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MAY JUNE 2009

A MAGAZINE OF SCIENTIFIC AND SPIRITUAL THOUGHT

Through the spiritual struggle, which is a struggle for knowledge, morality, truth, and

justice, we believe that the generations which have so far been left without protection and

ideals will experience a new resurrection.

ISSUE 69

4Satan and His Contemporary Followers

On Nature, Beauty, & Transcendence withSeyyed Hossein Nasr

3022Translation of Sufi Poetry

EDITORIAL

A MAGAZINE OF SCIENTIFIC AND SPIRITUAL THOUGHTMAY ∙ JUNE 2009 ISSUE 69

pg. 4

pg. 19

www.fountainmagazine.com

Seyyed Hossein Nasr, an outstanding figure of our time, rejects the separation of spiritual thought from science. In this issue we feature an interview with Professor Nasr in “Talks on Matter and

Beyond,” a new department we are launching this month. Based on the “unity of knowledge,” Nasr argues for a strong interrelation between “all the different disciplines, from poetry to music to philosophy to history to geol-ogy to medicine to physics and mathematics,” and he challenges any overly compartmentalized approach to learning.

In line with Professor Nasr’s ideas, and in an effort to seek knowledge in a holistic way, this issue examines diverse topics from science and spirituality. The lead article draws attention to “seditious organizations and followers of Satan who hold a grudge against people—particularly against believers.” With a comprehensive introduction on Satan’s rebellion and his role in the “contro-versy between unbelief and faith,” Fethullah Gülen calls believers to be on their guard against Satan’s contemporary followers and their temptation.

“Life is too complex to have occurred by mere chance,” says Ahmet Yildiz in his description of energy conversion in the microcosmic world of the cell in our body. Just like in a power plant, there is “a dynamic environment that involves constant formation, breakdown and repair of constituents” in a cell which is perfectly equipped with a command center, defense mechanisms, and the replication and repair systems of DNA.

In “The Last Prayer for Giants” we discover the wisdom in a Prophetic command to plant trees even when one knows doomsday is imminent. The im-portance of being kind to and protecting nature is emphasized in this allegory.

In return for our kindness to nature and thankfulness, God the All-Merci-ful blesses us with many benefits from nature. Patchouli, for instance, is not only famous for its fragrance, but also a useful plant in medicine, in repelling pests, and even in cleaning our homes. There is more in “Health and Natural Balance with Patchouli.”

How do we achieve a balance between our jobs, personal lives, and fami-lies and still serve the sole purpose of our existence—to worship God and seek His pleasure? How is it possible that God will grant believers eternal life although we can only achieve a limited number of actions in a limited lifetime? What is the secret of converting the finite into the infinite? The answer is in Vedat Akyuz’s essay on sincerity.

Medicine, like other fields of science, has developed enormously with techniques which surpass our imaginings. “Open Heart Surgery” is about a technique in which the heart is temporarily stopped while the body is con-nected to an artificial mechanism. Enis Turker describes this operation which opens a gateway for us to reflect upon the complex functions of our body, which are nothing but divine miracles.

UNITY OF KNOWLEDGE

Satan and His Contemporary FollowersM. Fethullah Gülen

4 11

16

39

40

56

13

19

26

46

49

Lead ArtıcleArts & Culture FICTION / The Last Prayer for GiantsSermed Ogretim

SOCIETY / Tips on Child EducationZeki Aydin

POEM / Universal Signs

Victor H. Earnest

HISTORY / At What Age Did Aisha Marry the Prophet?

Resit Haylamaz

BOOK REVIEW / Do We Worship the Same God?Review by Ihsan Orhan

Scıence

MATHEMATICS / What Algorithms Imply for UsAhmet Isik

HEALTH / Health and Natural Balance with PatchouliFatih Altun

NATURE / The Koala and Its Amazing FeaturesMehmet Celik

PHYSICS / Time and Beyond as a DimensionOsman Cakmak

MEDICINE / Open Heart Surgery: A Matter of Life and DeathEnis Turker

ENGINEERING / Fish: A Source of Inspiration for Efficient Energy ProductionSami Polatoz

BeliefEMERALD HILLS OF THE HEART / Taqwa (Piety)M. Fethullah Gülen

Q&A / Because of MeHikmet Isik

22LANGUAGE

Translation of Sufi PoetryAalia Sohail Khan

53BELIEF

Converting the Finite into Infinite by Sincerity

Vedat Akyuz

7BIOLOGY

The Power Plant in the Microcosmos: The ATP SynthaseAhmet Yildiz

58SEE-THINK-BELIEVE

It’s me, Peter, your ear!

Irfan Yilmaz

51

36

62

30Matter & Beyond Talks

On Nature, Beauty, & Transcendence withSeyyed Hossein Nasr

Mustafa Tabanli / MaryLynn Schiavi

4MAY / JUNE 2009

Satan is a miserable and accursed one, who has fallen away from God’s Mercy, whose task is to go astray and to lead astray, who continues his existence around the axis of sedition, incitement, hypocrisy, and discord. All his pursuits are devilish and he con-stantly pursues evil. Thus, he triggers evil feelings in people; by drawing them away

from kindness, goodness, and virtue, he virtually makes them resemble himself and become his followers. Rebelling against divine commands, doing the opposite of what God and the Prophet said, tempting people to the ways of transgression and leading them to bohemianism are the points he focuses on most. He always urges recognizing no law or rule to those who enter his territory. He arouses the passions of such people, incites their carnal desires, and constantly shows them the ways of misappropriation, entices them with pleasures and entertainment, and turns them into devils like himself.

Nothing compares to him at abusing certain feelings ingrained in human nature for particular intentions and purposes, which are beneficial for us if used properly. Likewise, he is highly skilled at

LEAD ARTICLELEAD ARTICLE

M. Fethullah Gülen

MAY / JUNE 20095

making beauty seem ugly, and ugliness seem beautiful to those who have been afflicted with the misfortune of entering his dirty atmo-sphere. He makes his unfortunate prey slaves to physicality with his enticement and propaganda to such a degree that it almost becomes impossible for those poor beings to turn toward the horizon of be-ing true humans afterwards.

Even though humanity recognized this evil creature for the first time on its refusal to prostrate before Adam, the history of this wick-ed one—God knows—may extend further back into the past in con-nection with its inner problems and conflicts. Satan is the meanest creature with the potential for jealousy, inclination to deceive, feel-ing of ego-centrism, spirit of rebellion, and weakness for renown in his nature—his willpower being the trigger—who keeps foaming with a rebellious code of conduct and who is fixed on malice. He keeps whispering the same thing to everyone who enters his orbit, be they human or jinn, since evil feelings keep boiling within the essential elements which constitute his inner world and character. He tries particularly hard to make people with character defects re-semble himself, constantly blows devilish considerations into them, and travels through their blood and vessels, always inculcating neg-ative things in those unfortunate ones. These poor beings consider the negativities of the words and expressions formed in their inner worlds or of the way of thinking they put on paper as their own, but it is obvious that there are devilish inculcations behind all of these negativities. In this respect, there are seditious organizations and followers of Satan who hold a grudge against people—particularly against believers—and try to lead them astray. They sometimes trig-ger the animal feelings in some weak ones and lead them to bo-hemianism, they attack those who do not think like themselves, sometimes raise a fuss, make the atmosphere tense and make dif-ferent groups oppose one another, always pursuing hypocrisy and discord. These are the ones—as the Qur’an states—who pretend to have faith while near believers and reveal their true thoughts when they are back near the radical lords of unbelief. These organizations and followers of Satan are also metaphorically regarded as satans; these are the human satans described in the Qur’an as “satans from humankind and the jinn” (An’am 6:112).

Just like Satan who chose rebellion by rejecting the order to prostrate before Adam and went even further by daring to engage in dialectics and argue against God, the modern Mephistos of our time in his footsteps always rebel against good, try to make people forget God and His Prophet, and pave the way for the flourish-ing of devilish considerations. As Goethe expresses in Faust, the struggle between Satan and man, the controversy between unbe-lief and faith, has never ceased and will never cease. During this struggle, occasionally circumstances were made suitable for unbelief and apostasy, apostates became completely insolent, at other times believers were intimidated through brute force, sometimes certain

JUST LIKE SATAN WHO

CHOSE REBELLION BY

REJECTING THE ORDER

TO PROSTRATE BEFORE

ADAM AND WENT EVEN

FURTHER BY DARING TO

ENGAGE IN DIALECTICS

AND ARGUE AGAINST GOD,

THE MODERN MEPHISTOS

OF OUR TIME IN HIS

FOOTSTEPS ALWAYS REBEL

AGAINST GOOD, TRY TO

MAKE PEOPLE FORGET GOD

AND HIS PROPHET, AND

PAVE THE WAY FOR THE

FLOURISHING OF DEVILISH

CONSIDERATIONS.

6MAY / JUNE 2009

“DO NOT FOLLOW IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF SATAN; INDEED HE IS A MANIFEST ENEMY TO YOU. HE ONLY

COMMANDS YOU TO EVIL AND INDECENCY.”

spoiled souls adopted the despotism of not letting anyone else but themselves live, and at times they committed or had others commit terrible cruelties—whose many examples appall us today. These tyrants did not even think about the existence of an Om-nipotent Power, mightier than themselves. They just ignored the fact that the oppressed has the Almighty to take refuge in, that those who make people suffer today will moan in misery tomor-row. What is worse, the unfortunate ones who led their lives un-der the hegemony of oppressors and despots understood nothing of what was going on, and they kept serving the goals of the tyrants over them. They failed to realize the situation they had got into and what mean deals they were being pushed toward. The poet Namık Kemal described them thus:

Helpers of the oppressors in this world are only rogues,Those who enjoy serving merciless hunters are naught but dogs.

In fact, the ends of such people have always been grim. A prov-erb says, “The company of Satan lasts to the gallows.” This is how they end up; as they do not enjoy the life of this world, they have never been confident about their future. They could not be, since human and jinn devils have caused their souls to deviate. One more time, they have fallen for the stealthy trick of Mephisto. They have been deceived by enemies disguised as friends, and by alienated souls whom they considered their fellows.

The apostates, unbelievers, bohemians, dealers in lust, tyrants who do not recognize any right or justice nowadays are doing to the unfortunate masses what the satans have not been able to. This reaches such a degree that these networks of evil, whose thoughts are as filthy as can be, who are foul-mouthed, and whose insides boil with grudge and hatred, keep attacking those who do not think like themselves, besmirch everyone, laud those they fa-vor, and easily defame those they do not. The poet Mehmed Akif criticized these strayers thus: “Our literary men are swearing at one another, / Published in different names, a paper always in print, / Disseminating seeds of discord all over!” This was the case the day before yesterday, it was so yesterday, and it is still the same now.

God called us to keep away from Satan as stated in the com-mand, “Dow not follow in the footsteps of Satan; indeed he is a manifest enemy to you. He only commands you to evil and inde-cency” (Baqara 2:168–169).

The Almighty reminds us of the grudge of that accursed one to

alert us: “Of Your servants I will surely take a share to be assigned to me (by their follow-ing me). I will surely lead them astray and surely engross them in vain desires” (Nisa 4:118–119). God invites us to be sensible and wary of the Satanic grudge and hatred as revealed in “…now that You have allowed me to rebel and go astray, I will surely lie in wait for them on Your Straight Path (to lure them from it). Then I will come upon them from before them and from behind them, and from their right and from their left” (A’raf 7:16–17).

If only we could understand all this!

BIOLOGY

MAY / JUNE 20097

“THE ONE WHO ADMINISTERS THIS

WORLD DOES SO IN ACCORDANCE WITH AN INFINITE WISDOM. HAVE

YOU NOT SEEN HOW MANY WISE PURPOSES ARE SERVED BY EACH HUMAN

LIMB, BONE, AND VEIN, AS WELL AS BY EVERY BRAIN

CELL AND EVERY ATOM IN YOUR BODY?”

TENTH WORD, THIRD TRUTH

The cell is a dynamic environment that involves constant formation, breakdown and repair of its constituents. At every second, its genetic code is read, tens of thousands

of enzymes are produced from this code, and other proteins and enzymes are broken down elsewhere. In addition, cells are furnished with many complex systems for survival. These include transportation of internal cargoes from one place to another; transfer of various signals from and to the command center, development of defense mechanisms, and replication and repair of DNA. These vital functions require thousands of different enzymes in order to take place. Most enzyme reactions that occur in the cell are “energetically unfavorable,” meaning that they require energy.

Ahmet Yildiz

MAY / JUNE 2009 8

For that reason, these reactions are coupled to the breakdown of the ATP molecule that supplies sufficient energy for them. The ATP (adenosine tri-phosphate) molecule acts as the “energy currency” of all known cells. Strikingly, many enzymes can bind to this molecule, rip off a phosphate ion from ATP, and utilize the energy generated by this chemical reaction to produce force, motion, voltage, torque and other mechanical features to drive biological functions. In this article, I tell the story of the making of a single ATP molecule by describing the energy conversion ability given to the cell and other biological processes taking place simultaneously, which provides indisputable evidence to the complexity of life.

