The origins of a seemingly nameless civic-social movement which later became popularly known as the “Gülen Movement” or “Hizmet Movement” date back to the early 1970s in Turkey.  The Movement’s goal is to produce “social good” throughout the world, which are manifested around peaceful activities like promoting dialogue among communities, human rights, love, tolerance, ethics, education, women’s issues, and eradication of poverty. It derives inspiration from the ideas and thoughts of Fethullah Gülen, a Muslim cleric who is known as “Hojaefendi.” The Movement has successfully nurtured a generation to establish a global network of socio-cultural institutions including schools, coaching centers, universities, media outlets, publishing houses, hospitals, dialogue centers, and relief organizations.

At its core, the Movement is a faith based social movement that takes inspiration from Islamic ideals to reinforce the civic, moral, and ethical goals of Islam. The goal is to transform individuals and society in such a way to produce a “golden generation,” which in turn provides leadership to all walks of human life.

The Movement has espoused a purely civic social aspect of Islam – as opposed to discourses of “Islam and modernity” – to universalize the message of the Movement which has ultimately paved the way for it to become transnational.

“The movement encapsulates a faith-inspired peace-invoking service. It promotes universal values, superiority of the law and human rights along with freedom of belief, freedom of religion and freedom of expression.” [1]

As the movement’s chief source of inspiration, Fethullah Gülen dwells upon the universal values of humanity as an integral part of Islam’s fundamental doctrine and values. His approach to faith bends on Sufism and this has always made him a propounder of the human-centric discourse of Islam. The goal of this discourse is to promote a civic and ethical transformation of an individual and society at large, based upon the prophetic model of insan al-kamil (perfect human being). Gülen maintains that “Morality is the essence of religion and a most fundamental portion of the divine message. The Prophet, who is the greatest embodiment of morals, said: Islam consists in good morals; I have been sent to perfect and complete good morals” [2].

Gülen further underlines that the basic dynamics of a life of action and thought is directly tied with our spiritual life, which is based upon our religious values [3]. Gülen’s very idea of hizmet, meaning “service,” reminds the spiritual fervor of Imam Rabbani’s “abadiyat,” (meaning eternity) notion, becomes in a way “service to eternal God.” The attainment of “service to eternity” can only be achieved by serving the humanity. This universal Islamic discourse of Gülen discards the need of state agencies as a perquisite to serve Islam and its interests. Rather, he maintains that Islam can best be served by participating in socially beneficial activities such as promoting peace, imparting education, providing relief and health facilities. To emphasize this point, Gülen has said; “Islam does not need a state to survive; in the modern age, civil society can independently maintain Islam even where Muslims are not in majority” [4].

These conceptual and ideological clusters helped create and broaden the vision of transnational networks of Hizmet Movement that had entered the global arena and made it to engage in a comprehensive perspective on social-civic challenges. Its transnational character became even firmer when Gülen himself moved to the United States and was actively involved in promoting and improving the overall wellbeing of society investing his robust efforts to foster dialogue and peace. Since then, themes such as peace, human rights, ethics, pluralism, altruism, reconciliation and dialogue have occupied even more space in the center of the Movement’s agenda in order to gain a better understanding of, and appreciation for, cultures, histories, civilizations and traditions.

Despite its current national experience in its homeland Turkey differs widely in terms of the social relevance and political interactions, at the transnational level one can hardly doubt that the Movement has progressively developed an ability to address and mobilize around problems of a social and civic nature.

Unlike many other Islamic modernist movements including Salafism and al-Nahdah in Arabia, the Muhammadiyah movement in Indonesia, the Aligarh and Nadwa movements in India, the Hizmet Movement has been characterized by mass interaction and participation at local, national, and transnational levels. This interaction and participation have attracted thousands of volunteers across the globe and have generated a global network of thousands of socio-cultural institutions including schools, coaching centers, universities, hospitals, dialogue centers, relief organizations etc. Their transnational networks active on global and local civic social issues have multiplied, built alliances with national and supranational civil actors including UN’s institutions, and influenced their views and actions.

Professor Anwar Alam maintains:

“Hizmet is a transnational civil society movement calling up everyone to collaborate around a common ideal of good work for humanity. The movement aims to facilitate an environment in which all can work together in a pluralistic, peaceful, all embracing spirit and voluntary altruism, regardless of subscription to a certain faith.” [5]

Unlike other movements, Hizmet’s most effective paradigm of conceptualizing such an unusual combination of coalitions, coordination, and diversities of convergence and pluralism, of national and transnational struggles is an example of a model grassroots movement.

Transnational networking of the Movement has emerged as a crucial aspect of its global activities and as the main form of organizational linkage between local nation-based civic actors to the cross-border activism of Hizmet. The Movement aptly fits into Robert Putnam’s theory on “Social Capital” which refers to “the connections among individuals, social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them.” Hizmet’s transnational network is a result of its employment of “social trust” and “reciprocity.”

Thus, these forms of movement within Hizmet can be characterized by voluntary horizontal and, at times, vertical patterns of coordination that are reciprocal and asymmetrical. Within the Hizmet Movement, in particular, the transnational network can be understood as maintaining coordination among different civil society actors including both organizations and individuals such as experts, located in several countries, based on a shared frame of work, and investing joint efforts for common good. Being a faith based movement, the crucial factor that motivates its volunteers is, as Anwar Alam rightly observed, “the in-built Islamic cognitive structure of the ‘ikhlas-iman-hijrah-dawa’” linkage that provides the motivational resources for the expansion of the movement.” While detailing the micro structure of the Movement he concluded, “in short, the whole Hizmet Movement runs on the informal principle of consultation, trust, cooperation, and faith” [6].

In spite of the different perspectives and viewpoints in course, the Movement flourished as a self-organized and self-sustained actor on the global scene with its own policy priorities and agenda for social-civic changes. The Movement is clearly transnational in its very nature and in the reach of its activism that converges in fostering universal values. While having such a vivid picture of the transnational character of the Movement, one can rightly argue that this transnational character became the reason the Movement not only survived but thrived, in wake of the so called failed coup attempt of 2016 and subsequent witch hunts and purges that were launched by the Turkish regime.

References

1 Alam, Anwar. 2019. For the sake of Allah, The Origin, Development, and Discourse of the Gülen Movement. Blue Dome Press, USA, p. 28.

2 Gülen, M. Fethullah. 1998. Towards the Lost Paradise. Izmir: kaynak.  Al-Bukhari, “Al-adab-ul-Mufrad” no. 273, and  Ibn-Sa’ad, “al-tabaqat” vol.1, p. 192.

3 Ibid, p. 87.

4 Quoted in Mustafa Akyol, “What made the Gulen Movement Possible” in International Conference Proceedings: Muslim World in Transition: Contributions of the Gülen Movement, Leeds Metropolitan University Press, London, October 2007, p. 31.

5 Alam, op. cit. p. 27.

6 Alam, op. cit. p. 159-164.

Scientific psychology corroborates these truths and lays bare the inescapable responsibility to know and manage the self (C.G. Jung, 1957). Knowing and accepting realities about ourselves positively offers a platform for personal growth and development, and further permits cathartic motivations for transcending flaws. While religions approach the path to transcendence differently (e.g. based on organic time and place), each testifies to human dignity that is capable of finding safe passage through the contradictions of life without compromising the safety of others.

Religious and secular histories reveal tragic outcomes for humanity when these responsibilities are ignored. The current neoliberal, capitalist ideology, which was systemized by economic theorist Milton Friedman, externalizes, or factors out, human and environmental damage, for these interfere with the profit principle. His open defiance of social responsibility not only shows a separation between the rational mind and rational heart, but clears the way for nullification of the universal human rights principle and bows to nefarious economic warfare waged between groups.

Within earlier historical memory, power’s unwillingness to analyze the subjective and blame the objective played-out on the global stage with catastrophic consequences. Between 1914 and 1945, the world was at war with itself. Yet, national leaders and their people denied their own failed-policies, and chose to violently project responsibility onto others (Fromm’s, 1973). Analyses of Europe’s part in the atrocities of WWII illuminate a reoccurring historical fact: non-defensive wars are often complicated and motivated by un-dealt with personal projections of a nation’s leaders and its peoples. At the heart of humanity’s violent history lie legions of self-denials and self-failures, too colossal to list. Perhaps more ironic than the irresponsible projections themselves is the denial of responsibility, as expressed in the question: where was God?

With the beginning of the West’s wars in the Middle East, in 2003, human rights experts recognized that the topic of human rights was off the table, a frightening but conscious decision that reconfirms the warnings of sages and prophets: human history is a history of choice.

A catharsis for the events of 1914 – 1945 was the establishment of the Bretton Accords, which established international institutions aiming to prevent future crimes against humanity. The sets of principles laid out in the accords sought to mandate individual rights of vital protections, by humanizing finances, employment, and governance. Rights of human security were embedded within a constellation of personal, social, economic, and political rights. The United Nations, which signed the 1948 Convention on The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, agreed to this universal principle, and applied it clearly to the subjugated children and women of the global patriarchy by creating the special conventions: Rights of the Child and The Elimination of Discrimination against Women.

While many nation-states embrace moral responsibility to ratify conventions for universal human rights, many UN representatives continue to face non-ratification resistance at home. While the new, global power-brokers of trade and finance systemically and tactically block universal human rights, the global under-privileged are taking their arguments to the streets. Taking responsibility to occupy their own policies is a response validated by scholar Noam Chomsky (Occupy, 2012, p.89) and reflects the Jeffersonian idea of democratic action. Taking possession of rights far exceeds passive verbalization.

A watershed of responsible self-action is being witnessed around the globe: workers are organizing to buy-back their closed factories; students organize to undermine dictatorships and corrupt governments; sexually exploited children are naming criminal-priests; women are fighting the slave-trade; independent journalists air photos of government backed genocides and externally organized coups; neighbors take video of real-time police brutality; independent filmmakers document corporate damages; veterans bow to their own shame and expose military atrocities; whistle-blowers expose mass government fraud; and high-ranking bank officials make tragic, but telling testimonies against system-exploitation by committing suicide. While these examples reflect an existing depth of global darkness, self-responsible action affirms our awareness of our right to live change and change living.

Considering our ever changing universe and the human capacity to re-imagine new life, it is possible to more clearly understand the discreteness of the great religions which direct responsibility to each individual. By means of self-awareness, self-responsibility and self-regulation, we each hold the best possibilities for peaceful co-existence and the preservation of human rights.

June Dayle Jelm, PhD in International Relations, is a Professional Mediator specializing in Domestic Violence in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Science is the systematic study of the behavior of certain phenomena (that is, regularities, uniformities) in the physical universe. Scientific study is based on observation, experimentation, measurement, and the formulation of universal laws that describe these facts and phenomena in general terms and enable prediction.

The process of describing regularities (i.e. things that happen in a particular way) is incomplete and never exhaustive because regularities are not exact and deterministic. There is actually quite a lot of approximation and simplification involved in this process. If an exact equation is desired, then these scientific laws, which are useful for prediction, must be formulated in mathematical terms; this represents the whole business of science.

The huge popularity of science is due to its practical results, such as the previous technological examples stated previously. Science is about studying regularities in the material world and describing those regularities in order to make predictions and to make possible the technology that we use daily possible.

It is important to stress that describing and making use of science is not about explaining, but rather using it to make sense of something; here, description is not to be confused with explanation. Therefore, science is about describing, not explaining. The moment a scientist talks about the meaning behind a law or regularity in nature and our ability to benefit from it, he is no longer talking science and he is venturing into the realm of metaphysics and the philosophy of science. Just because someone is a great scientist, it does not mean that he has a deeper insight into the meaning of the laws of the physical world and universe.

What science seeks to explain

Science does not answer questions of meaning or questions of agency (like, who is doing what for what reason? What is responsible for a given regularity?) and we cannot criticize science for not dealing with these questions. They may be important questions but it’s not the responsibility of the field of science to answer these questions. For example, consider the Law of Gravity. We drop a pen and it falls. Why did it fall? Because of gravity.

