becomes a need for them. As Victor Hugo stated, the need to read is like gunpowder, once it is ignited it does not die out.

During the pre-school period, if the parents read books to their children everyday, their child’s vocabulary will become enriched and their ability to think will improve along with their intellectual progress. In this way, children will learn to listen and to speak. They will grow up as individuals who love reading. They often ask questions when a story is being read, for children learn by asking. They should be given logical and satisfactory answers. Their questions should never be ignored or undermined. They should never be misinformed. Children are never bored by listening to the same stories over and over. This helps them to become familiar with the vocabulary and facilitates absorbing the message given in the book.

What is the benefit of books?

Books are the most important means of educating children. We transfer our culture to new generations via books. Books improve language use and teach about life. Children can get to know people through books and evaluate them. Within the plots of novels and stories, children come to recognize human behavior. Starting from this point, they learn what kind of people should be considered as friends and what type of behavior is to be avoided.

A child who reads about the problems in life and the ways to cope with these knows what to do when he/she encounters similar problems in real life. Books teach children to use their imagination and to love people, nature and living things. Books raise interest in inventions and technology. They teach about man’s place and his duty in the universe. The stories children read teach them that they should not step on ants, destroy bird-nests, that they should not let animals starve and so on. They make children feel in their consciences that lying, stealing, and fighting are all wrong. Children internalize values, such as being kind to people, helping them without expecting anything in return, courage, determination, modesty, being resolute and striving for success when identifying themselves with the heroes in the books they read.

Books are a means of entertainment as well. Riddles, puzzles, mind games and anecdotes contribute to the mental development of children and help them enjoy themselves.

The reason for reading:

Reading is related to the way we perceive the world and our perspective of life, universe and our self-opinion. Reading is the outcome of the urge to discover new things and our desire, as a human being to understand ourselves, the reason of our existence, our Creator and the mysteries of the universe. This must be the reason why the first order of the Qur’an is Read. People can achieve these only by reading.

How can we motivate children toward books and reading?

There is no magical way to make children love reading. Nevertheless, we can try different ways to approach this problem. We have already mentioned some methods that can be used with pre-school children. We can apply different methods for older children.

First of all, if the adults at home constantly read and share their opinions with each other about the themes or characters in the books they are reading, the children will develop an interest in reading. Reading starts with the family. Even a little child who cannot read or write, holds a book, turns its pages, looks at its pictures, asks questions about it and in the end, reading becomes as natural for him/her as eating and drinking. In short, if reading has a place in our own life, our children will read too.

We should not just present books as a means of transferring information. We should emphasize the entertaining and attractive sides of books also. Children should be made to meet books as if they were meeting a friend. Illustrated story books, novels, books of riddles, puzzles and anecdotes are usually more interesting for children. Such books warm children to reading.

We should read together with our child. Children love this. We should alter the tone of our voice when we read what different characters are saying, trying to animate the story. If the parent is the only one reading, it will be boring for the child. Sometimes the child should read to his/her parents. Some parents habitually read stories to their children before they go to sleep. This is a good method that can be used in most families.

Children should be taken to book fairs and bookshops, they should be given time to take a look at the books. They should be allowed to choose some of the books they are to read. We should be careful about choosing books suitable to their age. A book should have interesting illustrations and should be written in a language that is grammatically accurate, yet interesting.

In conclusion, if we choose the right ways, any child can love reading. However, we cannot make a child read a book by force. Even if we cannot help the children to love books, then at least we should not make them hate books. Once a person hates books, it is very difficult for them to warm to them again.

In Snow White, the evil stepmother gushes: Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest one of all? Most people think that she is vain, and therefore being vain is bad. But there is more to it than that, and if this is all we can impart to our children then we are robbing them of meaning. Actually, I do not think this is about our children at all, but rather about ourselves as adults. When we read these stories again to our children, its very telling about ourselves if we finally understand these stories or not, now that we have grown up.

If you are searching for wisdom in life, a child’s library of fairy tales is a convenient place to begin. The imagery in fairy tales provides us with archetypes that we can use to organize the lessons that life teaches us.

The notion of the evil stepmother in Snow White talking to her mirror struck me when I was looking at myself in the mirror. We know that some mirrors do a better job for us then others. Mirrors that make us look horrendous put us off. Is it the lighting? Is this mirror warped or what? Do I actually look like that? What’s going on with my hair? How come my pores are so big? But what I really mean is: Am I the fairest one of all?

I wish I had a mirror that did the job like the one Snow White’s stepmother had. It was honest and reliable. But mirrors like that do not exist, at least not for our bathrooms. But we do carry such a mirror, and it is of great help if we know how to use it. To use it properly, we have to ask ourselves the proper questions. The evil stepmother asked the wrong question. She was not evil; she was unenlightened and lost in her own illusions.

Most of us ask the wrong questions but do not think of ourselves as evil. We ask if we are the fairest, the smartest, the happiest, the most contented. The stepmother was told that she was not the fairest in relation to Snow White. She was plenty gorgeous already though, the number two beauty in the land.

When we ask the wrong questions, we become as delusional as Snow White’s stepmother. Unfortunately, many of us do not stop looking for a mirror that will tell us that we are the fairest.

Mirrors only show us who we are, not who we would rather be. We think that a new car would be a good mirror, but it is not. We think that a new, attractive mate would be a good mirror, but it is not. Neither is a high paying job or a lovely home. Such things have nothing to do with finding a mirror that works because this inner reflection, this mirror that we carry, never fails to work. Unfortunately, we simply fail to look, all the while asking the wrong questions to the wrong objects.

To be fair, it is difficult to look straight into our honest reflections. Not only must we contend with our previous illusions of trying to be the fairest, we must now contend with very real failings of character and personality. Guess what? I realized this weekend that I am not such a nice guy. Something like that can be down right depressing, but not if we realize that it is all part and parcel of seeing ourselves.

When we can SEE ourselves, we begin to see others; that is, we see ourselves in others and others in ourselves. We also begin to question ourselves, not to doubt ourselves but to pose questions that require answers from us. That is, we make ourselves accountable. When we are accountable to ourselves, we are essentially free. We no longer look outside for the pre-digested answers so much as inward for both the questions and the answers.