The ATP required by the cell is synthesized from food sources and light. Through a set of reactions that occur in the cytoplasm, cells can derive 10% of the energy available from the partial degradation of sugars and fats. However, life demands much more than that. Highly specialized organelles—mitochondria and chloroplasts—have a more efficient way of obtaining biologically useful energy. Mitochondria, which are present in virtually all organisms (animals, fungi, plants), act as a “power plant” that uses oxygen to completely burn sugars and fats. Chloroplasts, on the other hand, are only present in plant cells; they act as “solar panels” that utilize the energy of light. This is a “clean” way of obtaining energy, so to speak, where carbon dioxide (CO

2) is used to produce oxygen and

ATP. In this way, plants not only produce the energy they require, but also play an important role in the cycling of CO

2 and oxygen in the atmosphere.

The aforementioned facts of metabolism were discovered through the research and efforts of many scientists in the early twentieth century. Although this information is already fascinating enough to force us to think about how tiny cells and organelles can achieve the production of energy and know how to make use of it for thousands of different purposes, the most fascinating phenomenon awaits us in the smaller scale.

How ATP is produced in MitochondriaThe story starts with the intake of sugars and fats from our daily meal, compounds that are rich in Carbon (C), Oxygen (O) and Hydrogen (H) atoms. In the cells, their hydrogen ions (H+) are ripped apart and the remaining carbon and oxygen are converted to CO

2 gas through sets of chemical reactions within

the mitochondria (Figure 1). Most importantly, for

every H+, one highly energetic electron is also obtained in these reactions. By carrier molecules, H+ ions along with electrons are brought into contact with the electron transport chain (ETC) complex that is embedded in mitochondrial membrane (Figure 1).

As shown in Figure 1, the electrons flow from one protein to another in the ETC by a finely tuned mechanism that is still obscure to the scientific world. The complex consists of four proteins, each one firmly held to the inner membrane. Each protein has a greater affinity for an electron than has the one before so that the electrons tend to “swim” from one to another. Finally, the electrons are transferred to the oxygen molecule, which has the highest affinity for electrons. This is the only place where the oxygen we inhaled from the air is used to burn our food intake in the cells, simply to take electrons out of the chain. More importantly, as the electrons are taken by a member of the complex, one H+ is also taken from the carrier molecules, and released to the spacing between the inner and the outer membrane of the mitochondria, while the electron continues to travel along the ETC.

Figure 1. Mitochondria work as the power plants of cells. Fats and sugars are broken down in the matrix and H+ ions are pumped out to the intermembrane space by the flow of electrons (e-) in the Electron Transport Chain Complex (right), located in the inner membrane. The highly curved structure of the inner membrane (cristae) increases its surface area for the whole process; hence more energy can be produced within the compact volume. Mitochondria are surrounded by an additional outer membrane, so that H+ ions can be concentrated in the intermembrane space and their return to the matrix will be used for energy production.

MAY / JUNE 20099

One may wonder what all this has to do with the production of ATP. So far in the story, a mere one hundred enzymes and more than two hundred chemical reactions have taken place to move hydrogen ions (H+)—obtained from sugars and fats—across the inner membrane. ATP will be produced when H+ ions return to the mitochondria matrix in a highly elaborate mechanism, which will be explained below.

Cellular batteryPumping out hydrogen ions from one side of the mitochondrial membrane to the other results in a change in the potential energy across the surface. First, since hydrogen ions are charged, the intermembrane space becomes plus-charged, and the matrix minus-charged. This results in an electric voltage of 140 millivolts (mV) across the membrane. This is similar to batteries where electrons are inclined to move from the pointed (minus charged) end to the barbed (plus charged) end, when the two ends are wired. Second, the H+ ions in the intermembrane space become ten times more concentrated than in the matrix. This also favors their return to the matrix, in much the same way as humans wish to migrate from densely populated

the electron transport chain proteins to go back. This is because they can only take protons from the carrier molecules and these molecules are not present in the intermembrane space. There remains only one place for their return—that is the ATP synthase complex, where energy conversion takes place.

Figure 2. (Left) ATP molecules are made by using a similar design of water mills which uses hydraulic potential to rotate the mill (from the ‘Stanzino delle Matematiche’ Museo degli Uffizi, Florence; © by ‘Ministero Affari Culturali’ of Italy). (Right) Concentration difference of H+ ions across 100 nm wide lipid membrane of mitochondria create 200 mV of voltage which favors their return to the matrix. 4 H+ ions pass through the proton channel inside the stator of ATP synthase which causes 120º of rotation of the whole machine. This movement leads to a conformational change of the lollipop shaped head region to make a single ATP molecule. Figure is modified from 1.

areas to quieter places, to reach equilibrium. The concentration difference adds another 60 mV to the electric voltage, resulting in 200 mV of net potential. If we think that a typical AA battery has a 1.5 V charge, when eight of these membranes are stacked in serial order, they exceed the voltage of such a battery. However, H+ ions cannot freely pass across the lipid membrane since the membrane does not allow any particle with a net charge to pass. Neither can they use

Intermembranespace matrix

ATPsynthase

MAY / JUNE 2009 10

ATP synthesis protein machineThe structure of ATP synthase machinery is unique and worthy of mention. It is a multi-protein complex with a molecular mass of 500,000 daltons (1 dalton is equal to the molecular weight of a hydrogen atom). This gigantic protein machine resembles a mushroom which consists of a head, rotor and stator. The head is 10 nm across, and 8 nm high (1nm equals 1 billionth of a meter). This size is actually so tiny that, although it is one of the biggest protein complexes known, billions of billions of these machines would be required to cover a pinhead. ATP synthase is held to the inner membrane by its stator. In the center of the complex, there is a cylindrical rotor which connects the lollipop-shaped head to the stator. The stator is also in direct contact with the head region via an elongated arm which attaches the stator firmly to the head region.

Most strikingly, there is a narrow channel inside the stalk which allows the desperate H+ ions to return to their homeland. Yet, in one of the most amazing pieces of machinery that the science has witnessed so far, this channel only allows H+ ions (or protons) to pass along it. If you can imagine how tiny these ions are, you can estimate the width of this channel. Other plus-charged ions, for example Na+ or K+, are slightly bigger in size and hence, they are not able to pass. The design of this marvelous channel is still a mystery to scientists. Since energy is the only currency for the continuation of life and that currency is ATP in living organisms, one can say that the lives of all humans, animals, plants and other organisms require that protons pass through this tiny channel.

As each proton passes inside the channel to reach the matrix, it causes a 120-degree counterclockwise rotation of the rotor that is hundreds of thousands times heavier than itself. Therefore, the potential energy of the hydrogen ions is converted to mechanical energy by this molecular machine. The way ATP synthase works bears a metaphorical resemblance to manmade hydraulic machines. For example, old water mills, as shown in Figure 2, use hydraulic potential energy to rotate the mill. In a molecular machine, the voltage and concentration gradient is used to rotate the enzyme. Similar mechanisms are used nowadays in turbines placed on water domes to convert the energy from water flow to produce electromagnetic energy via rotation. In ATP synthase, each subunit of the head region can bind to ADP and phosphate, which cannot readily come together to form ATP. The rotation of the stalk causes a structural change in the protein surface

of the head region that specifically enables this reaction to form the energy molecule.

It is by this mechanism that cells can produce more than 90% of their energy. Three or four H+ ions are needed to pass through the channel to rotate the whole machine. A single ATP synthase turns at an amazing 24,000 rotations per minute (rpm). Assuming that the engines of highly developed automobiles can only rotate at up to 10,000 rpm, the speed of rotation of this machine is highly impressive. Remarkably, the human body breaks down 100 kilograms of ATP in a day that is roughly equal to 1026 molecules in number. Hence, billions of billions of ATP synthases need to work nonstop to supply our body with the required energy. They consume Hydrogen ions of roughly 1 kilogram of sugars (or fats) to produce sufficient ATP, which is usually what an average person eats per day.

The complexity of energy production in living organisms and use of highly divergent enzymes reminds us of the fact that biological processes are interconnected with each other. In order to start a single vital process, the cell needs to produce energy. Energy is stored in a chemical form of ATP whose synthesis requires enzymes, mitochondria, oxygen and intake of organic molecules. These enzymes are encoded from the genetic code, DNA, by a multi-protein complex, ribosome. This in turn needs energy to make the enzymes out of genetic code. The cycling of all these processes requires the recurrence of all the vital genes for energy production, DNA transcription, translation, cell division, and so forth. In addition, the necessity for the presence of gases, amino acids and other such factors raise questions about how life could have started spontaneously on Earth. Since we already know that the most primitive living organisms, or bacteria, have 30,000 genes and are highly complex, life is highly demanding. The example of how the energy molecule is produced is just a tiny example of the necessities of life. It is impossible to imagine that life could have started on Earth by mere chance.

Ahmet Yildiz is an Assistant Professor of Physics and Molecular Cell Biology at the University of California, BerkeleyReferencesMarco Piccolino, Biological machines: from mills to molecules.

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, volume 1, p. 149 (2000).

Bruce Alberts et al., Molecular Biology of the Cell, fifth edition. Garland Science, New York (2007).

Jonathan Sarfati, Design in Living Organisms. Journal of Creation 12(1) p. 3 (1998).

Off-site animation of ATP synthase can be found at the link below.http://multimedia.mcb.harvard.edu/anim_ATPase_flv.html

FICTION

MARCH/ APRIL 200911 MAY / JUNE 2009

ONE DAY, WE HEARD

SCREAMING AMONG

THE GIANTS ABOUT AN

ASTEROID HEADING

DIRECTLY TOWARDS

THE EARTH. THE ONLY

THING THEY WERE

WORRIED ABOUT WAS

THE END OF THEIR

OWN LIVES. WE WERE

NOT SURPRISED BY THIS

SELFISH REACTION TO

THAT EVENT BECAUSE

OF THEIR SELFISH PAST

ON THE EARTH. AND

THE ASTEROID CAME…

L ong, long ago, before the end of time, I heard a legendary story from my grandpa about what happened between him and a giant un-

like others…It was around dawn, and the day was not yet

fully light. Rain the night before had left a thick cloud covering the scene. The music of bugs and the chanting of birds filled the air. Against a back-ground of a slight breeze, which provided a smooth and continuous whistle, consecutive, rhythmic thumps could be heard. These thumps were the sounds of a giant’s footsteps as he was walking to work early in the morning.

Meanwhile, my grandpa and his friends were enjoying the water on the walkway. But a hot day was soon going to make the walkway the death bed of many of his friends. Aside from the heat of the day, the footsteps of the giants would bring to an end the lives of many others. Neither he nor his friends were aware of any of this. They were simply enjoying their water on the walkway.

That morning, the giant who was walking to work bent down towards my grandfather, grabbed a thin stick from the ground, and tried to kill him. Not ready for such an attack in the midst of his

Sermed Ogretim

12MAY / JUNE 2009 12

breakfast, my grandfather was stupefied, did not know what to do. He just spiraled away to escape the giant’s attack, as we always do in case of danger. But all was in vain; the giant would not give up.

Finally, the giant accomplished what he was trying to do, and thus my grandfather was saved from both the heat and the giant footsteps. It turned out that my grandpa had misunderstood the giant. Normally, other giants would walk on us, or would ignore us, and this giant was the same; or so he had thought. However, this one was trying to put the stick under my grandpa to lift him and place him onto the soil where he could be safe. My grandpa said that he appreciated this help more later when he heard his friends dying on that same walkway.

The story of a giant who was unlike others spread from the family to friends, and became known all around. The world underground rejoiced at the ex-istence of this one giant who was not like others… Maybe there were other giants like him, too; and the underground world kept praying for those giants that they might be protected from things they were unaware of, just as that giant had saved my grandfather from things that he was unaware of.

After my grandfather’s times, his story became a nostalgic tale for the elders and a bedtime story for little ones. The world aboveground became worse than the world underground. Instead of long trees above with their roots under ground, you would see huge, tall rocks in both places. The rocks underground provided water to everyone, but the rocks aboveground only pro-vided water to the giants. The roots of the plants and trees used the marrow of the earth to embellish it, but the long channels that the giants sank into the ground were like huge veins draining the earth to death. We ceased praying for them.

One day, we heard screaming among the giants about an asteroid heading directly towards the earth. The only thing they were worried about was the end of their own lives. We were not surprised by this selfish reaction to that event because of their selfish past on the earth. And the asteroid came…

It was foggy again, but not due to clouds; it was quite dark, but not due to dawn. The fog and the dark-ness were due to dust spread over the face of the earth. We were fortunate to be able to sustain our lives under such harsh conditions. As for the giants, they were not suffering much from the conditions, as they had taken shelter in special chambers built only for them. Being some of the few survivors of the impact, we were of

significant use to them. After using the entire earth self-ishly, now they were enslaving us. So, they still lacked our prayers for their protection. Could they ever figure out, despite their hardened hearts, why such tragedy had befallen them?

Not long after that time, we witnessed something totally incredible. One of the giants came out of the pro-tection chambers to do something that was completely unexpected. He looked through his goggles at the sky and tried to take a deep breath. As he was coughing be-cause of the dust in the air, he opened the nylon bag he was carrying. He sat on the ground, dug a hole with his hands, and uncovered the thing in the bag: a daisy plant. Was he going to plant it? But why? The chances of its survival were almost none. What benefit would it bring him, anyway, even if it survived for a day? He looked pleased with what he was doing. He even smiled at a worm that was escaping the hole he had dug for the flower. What was going on in his mind?