We observe that, without exception, the pen always falls when we lift it and drop it. Then we call the conjunction between performing an action and its regularity the law of gravity. This means that the law of gravity is simply the name we have given to this regularity; however, it does not mean that the pen is falling because of gravity. Gravity is the name given to the process, not an explanation for it, but in our minds both the name and the explanation for the phenomenon have become one and the same.

The question arises: Is it logically justified to explain an experience through a causal law that is derived through the same experience?

In the beginning, when scientists started asking these questions, it was unclear what the difference was between description and explanation. For a long time science was thought to be a venture competing with religion in providing answers for life.

Regarding natural laws, 19th century American philosopher Charles Peirce stresses on the point that natural laws serve as a description of natural events, not as explanations of these very events: “no law of nature makes a stone fall, or a Leyden jar to discharge, or a steam engine to work.”¹

A law of nature left to its self would be quite analogous to a court without a sheriff. A court in that predicament might probably be able to induce some citizen to act as sheriff; but until it had so provided itself with an officer who, unlike itself, could not discourse authoritatively but who could put forth the strong arm, its law might be the perfection of human reason but would remain mere fireworks. Just so, let a law of nature – say the law of gravitation – remain a mere uniformity – a mere formula establishing a relation between terms – and what in the world would induce a stone, which is not a term nor a concept but just a plain thing, to act in conformity to that uniformity?²

The law of gravity is just a formula, just a name. It cannot make a stone act in accordance to it.

It is important to note that the notion of law is closely related to issues of agency and also to the affinity of the human mind to perceive natural phenomena and the possibility of finding patterns in nature beyond science (i.e. how is it that we are so in tune to what is happening in the world that we can pick up all these regularities?). These issues announce the “greatness” of science. When it comes to the affinity of the human mind to realize recurrent patterns in the universe, Peirce says:

. . . the mind of man is strongly adapted to the comprehension of the world; at least, so far as this goes, that certain conceptions, highly important for such a comprehension, naturally arise in the mind; and, without such a tendency, the mind could never have had any development at all.³

Therefore, there would be no science if one could not grasp the regularities.

In our scientific inquiry, it is reasonable for us to be searching out these regularities and hoping that they will remain stable, but we cannot assume that we have explained how or why such regularities or laws are in effect. It may also be reasonable to say that there are regularities and we hope that these regularities and so-called universal laws will come into effect in the future so that technology can be made from predictions. There can only be hope, and not certainty, because science is based on observation and there may be some instances where the same observation may not occur.Even though science is based on exactitude, there is still a measure of hope and faith involved.

A scientific law states a repeated observation about nature. How do we come to the conclusion that we have a scientific law? Several events occur, (not just to the researcher) that hold to certain regularities, according to a certain pattern, and a generalized statement is formed. The process of generalization from a limited number of observations to form a universal statement or law is called the process of induction, or looking at a certain number of events and saying that things are going to happen all the time. The assumption under the process of induction is that the more observations made about a particular phenomenon, the more it will reinforce the law.

There is only one way for such an assumption to be true, and it has nothing to do with the number of observations. We assume a relationship or connection between the object and what occurs, the cause and effect. The assumption is that there is a necessary connection between the cause and the effect. One must be able to explain this connection in a logical way, not as something that depends solely on observation but something that necessitates the event. If this is unable to be done, if it is only based on observations, then induction is a problem. In formulating a scientific law, generalizations made through the method of induction are problematic.

Because of induction, the basic application of our inductive reasoning is twofold: firstly we think we can describe what we have seen by the use of universal laws, and secondly, that we can use these established laws in predicting what we will see. There is, however, a problem with the mechanics of the inductive process. Are we justified in formulating these universal laws simply on the basis of a discrete number of past observations that have been made?

For example, based on the scientific observation of planetary motion, we could suggest that “the sun will rise every day.” However, just because the sun has risen in the past, it does not mean that it will continue to do so either tomorrow or the next day. So the induction based on the number of occurrences of a particular phenomenon is illogical. There is no guarantee that we will ever see the sun rise again. The sense of faith we have in the scientific laws of planetary motions is based on the supposition that some kind of necessity has caused the sun to rise in the past and will therefore continue to cause the sun to rise in the future. We assume that the connection between the cause and the effect are necessarily related. To use another common example, everyone in Europe thought the statement “All swans are white” was true because every swan that they had ever seen was white. However, when travelers came back from Australia and New Zealand, they reported having seen black swans, thus providing a real life example of how induction can falter. This observation negated the previous generalizations.This brings us to the issue of causality.

Causality is the relationship between an event (the cause) and a second event (the effect), where the second event is understood as a consequence of the first. In relation to one another, induction only has to work sometimes whereas causality always has to work. It has little to do with the number of occurrences; it has to work for each cause-effect relationship. The consequence of this model of the world is that empirical knowledge is connected to the causal relations between objects and events. According to this view, the logic of scientific discovery is inductive. In other words, it infers universal laws from particular statements.

The logic of induction proceeds as follows: First, it conjectures that induction is valid, and then concludes that causation is true. Whereas, from the point of view of logic, it is just the other way around; induction can be justified only by proving that causation is logically valid i.e., that the relation between cause and effect is necessary. Induction is therefore logically not a justified method to attain universality. As the Australian-British philosopher of science Sir Karl Popper observes, scientific induction is “logically inadmissible,” that scientific “theories are, therefore, never empirically verifiable.”⁴

Can we count on the laws of nature? It depends. We can have faith in them; we can hope that they will continue to hold in the future but there exists no logical certainty. But we cannot prove that they will remain true because we cannot observe something that will occur in the future (the dogma of the experiment).

The British philosopher Bertrand Russell calls the dogma of induction, the “biggest scandal of philosophy.” He provides the example of a farmer and his chicken. The chicken notices that the farmer comes every day to feed it. It predicts that the farmer would continue to bring food every day. According to the principle of induction, each feeding event added justification to its prediction. Then one day the farmer came and wrung the chicken’s neck. Russell’s point is that induction cannot justify any conclusions!

Critical problems with the method of induction have been in discussion long before the more recent debates, and are often connected with the concept of causality. The same issue was also at the center of a heated debate among Muslim philosophers and theologians as early as the 12th century. This critical problem with the method of induction was also pointed out earlier by the 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume. Hume stated that when we observe two events to be causally related, say a seed (a) resulting in the growth of a shoot or tree (b), what we in fact observe is only a contingent conjunction of two events. That is, the causation that we think we perceive is not actually “out there in the world” for us to observe. When we see two events and judge them to be causally related, it is merely through a habit of the mind, something we project onto the world. A necessary causal link, as such, is not guaranteed. Hume writes:

Were any object presented to us, and were we required to pronounce concerning the effect, which will result from it, without consulting past observation; after what manner, I beseech you, must the mind proceed in this operation? It must invent or imagine some event, which it ascribes to the object as its effect; and it is plain that this invention must be entirely arbitrary. The mind can never possibly find the effect in the supposed cause, by the most accurate scrutiny and examination. For the effect is totally different from the cause, and consequently can never be discovered in it.⁵

This means that causal laws of nature are not true logically and there is no concrete evidence that these will continue to hold in the future. We simply cannot postulate universal laws that tell us the way the world irrefutably is and will always be unless we have some good reason to trust such generalizations. And even if we could trust such universal laws as “the sun will always rise,” it is not clear how many times we would need to see the sun rise in order to justify proposing this law. Scientific observation, although detailed and informative, has no claim to being the irrefutable truth of the matter.

The solution

Sir Karl Popper offered a potential solution to this problem by thinking about the way we do science in a new light. Popper turned science on its head by claiming that we are looking at science in the wrong way. Instead of looking to science to provide us with theories that are definitive and true, Popper said that we should be looking to science to provide us with theories that we have failed to prove false for a very long time. This approach to science is referred to as “Falsificationism.” Less of a solution and more of a shortcut, it is a tool which we are allowed to use in the game of science. He describes the Falsification approach by noting that for the scientific method to be rational, it must make claims to knowledge that is logically sound. That is, science is not about making grand universal laws, but about the examination of individual observations. According to the model of falsification, science is concerned with evaluating and refining. What we commonly think of as scientific claims to knowledge, are only hypotheses that we accept till they are proved wrong.

Fundamentally, Popper accepts that science can never provide us with complete 100% certainty, but he claims that this is not really a problem because it is not actually science’s job. The purpose of science is to provide us with a theory that is likely to be true based on the fact that we haven’t yet managed to prove it wrong. One unfortunate consequence of this, however, is that you can only ever be certain of the things that you have proved wrong. We know, for example, that the world definitely is not flat. The problem with this fact is that, although certain, it is not particularly useful to know that something is definitely false. For Popper, the best we can hope for is that a given claim is corroborated at one instance in time and if we presume otherwise, we are begging the question of the uniformity of nature: that what has always been, will (for apparently no good reason) continue to be.

To recapitulate, science does not deal with explanation; this is the realm of metaphysics. How we explain things depends on our beliefs and world view.

Dr. Yamina Mermer is a member of the Scriptural Reasoning Group based at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, UK.
Dr. Eren Tatari is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Rollins College, Florida.

Footnotes

1. Online Past Masters text, The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, (University of Virginia E-text Center), 1.323. (The online texts is drawn from The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Vols. I-VI ed. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931-1935), Vols. VII-VIII ed. Arthur W. Burks (same publisher, 1958).
2. Ibid., 5.48.
3. Ibid., 6. 417.
4. Popper, Karl. (1959). The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Hutchinson & Co. (Original work published in 1935).
5. Hume, David. (1772). An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Hackett Publishing Co.

This mystical unveiling, found in Ibn `Arabi’s vision of The Universal Tree and Four Birds, appears in his work entitled, Cosmic Unification in the presence of essential witnessing, through the assembling of the Human Tree and the Four Spiritual Birds. Ibn `Arabi’s vision offers a mystical grounding for dialogue among religious traditions, echoing the forms of dialogue identified by contemporary scholars and practitioners of interreligious dialogue. Ibn `Arabi’s distinctive philosophy of the Oneness of the Many or Diversity within Unity is an insight that will provide the basis for such mystical grounding (Chittick 1998, 169).

Background

If we are to understand Ibn `Arabi’s writings, the background for such concepts is important.

Five centuries after the advent of Islam in 1165 CE, Muhyiddin Muhammad Ibn `Arabi was born at Murcia in southern Andalusia in the Golden Age of Islam. During that period, the Iberian Peninsula witnessed an extraordinary cultural interaction between Muslims, Jews, and Christians under Islamic rule,which existed until the Christian domination of Spain became complete under the reign of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in the year 1492, thereby ending this cultural interaction (Hirtenstein 1999, 9).

Diversity within Unity

As a young boy growing up under such extraordinary conditions, Ibn `Arabi displayed visionary

abilities. His greatest vision occurred nearly thirty years later when he experienced a spiritual ascent beyond the seven celestial bodies, arriving at “the Universal Tree surrounded by four mystical birds: the Ringdove, the Royal Eagle, the Strange Anqa and the Jet Black Crow” (Jaffray 2006, 35). From this vision Ibn `Arabi came to develop his philosophy of Diversity within Unity (Jaffray 2011, 1).6 Author Angela Jaffray says, “Ibn `Arabi clearly acknowledges the monotheistic sense of God, but acknowledges Diversity among the different religions, but in Diversity, God wills unity” (Jaffray 2011, 1).

In the Universal Tree is observed a diverse unity based on the multiplicity of beings rooted together in one Divine Being. The tree and four feathered creatures that sit upon its branches bring forth a type of mystical grounding, fostered in unity for dialogue among religious traditions. The types of dialogue revealed within the tree will be the dialogues of life, of study, of prayer, and of spirituality, all of which, if followed in an atmosphere of mutuality, will have the potential to facilitate people toward the dialogue of action—an action bringing forth a vision of justice for all.

Discourse of the Universal Tree

Upon meeting the Universal Tree, Ibn `Arabi greeted it and the tree responded by saying:

Listen, O wayfarer, O king. I am the Universal Tree of synthesis
and likeness. I have deep roots and my branches are lofty…
… I am the synthesis of the divine words… (Jaffray 2006, 35-37)

In her commentary, Jaffrey interprets for us: the Tree consists of unity and multiplicity. The well-rooted trunk represents unity, and multiplicity reflected in the leaves. The leaves represent human beings, and the branches a synthesis of all the Divine’s Names and Attributes manifested to the leaves [humankind] (Jaffray 2006, 82, 83).

The Tree demonstrates the universality of God’s all-inclusive infinite ways in which He manifests Himself to creation. Ibn `Arabi writes, “People of God say there are as many ways to God as the breaths of the creatures…” (Twinch 2011, 3). In other words, there is one Divine Being, but God manifests Himself in infinite ways to each person.

In today’s global village of numerous religious and cultural traditions, we come together on a daily basis as the multiplicity of leaves on the Universal Tree interacting with one another. The daily interaction of people, known as the Dialogue of Life, is what Cardinal Arinze, past President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, describes as the form of dialogue most within the reach of anyone. “It is interreligious relationships … of daily life … we draw on the values of … different traditions … without discussing religion” (Arinze 1997, 17). This, according to Islamic scholar Mahmoud Ayoub, is the way in which during the course of daily living that “the common Abrahamic prophetic moral and spiritual heritage can help the children of all three families of Abraham come together to face the problems of the modern world, striving together for the common good of society” (Ayoub 2004, 313-319).

Discourse of the Ringdove (al-mutawwaqa al-warqa)

The Ringdove states,

I am the Dove of oft-repeated praises. Beautiful realities descend upon threads toward the hearts… in search of the One [Divine Being]. (Jaffray 2006, 41, 21)

The Ringdove receives melodious sounds offered by the tree’s branches so that She may carry the tree’s rhythmic song of unity and love (Jaffray 2006, 36) encapsulating God’s offer of grace to all. Jaffray notes that in another of Ibn `Arabi’s writings, entitled The Tarjuman Al-Ashwaq, Poem XIII, the ringdove, with her dark neck ring, represents the covenant entrusted to her by the Real(representing God or Allah). In this covenant, she is given the special job of bringing forth the inspiration of the Divine (Jaffray 2006, 84).

According to Ibn `Arabi, the Divine’s inspiration “is all the words of the Great Koran, the Gospel, the Psalms, and the Scriptures…and it is through speech, listening, and hearing, wecome to know what is in the Self of the Real, since we have no knowledge of Him except through the knowledge given to His messengers on earth by the Divine Spirit” (Almirzanah 2011, 88-89).

Discourse of the Royal Eagle (`uqab)

The Royal Eagle states,

I am the Intellect … I am the bearer of everything known, high and low
… I am His … the light of His existence. (Jaffray 2006, 43, 46)

Jaffray says that Ibn `Arabi calls the Eagle `uqab, which is associated with the ProphetMuhammad, and in philosophical terms is known as the First Intellect. The Royal Eagle is illumined with knowledge from God, the same spiritual knowledge that was given to Muhammad. Ibn `Arabi states, “the intellect [is] the bearer of everything that is known high and low … which takes from God … and is set forth … in the Qur’an” (Jaffray 2006, 46).

The grace-filled words of Allah given to Muhammad—words that verify the Torah and Gospels are, according to Muslim scholar and spiritual leader M. Fethullah Gulen, ” words that descended to the Earth [issuing in] a deep understanding of balance … heralding to its followers a path that leads to universal harmony” (Gulen 2010, 145). Such inspired wisdom given to the Messenger on earth and recorded in the scriptures according to Ibn `Arabi, “is that which God has made clear that He is in every direction turned to, each of which represents a particular doctrinal perspective regarding Him, and confirmed in the Qur’an 2:115, wheresoever you turn, there is the face of God” (Almirzanah 2011, 116).

Understanding the Divine knowledge imparted in each other’s scriptures is important for interreligious dialogue and is supported through the hard but necessary work of study, which is referred to as the Dialogue of Study (Knitter 2002, 204), or as Ayoub describes it, the Dialogue of Belief, which “engages the minds and hearts of people [together]…in their search for truth” (Ayoub 2004, 318). Discovering the truth of every faith through study, remarks Cardinal Arinze, is a way “to appreciate objectively the religion of the other and not run the risk of misrepresenting it” (Arinze 1997, 96).

Discourse of the Strange Anqa (`anqa mughrib)

The Strange Anqa states:

I am the one who has no existent entity. I am Dust in which God reveals the bodies of the world … Nothing can be manifested that I am not in … I wander through the gathering of those with bowed heads. (Jaffray 2006, 46, 47, 91)

Commentary notes from one of Ibn `Arabi’s earlier works entitled “Anqa mughrib,” according to Jaffray, identifies Jesus as the Anqa (Jaffray 2006, 93). Philosophically speaking, the Strange Anqa is also a metonym for the Greek notion of hyle (Arabic: hayula), or prime matter, which according to Ibn `Arabi, citing from Qur’an 56: 6, “. . .was scattered dust” (Jaffray 2006, 94). Dust, according to Ibn `Arabi, “is God’s desire to bring the cosmos into existence and His Theophany” (Jaffray 2006, 95). The Anqa [Dust] Ibn `Arabi says, “comprises every form…[but] human minds cannot know it by … their thinking … It is concealed, but without being absent … [and] in any form it wills, it manifests itself” (Jaffray 2006, 96).

The Anqa further explains its reality: “Although the door of my existence is sealed nothing can be manifested that I am not in… I wander through the gathering of those with bowed heads” (Jaffray 2006, 47). Ibn `Arabi claims, “Allah is revealed in every face, sought in every sign … and pursued in the unseen and the visible. Not a single one of His creatures can fail to find Him in its primordial and original nature” (Jaffray 2006, 1). In other words, bowed heads (prayer), “is the means of seeing God … [where] the form of God becomes visible to the heart” (Corbin 1969, 248).

Approaching God through prayer is essential to interreligious dialogue. Prayer, according to Gulen, “is a mysterious key to His everlasting treasures…[to] a most secure shelter… Those who step into this shelter are considered to have obtained [the] key…” (Gulen 2003, 4). Together in prayer we have the ability to obtain the key of God’s treasures, which may offer a solution to suffering stemming from the disease of prejudice and collectively help bring forth a “breeze of hope for those who are suffering…” (Gulen 2003, 4). Asking for the Divine’s guidance through prayer must always be preliminary to meeting on the level of words. Calling on the Divine, known as the Dialogue of Prayer, brings an openness to the conversation says Cardinal Arinze, “an openness to the action of God’s Grace in the person through the dialogue” (Arinze 1997, 95).

Discourse of the Jet Black Crow (al-ghurab)

The Jet Black Crow states:

I am of numbers, the singular among counted numbers. The Real summoned me into His presence and I came … His knowledge flows in me… (Jaffray 2006, 48, 50)

Although many equate the Crow with evil, Jaffray says from a philosophical and cosmological point of view, Ibn `Arabi saw that the crow represents the Universal Body—the Perfect Human Being. The Crow in Ibn `Arabi’s vision is Abraham, the intimate friend of God (Jaffray 2006, 101). In the reading of scripture and according to the commentary by Jaffray, Abraham demonstrates the true qualities of the perfect human, in trust completely abandoning the self, and filling the self with God, for he was called and he “readily responded” (Jaffray 2006, 101).

Abraham’s attribute of abandoning and filling the self with the Divine is needed in interreligious dialogue. This is a deep spirituality according to Gulen, that is very important in devotion and servitude to God, for the person who has reached complete spiritual knowledge of Godis the one according to Quran 66:6, who “do not disobey God in whatever He commands them, and carries out what they are commanded” (Gulen 2011, 149). Such souls experience the pleasure of intimacy with Him at every moment so long as they keep their “eyes fixed on the door of the Ultimate Truth” (Gulen 2011, 150). According to Cardinal Arinze, this is the Dialogue of Spirituality—”a dialogue that calls on a person to go to the higher self and indeed to go beyond self and aspire to some form of relationship with a Divine Being, or God” (Arinze 1997, 101).

This deep spirituality, according to Gulen, “should turn and direct others to God from the bottom of [our] hearts, thereby leading us to work toward improving and reforming the world…” (Gulen 2012, 219). Such spirituality allows one to be more aware of what “the faith Spirit [brings] down upon [the] heart” (Ali 2010, 219)—bridging an awareness of what the Divine commands for the world. This is an awareness that can bring about the Dialogue of Action—an action, according to Cardinal Arinze, “referring to Christians and other believers cooperating for the promotion of human development and liberation in all its forms,” (Arinze 1997, 18) demonstrating to the world how we are to dwell within God’s creation with the attributes given to us by God to promote mutuality and unity.

A Good Word Produces Action

Produced within the tree is:

A good word is as a good tree; its roots are firmly established and its branches are in heaven; it gives its produce every season by permission of its Lord. (Qur’an 14:25)

The good fruits of dialogue require us to “invite (all) to the way of thy Lord with wisdom and beautiful preaching and argue with them in ways that are best and most gracious…” (Ali 2010, 156).

In interreligious dialogue, we come to see the universality of God’s love and concern for everyone. According to Cardinal Arinze, “When deeply committed spiritual leaders of different religions meet … something wonderful happens … because they are sincerely looking for God, they are better able to understand each other” (Arinze 1997, 110). Interfaith dialogue seeks to bring about a cooperative, constructive, and positive interaction between people of different religious traditions with the ultimate goal, according to Ayoub, of making possible “the ability of all women and men of faith to listen to and obey the voice of God as it speaks to all faith communities…,” (Ayoub 2004, 319) thereby bridging a path to forming new relationships and unity among believers. In creating new relationships, Cardinal Arinze considers it important that “every believer…should strive to be more open to the action of God … and be willing to go where the divine light leads” (Arinze 1997, 70, 71).

Following the divine light in spirit and in an atmosphere of common mutuality, interreligious dialogue has the potential to bridge the path toward a global ethic of love and tolerance seeking solutions to the immense social, economic, and ecological crises facing the world today. The Universal Tree demonstrates to us a well-rooted trunk from whose branches bring forth the multiplicities of God’s Names and Attributes manifested to all people in diverse ways. From Ibn `Arabi’s point of view, only through “the acquiring of gnosis (spiritual knowledge) can the Heart be receptive…to the universality of God” (Austin 1980, 146) and find “that despite the multiplicity of God’s names, attributes, and acts, there is but a single Being…” (Jaffray 2006, 12).

In an unconventional way, The Tree raises a type of cosmic conversation weaving together the dialogues of Life, Study, Prayer, and Spirituality, directing us toward the dialogue of Action—an action working for peace and justice. In the spirit of love, may we all come together like Birds of a Feather in the hands of the Divine. As Mr. Gulen notes, may we come together “as limbs of the same body … ceasing the duality that violates our very union. We should clear the way to unite people; this is one of the greatest ways in which God grants people success in the world, and how He transforms this world into a Paradise. It is in this way that the door of Heaven will be opened wide in order to give us a warm welcome. Hence, we should remove all ideas and feelings that pull us apart, and run to embrace one another.” (Gulen 2010, 7)

Brenda Pletcher is a student of religious studies at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, who has a special interest in Interfaith Dialogue.