It was just at the moment he was about to plant the flower that the earth suddenly started shaking like crazy. The planet was dying because of the deep cracks caused by the impact of the asteroid. Now, neither the giant nor the flower had any chance of survival. He did not know what to do for a while; then he started shed-ding tears: “Oh my God! Oh my God!”

Then he saw the deep cracks forming near him, shaking and growing. It was as if the planet had started shouting at him in thousands of voices. He could not stand the quakes and fell down next to the hole, as if it were he, instead of the flower, that was going to be buried in it. At that moment, this giant was no differ-ent from us: lying on the ground, and seeking his way out of this doom. Who was there to help him? His cries were now screams: “Oh my God! Oh my God!”

All of a sudden, he stopped crying and started talk-ing to someone, but we could not see anybody around: “Please, hold me tight. Do not leave me….” He contin-ued, “But I can’t… I can’t….” Then, he tried to reach the flower that had rolled away from him when he fell down. He grabbed it and cradled it at his chest; but struck by a stone falling from one of the nearby rocks, he fell unconscious. As he was sinking into the growing cracks, we uttered a prayer for a giant who had planted a flower in his heart… The last prayer of worms, the last prayer for giants….

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

MATHEMATICS

MAY / JUNE 200913

Different people have different styles of handling situations; as the proverb says “Different strokes for different folks.” Another proverb “Two heads

are better than one,” on the other hand, invites us to ask for the opinions of others. God has created mankind with diverse temperaments and talents. One of the advantages to this is that people are capable of approaching matters from different angles and finding different solutions to the same problems. An ability to act in accordance with this wisdom allows for intelligent co-operation among human beings, resulting in many positive attributes.

As is the case in many scientific arenas, the first stud-ies in the field of algorithms were conducted by Muslim scientists. The concept of algorithm was used for the first time by the worldwide renowned Muslim scientist Al-Kh-warizmi, who lived between 780–850 ad in Baghdad. Al Khwarizmi put his name to historic studies in the fields of mathematics, astronomy, and geography. His work en-titled Hisab al-jabr wa-l-muqabala (Calculation by Com-pletion and Balancing) constitutes the first collection of al-gorithms. The Latin translation attracted great attention in Europe. The Europeans used the term algoritmi, rendered from “Khwarizmi,” to refer to rules for solving arithmetical problems by using Arabic numerals.

Having first developed as a branch of mathematics, al-gorithms have been described as a sequence of instructions that is used to solve a certain problem. These finite num-ber of steps begin at a certain point and come to an end with a result. But, today when we talk about algorithms, what comes to mind are the methods pursued in the op-erations of sequencing in computer programming; though algorithms are used in many fields, including physics, chemistry, biology, and music.

THE CONCEPT OF ALGORITHM WAS USED

FOR THE FIRST TIME BY THE WORLDWIDE RENOWNED

MUSLIM SCIENTIST AL-KHWARIZMI, WHO LIVED BETWEEN 780–850 ad IN

BAGHDAD.

Ahmet Işık

14MAY / JUNE 2009

When different algorithms are used for solving the same problem, this enables us to reach the same solution through different means. There are, for instance, a great number of sorting algorithms (selection sorting, merge sorting, quick sorting) that have been developed for the purpose of incrementally sorting a given set of numbers. The same also applies to the search algorithms which find a given number in a set of numbers. What does this imply for us? Different people can attempt to solve the same problem with different algorithms or approaches that are better, truer or more “beautiful” answer. Thus, it is always important not to reject an idea without a prior examination or understanding, to welcome proposals of different opinions and to try to benefit from better al-ternatives or solutions. Thus, we can understand from an algorithmic approach that establishing dialogue and showing mutual respect are essential moral virtues in transforming differences into wealth.

Computer algorithms solve certain problems ac-cording to pre-defined parameters. Thus, we should never forget that computers cannot carry out a sponta-neous operation, but can only carry out functions that have previously been programmed into them by hu-man beings. Although some researchers, by relying too much on recent developments in computer sciences, and particularly in fields like artificial intelligence, at-tribute human characteristics to computers. They even estimate that they can produce human-like things in the near future, which seems rather unfeasible when we consider countless physical and spiritual features of humans. What does this imply for us? Pursuing a systematic method when solving problems in both computer sciences and daily life would considerably increase one’s success rate in solving any problems en-countered. The most critical stages in problem solving are obviously a correct diagnosis and full description of the problem. The algorithms are developed and the most coherent and suitable are then chosen.

After an algorithm is designed in a flowchart, it is translated into software and tested against verifiable data prior to its usage in real operations. This test is nec-essary to prevent probable flaws in the software. What does this imply for us? By utilizing all the talents and especially the intelligence granted to us, human beings are always able to find what is better or truer. Research has been conducted in scientific studies by keeping in mind that there is always a next step in any development that has been achieved; the experience of the history of

mankind demonstrates that a method that has been de-veloped today might prove to be inadequate tomorrow. When analyzing a number of different algorithms that are used to solve the same problem, the cost is assessed, with the least costly and most suitable one being select-ed. The cost of an algorithm is determined according to the number of operations carried out in solving any problem. An algorithm which solves the same problem with a greater number of sets has a lesser efficiency and a lesser performance.

Sorting algorithm by insertionSorting algorithms are one of the most frequently used algorithms in computers. As sorted data is more easily processed and used, data are usually sorted first with a sorting algorithm before it is processed within more costly operations.

In insertion sort (i.e., sorting by insertion), num-bers to be sorted are inserted into a new “sorted” set. The new sorted set is empty at the beginning, and the numbers are inserted one by one into the right position of this set. During each insertion, the number at hand is compared to the numbers of the new set from the smallest to the largest. During a comparison, if the term (number) at hand is smaller than the term in the new sorted set, then the term is inserted right before the term in the sorted set. As each term is generally compared with all the terms which precede it, sorting of n numbers is done by about n2 comparisons. Thus, the cost of such a sorting algorithm is O(n2).

The quick-sort algorithmThis algorithm is used to find the shortest way between two points. Let us suppose that we have a limited num-

15 MAY / JUNE 2009

ber of points, some of which are inter-related. During this type of calculation, the shortest way is systemati-cally found by checking all the combinations that have been able to be established among given points. The web sources that are provided for planning routes and mapping services with PNDs (Portable Navigation De-vices) for travelers can be given as examples; here the minutest details of every highway and road have been recorded to the virtual media. In accordance with cer-tain criteria, by taking into consideration all the prob-able routes between the two addresses provided by the user, the optimum driving route, including road and street names, is suggested.

Use of algorithm in medicineAny research or inquiry used in the diagnosis and treatment/curing of a disease is defined as a medi-cal algorithm. The logic of a decision tree is used in diagnosing, curing and following up diseases with these algorithms. Guiding algorithms, for example, “if symptoms A, B, C are observed in patient, then, the patient is probably suffering from the disease D, so, use the treatment E” are used in medical expert systems. The purpose of such algorithms is to stan-dardize the medical services provided and thus mini-mize potential uncertainties and errors that likely to arise. Moreover, such algorithms are also used for educational and training purposes and as a guide to approaching the patients, diagnosing and curing dis-eases and towards solving their problems with greater ease. A great number of medical information that has been published has been transformed into numer-ous algorithms, ranging from those that use simple calculations to those that make highly complicated decisions. For instance, in the algorithm that was de-veloped to measure the Body Mass Index (BMI), age, sex, height and weight are among the questions that are asked of the patient. The data obtained from the patient is later applied to a formula developed from the experiences of medical science, and the said in-dex can thus be calculated. However, doctors should compare the results obtained from such algorithms with their existing knowledge, for even such simple algorithms as BMI become undependable in different cases, for example an athlete or an expectant mother. Algorithms only provide guidance for physicians, but the final decision should be taken by the physician after having individually assessed the status of each and every patient.

Algorithms and musicThe algorithmic composition has been used in music for centuries to produce music with a methodologi-cal approach. Canon, for example, is a form of music produced with an algorithm in which a melody is rep-licated by one or more imitations of it played after a given duration.

Human brain, nature, and algorithms Although the secrets of brain have not yet been fully ex-plained, vital information has been compiled about its biological structure and functioning, thus proving that different sections of the brain fulfill different roles. Such sophisticated tasks as controlling the bodily organs, mental discernment, functions corresponding to the use of tongue and other sensory activities, the perception of colors, calculation of actions and the perception of phys-ical conditions, are all carried out by use of brain mecha-nisms and faculties. All these tasks are accomplished by algorithmic processes which have not yet been fully explained. The issue of the unification of the data or im-ages received by the eyes is, for instance, one of the mat-ters that scientists do not yet fully understand. Although many have tried to imitate the human brain, such simple cerebral functions as walking and communicating have, to date, not been convincingly imitated.

What algorithms imply for usAs science and technology develop more and more, new inventions are being made, algorithms are being proposed for unsolved problems, while algorithms of already solved problems are being further developed. For example, many ciphers, which in the 1970s were believed to be unsolvable within an acceptable span of time, are being easily solved today thanks to the algo-rithms that have been developed and the ever-increas-ing operational power of computers. Consequently, de-velopments in algorithms suggest to us that we should always search for that which is better and more effec-tive; also we should remember that there are a number of different ways that lead to the very same target. Thus, we should always be open to the ideas of others and willing to consult with them before making a decision about any subject.

Ahmet Isik has a PhD in mathematics and is a freelance writer.

ReferencesCormen, T. H., C. E. Leiserson, R. L. Rivest, Clifford Stein.

Introduction to Algorithms, MIT Press, 24th Edition, 2000.http://www.nist.gov/dads/termesType.html#P

SOCIETY

MAY / JUNE 2009 16

Preparing children for life is an art. There are many things that par-

ents should know and do about this. One is to make children have

the self-confidence that is bestowed by the Creator as a potential.

The children who appreciate their talents and capabilities—believing

in the importance of them—and have self-confidence become active agents

in their personal improvement since belief and confidence motivate them.

They do not feel shy when asking questions, trying something new, or ex-

ploring. Instead of waiting for an opportunity to knock at their doors, they

take advantage of present opportunities. They act with courage in exploring

life and joining in every aspect of life.

IF THE CHILD

EXPERIENCES

EMOTIONAL SUPPORT

FROM PARENTS, HIS

OR HER CHANCE

OF OVERCOMING

THE ANXIETIES

OF INCAPABILITY

AND ATTAINING A

HEALTHY CHARACTER

INCREASES.

Zeki Aydin

MAY / JUNE 200917

If their thoughts and decisions are not valued, if they suffer from violence, are not taken seriously, if their excuses are mostly considered lies, if their confidence is generally thought of as a sign of know-it-all behavior, if their pleasure is seen as a sign of being pampered, then chil-dren will not develop self-respect and they will lose self-confidence.

Another point that should be kept in mind is that children always want to spend some time on their special interests. Yet, if it is the par-ents who generally decide what the child should do and do not offer other options, the child becomes deprived of his or her interest.

Since children are not very ex-perienced ın relationships, they

can easily start to think that they are not capable. The most

helpful action to remove this kind of feeling is

to make them real-ize that there

are some people

who can understand them and have empathy with them. If the child ex-periences emotional support from parents, his or her chance of over-coming the anxieties of incapabil-ity and attaining a healthy character increases. On the other hand, if the parents do not pay attention to the complex feelings of the child and the reasons behind them, some new problems may arise. Things that are not significant for us may be very sig-nificant for the child; so we should not ignore the fears of a child.

When children feel incapable of dealing with a new problem, the parents should reveal their belief

in their capacity to overcome the problem and show their support. When children need the parents, they should be near enough that the children can find them as soon as they look for them. However, this “closeness” should not be limited only to physical occasions. There should be emotional support, too.

The most important way for parents to supply this psychologi-cal support is to show their love to their children. Hugging, kissing and putting an arm on the child’s shoulder can be much more im-pressive than saying, “Do not be afraid; I am here with you!” Nev-ertheless, to say, “I show my sup-port through my actions. There is no need to state it,” is not true. Expressing, “I love you!” with the tongue may not be so important for adults, but it is a magical expres-sion that every child wants to hear. In this way, the child feels strong and every duty turns into a plea-sure for them. To make children gain self-confidence, the parents should first know them from every aspect, recognize their talents, and then should establish necessary environment to improve their abili-ties. Moreover, it is essential to give

opportunity to children to express their thoughts very often, to try to understand their feelings by asking, “What do you think? How do you feel?” to look at their face while they are speaking, to say how much you love the child, to make them feel that you care about them and value their opinion, to assign them some works and responsibilities that are compatible with their age, and to appreciate positive behaviors and successes they have demonstrated. In addition, it is important to set

shoulder can be much more im-pressive than saying, “Do not be afraid; I am here with you!” Nev-ertheless, to say, “I show my sup-port through my actions. There is no need to state it,” is not true. Expressing, “I love you!” with the tongue may not be so important for adults, but it is a magical expres-sion that every child wants to hear. In this way, the child feels strong and every duty turns into a plea-sure for them. To make children gain self-confidence, the parents should first know them from every aspect, recognize their talents, and then should establish necessary environment to improve their abili-ties. Moreover, it is essential to give

18

some time aside for the child, to chat with them, to talk about their negative behavior and how it could be cor-rected, not to forget special days, to establish a happy and peaceful family environment, to strengthen family relations and to make children feel that they are an in-separable part of the family. Children who are socially active are more self-confident, and they can easily join in the social environment around them. In this sense, especially less sociable children should be encour-aged to attend social activities, and, if it is necessary, the parent should accompany the child, and promote them in asking for permission to speak inside a com-munity. Also, parents should neither humiliate their child among other people nor exaggerate his or her failures. In order to help the child to establish a strong character, the fears and concerns of the child should be respected; thus, the parents should avoid severely critical or judgmental behavior, and they should not compare the child with other children. Furthermore, children should be required to do things that are ap-propriate to their age, especially to do homework by themselves. The parents should avoid improper types of punishment and reward.

Hence, children should not be belittled, and their presence should be respected; however, the parents should not expect extraordinary things, and keep in mind that the child has a different and improving character. The parents should pay attention to their school life, character education and spiritual life. Such prayers in action that are made through the tongue of necessity should also be supported with the actual prayers, and therefore parents should trust that God will arrange things for the best.

God Almighty honored humans with innate free will so that it will serve as an invitation to His Supreme Will, that is,

as an initial means. Free will is a decipherer and a torch; wherever it shines, the Light and Supreme Will of the One Who governs all of creation

and space is manifested there as well.***

HEALTH

MAY / JUNE 20091919

Studies made recently in rela-tion to aromatherapy show that aroma can be the prepa-ration for many important

functions in connection with a per-son’s spirit and body. Many experts on complementary medicine in the West supply patients with prescriptions for various aromas in relation to their particular illnesses.

Less well known is that research is also continuing into the scent of repellents to deter pests like insects and ticks. Vari-ous plants are known for the effects of their aroma, and are in widespread use for protection, especially in very hot and humid climates where there are a great number of arthropods; for in-stance, it is known that mosquitoes will not approach a house that has basil plants on the windowsill.

Another plant which is well known and used commonly for its scent is “patchouli” (pogostemon cablin), the scented essen-tial oil of which is obtained by steaming the plant and collecting the oil which emerges. The plant is a member of the mint fam-

THE FRAGRANCE

OF PATCHOULI IS

BELIEVED BY THE

CHINESE, JAPANESE

AND ARABS TO

PREVENT THE SPREAD

OF INFECTIOUS

DISEASES AND ALSO

USED FREQUENTLY

IN PERFUMES AND

SOAPS. WIDELY USED

IN EUROPE IN THE

EIGHTEEN HUNDREDS,

PATCHOULI BECAME

THE MOST POPULAR

FRAGRANCE OF

THE GENERATION

IN AMERICA IN THE

SIXTIES.

Fatih Altun

MAY / JUNE 2009 20

ily, and its actual origin is India, where its scent can be found even in the famous Indian ink. Patchou-li leaves used to be placed between carpets and rugs made in Iran and Turkey to protect them from any harmful pests or insects before they were sent to Europe. During the Victorian period carpets, shawls and rugs exported from India were also sprinkled with the fragrance of patchouli to protect them from moth, In fact any carpets, rugs or shawls that did not have the scent of patchouli were not favored be-cause they were believed to have been manufactured in Europe. The fragrance of the plant, which is longer lasting than most other scents, is believed by the Chinese, Japanese and Arabs to prevent the spread of infectious diseases and also used frequently in per-fumes and soaps. Widely used in Europe in the eighteen hundreds, patchouli became the most popu-lar fragrance of the generation in America in the sixties.

The research into patchouli has been limited so far and scientific observations are insufficient; nev-ertheless, the chemical composi-tion of the various scents found in the oil of this plant have been iden-tified, and the long human experi-ences of using this plant and its fra-grance may hold great significance for scientific research in the future.

The plant contains patchouli alcohol, pogostone, friedelin, epifrie-delinol, pachypodol, retusin, oleanolic asid, beta-sitosterol and daucoster-ol, most of which prevent nausea. It has also been found to contain alpha-bulnesene, which prevents the clotting of blood. In addition, according to an article in the 2008 February edition of the Phytotherapy research journal, since the oil obtained from patchouli essence is an effective fly killer, the oil could also be an effective as a component of insect repellents and might even be an effective arthropod and tick repellent.

Looking at these studies we clearly see other ways in which we could benefit from this substance; for instance, by adding a few drops to water we could use it in household cleaning and therefore get rid of unwanted odors at the same time as preventing insects in the home without the use of car-cinogenic chemicals. The oil is also known to be used to prevent fungus, to reduce perspiration and eliminate unwanted body odors and for dietary purposes, due to its effectiveness in reducing the appetite.

Moreover, patchouli has also long been a fragrance very much sought and used as a form of treatment for its soothing qualities and positive effect on spiritual health. Martin Henglein, who was one of the founders of aro-matherapy and developer of the theory of the curative aspect of the fragrances of plants, recognizes geranium, rosemary, bergamot, and patchouli as the four primary aromas, and he emphasizes that these four fragrances perform various functions. Geranium can prevent addic-tions from progressing and even assist people in aban-

MAY / JUNE 200921

doning addictions and bad habits. For instance, the role geranium plays in giving up smoking is indisputable: when the desire to smoke increases and becomes unbearable the aroma of geranium temporarily eliminates the desire to smoke. According to Henglein, rosemary improves memory while bergamot increases activity in the brain and the ability to understand; patchouli activates the mechanism which motivates a person’s energy.

Robert Tisserand, owner of a treatment center in England, believes that certain fragrances can also cure psychological illnesses, Tisserand says that these aromas have a positive effect on the signal molecules (neurotransmit-ters) that provide communication with the nerve cells and can help to cure psychological problems. Fragrances encourage the body to release endor-phin, a substance which resembles morphine (a pain reliever) and this is why rose oil, jasmine, sage, cananga (ylang ylang), patchouli, and grapefruit are recommended for depression, to increase confidence, and to help with abnormalities of sexual function. If patchouli is used in excess, it allegedly may cause a sedative effect or may reduce sleep. Otherwise, it is claimed to have a balancing effect on the body’s energy and psychological condition, inspire a sense of calmness, eliminate laziness, support treatment of addic-tions, and relieve feelings of fear and depression.

Everyone knows that charming fragrances enhance positive thought and feelings, and we also know the negative aspects of bad odors. It is reported that the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said, “I have been made to love perfume,” drawing attention to the importance of pleas-ant fragrances and reminding us that Prophet Jacob received the glad tid-ings that his son Joseph was still alive because of the scent of his shirt.

ReferencesGuan L, Quan LH, Xu LZ, Cong PZ. (1994): Chemical constituents of Pogostemon

cablin (Blanco) Benth. Zhongguo Zhong Yao Za Zhi. 1994 Jun;19(6):355–6, 383. Yang Y, Kinoshita K, Koyama K, Takahashi K, Tai T, Nunoura Y, Watanabe K.(1999):

Anti-emetic principles of Pogostemon cablin (Blanco) Benth. Phytomedicine. 1999 May, 6 (2): 89–93.

Luo J, Guo X, Feng Y. (2002): Constituents analysis on volatile oil of Pogostemon cablin from different collection time cultivated in Hainan. Zhong Yao Cai. 2002 Jan. 25 (1): 21–3

Hsu HC, Yang WC, Tsai WJ, Chen CC, Huang HY, Tsai YC. (2006): Alpha-bul-nesene, a novel PAF receptor antagonist isolated from Pogostemon cablin. Bio-chem Biophem Biophys Res Commun. 2006 Jul 7;345(3):1033–8.

Tsai YC, Hsu HC, Yang WC, Tsai WJ, Chen CC, Watanabe T. (2007): Alpha-bul-nesene, a PAF inhibitor isolated from the essential oil of Pogostemon cablin. Fito-terapia. 2007 Jan. 78 (1):7–11.

Pavela R. (2008): Insecticidal properties of several essential oils on the house fly (Musca domestica L.). Phytother Res. 2008 Feb;22(2):274–8.

Jantan, I. and Zaridah M. Z.(1999): Development of Environment-Friendly Insect Re-pellents From The Leaf Oils of Selected Malaysian Plants. ASEAN Review of Bio-diversity and Environmental Conservation (ARBEC) November–December 1999, p.1–7.

THE CHEMICAL

COMPOSITION OF

THE VARIOUS SCENTS

FOUND IN THE OIL

OF PATCHOULI HAVE

BEEN IDENTIFIED, AND

THE LONG HUMAN

EXPERIENCES OF USING

THIS PLANT AND ITS

FRAGRANCE MAY HOLD

GREAT SIGNIFICANCE

FOR SCIENTIFIC

RESEARCH IN THE

FUTURE.

LANGUAGE

MAY / JUNE 2009 22

The misunderstanding and

the misconception by some

Western readers that Sufi

poetry is strongly tinged with sen-

suality and replete with erotic and

bacchanalian symbolism is now

discredited as altogether false. Now

it is universally recognized that Sufi

poetry sings of Divine Love in secu-

lar words. Nicholson writes that one

who reads mystical poetry of Islam

feels that the aspiration of the soul

towards God is expressed in the

same terms which might be used by

an Oriental Anacreon or Herrick.

Indeed, the resemblance is so close

that unless supplied by interpreta-

tion of the Sufi doctrine of Divine

Love, the poet is likely to be misin-

terpreted. Hence there is need of cor-

rect translation and interpretation

of a Sufi poet’s language which is

densely metaphoric and intertextual.

Current trends in language studies

Of the various functions of language

one is its meaning making, knowl-

edge producing activity. Various

theories of language and discourses

produce different kinds of knowl-

edge, meaning, reality and truth-

claims. Over the last four decades

much academic discussion dealing

with language has started out with

its value-laden entwinement with

ideology. Language’s ambiguous na-

ture, culture-specific character, inde-

terminacy of meaning and the ways

in which it shapes and controls our

perceptions of the world, have been

studied in the social and political

context. Consequently, there has

been proliferation of such diverse

disciplines as psycholinguistics,

socio-linguistics, and post-colonial

studies. Research in language use

has tended to focus on its power to

shape our perceptions of the world

within hierarchical structures of

SUFI POETRY DEVELOPS

AN OPTIMISTIC

RELATIONSHIP

BETWEEN HUMANKIND

AND LANGUAGE.

JUST AS MYSTICAL

EXPERIENCE IS

LIBERATING, LIKEWISE

LANGUAGE IS SEEN

AS A LIBERATING

FORCE, EXPANDING

AND PROMOTING

HUMAN WELL BEING,

RATHER THAN BEING

CONSTRICTIVE

AS DERRIDA, THE

PHILOSOPHER OF

LANGUAGE,

CLAIMS IT TO BE.

Aalia Sohail Khan

MAY / JUNE 200923

power which are both formulated and upheld by lan-guage. Language has been studied as social capital, an instrument for establishing cultural hegemony, a form of manipulation and conquest, a discourse of power embedded in ideology in the context of education, in-terpersonal and mass communication, business, pro-paganda, advertisements, natural sciences and transla-tion studies.

The truth-claim of the designative tradition in the philosophy of language, based as it is on nominalism and naturalism, limits meaning to word-object relation only, and reduces reality to mere physical phenomena that can be quantitatively measured and explained. This exclusive, separatist, Cartesian focus on mirror-ing objective reality ends in scientific materialism and determinism, which leaves no room for the noblest reaches of spiritual life. On the other hand, if the twin emphasis on how discourse is both constituted by and constitutes the socio-cultural world and the notion that discourse is invested in and contributes to the (re)pro-duction of power relations in society, ends in cultural materialism, likewise the poststructuralist marginaliz-ing of external reality, exaggerated one-sided emphasis on hermetically closed system of textuality, regression and deference of meaning results in nihilism.Breaking free from linguistic reductionismIf it is to have a future, the philosophy of language has to break free from cultural narcissism, solipsism, and linguistic reductionism. It has to make a connection between the fullness of life and language. The idea of reality needs to be extended to make room for the com-plexity of full human experience—the Transcendental and the temporal and spatial, the Eternal and the his-torical, the spiritual and the physical, the sacred and the secular. Regrettably research in language studies has not been carried over into the domain of mysti-cal discourse. The absence of an adequate study of the need, nature, function, effect and context of language in leaping up to Transcendence, neglect of the study of the relationship between language and faith in mysti-cal discourse in various theories of meaning and real-ity is symptomatic of a deep problem in our current views of our cognition of reality. The difficulty is not a matter of mere oversight. The problem is far more dis-tressing, for it concerns our entire orientation towards these issues, which is based on a set of presuppositions that deny God, spirituality, mysticism, and sacredness

a central role in the constitution of reality. The para-digms of positivism and empiricism are still regarded as organizing forms which exclude transcendence and subjective mystical experience as integral parts of the fullness of life.