References

• Ali, Abdullah Yusuf. 2010. The Meaning of the Holy Qur’an, Madison Park, Pacific Publishing Studio.
• Almirzanah, Syafaatun. 2011. When Mystic Masters Meet: Toward a New Matrix for Christian-Muslim Dialogue, New York: Blue Dome Press.
• Arinze, Cardinal Francis. 1997. Meeting Other Believers; The Risks and Rewards of Interreligious Dialogue, Huntington, Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division.
• Austin, R. W. J. 1980. The Bezels of Wisdom, Mahwah, Paulist Press.
• Ayoub, Mahmoud. 2004. “Christian-Muslim Dialogue: Goals and Obstacles.” Muslim World 94, no 3 (July): 313-319. Academic Search Elite, EBSCO host (accessed July 3, 2012). p. 318.
• Chittick, William. 1998. The Self-Disclosure of God, Principles of Ibn al-`Arabi’s Cosmology, Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Corbin, Henry. 1969. Alone with the Alone; Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
• Gulen, M. Fethullah. 2003. Time to Pray, The Fountain 42 p. 4,
• ——. 2010. Toward A Global Civilization of Love & Tolerance, NJ: Tughra Books.
• ——. 2011. Emerald Hills of the Heart: Key Concepts in the Practice of Sufism 1, NJ: Tughra Books.
• ——. 2012. Reflections on the Qur’an: Commentaries on Selected Verses, NJ: Tughra Books.
• Hirtenstein. Stephen. 1999. The Unlimited Mercifer; The Spiritual life and thought of Ibn `Arabi, Oxford: Anqa Publishing.
• Jaffray, Angela. 2006. The Universal Tree and the Four Birds, Oxford, Anqa Publishing.
• ——. 2011. “Water with One Water,” Ibn `Arabi on the One and the Many, http://www.ibnarabisociety.org/articles/watered.html Retrieved 8/30/2011.
• Kakaie, Ghasem. 2011. Interreligious Dialogue: Ibn `Arabi and Meister Eckhart, http://www.ibnarabisociety.org/articles/interreligious-dialogue.html Retrieved 9/12/2011.
• Knitter, Paul. 2002. Theologies of Religions, Maryknoll, Orbis Books.
• Steindle-Rast, David. 1996. Meister Eckhart from Who God Hid Nothing, Boston and London: Shambhala.
• Twinch, Cecilia. 2011.”The Circle of Inclusion,”
• http://www.ibnarabisociety.org/articles/circleofinclusion.html Retrieved 9/12/2011.

Over the millennia, Noah’s Ark and the Great Flood has been documented in several revelations and scriptures and related across a myriad of cultures and civilizations more or less in the same form. Every major creed, every race or civilization will have something to say about “The Great Flood.” The re-iteration of such an overwhelming event over thousands of years of history seems to convey a timeless message, as well as certain codes of universal moral conduct.

Many aspects from the world of matter are reflected as sublime meanings in the spiritual or metaphysical realm. If the Ark is likened to a spiritual and social sanctuary, then the great flood symbolizes not only a physical destruction of Earth but also a destruction of the spiritual and moral aspects of humanity. The surging of flood waters and the sinking feeling are analogous to the spiritual drowning of a lost individual in the ocean of life. Overwhelmed and burdened by a heavy weight on their shoulders, they are unable to carry on their journey in safety. Although the soul constantly seeks and yearns for continuous safety and security where it can let go of the heavy burdens of daily life and take a deep breath, it usually turns towards many false sanctuaries or havens. Not having adequate protection, the great floods of spiritual turmoil eventually drown and suffocate it.

The Ark as a representation of faith

Just like the physical need for air, water and food, the human soul similarly needs its own nourishment to survive. Without this food, it gradually decays and dies, wherein the heart becomes hardened, and a loss of sensitivity towards its environment begins. This apathy is the slow death of the human soul. In this context, the great miracle of Noah’s Ark, a significant event in the common history of humankind, represents the true spiritual sanctuary of faith that can guard humanity from drowning in the tumultuous ocean of life.

In fact, true concern for and connection with others can only be found in faith. One can even say that the greatest spiritual sanctuary and satisfaction for the human soul is faith. It enables the human soul to “let go” of those burdens that pull it down and drown it in materialism. It illuminates the heart and mind to truly feel and see beyond the prism of material life. The false perception that this fleeting world is the only goal of our life will not and cannot satisfy the innate need of the human soul for permanence and perfection. Neither comfort, wealth, nor a high social status (including other attractive but destructive desires like the love of fame) will satisfy these needs, as they are just means to a great end, not an end in themselves.

Faith is both light and power.1 Only the attainment of true faith can enable one to overcome any confronting challenges. The great enduring quality of the Ark resonates with the great qualities generated from a deep, certain faith. These attributes include perseverance and patience in doing good both in times of prosperity and in adversity, where it is especially difficult to do good in times of hardship, and even more so in times when advocating good is deemed dubious.

The Ark: A representation of common universal values

The great dangers surrounding and threatening our existence are not just in the visible world around us, but also within us: arrogance, pride, selfishness, greed, oblivion to the suffering or needs of others and many other such traits. We can certainly say that all these dangers, whether apparent or dormant, represent a “Great Flood” and, if correct precautions are not taken, they are bound to crush us – either physically or spiritually or perhaps both.

“The Ark” on the other hand can represent the common universal values that humanity at large shares. When the core human virtues, such as, being trustworthy, honest, loyal, sincere, and patient, are applied correctly and appropriately, they will be a means to protect us from the threat of the imposing “Great Flood.”

One can even say that the force of “The Flood” is so enormous that a protective sanctuary of an “Ark” with the ability to withstand such a destructive force is inevitable. This Ark must be established through the co-operation and dialogue of cultures, where the common universal values of humanity are realized and brought forth again. It will be these shared values of humanity that will serve as a protective shield against the debasing forces of “the Flood,” the real threat to our existence.

The common universal values of humanity are the moral pillars that will and can move each individual to take action for the sake of all and for the betterment of all because in essence these values are based upon recognizing the great, common needs we share rather than our apparent differences. Hence, for the sake of our common needs, it is pertinent to make every effort to co-operate and prevent animosities to the best of our abilities.

The application of these values requires the alleviation of misconceptions and misunderstandings of the great systems that formed civilizations, as well as pro-active dialogue between cultures, communities and individuals. Becoming increasingly more relevant in a constantly developing “global village” such as our contemporary society, these values will be founded and driven by respect, appreciation for the differences of cultures and their contributions to world history. As each individual is a masterpiece of the Creator of the Universe, then their freedom or right to belief, expression and travel should not be violated, for each individual has an inviolable dignity and honor.

The contemporary “social sanctuaries” or “Arks”

Existence is based upon the creation of opposites. Just as the darkest hour of the night happens before dawn; so too the Ark provided much needed solace and sanctuary as the “Great Flood” engulfed all. Similarly, the contemporary “social Ark” will serve to rectify and protect humanity from the social torment and tumults of our current times. Indeed, a great characteristic of a contemporary “social sanctuary” is that it will receive its energy and passion from deep faith and an ultimate sense of responsibility for its actions aiming to reinstate the common values of humanity first within itself and then with others. Each individual (moving as part of a collective whole) of this society will be a kind of “devotee and advocate of love” to provide selfless, altruistic service, consciously reaching out to help the community they come across and to overcome their problems at the expense of their own worldly desires. Being aware of their unremitting duty of gratitude and obligation towards the Creator, their philosophy will be to give without expecting anything in return, seeking only His approval. They will suffer great distress, but in this process they will set forth a great example of tolerance, respect, understanding and generosity. Over the last three decades, millions of individuals have been moved in this way through the inspiration of a great thinker and leader, Fethullah Gulen. 2, 3

One of the greatest diseases of our current times is prejudice and discrimination. Millions of people have suffered and still continue to suffer great anguish as a result of this crippling psychological and social disorder. The contemporary “social Ark” will take upon itself to help cure this disease by consciously drawing attention against the mentality which disregards the myriad of similarities and great common needs of humanity but instead focuses on small but unique differences of individuals or communities, thereby sowing the seeds of hatred. In contrast, they will actively teach what a great act of justice it is to focus on what brings humanity together rather than what seems to divide them. To further demonstrate this reality with example, they will recruit all their personal resources within their reach to melt the icebergs in hearts and bring together communities. Their actions will serve to blow out the fires of hatred and jealousy, fostering what has been neglected for centuries.

As they do so, they will learn and demonstrate how to hate hatred (which is easy to do) and love the act of caring (which is difficult to do). They will establish platforms where people can find common ground to work together to solve the current chaotic problems of our times. Social justice will be born when individuals begin to realize that each person is a unique master-piece that reflects (like a mirror) the most beautiful attributes of its Creator in various ways. When individuals will not be judged by their differences, but when their differences will be viewed as enrichment and a contribution, true global peace will arise. At that point humanity will board the final Ark of social justice and find solace and comfort in appreciating each other.

Sebnem Unlu, PhD, is a Research Faculty at University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, USA.

Notes

1. Bediüzzaman Said Nursi. The Words, Twenty-third word, Third point, The Risale-i Nur Collection.
2. Mücahit Bilici. “The Fethullah Gulen Movement and Its Politics of Representation in Turkey,” The Muslim World, volume 96, Issue 1, pgs. 1-20.
3. Serif Ali Tekalan. “A movement of Volunteers.” Paper presented at the conference “Islam in the Contemporary World: The Fethullah Gulen Movement in Thought and Practice,” Rice University, Nov. 12-13, 2005.

Gulen and those inspired by him have presented a new kind of Islamic intellectualism and altruism coupled with a deeper sense of activism and spirituality that has been missing from many contemporary Muslim movements of the twentieth century. The failure of many politically oriented Muslim movements around the world finds no reflection in the preaching and writing style of Gulen. The revival of other religious groups or non-Islamic religious traditions has not discouraged Gulen in any way from shaping his own ideals of spreading value-based education and people-oriented spirituality and cultural activities.

With the appearance of Muslim nation-states on the political map of the world, different kinds of extreme religious indoctrination have harmed the genuine revival of universal Islamic values. Gulen’s preaching demonstrates that he is quite aware of this intellectual weakness of the political movements of his many predecessors to uphold the moral and ethical values derived from Islamic scriptures and traditions. A good number of Muslim countries have based themselves on the nationalist ideals of the people concerned in order to try to prosper politically and economically. Like many Arabs and Persians, in the early years of the Republic many Turks also seemed to want to build a prosperous modern state based solely on nationalist ideals and thus tended to show a discriminatory attitude toward all kinds of religious traditions and phenomena based on religious beliefs. Many Islamic religious symbols were either misused or attacked disproportionately in the political games of capturing and upholding state power. Gulen’s voice of moderation surfaced at this juncture of dichotomous Muslim polity and the ideological struggles between extreme forces in the Muslim world. Gulen preached the path of moderation, honesty and sincerity to protect the interests of the masses, irrespective of the ethnicity or the religious practice of particular groups of people.

Unlike some religious leaders and clerics in other parts of the world who are his contemporaries, Gulen has never aimed to overthrow a secular government and replace it with a religiously oriented political party. He has never considered this as an option to eliminate corruption within the state and political system. Gulen finds this unacceptable as it contradicts the core principle of the non-compulsory character of Islamic religious practice and no state or society can be truly transformed merely by such partisan politics. Thus, Gulen has always preferred to promote sound education based on universal values in order to generate a virtuous society.

Modern-day Rumi

Many analysts and authors have called Gulen the modern-day Rumi of Turkey, the land where Rumi was put to rest for eternity in the city of Konya. A thirteenth-century poet, philosopher, and mystic, Rumi is celebrated by both Turks and Iranians, but he is also a matter of contestation between the two nations regarding his ethnic identity. But Rumi’s Sufi traditions cut across the lines between nationalistic and sectarian differences, and the truth of the matter is that eight hundred years ago national and ethnic identity played a very insignificant role determining someone’s contribution to Muslim civilization. In practice, Gulen has brought that glorious tradition back to the minds of millions of modern and religious Turks.

Gulen is neither a poet nor a mystic in its traditional or typical sense, but perhaps his series of writings on Sufism has earned him the title of Sufi. Gulen’s preaching is full of compassion for all, and none of his writings ignite any kind of hatred against anyone. That might be one of the reasons why Gulen has been considered seriously as a Sufi. A second reason could be his lifelong personal piety and austere lifestyle.

Muslims would probably not call Gulen a Mahatma Gandhi of Turkey or the Muslim world, though some Westerners have started to call him a Muslim Gandhi.¹ In the substance of his preaching and writing, Gulen is a voice very close to both Rumi and Gandhi; he has always sought truth in bringing people together for the causes of peace and humanity for all, irrespective of race and religion. Like Rumi, Gandhi also never abandoned any of his own religious traditions. However, both of them were disliked, if not hated, by many of their orthodox co-worshipers for their extraordinary humility towards the followers of other religions. Gandhi was killed in 1948 by a Hindu fundamentalist who, like many other orthodox Hindus, believed that Gandhi was betraying the cause of the Hindu religion and that he was influenced by the Muslim intellectuals of British India and the Sufis of South Africa. Away from the persecution of false accusations of igniting religious hatred in Turkey, Gulen lives in the USA where he has proven himself a champion of the cause of inter-faith dialogue and bringing people of all races and religions together to work for peace and harmony between nations and religions.

Spirituality and the Anatolian spirit

Many Muslim authors seem to believe that the modern Western mind is too materialistic to favor the core universal spiritual message of Islam. Thus, many Muslim analysts tend to conclude that it is useless to preach Islamic values to Westerners. Gulen does not accept this simplistic presentation of Western materialism as a barrier to spreading the peaceful message of the Qur’an and Sunnah upon which a compassionate society can be built. He does not believe that Westerners have any inherent problem in appreciating and accepting the spirituality derived from the fundamental sources of Islam; for him the question is how well Muslims can represent Islamic spirituality and the universal message of Islam so as to attract Westerners to build a global society based on genuine equality, tranquility, and humane treatment for all, irrespective of gender, race, and religion.

Gulen advocates a compassionate and brotherly form of Islam that emphasizes inner spirituality rather than an aggressive, outer expression of religious beliefs and coercive propaganda. In rediscovering this fine line of spirituality, Gulen has skillfully avoided the tendency to overemphasize a particular set of characteristics that might be seen as belonging to western or eastern, northern or southern people. He is critical of any kind of nationalistic or ethnic confrontational policies which lead to discriminatory attitudes to others, or dividing people between “us” and “them.”

His definition of nation does not compromise one race or ethnic group; Anatolia has always been a land of diverse ethnic groups and forms one united nation today. Free of any chauvinism, he addresses the colorful mosaic of Anatolia as “a crucible for peoples that have come from Central Asia, the Balkans, and Mesopotamia.”² Extrapolation of this notion automatically leads to the principle that the whole of humankind is the offspring of Adam and Eve. Gulen insists on seeing the potential for good in all peoples and religions. He stresses the merit of good deeds, and rejects the empty words of hostile propaganda and ways of terrorizing others.

Gulen believes that all human beings have an urge and need to achieve spiritual salvation expressed in their ability to appreciate the heavenly attributes which surround everybody in this world up to the end of physical existence on this planet. Gulen sees the world and human existence on earth as an open book of God Almighty, and the Qur’an is the glorious reflection of the process of the revelation of truth to the whole of humankind. Reading such thoughts in Gulen’s books or hearing them from him directly, many observers have believed that he is ultimately a Sufi and mystic and therefore his messages will not attract the younger generation of Muslims in secular Turkey and elsewhere whom they assume to be hot-blooded and radical. This assumption has found no ground in reality, however, as most of those inspired by him are young people.

Gulen and politics

Gulen is very active religiously and socially, while apparently very reluctant to play any part in the political moves of particular political parties or forces. As a non-political entity Gulen has become something of a center of gravity for many millions of Turkish people from all walks of life. Thus, even secular political parties have tried to use his style of preaching and argumentation to reach out to the voters. However, in his own life he is quite secluded from all kinds of political activities.

Some Westerners view Gulen’s way of life as monastic in the Eastern style. They may even see him as a Muslim Dalai Lama seeking nirvana throughout his entire life. However, even in his self-imposed exile in the USA he has never aspired to any media attention or publicity or popularity of any kind. He is deeply involved in interfaith activities and devoted to his Islamic duties as a true Muslim sacrificing every moment and everything quietly for the benefit of others.

Not sectarianism, but dialogue and diplomacy

Gulen does not devote much time to explaining the differences between Shi’as or Sunnis, Hanafis or Hanbalis, Malikis or Shafis, whereas many contemporary Muslim scholars give the utmost importance to these differences of sect and madhhab. According to such scholars, focusing on these distinctions is the right way to purify the Muslim nation from shirk (that is, any belief contrary to tawhid, the oneness of God), bida (illegitimate innovation in religious affairs), or just deviation from the siratul mustaqim (the straight path) demonstrated by the Prophet of Islam.

For Gulen, however, the most important thing is to establish a close relation between the human self and the sifats (Attributes) of God Almighty. Only when a great number of people are selflessly and honestly devoted to the higher spiritual cause prescribed by the holy ideals of Islam of making the entire human race preserve and protect its own dignity and surroundings for the benefit of all, can we hope to regain the lost glory of the Muslim civilization and the generosity and liberality of the Muslim nation for which we hope. Gulen does not believe that much can be achieved for these noble causes through military or political means. Dialogue and diplomacy is the better option for all sides in any ongoing conflict. Welfare-oriented governance is the best alternative to the corporate greed for profit and deception of all kinds aimed at making money for a tiny group of people in society.

Unlike most Muslim nations, Turks have never experienced direct foreign colonial rule of any kind. This unique feature of the Turkish nation has made Turks better prepared to accept the universality of Islam that has been expressed or reflected in thousands of Gulen’s sermons and in the numerous speeches delivered to Muslim congregations and interfaith meetings both in Turkey and the USA. Those ideas are crystallized in dozens of books written by Gulen. Alongside his preaching about universal values, Gulen has always been mindful of the troubles afflicting the hearts and minds of Turkish people. Knowing very well the risks of alienating himself from some of his own people, he has nevertheless shown great enthusiasm for reform of the education system in Turkey. In doing this, however, he has never allowed any sect, group, or political party to own or disown him completely. His strategy is very clear: whoever does good and honest work as a Muslim I should be with him, and I must avoid all kinds of bad or wicked works.

Opposition to Gulen

Ultra-secularist forces have tried unsuccessfully to use Gulen for their own political ends in various ways. One attempt was to characterize him as an innovator of religious reforms with little compatibility with the preaching and life of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. Having failed in that, some anti-Islamic forces inside and outside Turkey are now trying to portray Gulen as the future Khomeini of Turkey. But Khomeini’s year-long stay in the city of Bursa in Turkey, once the capital of the Ottoman Empire, and his exposure to the Sunni communities in Turkey and Iraq did not make him Sunni, and Gulen’s exposure to the USA will not make him a revolutionary or worldly Islamic preacher. Gulen’s beardless face and modern dress do not make him less Islamic, but he is neither a fanatic nor a so-called modernist incapable of appreciating the attributes of God Almighty. Comparing Gulen’s educational and cultural movement with Khomeini’s revolution in Iran is either a reflection of ignorance about the many diverse methods of social reform with wide-ranging ramifications for the revival of Islamic values, or shows a complete lack of knowledge about the many dissimilarities between these two great Muslims nations.

In Gulen’s writing, Islamic revolution and jihad with its detailed rules and regulations are either absent or he limits himself to a clarion call for spiritual jihad that has nothing to do with war, violence, or even aggressive ways of spreading the religious message.

Our interest in our environment and our love for humankind – that is, our ability to embrace creation – depends on knowing and understanding our own essence, our ability to discover ourselves, and to feel a connection with our Creator… Humanism is a doctrine of love and humanity which is articulated recklessly these days, and it has a potential to be easily manipulated through different interpretations. Some circles try to impose an abstract and unbalanced understanding of humanism by confusing people about jihad in Islam and awakening suspicion in their hearts… Jihad can be a matter of self-defense or of removing obstacles between God and human free choice…”³

For many years now, Western commentators have asked why world-renowned Muslim and non-Muslim authors fail to demonstrate any clarity in the complicated issues related to Islam and jihad. In this area, Gulen is a voice of complete clarity and consistency in his presentation of Islamic issues and their correlation with universal humanitarianism. Thus, Gulen has filled, at least to some extent, an intellectual gap between the Muslim world and the West. His message is very clear for any careful reader, not least on matters like terrorism: “Terror can never be used in the name of Islam or for the sake of any Islamic ends. A terrorist cannot be a true Muslim and a true Muslim cannot be a terrorist. A Muslim can only be a representative and symbol of peace, welfare, and prosperity.”⁴

Questioning or challenging the universality of Western concepts of human rights is rather an easy job. However, to present a comprehensive and better alternative to a Western consumption-based society is a gigantic task that has been initiated by the Gulen movement in the areas of educational and cultural exchange between religions and nations.

Even Gulen himself may not even be able to imagine the impact he is having now on the Turkish public psyche and beyond in formulating a new and completely peaceful strategy to bridge the East and West or the Muslim world and the rest of the world. This is truly a huge intellectual advance wrought almost single-handedly by Gulen and based on his convincing arguments for peace and dignity for the whole of humankind. His emphasis on a value-based educational system without indoctrination is shown clearly in all his books. This emphasis has led to the founding all around the world of hundreds of schools sponsored by Turkish educators and businessmen where teachers are trying to implement Gulen’s ideals.

There is still more to say about the Turkish and Sunni features of the Gulen movement as it has been spearheaded by Sunni Muslims of Turkish origin. One might inquire into how an ultra-secularist state such as Turkey could have produced a social, cultural, and educational reformer like Gulen. However, it seems life-long dedication to the universal causes of Islam and humanity may ultimately produce such a result. Gulen’s followers never indulge in nationalistic, sectarian, or chauvinistic agendas in propagating Islamic values or an educational and cultural system within Muslim communities and beyond. This is the key to the remarkable success of the Gulen movement today. That is what has made him a living legend and, of course, the world’s most influential intellectual of 2008.

Maimul Ahsan Khan is a professor of law (Islam, Human Rights and International Commerce) at the University of Dhaka in Bangladesh.

Notes

1. Mark Scheel, “A Communitarian Imperative: Fethullah Gulen’s Model of Modern Turkey,” The Fountain, 61st issue, January–February 2008.
2. Gurkan Celik, Kate Kirk, Yusuf Alan, “Gulen’s Definition of Peace,” in: Dialogue: Asia-Pacific, Issue 15, January – March 2008, p. 8.
3. M. Fethullah Gulen, Toward a Global Civilization of Love & Tolerance, The Light, New Jersey, 2006, pp. 6, 8, 59.
4. Ibid, p.8.

With a contemplative eye, one finds that the facts he deduced from the treasures of this Divine Book are many and various and that they relate to all knowledge, science, culture, or philosophy, despite their differences.

In this article I will try to explain one of the many Qur’anic facts that Nursi derived and to which he drew attention, a fact that had not been explained before or whose share of study and research was brief, immature, or incomplete.

It is what he refers to as “the Qur’an’s preservation of the existing equilibrium among all sublime divine truths.” Explaining this fact, Nursi states that this preservation and equilibrium represent a property that certainly does not exist in any human work of art, in any of the thoughts of the greatest intellectuals, in any of the righteous people’s traditions, or in any of the books of illuminists who delve into hidden matters. Each of these groups clung to one branch, or at most two, of the great tree of truth, and so became preoccupied with its leaves and fruits, ignoring the other branches, either because of ignorance or because they were unmindful of them. It is as if there was a kind of division of labor so that they could specialize among them.

The ocean of truths

Nursi draws a similarity between this and a great treasure found by divers at the bottom of a sea. Because each one of them has seen only a small part of this great treasure, which is separated from the other parts, the divers’ perceptions of it differ and even contradict one another. Then, Nursi goes on to say, “The Qur’an, that ocean of truths, encompasses and sees in its verses the entire treasure and describes its jewels in such a harmonious and balanced way that they show their beauty perfectly” (Nursi, 25th Word, 2005, p 458).