Despite the fact that since the 1970s the study of mysticism has been completely transformed, it has yet to draw the attention of linguists, literary critics or phi-losophers of language. Far from being regarded as sen-timentalism or a deviation from religion or abnormal behavior mysticism has come to be recognized as an account of sublime spiritual experience. The labors of religious psychologists, like the work of William James (1982) have disentangled mysticism from psycho-physical accidents; no responsible student now would identify mysticism with mere confusion of thought. The philosophical and theological landscape with its increasing emphasis on Transcendence, respect for the idea of the sacred, growing recognition of the distinct-ness, independence and need of the spiritual order and a revival of the creaturely sense, strongly contrast with the temper of the nineteenth-century thought. The metaphysical claims of mystics are now recognized as truth-claims. The warm welcome given to Rudolf Ot-to’s The Idea of the Holy (1926) has been followed by renewed interest in the sacred. Yet in spite of the adjustments required by such a shift in philosophical outlook, language theorists have yet to enrich their in-sights by gleaning from the field of mysticism. Wittgen-stein’s catalogue of “language games” includes prayer but it does not move beyond formal prayer to private prayer, munajat, “a prayer of intimate conversation between God and man during which words of love and affection are exchanged and consolation is found for the afflicted heart.” The linguist’s inquiry does not address issues of the meaningfulness, force and effect of language constructs in the mystical discourse and context. This constitutes a very large gap in scholarship on language.

The profundity of thought, sublimity of emotion and esthetic beauty of the works of Muslim mystics has gained international attention and respect by vir-tue of their translation into different languages and the commentaries on them—Massignon’s French volume on Mansur al-Hallaj (1922), Chittick (2000), Nichol-son (1964, 1970, 1989), Arberry (1956, 1979) and Schimmel’s works (1975, 2003) in English on Muslim

24MAY / JUNE 2009

mystics in general and in particular on Al-Hujwiri and Maulana Rumi, Margaret Smith on Muhasibi (1935), and Rabia (1994), Schimmel’s German volume on the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) (1981). Maulana Rumi has emerged as the most widely read poet in the United States because of the accessibility of translations of his work into English. RationaleWhy Sufi poetry? The devastation caused by the two world wars, for the first time shook the Western world into realizing a two-fold need. The first was of “a deeper understanding and appreciation of other peoples and their civilizations, especially their moral and spiritual achievements.” The second need arose from the strong call for “a new vision of the Universe, a clearer insight into the fundamentals of ethics and religion.” What should be the criteria for living a decent life? Can the nations be brought together? Is there a God of love or simply a blind, mechanical, impersonal force behind the chance collocation of at-oms? What is the nature of the relationship between man and God? Can man reach out to Him or does He remain inaccessible? This quest led men and women to dig out what the mystics, the greatest minds of East and West, who by common consent are accepted as the people of God, have thought and said about the truth of God.

This was, according to Arberry, one of the main objectives behind a series of translations of Sufi (Is-lamic mystical) literature and commentaries on them, showing the background against which this kind of literature arose and developed. The translator of Sufi literature emerged in the role of the guide who shows the way to treasures. Arberry (1956) wrote, “Mankind is hungry, but the feast is there, though it is locked up and hidden away.” The aim of translations was to put that feast within reach, so that, like “the Heroes of Homer, we may stretch out our hands to the good cheer laid before us.”

Unfortunately this aim has not yet been realized. Since 9/11 nations have drifted even further away from each other. Misunderstanding, misrepresenting and misrepresented, seething with the consuming pas-sion of mistrust and hatred, the world today is once again standing on the brink of disaster. We behave in this wasteland like hollow men who eschew eye con-tact with each other, who can connect nothing with nothing, and talk only about the clash of civilizations.

We need to open our eyes to the beauty of the emo-tion of love shared by all the religions and traditions of mysticism. No doubt, the great religions differ in fundamentals, but the essence is the same, and that is compassion and it is that which brings the great reli-gions together on a strong spiritual footing.

The transformative spirit and power of Sufi poetry was later voiced once more by a Western scholar, Karen Armstrong, who viewed her access to the Holy Qur’an and Sufi literature through translations as a “very lib-erating experience.” She discovered expansion, plural-ism and compassion in Islam. Since then it has been her jihad, as she puts it, to enlighten her people in the West about the true spirit of Islam and dispel misun-derstandings, prejudices, and negative stereotyping of Muslims.

Another motive which should precipitate transla-tion of Sufi poetry is the need to fill the gap in scholar-ship on language. Language has a complex character. It can perform diverse and contradictory functions. Like the two-faced Roman God Janus, language has an ambivalent character; it can equally disclose and hide, construct and destroy, inspire and demoralize, liberate and imprison, clarify and distort, heal and hurt. Sufi literature brings forth the paradox of the inadequacy of words to express and convey the mys-tical experience and insight, and on the other hand the meaning, power and need of words. Sufis always say that their experience is ineffable, yet they couch their feelings and experiences in words and express them with great conviction, force and eloquence. If the spiritual experience and the vision are unutter-able and beyond expression and words are inherently incapable of expressing something which is beyond the comprehension of intellect (because words are the tools of intellect to conceptualize) then these ques-tions are immediately raised:

1. What is the nature of language in Sufi poetry?2. What does a Sufi describe?3. How do the words function?4. What is the purpose of this functioning?First, Sufi poetry is highly metaphorical in nature.

The illogical logic in Sufi poetry addresses the “onto-logical” status of metaphor in relation to how things actually are: the unreality of the phenomenal world and the way it should be “seen as something else.”

Second, Sufi literature reveals and describes the most profound spiritual truths disclosing the esoteric

25 MAY / JUNE 2009

aspect of Islam, as the very titles of many Sufi treatises demonstrate. Kashf-Al-Mahjub, the oldest Persian treatise of tasawwuf (Sufism), written by Ali Bin Uth-man Al-Hujwiri, means the “Unveiling of the Veiled,” and in his own words it is “an explanation of mystical sayings, and an uplifting of the veil of mortality.” Long before Derrida used the word “translator” for a writer, Sufi writers saw themselves in the role of translators, who transfer, reconstitute and interpret divine truths from the transcendental domain to the context of this physical world.

This makes us move on to the function that lan-guage performs in Sufi literature. Sufi poetry displays the close relation between language, belief, understand-ing and truth. Sufi poetry by its very nature engages us in a dialogue with the Transcendental. Not only does it initiate the move to relate, it then becomes the means of consolidating and strengthening the bond, and ex-panding understanding of the nature of relationship.

Here language becomes a way of showing the way to harmony and peace that passes understanding. Words do not strain, slip and crack here. They are meaningful, not illusory nor simulacra. They create meaning: mean-ing is not endless regression here. Language in Sufi poet-ry is not “a prison house” outside which no reality lives. Functioning as a therapy, Sufi poetry sprouts hope and shows possibilities of breaking through impasse, becom-ing a source of strength and inspiration. It reanimates and “brings dead hearts to life.”

Sufi poetry has constitutive value; it constitutes who we are, how we should think and live. It sets the pa-rameters of our life by pressing upon us the ideal of love and compassion. Making us see beyond the mere referential value of word-object relationship, it offers a dynamic and creative view of language.

Thus, Sufi poetry develops an optimistic relation-ship between humankind and language. Just as mysti-cal experience is liberating, likewise language is seen as a liberating force, expanding and promoting human well being, rather than being constrictive as Derrida, the philosopher of language, claims it to be.Integrating the sacred with the secularResearch in the translation of Sufi literature becomes a way of reintegrating “the sacred with the secular” in today’s disenchanted world. The way language in Sufi literature creates and extends meaning and reality is nowadays ignored because of the Post-structuralist emphasis on culture, ideology and indeterminacy of

meaning in language. But the significance of language as a “meaning-making” activity, a way of knowing and understanding Transcendence, a means of creating a bridge across diverse religions and cultures validates such comparative studies. Truth may be at stake. A re-searcher and a scholar like the translators, critics, histo-rians, journalists and professors of literature can break or make a writer on his/her own terms. Research ac-quires the power of Plato’s pharmakon, both “poison” and “remedy.” The power invested in the researcher to change texts and so change the world should be in-creasingly recognized.

The researcher may intervene in the interpretation of text for different reasons and use research to serve various functions. If an interpretation is yoked to a po-litical or national agenda it may manipulate language to construct meaning not intended by the original text. In this way research ceases to be a means of knowing the truth. It becomes manipulation, subsuming the original meaning into its own hegemonizing voice. In generating erroneous perceptions of a work and the doctrine it is embedded in biased or erroneous inter-pretation assists in promoting negative stereotypes. Inauthentic and distorted versions of Sufi literature were instrumental in re-presenting Islamic mysticism as a form of Bacchanalian ecstasy. Research can thus do more harm than good by repressing, distorting or containing the original meaning.

In its positive aspect, by being faithful to the origi-nal meaning of the text, research can promote good will through intercultural dialogue, expand under-standing about other religions and literatures, and promote peaceful coexistence. The aim should be to deepen understanding and expand awareness about the complexity of the web of language use in making Sufi poetry.

Aalia Sohail Khan is an associate professor of English in the National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad.

ReferencesArberry A.J. Muslim Saints and Mystics. Trans. Tadhkirat-al-

Auliya by Farid al-Din Attar. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966.

Medina, Jose. Language: Key Concept in Philosophy. London: MPG Books Limited. 2000.

Schimmel, Annemarie. As Through a Veil: Mystical Poetry in Islam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Underhill, Evelyn, Mysticism: A study in the nature and de-velopment of Man’s spiritual consciousness. New York: Meridian Books, 1960.

NATURE

MAY / JUNE 2009 26

D o not be misled by my appearance into thinking I am a type of bear. Although we koalas may resemble bears, we have been created with quite different characteristics. Our birth, diet, habitation and development bear no comparison with

those of the bear. Do not misunderstand me. The assertions I make are not because I do not like bears. I was just pointing out that we have been granted various distinct attributes by the Creator. Although some of the abilities and habits of my species that I will describe may seem a bit uncommon, I am totally aware that these unusual abilities are a divine blessing bestowed upon us by our Creator to make our lives easier and more convenient.

IT MAY SEEM

UNBELIEVABLE TO

YOU BUT WE HARDLY

DRINK ANY WATER.

THIS IS WHY OUR

NAME IS SAID TO

DERIVE FROM A WORD

OF THE ABORIGINAL

LANGUAGE MEANING

“NO DRINK.” THIS IS

MAINLY DUE TO OUR

DIET BECAUSE OUR

NEED FOR WATER IS

PROVIDED BY THE

EUCALYPTUS LEAVES

WE EAT, WHICH

CONTAIN 40–60%

WATER, ENOUGH FOR

OUR BODIES.

Mehmet Celik

MAY / JUNE 200927

The Creator of the universe, the eternal power of existence who has constant awareness of the activity of every cell in our bodies, has endowed us with many fascinating characteristics in the features of our diet and process of reproduction to enable us to live within the ecological stability and principles of adaptation in our natural environment. I will try to explain some of these features to the best of my ability to give you a brief but significant idea of our unique and amazing creation.

Unlike humans, for whom the total development of the fetus and organs takes around 280 days in the womb, we remain in our mother’s womb for a much shorter period. Following a 34–36 day pregnancy, we are born into the world around the size of a bean, blind and earless. As soon as our mothers give birth to us, we crawl by divine inspiration into a pouch created for our protection and development on our mother’s belly. This pouch is why you define both us and kangaroos among the animal kingdom as marsupials. If we did not climb into the pouch created for us to complete the process of our development, we would not be able to live for the first five months of our lives. We feed by sucking the taps of nourishment, the two teats found within the pouch, for the first five months of our lives without leaving this cozy place of security. After about five months hidden in the pouch, we gradually begin to stick our heads out to learn how to benefit from the other substances God has created for us in the universe. While the younger mothers of our species can give birth every year, the older females only give birth every two years or so.

After the first six months we obtain sustenance from our mothers which contains the bacteria and nutritional weaning supplement our digestive system requires to

enable us to make the transition from our mother’s milk to the nutrient which becomes the main provision we depend on for the rest of our lives, eucalyptus leaves. In the eighth month of our lives we become a bit more active and sometimes leave our pouch and ride on our mother’s back, but we climb back into our pouch at the first sign of danger. We begin to fend for ourselves and eat the eucalyptus leaves with no help from our mothers a year after our birth. We have our very own eucalyptus tree, sometimes even more than one, and we mark

the tree by scratching it with our claws, a kind of signature that defines which of us lives in a certain tree.

It may seem unbelievable to you but we hardly drink any water. This is why our name is said to derive from a word of the Aboriginal language meaning “No drink.” This is mainly due to our diet because our need for water is provided by the eucalyptus leaves we eat, which contain 40–60% water, enough for our bodies. As well as this our digestive system and kidneys

have been created with a structure that takes the maximum benefit from the water in eucalyptus leaves and wastes the least possible amount of water. The rate of our metabolism is quite low compared to that of other mammals. This is another factor which greatly reduces the loss of water from our bodies, so we do not have to constantly climb down from the trees we live in to find water.