I believe that this great truth to which Nursi draws our attention in the above lines needs some explanation, especially when its proof has become crystal clear in the extreme confusion prevailing among all western scholars or all those researchers who stray from the guidance and light of the Qur’an. This fact has also become manifest within their works or conversations, as will be seen later.

Many are those who think that the universe we live in is full of many different truths, whereas the fact is that this conception is a false illusion; the universe has only one single truth, which has many different branches and angles.

For instance, those who devote themselves to studying astronomy, geology, zoology, history, biology, psychology, philosophy, ethics, etc. walk in different directions along the one global truth. The magnitude of this truth, with its diverse aspects and directions, make many people, including many intellectuals and specialized scientists, think that there are various scientific truths that are independent from one another. That is why some of them do not concern themselves with what the others have discovered and limit themselves to the world of the independent truth they imagine to exist.

That is why the information people have in such fields is incomplete or even misleading. Further, such

information does not quench their thirst or satisfy their aspirations, but rather adds to their perplexity and confusion. This is because the more they delve into such information the more they are faced with threads that surpass the limits of their research and the ranges of their studies. If they try to follow some of this new information, they will be led to ranges which are more spacious and to threads which are more entangled and complicated.

Partial knowledge

Such partial knowledge, which may seem like independent truths within the firm universal structure are, in fact, like so many chapters in one great scientific book that is only concerned with one subject. What can one gain if one only finds one of its chapters and occupies oneself with studying it thoroughly and meticulously? Or even, what would one understand of such book if one studies all of its chapters without following any order or coordination, and without referring to any connection between one chapter and the other? It is unquestionably clear that such a person will not emerge from such a study, however meticulous and profound it is, with anything but some broken concepts and incomplete information, which are in total nothing but the worst kind of compound ignorance, even if they are partially true information. The same applies to the universe: It is a whole book, containing so many connected and harmonious parts, even if they seem to be independent and disharmonious before the eye that quickly glances over them.

The proof of that which Said Nursi has stated in brief is the fact that so many of the scholars and philosophers who have enjoyed world-wide fame have returned to in their final days, complaining about ignorance, seeking knowledge, and suffering confusion.

To illustrate, in his autobiography, we find Bertrand Russell stating that although he achieved much of what he had dreamt of, including love and peace, as far as seeking knowledge, he had gained nothing more than misfortune.

Even the man who created special and general theories of relativity and established the rules of space, time and gravity, that is, Albert Einstein, complained of the same problem and disclosed to his friend, the American writer George Ferk, that the information he had gathered about the universe could provide him with nothing except a mysterious riddle that was impossible to solve. When George Ferk asked him about death he answered, “I don’t know.”

In his book Anti-Duhring, Friedrich Engels expresses his confusion about the issues of the universe in a long speech in which he says, “How little we know about the origin of blood corpuscles, and how numerous are the missing links even today, for example, in the establishment of a rational relationship between the symptoms of a disease and its causes! Again, often enough discoveries such as that of the cell are made which compel us to revise completely all formerly established final and ultimate truths in the realm of biology, and to discard whole piles of them once and for all.” He continues, “But eternal truths are in an even worse plight in the third group of sciences, the historical ones; … In the sphere of human history our knowledge is therefore even more backward than in the realm of biology.” He goes on to say, “…and the generations which will correct us are likely to be far more numerous than those whose knowledge we are in a position to correct-often enough with considerable contempt.”I am certain that the appearance of extreme philosophical doctrines such as idealism, existentialism, pragmatism, and the like is but the fruit of a disorder that results from an incomplete and partial knowledge about conceiving the overall structure of existence, of course with the supposition that this partial knowledge is correct. Partial knowledge can never convince the mind and appease the soul, except if it comes after having achieved an overall comprehensive knowledge that encompasses the structure of all existence: humanity, universe, life, and the relationship between them. It is not important for such overall knowledge to be profound and precise, especially at first, yet, it is extremely important that it be correct and comprehensive. In this connection, I shall remind you of a scientific truth to which we should direct our attention as proof of what is being said. The study of 20% of a mass that is composed of many parts does not necessarily lead to a correct perception of 20% of the facts about this mass. In fact, such a study does not even lead to the correct perception of 1% of the facts of this mass, but it may lead to some distorted conceptions about this mass in general. What a researcher may conclude from such a study is nothing but some illusions which they consider to be information and science. What is the percentage of correct information which a person may conclude from putting a magnifying glass on a certain spot on the map and totally concentrating on the scope of this glass, contemplating bright colors and broad lines that appear under their eyes, before getting to know the whole map with all its longitudes and latitudes? Although they may get to know “some knowledge” when they comprehend the colors, read the names of towns and cities under the magnifier correctly, observing the bending lines, etc. this kind of knowledge should actually be called “dead knowledge” as it has no connection with any of the information contained on the overall map. Such is the truth of the knowledge gained by the person who searches for the truth about the universal existence and limits their mind to one of its angles or one of its parts. It is certainly a dead knowledge that has no relation with the knowledge and information that the universe as a whole reveals. That is why such knowledge cannot provide its owner with any aspect of the scientific certainty that the researcher seeks.

Comprehensive knowledge

Now, the question is how can we get to know the overall comprehensive knowledge? In other words, where would one find this map, which displays to us the comprehensive perspective for perceiving all of the universal structure, and reveals to us the kind of relationship that exists between its major aspects and basic elements? It is certainly known that we shall not find any such map except in the Qur’an, as Nursi asserts. In fact, this is the essential mission for which the Qur’an was revealed and upon which the self-knowledge of humanity depends. Through the Qur’an mankind can easily identify its ability to shoulder the responsibility with which it was charged and for which it has been created. We should all be aware that only if the Qur’an is the word of the Creator of this universe can it comprise the whole comprehensive picture of the unity of these created things that are connected and intertwined in such a marvelous harmony. Whoever devotes themselves to studying the Qur’an with due contemplation, dedication, and scrutiny shall discover that this book starts by acquainting humanity with itself, its properties, and its missions in this life. Then, it explains to humanity the life that they enjoy with all the important and trivial things it contains, and causes them to see its beginning, its end, and its relation with what will come after it. After that, the Qur’an allows human beings to perceive universal phenomena around them and how these phenomena are connected to them in a comprehensive overall way. In this way, it causes us to observe the fixed courses that never undergo any development or change and the sophisticated symbols that are exploited for the interests of mankind. These are the general elements of the structure of this existence: human beings, life, universe, and any other components.

Therefore, these are the springs of all knowledge. In this way, the universal structure appears before human sight through their contemplation of that amazing Divine Book. It appears just like a huge tree would appear before you as you look at it from level ground without anything to block your view; the tree clearly appears before your eyes with its body, huge trunk, spread out branches, and the fruit it carries among its leaves. Thus, if human beings, after such overall comprehensive knowledge that is deduced from the Qur’an, plunge into the sea of universal existence and dive deep into whatever aspect or part they desire to know and study they will not be lost in mazes or be misled by the refracted spectrum that results from the view being limited to narrow separated angles. Through their dependence on this comprehensive map, which has become printed on their insight, human beings attain that which will protect them from being misled or deluded, and that which will make them aware of the relationship between the parts that may seem discordant or independent. This kind of awareness is what is meant by “knowledge,” the importance and honor of which are recurrently mentioned in the Qur’anic verses. The Qur’an also refers to those who are gifted with such scientific insight, for example in the verse that states, The erudite among His servants fear God Alone (Fatir 35:28). As for those who start by placing huge magnifying glasses on small spots on the huge universal map and then stare at these spots while they are unaware of the map itself, these are the people to whom God refers in the verse that reads, They know only some appearance of the life of the world… (Rum 30:7). Some may think that the phrase “some appearance” (which is the translation of the Arabic word zahiran in the verse), refers to a superficial understanding of things. However, the fact is that the superficial understanding of a thing is knowledge about which a person brags while they are still ignorant of the truth and magnitude of this same thing. So they start to delve in and concentrate on a single corner of such a thing, abandoning its spacious magnitude.

Still, there is a question which should be directed to those who, like Said Nursi, state that no philosophy or any other branch of knowledge can substitute for the cognitive role of the Qur’an. The question is: Has anybody who understands the sciences of the universe in the light of the Qur’an thought of death as a perplexing mystery, as was the case with Einstein? In addition, has anyone, after starting to ponder upon the universal map shown in this Divine Book, happened to be taken away by their knowledge from the life in which they are living into confusing ignorance or desolate darkness? On the contrary, this only happens to those scientists and philosophers who embarked on their scientific journeys at a great distance from the great Qur’anic gate that gives humanity an overall perception of the universal mass and its comprehensive relationships. Examine closely, for as long as you like, the history of past and present scientists who have taken the Qur’an as a cognitive course for themselves and as a ship in their intellectual journeys throughout this universe. You shall never find anyone of them whose knowledge has thrown them into confusion or whose scientific discoveries have thrust them into fear or gloominess. The opposite is always true.

We didn’t have long to wait. The next morning the opening ceremony of the conference entitled “From Terrorism to Universal Ethics: Religions and Peace” in Moscow, staged by Dialogue Eurasia Platform of the Journalists and Writers Foundation and the Russian Institute of Oriental Studies, reflected the same colorful picture of the rainbow the day before. Turkish folk music singer Mahsun Kirmizigul performed the song “The Song of Religions” and 48 children in groups of eight, all dressed in white, came onto the stage with scarves of different colors that represent richness of diversity. Following this colorful performance, 14 spiritual leaders and ecclesiastics took their respective seats: Mark Yegoryevskiy, the representer of Alexi II, the Patriarch of the Russian-Orthodox Church; Emmanuel Adamakis, Metropolitan of France; Priest Sahak Mashalyan, the representative of the Turkish Armenian Patriarch; the assistant of Ravil Gaynutdin (the mufti of the Muslims in Russia); Prof. Mustafa Cagrici, the mufti of Istanbul; Ishak Haleva, the Chief Rabbi of Turkish Jews; Syrian Ancient Community Metropolitan Yusuf Cetin; Yusuf Sag, Vice Patriarch of the Syriac Catholic Community; Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, from India, the founder of The Art of Living Foundation; Byung Do Min, Buddhist Priest from South Korea; Tizen Giok Sang, the Buddhist priest, the representative of the Dalai Lama; Bingkil Irawan, the representative of the Confucius Community of Indonesia; Jadi Nugroho Damaris, the leader of the Protestant Community in Indonesia. Some of them prayed according to their own beliefs and some of them shared their ideas. Then they all planted a “Tree of Love” in a glass sphere that had a world map drawn on. The sphere was filled with earth that had been taken from different parts of the world, and then the children carried water in their hands in order to show everyone how difficult it is to help an olive tree to grow, the symbol of peace.

It was not surprising to see the use of such symbols in order to relay impressive messages at the beginning of the ceremony; interestingly, the four fundamental concepts (terrorism, universal ethics, religion, and peace) that are usually defined differently and toward which different approaches are generally adopted were all discussed under the same heading. What is more, the conference was held in the city of Moscow; a city that was the capital of a country where it used to be imposed that “religion is the opium of the masses.” This meeting was held near the Duma, the sub-parliament of the Russian Parliament, and about 100 yards from Red Square.

In addition to the role the city played in the past and the significance of the subject, the hall where the conference was held was also important. The sessions were held in a conference hall called the Kalani Zal; formerly this had been where important decisions had been made and where the funeral of Stalin, a leader who had put religious groups under great pressure, was conducted 52 years ago. In this hall, adorned with dozens of chandeliers, large and small, the participants expressed their pleasure in being there, as well as stressing the need for perpetual peace in the world. The fact that the writer Chingiz Aytmatov expressed his feelings in the following way indicates the importance of the meeting: “This symposium stems from a need. We have organized it so that we can strive to form common values; this is what life forces us to do. Why does terror exist with the technology that we have developed? Why are people still killing each other? For what reason has terrorism been identified with Islam? We have all just celebrated the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. While its sorrow is still fresh in our heart, why is terrorism still on the agenda? We are here to answer these questions. In the past we used to gather in this hall for important occasions. Now it is good that we are here for different goals.”