Those who call us lazy because we sleep a lot, an average of twenty hours a day, unfortunately do not know very much about us. Sleep is necessary for us because fibrous eucalyptus leaves contain very little protein and very few other nutrients. This means they provide us with a low energy diet so we have to optimize our use of this energy. The Creator adapted us so that we sleep for 18–20 hours a day to save energy. So never compare us with those who have the ability or energy to be active but waste their valuable lives in unnecessary actions or idleness.

The high content of aromatic oils and various chemical components of cyanide found in eucalyptus leaves are extremely poisonous to many plant-eating animals but we are an exception. God created us with a unique digestive

28MAY / JUNE 2009

system because the main ingredient of plants, cellulose, is such a hard substance to digest that we have been created with a caecum, a section of intestine much longer (200 cm) than that of other mammals, which acts as a chamber of fermentation. Here the high-cellulose eucalyptus leaves are easily broken down by bacteria and microorganisms living in our caecum, a process which then enables our digestion of the leaves. Some of the harmful oils and components (phenol compounds) in the leaves are refined by our liver, which works in an excellent manner, and then these oils are excreted from our body. The creation of our liver, which acts like a special laboratory that can even transform the most dangerous of poisons into harmless substances, has been referred to by evolutionists ludicrously as “a coincidence” or “unaware mutation.”

There are certain things that we must be wary of in our diet. Out of around six hundred different kinds of leaves we can only eat twenty of them, so from around nine kilos of leaves that we pick every day, we only eat one kilo of the least poisonous ones. We usually choose the fresher leaves, and we detect the amount of poison in each leaf by its odor. This is why our noses are one of the most sensitive organs of our bodies. Sometimes we eat earth to obtain the minerals lacking in our bodies. This sharpens our teeth at the same time.

God Almighty, who created even the smallest detail of the universe perfectly, also created our bodies to meet our every requirement. The All-Knowing Designer of the universe created us with arms and paws so we can easily climb up into the eucalyptus trees we use as our homes, our places of habitat. The soles of our paws that are covered in a thick skin, and our arms and legs, which are equipped with strong muscles, and our hook shaped claws enable us to grip onto the trunk and branches of the tree. We can even sleep while we are hanging from a branch. We have five claws on each of our front paws and two of these claws are placed like the thumbs on your hands. These claws enable us to grip and keep a hold on branches. The second and third claws on our hind paws are joined together to enable a stronger grip. We can grip with all four of our paws just like a human grasps with his or her hand and this helps us to walk up the branches and move around in the tree with great ease.

Our body temperature is perfectly adjusted for outdoor life, and our rainproof fur also protects us from the cold, heat and wind. Our fur changes and

adapts every season in length and thickness according to our temperature requirements, Australia is situated in the southern hemisphere, so those of us who live in the south have been created with a longer more bristly fur than those in the north so we can cope with the harsh winter conditions. Our fur has patches of different colors on different parts of our bodies; the darker fur on our backs has been created to absorb and preserve heat while the fur on other parts of our bodies is relatively light in color.

To protect ourselves from strong winds we roll our ears up into a kind of ball and turn our backs, the most insulated part of our bodies towards the wind. The fur on our backs is as protective as that of the animals that live in the Arctic. If you see us curled up on a branch in the winter, don’t worry. Due to our incredible fur coat we are as warm and comfortable as you are in your homes.

Unfortunately, we have been subjected to the never-ending desires and ambitions of humankind. The dingoes, iguanas, and some of the eagles and owls that live in Australia do cause us harm from time to time but the massacre inflicted on us by humans in the nineteenth century was heartless and barbaric. Especially from about 1910 to the 1930s my ancestors were killed for our fur and around 80% of our main source of nutrition was destroyed by cutting down eucalyptus trees. In 1927 our species was subjected to the largest massacre ever. They say that over two and a half million of my brothers and sisters were barbarically killed then. It is reported that there are between two and eight thousand of us living today, and the drop in our population is mainly due to agriculture, urbanization and the destruction of the trees we depend on for our habit and nutrition. There has been a huge increase in deaths among us from contagious diseases and attacks by domestic animals like dogs. In recent years, all praise to our merciful Creator, by the great efforts of some foundations and organizations we have been placed under a conservation order.

This description of our exceptional organs, our behavior we are inspired to adopt, and the many blessings bestowed upon us must have explained to you and enlightened you about certain things. May the greetings of the Almighty, He who created us with a liver to enable us to cope with the poisonous leaves, who enables us to feed our offspring in the security of the pouch on our bellies, who created everything in the universe in total cooperation and harmony with each other, be upon you all…

29

MATTER & BEYOND TALKS

MAY / JUNE 2009 30

ON NATURE, BEAUTY, AND TRANSCENDENCE: AN INTERVIEW WITHSEYYED HOSSEIN NASR

Mustafa TabanliMaryLynn Schiavi

Matter and Beyond

explores a wide range of ethical,

philosophical, spiritual and scientific questions through interviews with leading

scholars and scientists on compel-ling topics such as: mysteries of

consciousness, the healing powers of music and sound, love, ecology,

astronomy, artificial intelligence, cosmology, quantum mechanics

and free will, spiritual capital, bio-ethics and unity of knowledge.

What follows is an interview with Professor Seyyed Hossein

Nasr, one of the world’s leading experts on Islamic science and spirituality. He is professor of

Islamic Studies at George Wash-ington University. Professor Nasr is the author of numerous books including Man and Nature: the Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man

(Kazi Publications, 1998), Religion and the Order of Nature (Ox-

ford, 1996), and Knowledge and the Sacred (SUNY, 1989).

MAY / JUNE 200931

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

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

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

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

I believe that one of the greatest tragedies that has hap-pened in Western civilization after the Middle Ages, and has resulted in what we see today, is compartmen-talization, that is, a separation of various modes of knowing, various forms of knowledge, from each other, so that few matters are known in a complete way. Here I am, a professor at a major American university, and the students who come and study with us—their minds are like drawers in your bedroom. You put socks in

one drawer, underwear in another, shirts in another… So they go from one class to another, they learn cer-tain things, but there is no connection between various subjects that they learn. It is not only I who say this; the great English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said this over a half a century ago. This compartmen-talization is one of the greatest dangers facing modern civilization. In traditional civilization there used to be a unity of knowledge. Of course, Islamic civilization is based upon tawhid, upon unity, and in the framework of the Islamic sciences all the different disciplines, from poetry to music to philosophy to history to geology to medicine to physics and mathematics, all of these have some kind of interrelation. There has always been an overall world view that has embraced them.

Now, that has been destroyed, but there have been some attempts to try to create a metaphysical basis to reintegrate the sciences. For example, Whitehead was interested in this matter and he tried very hard to do this, but none of these people really succeeded because the whole education system in the West is now based on this kind of specialization and unrelated disciplines that have nothing to do with each other.

So what to do? You end up with a scientistic positiv-ist claiming that nothing unscientific is important, that there is no other mode of knowledge but science—that is one side. On the other side for now we see those who emphasize only the outward meaning of religion with little interest in its intellectual and spiritual as-pects. And other people fall in between.

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

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

No, it was not. Let me mention the field of art which in traditional civilization was related to knowledge, to the science of forms. Now that link has been largely severed as has the link between various branches of knowledge. It is a modern illness that has deprived po-etry and art of their intellectual function, that is, their relation to knowledge at the highest level. In the nine-teenth century, when a lot of the Romantic poets of the English language such as Wordsworth depicted po-

MAY / JUNE 2009 32

etically beautiful scenes of nature and were against the vulgarization, the destruction, the ugly landscapes that resulted from the Industrial Revolution in England, their poetry was taken simply as sensibility, as emotion; it was not allowed to challenge the science of the day, which reigned supreme as the only legitimate form of knowing and in fact continues to do so.

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

It is the same with music. Music takes you out of your ordinary experience of time. So does poetry, but especially music, and it makes you experience time in a different way. Now, that other time that you experience is not simply a fantasy; it is not simply subjectivism; it

is another aspect of reality. In all traditional arts there is a science that reveals another dimension of reality without this science being completely divorced from other modes of knowledge. A traditional mosque or cathedral is related to cosmology and theology as well as the science of forms, materials, colors and optics. Such edifices are themselves testimony to the unity of knowledge and the necessity to reject the compartmen-talization of various modes of knowing.

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

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

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

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

More and more people are also now speaking of

"NOW, ALL RELIGIONS EMPHASIZE THE HUMAN SOUL’S EXPERIENCE OF WONDER. FOR EXAMPLE,

THE QUR’AN SPEAKS SO MUCH ABOUT GOD’S CREATION AND ASKS US TO THINK, TO

MEDITATE UPON AND TO WONDER ABOUT GOD’S CREATION. THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT

ACCEPTING THE REMARKABLE DESIGN IN GOD’S CREATION."

MAY / JUNE 200933

a holistic worldview whose loss has caused the envi-

ronmental crisis. Ecology by nature is a discipline that

brings things together. If we destroy the Potomac River

here, we do not know what effect it will have on the

fish in Mexico. But it might have an effect of which

we are not as yet aware. Now many are beginning to

realize more and more that on the earth everything is

intertwined and our experiential knowledge cannot be

divorced from scientific knowledge and vice versa.

Today even some modern scientists are beginning

to realize this truth, but they still exclude the spiritual

world and the psychological world from their science.

At least on the material level, however, they are real-

izing that this cutting of things from their natural set-

ting and analyzing them and getting knowledge about

them is not the whole of knowledge. There is also

crucial knowledge based on the interrelatedness of

things. And I think it is here that Islamic thought can

make a very important contribution to contemporary

thought.

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

First of all, the design argument may also be found in

Islam in another form. We have it in all religions. But

putting all the theological aspects aside, if you find a

watch on a table, you would think that someone de-signed it and that the person had the intelligence to de-sign a watch. When you see things much more compli-cated than the watch, working in a remarkable fashion, it creates in you an awareness of an incredible intelli-gent design and a sense of awe, of wonder. That is what modern science has for the most part tried to destroy. Einstein, one of the greatest scientists, had this sense of wonder—but ordinary science as it is taught in schools is against encouraging this sense of wonder. Rather, it has tried to equate to explain with to explain anyway, providing a view in which there is no sense of wonder. The enchantment of nature, wonderment, they have been all cast away. Now, all religions emphasize the human soul’s experience of wonder. For example, the Qur’an speaks so much about God’s creation and asks us to think, to meditate upon and to wonder about God’s creation. That is impossible without accepting the remarkable design in God’s creation.

M&B: Do you think that becoming aware of ecological problems is related to realizing human responsibility?

A crisis can always be positive in a way in that it can force us to re-examine our position. When the earth trembles under your feet, you are in a different frame of mind than when you were walking on solid earth and you did not think about the earth. When you are

MAY / JUNE 2009 34

sitting here you do not even think about the floor, but if the floor be-gins to shake, if there is a big earth-quake, you will immediately think about the floor.

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

I have written for fifty years on this matter. I am one of the first Muslim thinkers to have written about such subject and one of the first to predict the environmental crisis and I stand by what I said about this matter half a century ago. Every kind of trying to save the planet by recourse to only good engineering or economic planning is just cosmetic. I just had a discussion, which is com-ing out in the Islamic Science

journal, in which I said that if someone has cancer as a result of which his skin turns yellow, if you just put some cosmetics on the face of a woman so that her cheeks seem rosy, that is not go-ing to cure her cancer. We need to do something much more pro-found than this.

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

Ordinary people are drawn by their inner nature to the beauty of God’s creation. In Washington, D.C., in the beginning of April, you have the cherry blossoms. I know you have seen cherry blossoms—one of the most beautiful natural manifes-tations in big cities anywhere in the world. There are hundreds and hun-dreds of Japanese trees which were presented to the United States at the beginning of the twentieth cen-tury and which are found especially around the basin near the Thomas Jefferson Monument and certain other places in Washington. They are very beautiful when in bloom, and people are drawn from all over to their beauty. So, there is still cer-tainly attraction to the beauties of nature.

But the problem is that modern education and culture have eclipsed or lessened the awareness of hu-man beings of the relation between this beauty and the Beauty of God. So many people will say, “Oh, what a beautiful tree!” But that does not usually remind them of God be-cause of a secularized culture that has dominated the West for the past few

"IT IS IMPORTANT ALSO TO REALIZE THAT THE

SACRED IS NOT ONLY A CATEGORY PERTAINING

TO THE TORAH, THE GOSPELS OR THE

QUR’AN, A CHURCH OR A MOSQUE. OF COURSE, THEY ARE THE HEART OF

THE SACRED FOR THE FOLLOWERS OF THESE

VARIOUS RELIGIONS, BUT THE SACRED ALSO EXISTS IN GOD’S CREATION, IN PLANETS AND ANIMALS,

IN THE MOUNTAINS, DESERTS AND SEAS, IN

THE FIRMAMENT AND THE STARS."

MAY / JUNE 200935

centuries. But the natural inclination toward beauty is always there.

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

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

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

I wrote a book called Religion and the Order of Nature that was translated into Turkish two years ago. It is one of my major books, one in which I speak precisely about

how all the religions of the world, despite all their dif-ferent languages and forms, have a remarkably similar view towards the order of nature, where the order of nature comes from, why this order, and how important it is in this domain for the religions of the world to work together. That is perhaps the best hope that we have because in most places in the world people still listen to their religious leaders, whether they be imams, priests or rabbis. If on Fridays the imams in mosques would concentrate on the importance of treating nature as God’s sacred creation, within a few months such teach-ings would affect what the people do.