A Platform geared up

In fact for a long time the DA (Dialogue Eurasia) Platform has been organizing meetings and publishing books in order to try to meet the concerns expressed by Aytmatov. The meeting in Moscow was a part of such efforts, but one detail separated this symposium “From Terrorism to Universal Ethics: Religions and Peace” from the others. In the past, these activities had been limited only to the region of Eurasia and the area of Abrahamic faiths; now they had gone one step beyond. Among the many participants from 38 countries there were Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and Confucians; the geographical boundaries ranged from the United States, Canada, Bulgaria, Georgia, India, South Korea, and Indonesia. Such an expansion to include almost the entire world shows the ground that the DA Platform had covered in a very brief time.

During the meeting people expressed their dissatisfaction with the trend that was now prevalent throughout the world. The deadlock that Western civilization had reached and is now facing was often referred to, as well as the attempts to find a solution to the problems and the expression of the need for alternative approaches. The participants were aware of the problems, but when it came to solutions, the common points made way to different insights and approaches. Ratislav Ribekov, the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Oriental Studies, dwelled on the role of religion in this subject, saying, “All the religions must be in the struggle for good and bad; they must join forces.” Prof. Ilber Ortayli, the second-term president of the DA, said “Peace means religion and religion means peace. Each and every religion tries to realize this by striving for peace.” With this sentence, he sent a clear message to those who were trying to make a connection between “terrorism” and “religion.” Anar, the Chairman of the Writers Foundation in Azerbaijan, also spoke on the point made by Ilber Ortayli and he reminded us that all cooperation and reciprocal understanding begin with dialogue. Muhammed Nur Hidayet, the President of the Assembly in Indonesia, emphasized the importance of “being constructive without being destructive,” showing the approach that should be adopted.

The symposium consisted of five sessions. In the first session, “The Obstacles of Global Peace and Critical Views,” Dr. Kamran Mofid from England presented a paper with a heading of “Violence or Dialogue?” Born in Iran, Mofid stated that the world was enraged and displeased and said “Bombs explode everyday. People are killed. That is not the type of world that God wishes for.” A lecturer in economics, Mofid said that he had noticed the close connection between economics and theology, and that economics inseminates people with the idea “You can be happy through consumption”; theology states that the same happiness can be realized with the help of love and compassion. “Money is important. Being rich or trading are also important. But those who deal with money should know that wealth is attained only for a noble goal.”

Mofid also said “We talk continuously about economic growth and prosperity at school, on the street, and on TV. We have focused too much on production and consumption. However, we do not discuss whether economic growth can bring justice. Then why do we produce something? What is our aim? What is more, what is the goal of the journey we call ‘life’?” He stated that the world was in need of a spiritual revolution and we should contemplate the concept of “common benefit.”

The second speech was made by Prof. Hassan Hanafi from the Cairo University. The title of his paper was “Violence and the Factual Analysis of the Violence Thesis Based on the Enlightenment Theory Opposing Violence.” Hanafi said “It is easy to curse terrorism, but it is difficult to reveal its sources. We want to extirpate the source of violence and terror from the world, but it is a hard to admit that we are desperate.” He stated that violence and terror were social facts and that tendency toward violence decreases as people gained their liberty. He said “We often accuse others, saying ‘I’m innocent.’ We even say ‘my violence is good,’ but apart from individual violence, there is also the violence of organized groups and even states.” He stated that terrorism has become a global “phenomenon” and that the mass media has played an essential role in this process. The final speaker of the first session was J. C. Kapur, publisher of The Journal of International Issues and president of the Kapur Surya Foundation in New Delhi. Unfortunately, he was not able to participate in the symposium, so his paper, “Challenges on the Pathways to Peace,” was read by someone else. Kapur stressed that the misconstruction of secularism had caused the erosion of ethical values in society.

The title of the second session, conducted by Prof. Dogu Ergil, was “Religion, Belief and Tradition: the Contribution to Universal Ethics.” In this session, Prof. Dimitri Kitsikis dwelled on the role of religions for the maintenance of peace in a globalizing world. Claiming that nation states are steadily disappearing, Kitsikis said “The European Union is openly directing its efforts, in its integration process, to replace nation states with regions. In time, all nation states will be carved up into regions inside the European Union.” Drawing attention to the process of Turkey’s membership, he stated that some regions were being encouraged toward autonomy in some member countries of the EU: “Turkey should be aware of what is awaiting her when she joins the European Union as a full member.”

No peace project can continue without religion

Presenting a paper with the title “The Importance of Interreligious Dialogue in the Middle East Peace,” Rabbi David Rosen from Israel talked about the misuse and exploitation of religion. Stating that religion adds meaning and goals to our lives, he said “Religion surely brings identity to a person. Who am I? What is my aim? Of course the answers to these questions disclose our psycho-moral values.” He also commented on the reflection of religion and the identity relationship in the Israeli-Palestine conflict in the Middle East: “The Israeli-Palestine conflict is in fact a regional problem. This is a conflict over land. This can be solved by a regional concession, namely the giving of some land. Of course, this should be done with the affirmation of both parties. Unfortunately, this has not yet been realized. This regional conflict has turned into a religious conflict. Now a party is using religion to try to remove the other, while the other side is trying to defend itself in the same way. A conflict for land can be solved by means of land concessions.” Stressing that the components of religion and identity have become intertwined, Rosen thinks that we should make religion a part of the solution. If we exclude religion, it could hang over our heads. No peace project can be lasting without benefiting from religion.

Submitting a paper with the title of ‘Can Sufism be a Base for a Universal Ethics?’ Prof. Kenan Gursoy put the same emphasis on this matter: ‘Those who have tried to exclude religion are now unsuccessful. Today we have to discuss the problems without avoiding religion. If religion becomes the means of domination instead of bringing an inner peace, then we must evaluate it in the name of humanity and ethics. Modernity has become ethics of division and there is no space for differences there. In this part of the symposium, Associate Prof. Irina Kudrasava of the Foreign Relations Institute of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Russia made a speech that gave some important clues about Moscow”s perspective on world politics, and particularly on terrorism. Having stated that after the collapse of the Soviet Union there had been a process of globalization and that the liberal model was in effect all over the world, Kudrasava thought that globalization had introduced serious problems in terms of economy and humanity in the Islamic geography. Therefore, many Muslims believe that Christians and Jews were waging a war against Muslims. On the contrary, there is no such thing; this is merely the result of political injustice. Expressing that globalization made human beings Western and that the West is viewing the rise of Islam as being ‘aggressive and dogmatic,’ Irina Kudrasava went on to say that, ‘Islam is perceived as a phenomenon that must be kept under control. Therefore the West behaves like a policeman and keeps Islam within limits.’

According to Kudrasava, globalization had made countries dependant on each other. ‘Today there are 15-20 million Muslims in Europe. These are not only the emigrants coming from outside of Europe, but also Europeans that have accepted Islam. The priority of the first emigrants was economic independence. Religion and culture became more important for the children of the first emigrants. There are foundations, mosques, houses of culture, and publications that belong to the Muslims in Europe now. In short, there has been an Islamic revolution in Europe.’ Evaluating the end of the second session, Dogu Ergil said that, ‘Humans are like a family. Individuals are responsible to one another in matters of independence, prosperity, and security. This leads to an insight of morality. Almost everybody answers the question of ‘Can religion form such a common ethical insight?’ by saying that it is possible. Religions must be part of the solution, not the problem. Therefore, religions must establish dialogue with each other in the name of compromise.’ On the second day of the symposium, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, from India, was the chairman of the session. Abd al-Wahid Pallavicini, the President CO.RE.IS. Italiana, was unable to participate in the symposium for the first speech. Prof. Ahmed Abdulveli Vincenzo, from Napoli Frederico II University read Pallavicini”s paper, ‘What is European Islam?’ on his behalf. Stating that in terms of sociology the existence of a large number of Muslims is being perceived as if there were many forms of Islam, Vincenzo went on to say that Islam was a universal religion and addresses everyone. Believing that concepts like fundamentalism, civilization, and tolerance have been misunderstood, he said ‘Fundamentalism was born in a Baptist Church in the US. It made religious concepts political. Fundamentalism does not exist in Islam. It is an ideology. The civilization philosophy of Islam can only be explained in terms that we call umran, which means ‘the existence of God in society.’

Umran is a concept that shows that human beings are equal and a concept which has a universal quality.’ Stating that dialogue is one of the key concepts between Muslims and Western Europe, Vincenzo said, ‘The religion that is the majority religion in a region must approach other minority religions with tolerance. Freedom of religion in Europe does not necessarily mean that all religions in Europe have the same conditions; Islamic groups are not treated with equality to other Christian groups. For a multi-cultural Europe, it is essential that we get in touch with those Islamic groups that are on this continent and that the Muslims tell the Europeans about the universality and encompassing nature of Islam.’ Presenting a paper under the title of ‘Synagogue, People, and Ethics’ Zinoviy Kogan, Chief Rabbi of Russia, stated that Russia is a country where celestial religions have existed for a long time, that an interreligious platform has been founded in the structure of the Russian Federation, and that they amicably live with the Muslims of Russia. ‘Ministers should attach importance to dialogue instead of highlighting the areas of dispute. Stalin tried to eradicate the Jews and other people who belonged to other religions. We got rid of him; we saw him off 50 years ago in this hall.’

In the second session of the second day, individual and civil society dynamics and universal ethics were discussed. Chingiz Aytmatov was the chairman of this session and Prof. Memetsho Illolov expressed that peace was being maintained in the Eurasia region and that there was dialogue among both political figures and non-governmental organizations. Then, presenting a paper under the heading of ‘Democracy and the Human Rights Problem in the Traditions of Western and Islamic Law,’ Prof. Leonid Sukiyanen, one of the most eminent experts of Islamic Law in Russia, stated that the Islamic world and other religions have some serious problems when it comes to understanding each other. According to Sukiyanen, human rights and democracy today are explained in terms of liberal concepts. Therefore, Western countries tell Islamic countries that ‘If you want democracy, betray your Islamic principles.’ Extremist Muslims appear under the flag of Islam and claim that there is no common point between them, the West, and democratic values. On the contrary, Islamic principles have arguments that support dialogue among civilizations.

A discussion of the legal system

After this evaluation, Sukiyanen went on to say that, ‘Politics should support the democrats, not the extremists.’ He also mentioned different cultural structures and problems, reminding us that in some countries some rights have only recently been given to women. Saying that ‘There may be some kind of compromise between West and Islam on some common points, like human rights,’ Sukiyanen suggested that within the scope of Dialogue Eurasia, Muslim, Christian, and Jewish jurists could meet and discuss their own law systems. In his paper, ‘The Role of the Civil Society in Preventing International Terrorism’ Alexander Dichek, the President of the Ukraine Anti-Terror Center, said that modern terrorism had become a social fact that had reached very dangerous dimensions. Stating that it is not possible to eradicate terrorism through sheer force, he said ‘We do not divide civilization into West-East or Islam-Christianity.’ According to Dichek, terrorism has demanding economic and human resources conditions. Therefore, in order to struggle with the fact that ‘systematic terrorism’ has a huge structure, it is inevitable that a new national security architecture be founded. The last speech in the same session belonged to Ali Bulaç, the columnist from the daily newspaper Zaman. Dividing the world into two categories, as ‘the region of crisis’ and ‘the region of potential crisis,’ Bulaç said that the main question we should be asking must be, ‘Can we solve these conflicts with the accumulation of knowledge and experience we have?’ Claiming that what we have learned in the 200 years since the Enlightenment had not been enough to find a solution to the existing problems, Ali Bulaç went on to say that people are seeking solutions outside of the West. He also stated that the Madina Agreement was a good reference for the solution of the problems of the world. In the last session of the symposium, named ‘Applicable and Sustainable Peace Projects,’ Prof. Hervé Legrand, Sergey Lazarev and Rabbi Brad Hirschfield presented their papers. Finally, Dr. Gunduz Aktan, former Turkish ambassador to the Geneva office of the UN made the conclusive remarks about the event. In brief, ‘religion and religious arguments’ were the basic ingredients of the two-day symposium.