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

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

Interview conducted by Mustafa Tabanli for Ebru TV for the television show Matter and Beyond, episode 23. Visit www.ebru.tv for the full show.

LEAD ARTICLE

TAQWA (PIETY)

Taqwa is derived from wiqaya, which means self-defense and avoidance. Sufis define it as protecting oneself from God’s punishment by performing His commands and observing His

prohibitions. Besides its literal and technical meanings, in religious books we find the meanings of piety and fear used interchangeably. In fact, taqwa is a comprehensive term denoting a believer’s strict observance of the commandments of the Shari‘a and the Divine laws of nature and life. Such a person seeks refuge in God against His punishment, refrains from acts leading to Hellfire, and performs acts leading to Paradise. Again, the believer purifies all outer and inner senses so that none of them can associate partners with God, and avoids imitating the worldviews and lifestyles of unbelievers. In its comprehensive meaning, taqwa is the only and greatest standard of one’s nobility and worth: The noblest, most honorable of you in the sight of God is the most advanced of you in taqwa (al-Hujuraat 49:13).

The concept of—even the actual word—taqwa is unique to the Qur’an and the religious system of Islam. Its comprehensive meaning encompasses the spiritual and material; its roots are established in this world, while its branches, leaves, flowers, and fruit are located in the Hereafter. One cannot understand the Qur’an without considering the meaning or content of the fascinating and wonderful concept of taqwa, and one cannot be muttaqi (pious) if one does not adhere consciously and continually to the practices and concepts outlined in the Qur’an.

In its very beginning, the Qur’an opens its door to the pious: This is the Book about and in which there is no doubt, a guidance for the pious (al-Baqarah 2:2), and calls on people to live in accordance with it so that they may be pious: O men! Worship your Lord, Who created you and those before you, so that you may be pious (and protect yourselves from His punishment) (al-Baqarah 2:21).

M. Fethullah GülenBELIEF

MAY / JUNE 2009 36

THERE ARE THREE SIGNS OF A TRUE ASCETIC: FEELING NO JOY AT WORLDLY THINGS ACQUIRED OR GRIEF OVER

WORLDLY THINGS MISSED, FEELING NO PLEASURE WHEN PRAISED OR DISPLEASURE WHEN CRITICIZED OR BLAMED, AND PREFERRING TO SERVE GOD OVER EVERYTHING ELSE.

LEAD ARTICLE

The most lovable act in God’s sight is piety (taqwa), His most purified servants are the pious, and His peerless message to them is the Qur’an. In this world, the pious have the Qur’an; in the Hereafter, they enjoy God’s vision and pleasure. The pleasure felt in the conscience and spirit is another gift of piety, and in order to recall the importance of piety, the Almighty decrees: Fear God and be devoted to Him as He should be feared and devoted to (Al Imran 3:101).

Piety, which is the conscious performance of good and the avoidance of evil, prevents individuals from joining the lowest of the low and causes them to advance on the path of the highest of the high. For this reason, one who attains piety has found the source of all good and blessing. The following is another testimony to this fact:

To whomever God has given religion and piety,He has realized his aims in this world and the next.Whoever is a soldier of God and pious,He is prosperous and truly guided, not wretched.

Whoever has nothing to do with piety,His existence is but a shame and disgrace.One lifeless with respect to truth is not truly alive;Only one who has found a way to God is alive.

Piety is an invaluable treasure, the matchless jewel in a priceless treasure of precious stones, a mysterious key to all doors of virtue, and a mount on the way to Paradise. Its value is so high that, among other life-giving expressions, the Qur’an mentions it 150 times, each time resembling a ray of light penetrating our minds and spirits.

In its limited sense, taqwa means sensitivity to the commandments of the Shari‘a and refraining from acts that deprive one of Divine reward and result in God’s punishment. The verse: Those who refrain from major sins and shameful deeds (Ash-Shura 42:37) expresses one aspect of this basic religious virtue; the verse: Those who believe and do good deeds (Yunus 10:9) points to the other. Strict observance of obligatory religious duties and refraining from major sins are the two necessary and complementary foundations of taqwa.

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MARCH/ APRIL 2009 38MAY / JUNE 2009

As for minor sins, which the Qur’an calls lamam (small offenses), there are many Prophetic declarations, such as: “A servant cannot be truly pious unless he refrains from certain permissible things lest he should commit risky things,”1 that warn people to be careful.

Perfect sincerity or purity of intention can be attained by avoiding any association of partners with God, while perfect piety can be achieved by refraining from all doubtful and risky deeds. According to the Prophetic saying, “The lawful is evident and the forbidden is also evident. Between these two are things which most of the people do not know whether they are lawful or forbidden,” a truly righteous, spiritual life depends on being sensitive to matters about which there is some doubt. The Tradition above points out that the Legislator of the Shari‘a has clearly explained in broad terms what is allowed and what is forbidden. However, as many things are not clearly allowed or forbidden, only those who avoid doubtful things can live a truly religious life. Using a simile in the continuation of the Tradition, the prince of the two worlds, upon him be peace and blessings, said:

“It is possible for one who does doubtful things to commit forbidden acts, just as it is possible for the flock of a shepherd pasturing near a field belonging to another or the public to enter that field. Know that each king has a private area under his protection; the private area of God is forbidden things. Also know that there is a part of flesh in the body. If it is healthy, the body will become healthy; if it is ailing, the body will be ailing. That part is the heart.”2

In light of this basic foundation for a healthy spiritual life, perfect piety can be obtained by avoiding doubtful things and minor sins. In order to do this, however, one must know what is lawful and what is forbidden, and have a certain knowledge of God. We can find the combination of piety and knowledge in these two verses: The noblest, most honorable of you in the sight of God is the most advanced of you in taqwa (al-Hujuraat 49:13), and: Only the learned among His servants fear and revere God (al-Fatir 35:28). Piety brings honor and nobility, and knowledge leads one to fear and revere God. Individuals who combine piety and knowledge in their hearts are mentioned in the Qur’an as those who pass the test of piety: They are those whose hearts God has tested for piety (al-Hujuraat 49:3).

In the context of worship and obedience, piety means purity of heart, spiritual profundity, and sincerity. In the context of refraining from what is unlawful, piety means being determined not to commit sins and to avoid doubtful things. For this reason, each of the following may be considered an aspect of piety: A servant must• Seek only God’s approval and pleasure, and not set his or her heart upon whatever is other than Him.• Observe all commandments of the Shari‘a.• Do whatever is necessary to achieve the objective, and be convinced that only God will create the result. Thus one cannot be a fatalist (i.e., one cannot neglect to perform whatever is necessary to obtain a certain result, and must take all necessary measures against possible misfortune or defeat) or a pure rationalist and positivist (Mu‘tazili) who attributes all human acts and accomplishments to oneself by denying God any part in them.• Be alert to whatever may divert him or her from God.• Be alert to the carnal pleasures that may lead to the realm of the forbidden.• Ascribe all material and spiritual accomplishments to God.• Not consider himself or herself as superior to anyone else.• Not pursue anything other than God and His pleasure.• Follow the Guide of all, upon him be peace and blessings, without condition or reservation.• Renew himself or herself, and continuously control his or her spiritual life by studying and reflecting on God’s acts and works as well as on His laws of nature and life.• Remember death, and live with the conscious knowledge that it may happen at any time.

In conclusion, taqwa is the heavenly water of life, and a muttaqi (pious one) is the fortunate one who has found it. Only a few individuals have achieved the blessing of this attainment. A poet said:

God Almighty says: The great among you are those who are pious.

The last abode of the pious will be Paradise and their drink kawthar.

O God! Include us among Your pious servants who were sincere in all their religious acts.

Notes1. Al-Tirmidhi, “Qiyama,” 19; Ibn Maja, “Zuhd,” 24.2. Al-Bukhari, “Iman,” 39; Muslim, “Musaqat,” 107, 108.

The old globe speaks on its own,Looks ecstatic with a Godly gown, With spangled Paradise all around,Proclaims Who holds the crown. In the broad wondrous sky on high Like an imperial azure eye,Evoking awe beyond confusion,Our Lord displays His heavenly dye.

The moon twitters with solemn impulsionAmidst the shooting stars and the sun,Ears and eyes of enthusiasm, deeply enjoysHow its Glorious Lord has revealed His art.

Power and dominion under His Hand,The soil, the air, the water, surrender.Every being adores the same LordWhile every entity reflects His splendor.

POEM

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UNIVERSAL SIGNS

Victor H. Earnest

HISTORY

MAY / JUNE 2009 40

WHILE LISTING NAMES

OF MUSLIMS DUR-

ING THE FIRST DAYS

OF ISLAM, AISHA’S

NAME, TOGETHER

WITH HER OLDER

SISTER ASMA, ARE

LISTED IMMEDIATELY

AFTER THE NAMES

OF THE SABIQUN

AL-AWWALUN (THE

FIRST ONES). SHE WAS

THE 18TH PERSON

TO ACCEPT ISLAM.

THIS MEANS SHE WAS

LIVING THEN AND

MATURE ENOUGH TO

MAKE SUCH A CHOICE

AND EXERCISE HER

WILL.

Resit Haylamaz

MAY / JUNE 200941

When covering the life of Prophet Muhammad, one of the most debatable

topics is that of the age of his wife Aisha when the two married. Her alleged very young age has been used in smear campaigns against the Prophet.

Reports that Aisha bint Abi Bakr was 6 or 7 years old when she became engaged and 10 when she married1 have been the most basic factor in the formation of the view regarding her age of marriage. Also, it should not be forgotten that factors such as similar prac-tices being quite widespread at the time and the physical development of children becoming complete at an earlier age at that time also con-tributed to the dispersion of this view. For this reason, this subject was not made a current issue for discussion until very recently.

Orientalists who do not con-sider the conditions of the time period in which an action occurred and who examine Islam from “out-side” have made this a current is-sue. The Muslim world’s reaction to this different stance has been mixed. While some have insisted that Aisha’s above-mentioned age at marriage is correct,2 others are of the opinion that Aisha was old-er.3 In this situation, where it is not always possible to maintain a balanced view, various approaches have developed as an answer to Ori-entalists’ claims, including those that choose to deny the reports or ignore the existence of other alter-natives as a response to this view.

First of all, we should know

that everyone is a child of the time they live in and therefore must be evaluated according to the cultural context of the relevant time. There are certain values that form a soci-ety’s customs and when a society is evaluated, these values have to be taken into consideration. Other-wise, were we to attempt to evalu-ate historical events within today’s conditions, we should remember that we are fated to make mistakes.

It is known that during the time of the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, young girls were married at an early age4 and that age difference was not important in marriage.5 Especially in regard to young girls, it should not be forgotten that there was social pressure for this, that they matured earlier due to climatic and geographical conditions and that they were seen as goods that needed to grow in their husband’s house. Moreover, this is not a mat-ter just related to girls; boys were also married at ages 8, 9 and 10 and they became the head of a fam-ily at an age that is perceived as very young today.6 Perhaps it is this culture that lies at the basis of this issue’s not having been questioned until recent times. Otherwise, it was impossible for a mentality that wanted to brew a storm in regards to the Prophet’s marriage with Zay-nab bint Jahsh and that slandered Aisha after her return from the Muraysi expedition to not criticize such an issue at that time.

In the verses of the Qur’an that came at the same time, the age for marriage was mentioned and it was

emphasized that children should be married when they come of age.7 So, opposing a divine suggestion cannot be considered. Using the mentality of Umar, if intervention had been a matter of consideration here, the Prophet would surely have been warned in a coming revelation and a step would have been taken to resolve the issue. At any rate, the Prophet’s wedding to Aisha took place in accordance with direction from divine will.8

Now, putting the extremes be-hind us and using moderate crite-ria, let’s examine sources related to Aisha’s age at marriage once again.

1. While listing names of Mus-lims during the first days of Islam, Aisha’s name, together with her older sister Asma, are listed im-mediately after the names of the Sabiqun al-Awwalun (the first ones) like Uthman ibn Affan, Zubayr ibn Awwam, Abdurrahman ibn Awf, Sa’d ibn Abi Waqqas, Talha ibn Ubaydullah, Abu Ubayda ibn Jarrah, Arqam ibn Abi al-Arqam and Uthman ibn Maz’un. Being the 18th person to accept Islam, Aisha’s name precedes the names of Umayr ibn Abi Waqqas, Ab-dullah ibn Mas’ud, Salit ibn Amr, Ja’far ibn Abi Talib, Abdullah ibn Jahsh, Abu Hudayfa, Suhayb ibn Sinan, Ammar ibn Yasir, Umar ibn Khattab, Hamza ibn Abdilmut-talib, Habbab ibn Aratt, Said ibn Zayd and Fatima bint Khattab.9 This means she was living then and was mature enough to make such a choice and exercise her will. In addition, the information in

MAY / JUNE 2009 42

reports that “she was a small girl then” shows that her name was mentioned in a conscious way.10

This date refers to the early days of Islam. For it is known that Aisha’s sister Asma, who was born in 595, was 15 when she became a Muslim.11 This indicates the year 610, when the Prophet started to receive the revelation and this then shows that Aisha was at least 5, 6 or 7 that day and that she was at least 17 or 18 when she married the Prophet in Medina.