Note

This report was originally published in Aksiyon, issue # 549, Istanbul, and we thank Kemal Budak for its translation into English.

The Second Fruit of the Fifth Branch

soul! Worship is not the introduction to additional rewards, but the result of previous bounties. Yes, we have received our wages, and are accordingly charged with the duties of service and worship. Because, O soul!, since the All-Glorious Creator, Who clothed you in existence which is pure good, has given you a stomach and appetite, through His Name of Provider, He has placed before you all foods on a table of bounties. Then, since He has given you a life decked out with senses, life too requires sustenance like a stomach; all your senses, like eyes and ears are like hands before which He has placed a table of bounties as broad as the earth. Then, because He has given you humanity, which requires many immaterial foods and bounties, He has laid out before that stomach of humanity, in so far as the hand of the mind can reach, an extensive table of bounties as broad as the worlds of both the inner and outer dimensions of things. Then, since He has given you Islam and belief, which require infinite bounties and are nourished through countless fruits of mercy and are supreme humanity, He has opened up before you a table of bounties, pleasure, and happiness which includes the sphere of contingency together with the sphere of His sacred Names and attributes. Then, through giving you love, which is a light of belief, He has bestowed on you an endless table of bounties, happiness, and pleasure. That is to say, with regard to your corporeality you are an insignificant, weak, impotent, lowly, restricted, limited particular, but through His favour, it is as if you have risen from being an insignificant particular to being a universal, luminous whole. For by giving you life, He has raised you from particularity to a sort of universality; and by giving you humanity, to true universality; and by bestowing Islam on you, to an exalted, luminous universality; and by giving you knowledge and love of Him, He has elevated you to an all-encompassing light.

O soul! You have received this wage, and you are charged with the pleasurable, bountiful, easy, and light duty of worship. But you are lazy in this too. If you perform it half-heartedly, it is as though the former wages are insufficient for you and you are overbearingly wanting greater things. Also, you are complaining: Why was my prayer not accepted? But your right is not complaint, it is supplication. Through His pure grace and munificence, Almighty God bestows Paradise and eternal happiness. So seek refuge in His mercy and munificence constantly. Trust in Him and heed this decree:

Say: In the bounty of God, and His mercy -in that let them rejoice; that is better than the [wealth] they hoard.¹

If you say: How can I respond to these countless, universal bounties with my limited and partial thanks?

The Answer: With a universal intention and boundless belief… For example, a man enters a king’s presence with a gift worth little, and he sees that other gifts worth millions have arrived from acceptable people, and have been lined up there. It occurs to him: My present is nothing. What shall I do? Then he says suddenly: My Lord! I offer you all these valuable gifts in my name. For you are worthy of them. If I had the power, I would have given you gifts equal to them. Thus, the king, who has need of nothing and accepts his subjects’ gifts as a sign of their loyalty and respect, accepts that wretched man’s universal intention and wish, and the worthiness of his elevated belief as though it was the greatest gift.

In exactly the same way, while performing the five daily prayers an impotent servant of Almighty God declares: Salutations be to God! That is, I offer You on my own account all the gifts of worship all creatures offer you through their lives. If I had been able, I would have offered You as many salutations as them, for You are worthy of them, and worthy of more besides. Such an intention and belief comprise extensive universal thanks. The seeds and grains of plants are their intentions.

And for example, the melon utters a thousand intentions in its heart in the form of the nuclei of its seeds: O my Creator! I want to proclaim the embroideries of Your Most Beautiful Names in many places on the earth. Since Almighty God knows how future things will come about, He accepts their intention as actual worship. The rule, A believer’s intention is better than his actions² alludes to this mystery. The wisdom in offering glorifications in also infinite numbers is understood from this mystery. For instance:

Glory and praise be unto You to the number of Your creatures, that may be as pleasing to You as the extent of Your Throne and the ink of Your words, and we glorify You with all the glorifications of Your prophets and saints and angels.³

Just as an officer presents all the duties of his soldiers to the king in his own name, so man, who acts as officer to other creatures, commands the animals and plants, has the capacity to be God’s vicegerent over the beings of the earth, and in his own world considers himself to represent everyone, declares:

You alone do we worship, and from You alone do we seek help.⁴

He offers the worship and seeking of help of all creation to the All-Glorious True Object of Worship in his own name. He also says:

O God! Grant blessings to Muhammad to the number of the particles in existence and all their compounds!

He offers benedictions for the Prophet (pbuh) in the name of everything. Because everything is connected with the Muhammadan Light. Thus, you may understand the wisdom in the countless numbers mentioned in the glorifications and benedictions for the Prophet (pbuh).

Footnotes

1. The Qur’an (10:58)
2. al-Manawi, al-Fayd al-Qadir, vi, 291, No: 9295.
3. Muslim, Dhikr, 79; Tirmidhi, Da’wat, 103; Nasa’i, Sahw, 94; Musnad, i, 258, 353.
4. The Qur’an, 1:4.

If we evaluate knowledge as ‘an accumulation of information obtained as a result of a person’s effort, merits, and capabilities’, then man will come to this world without knowing anything and will encounter an endless universe where innumerable creatures come together and countless events unfold. Everything in the .universe outside of man’s influence is in its proper place and complete order, harmony and balance reign. We can say that all the spiritual and scientific principles underlying the unshakable order, harmony and indestructible balance of this vast and complex universe, of which the human body comprises a miniature, are the sum of truth or truths.

On the other hand, sciences like physics, chemistry and biology-regardless of whether or not they are accurate-examine the universe and universal relationships with their own peculiar principles. The data from these sciences are taken up by philosophers and thinkers and data from human relations is used by sociologists and psychologists. In contrast, through their basic tenets of faith, monotheistic religions like Islam see the universe and man as an expression of the same truth in all relationships, principles of life and particulars of existence. In this situation Divine books like the Qur’an are an expression of, in fact, comprise, themselves, the truth that provides universal harmony, balance and order or the totality of truth. Throughout history philosophers, sociologists and psychologists who have determined or discovered truths have differed among themselves, which has lead to the emergence of different schools of thought. In contrast, all Prophets and the Divine books they brought have espoused the same thing. Consequently, we can say that all the principles that bring about the universe in all kinds of events and relationships and provide universal harmony, order and balance and Divine Scripture, which contains the sum of those principles, are the ‘truth itself’. Thinking and drawing conclusions according to these in view of all things and events can be called ‘thinking straight’. 

MAIN FACTORS OF THINKING STRAIGHT

Character and Intention

Man is equipped with many capabilities, while being at the same time caught in a web of very mixed emotions and endless needs. He has faculties like intelligence that surround and burden him with sorrows from the past and fear and anxiety for the future, a conscience that reminds him of his human responsibility and the essential purpose of his creation, and a will that continuously brings him to choose between alternatives. Just as man can put his intelligence, conscience and will under the command of truth, he can also surrender them to the power of his desires, needs, interests and ambitions. The characteristics inherited at birth also play an important role in his thought. The sum of these characteristics is called man’s nature or character.

A person under the influence of self-interest, desire, and moral weaknesses, and who has not yet found the right direction, especially one motivated by lower emotions such as jealousy, revenge, hatred and hostility, cannot easily think straight. Thus, one of the most important conditions for thinking straight is spiritual and moral training, of which the most reliable for all times and peoples, is by the guidance of the Qur’an.

The elements making up a person’s character such as desire, inclination, sensibility and need, always influence his intentions. When the intention is not to reach the truth but to realize a personal goal the individual has set for himself, then that individual may not hesitate to distort data or even twist the truth. In order to strive after the truth and think straight, a person must have a sound intention which depends upon a trained and disciplined character.

Sent to this world with a nature that is ready to be trained, in fact, must be trained, man encounters two main resources for filling the transparent and empty mental cup that he is born with. The first is an environment composed of the immediate family circle, the cultural and social milieu (this includes the modern media) and schooling. The second is Divine inspiration. From the moment of birth man naturally falls under the influence of his immediate family and surroundings. In time this influence leads to the development in the individual mind of many notions, modes of thinking, patterns of value and understanding. At school these are changed, reinforced or renewed by what is learned there.

During this process many divinely inspired thoughts come depending on the individual’s effort and mental concentration. These thoughts can come, like many scientific discoveries, in the form of dreams or as inspiration to the heart. Divinely inspired thoughts, even if they are always essentially true, take on colour and form (like water taking the colour and shape of the bowl) according to the person’s mental make-up, spiritual degree, and emotional sensitivity. Thus, the mental framework that has been shaped by the family, the environment, by formal or informal training, and by received modes of perception and patterns of value, can be regarded as the individual’s measures.

At every stage in the process of developing the mental make-up, that is, at the different stages of the life-long educational process, man thinks and evaluates differently. This is normal. We can see changing thoughts and values as the normal consequence of a constantly developing mental make-up. What is abnormal is if a person falls into the trap of thinking that every stage is the final one, then promotes his thoughts at that stage as absolutely true. This is one of the gravest mistakes that people make. The presentation of his thoughts as the absolute truth by one who is constantly in a learning phase, and in whose mind many false thought patterns and measurements have accumulated, is harmful. It can prevent him from learning new ideas, from avoiding repeating his mistakes, from reaching the truth, and from questioning and investigation at a later stage. God forbid, it can even lead him to stray or become a despot ‘for the sake of knowledge’.

In view of this, the path to thinking straight passes through sound criteria and, as a result, a healthy perspective. This can be achieved first by doubt, that is, by doubting every- thing except absolute truths taken from their source. Then, by mental and spiritual purification. The mind must be cleared of mistakes and biases and the heart of sin and lower emotions. Beyond that, signs of enlightenment that will take one to the truth and to thinking straight should be followed. Unless these stages are accomplished, unless sound criteria and consequently a healthy point of view are obtained, it doesn’t matter how much a person knows or works; he can’t reach the truth.

Accurate Knowledge

After a sound character, sincere intention and correct point of view, the most important factor for thinking straight is accurate knowledge. For a person with a healthy intention and perspective, accurate knowledge is the essential sound material with which to think straight, just as, for making bread the right flour in the right amount is essential material. Without this, it’s not possible to think straight. Unless, there is revelation as for the Prophets-but that is no longer possible. Otherwise Divine inspiration can only manifest in a very pure heart. Even with inspiration, the range is very limited; in most aspects of life there is a need for accurate knowledge.

Escaping From the Restrictions of Time and Conditions Or Perceiving Time and Conditions Accurately

Another factor for thinking straight is being able to escape the restrictions brought about by epoch and circumstances. While doing this, current time and conditions must be taken into consideration so that one is not crushed by them.

Another important factor in thinking straight is thinking about subject-matter or seeking truths that are not tied to time and conditions. This will save a person from thinking in fragments and allow for holistic thinking, which is very important.

However important it is to be free from the restrictions of time and conditions in order to reach truths not limited by them, it is also vitally important to take advantage of time and conditions. Just as the number of truths in our lives that are absolute (i.e. true for everyone all the time and under all conditions) is small, the number of relative truths (those that change according to people, time and conditions) is great. Thus, especially in finding truths in this second group, knowing and diagnosing accurately the times, conditions, and people involved, is one of the most important paths to thinking straight. Regarding the subject of Islam, which is a religion that addresses every century, every level, every character and temperament, and every condition, it is vitally important to know well all the different epochs, social levels, characters and temperaments in order not to fall into error. Otherwise, in the name of Islam the door to catastrophe can open and-God forbid-the danger of man falling within the bounds of reference of the following verses can arise:

Say: ‘Shall we tell you of those who lose most in respect of their deeds? Those whose efforts have been wasted in this life, while they think that they are doing well (what they are doing.’ (Kahf: 103-104)