2. In regard to days in Mecca, Aisha said, “I was a girl playing games when the verse, ‘Indeed, the Last Hour is their appointed time [for their complete recompense], and the Last Hour will be more grievous and more bitter’12 was re-vealed to God’s Messenger.”13 This information opens other doors for us regarding her age.

The verse under consideration is the 46th verse of Surah Qamar, the 54th chapter of the Qur’an, which explains the miracle of the split moon [the splitting of the moon is one of the miracles per-formed by the Prophet Muham-mad]. Revealed as a whole, this surah came while the Prophet was in Ibn Arqam’s home in the fourth (614)14 or eighth (618) or ninth (619)15 year of his mission, accord-ing to differing reports. Looking especially at necessity, some schol-ars focused on the date being 614;

when this date is taken, Aisha either had not been born or had just been born. While when this date is taken it appears that she must have been born at least eight or nine years ear-lier, the situation does not change much when 618 or 619 are taken. In that situation she would have only been 4 or 5 years old, neither an age at which she would be in a position to understand this event and relate it years later. According to the second possibility, she was probably born when the Prophet’s mission had just begun.16

Another matter worth men-tioning here is that while describ-ing that day, Aisha stated, “I was a girl playing games.” The word she used to describe herself, jariya, is used to describe the passage into puberty. Ibn Yara, an Arab poet, describes this passage as follows: “When a girl becomes 8 years old, she is not a ‘jariya.’ She is a bridal candidate that I can marry to Utba or Muawiya.” Some scholars say that it is used for girls who are older than 11.

If we look at the issue taking 614 as the year that Surah Qamar was revealed, Aisha would have been born at least eight years be-fore the revelation of this verse, or in 606. If we accept 618, then the year of birth would have been 610; this event alone makes it impos-sible for her to have been 9 when she married.

When this information is com-bined with her name being on the list of the first Muslims, we get the result that Aisha’s date of birth was probably 606. Consequently, she would have been at least 17 when she married.

3. Of course, Aisha’s memories of Mecca are not limited to this. In addition to this, the following memories confirm this matter:

a) Her saying that she had seen two people begging who had remained from the Year of the El-ephant (the year in which Yemeni King Abraha sent an army of el-ephants to Mecca in order to de-stroy the Ka‘ba; the elephants were pelted with pebbles dropped on them by birds), which occurred 40 years before the prophetic mission and is accepted as a milestone for determining history, and her hand-ing down this information with her sister Asma only.17

b) Her describing in detail that during difficult times in Mecca, God’s Messenger had come to their house morning and evening and that her father, Abu Bakr, who could not endure this hardship, at-tempted to migrate to Abyssinia.18

c) Her stating that first it was mandatory to offer two cycles of obligatory prayer and that later it was changed to four cycles for residents, but that during military campaigns two cycles were per-formed.19

REGARDLESS OF WHETHER AISHA’S AGE AT MARRIAGE WAS 9 OR 17 OR 18, THERE IS NOTHING STRANGE ABOUT IT. IT IS NECESSARY TO EVALUATE EVERY SOCIETY ACCORDING TO ITS OWN RULES. HOWEVER, WHEN WE LOOK AT INFORMATION PASSED DOWN TO US, IT SHOULD NOT BE FORGOTTEN THAT THIS INFORMATION TO THE EFFECT THAT AISHA, MAY GOD BE PLEASED WITH HER, WAS BORN IN 605, ENGAGED AT THE AGE OF 14 OR 15 AND MARRIED AT THE AGE OF 17 OR 18 IS TOO STRONG TO BE IGNORED.

MAY / JUNE 200943

d) In reports about the early days, there being statements like, “We heard that Isaf and Naila had committed a crime at the Ka‘ba and for this reason God turned them into stone as a man and woman from the Jurhum tribe.”20

4. Being betrothed before the engagement: Another factor that supports the above view is that at the time when the Prophet’s mar-riage was a topic of discussion, Aisha was engaged to Mut’im ibn Adiyy’s son Jubayr. The sugges-tion for the Prophet to marry Aisha came from Hawla bint Hakim, the wife of Uthman ibn Maz’un, some-one not from the family. Both situ-ations show that she had come to the age of marriage and was known as a young marriageable girl.

As is known, this betrothal was broken by the Ibn Adiyy family due to the possible religious conversion of their son to Islam, and it was only after this that Aisha’s engagement to the Prophet, peace and bless-ings be upon him, took place.21 Consequently, the marriage agree-ment was either made before the prophetic mission or when the call to Islam was being made openly (three years after the Prophet began receiving revelation). If it was made before the mission, together with the idea that Aisha was 9 years old when she married being shaken from its foundation, it implies that Aisha was born even earlier than has been thought. For this reason, some say that she was a 13- or 14-year-old girl then.22

It should not be overlooked that this decision was made during the period when the call to Islam had begun to be made openly. In

regard to time, this means 613-614. If it is assumed that Aisha was born four years after the mission, it has to be accepted that she had not yet been born, so it is not possible to talk about a marriage agreement under these circumstances. In this case, it has to be accepted that she was at least 7 or 8 when her engage-ment was broken, so the year was probably 605.23

Here, another possibility can be mentioned; namely, an agree-ment of arranged future marriage similar to “cradle tallying,” an agreement between parents in the early years after the birth of a baby. However, there are no details in the texts under consideration to confirm this.

5. The age difference of Aisha’s siblings should be taken into ac-count. As is known, Abu Bakr had six children. Asma and Abdul-lah were born from Qutayla bint Umays, Aisha and Abdurrahman from Umm Ruman, Muhammad from Asma bint Umays and Umm Kulthum from Habiba bint Harija. Asma and Abdullah have the same mother as do Aisha and Abdurrah-man. The age difference between children from the same mother can enlighten our subject matter.

a) Abu Bakr’s first daughter, Asma, was born in 595, 27 years before the Hijra, Prophet Muham-mad’s emigration to Medina.24 At the time of the Hijra, she was mar-ried to Zubayr ibn Awwam and was six-months pregnant.25 Her son Abdullah was born three months later in Quba while she was migrat-ing to Medina. She died in the 73rd year of the Hijra at the age of 100; her teeth had not even fallen out.

Here there is another critical piece of information. The age dif-ference between Aisha and her sis-ter Asma was 10 years.26 According to this, Aisha’s year of birth was 605 (595+10=605) and her age at the time of the Hijra was 17 (27–10=17). Since her marriage took place six, seven or eight months after the Hijra, or just after Badr,27 this means Aisha was 17-18 years old at that time.

b) The age difference between Aisha and her brother Abdur-rahman is also striking. Abdur-rahman became Muslim after the Treaty of Hudaibiya was signed, six years after the Hijra. He was careful not to encounter his father at the Battle of Badr, in the sec-ond year after the Hijra, and that day Abdurrahman was 20 years old.28 In other words, he must have been born in 604. Taking into consideration the conditions of that time, the probability is low that the sister of a child born in 604 would be born 10 years later in 614. Put another way, at a time when the age difference between brothers and sisters is one or two years, a large difference such as 10 years between Aisha and her brother is highly unlikely.

6. Reports regarding Aisha’s death are also of a nature to illumi-nate this issue. The year in which she died is listed as the 55th, 56th, 57th, 58th or 59th year after the Hijra29 and her age at that time as 65, 66, 67 or 74.30 Just as there is no agreement regarding her date of birth, there is no agreement regard-ing her date of death.

Reports to the effect that she died in the 58th year after the Hijra

44MAY / JUNE 2009

and that she was 74 when she died give the impression that they are sounder than others because they give detailed information such as the day she died as being Wednes-day, that it corresponded to the 17th day of Ramadan, that upon her request she was buried at night after the Witr prayer in the Jan-nah al-Baqi graveyard, that again upon her last request the funeral prayer was lead by Abu Hurayrah and that she was lowered into the grave by persons like her sister Asma’s two sons, Abdullah and Urwa, her brother Muhammad’s two sons, Qasim and Abdullah, and her brother Abdurrahman’s son Abdullah.31 Therefore, when calculations are made according to this date, we see she lived 48 years after the Prophet’s death (48+10=58+13=71+3=74). This means she was born three years before his prophethood and, in view of this information, she was 17 when she married (74–48=26–9=17).

In support of the above, her being on the battle front at Uhud, in the third year after the Hijra, when even boys were turned away; her depth in scholarly mat-ters and the mature attitude and statements she put forth in regard to the matter of slander; the age difference between her and the Prophet’s daughter Fatima; her knowledge and awareness of the Hijra and later developments; af-ter arriving in Medina, her mar-riage being consummated at her father’s suggestion and after the mahr (dowry) had been paid32; the position of the Prophet as a guide in the society; the sensitivity of the Prophet and fatherly com-

passion; the differences in reports regarding the date of marriage and their having no finality33; Aisha’s using the doubtful expression “six or seven” when referring to her age; dates of birth and death not being as clearly determined in that society as they are today—all this strengthens the probability that she was born before the com-mencement of Islam, was engaged at 14 or 15 years of age and was married to the Prophet at the age of 17 or 18.

In this situation, it is up to us to attribute the meaning “I appeared to be” to the report “I was 6 or 7 when I was engaged and 9 when I married” and reconcile the two.34 The fact that Aisha was physically thin strengthens this interpreta-tion. She was affected by physical events faster and had a smaller body than her peers. Events like her becoming ill during the mi-gration to Medina,35 her mother’s showing her special attention and trying to make her well,36 her los-ing her necklace after the Muraysi expedition and the enclosed litter being put on the camel thinking that she was in it37 all show this.

In short, regardless of whether Aisha’s age at marriage was 9 or 17 or 18, there is nothing strange about it. It is necessary to evaluate every society according to its own rules. When we look at examples, it was quite a widespread custom to marry both boys and girls at a young age. However, when we look at information passed down to us, it should not be forgotten that this information to the effect that Ai-sha, may God be pleased with her, was born in 605, engaged at the age of 14 or 15 and married at the

age of 17 or 18 is too strong to be ignored.

Dr. Reşit Haylamaz is the editor-in-chief of Kaynak Publishing Group.

Notes1. Bukhari, Manaqib al-Ansar, 20, 44;

Muslim, Niqah, 71; Fadail al-Saha-ba, 74; Abu Dawud, Adab, 55; Ibn Maja, Niqah, 13; Nasai, Niqah, 78; Darimi, Niqah, 56.

2. Azimli, Mehmet, “Hz. Âişe’nin Evlilik Yaşı Tartışmalarında Savunmacı Tarihçiliğin Çıkmazı,” İslâmî Araştırmalar, Vol. 16, Issue 1, 2003.

3. See Doğrul, Ömer Rıza. Asr-ı Saâdet, Istanbul: Eser Kitabevi, 1974, 2/141; Nadwi, Sayyid Su-layman. Hazreti Âişe, (trns. by Ahmet Karataş), Istanbul: Timaş Yayınları, 2004, p. 21; Savaş, Rıza. “Hz. Âişe’nin Evlenme Yaşı İle İlgili Farklı Bir Yaklaşım,” D. E. Ü. İlâhiyât Fak. Derg. Issue 4, Izmir, 1995, pp. 139-144; Yüce, Abdülha-kim, Efendimiz’in Bir Günü, Istan-bul: Işık Yayınları, pp. 82-83, 2007.

4. Abdul Muttalib, the grandfather of the Prophet, married Hala bint Uhayb, who was young then. Since he married off his son Abdullah to Amina at an early age at around the same time of his own marriage with Hala, the Prophet was almost of the same age with his uncle Hamza.

5. In order to have family relationship with the Prophet and thus further his close relation with God’s Mes-senger, Umar ibn Khattab married Ali’s daughter Umm Qulthum, and this marriage was not found strange at that time at all.

6. Amr ibn As, for instance, was 12 years older than his son Abdullah. This means that he was around 10 when he got married. For further information see Ibn al-Athir, Usud al-Gaba, 3/240.

7. Nisa 4:6. 8. Bukhari, Ta’bir, 21, Manakib al-

Ansar, 44, Niqah, 9; Muslim, Fadail al-Sahaba, 79; Ibn Hanbal, Musnad, 6/41, 128.

9. Ibn Hisham, Sira, 1/271; Ibn Ishaq, Sira, Konya, 1981, 124.

10. Ibn Hisham, Sira, 1/271; Ibn Hisham, Sira, 124.

11. Nawawi, Tahzib al-Asma, 2/597; Hakim, Mustadrak, 3/635.

MARCH/ APRIL 200945

12. Qamar 54:46. 13. Bukhari, Fadail al-Qur’an, 6; Tafsir al-Sura, (54) 6; Ayni, Badrud-

din Abu Muhammad Mahmud ibn Ahmad, Umdat al-Qari Sharh Sahih al-Bukhari, Dar alIhya al-Turas al-Arabi, 20/21; Asqalani, Fath al-Bari, 11/291.

14. Suyuti, Itqan, Beirut, 1987, 1/29, 50; Doğrul, Asr-ı Saadet, 2/148.

15. The month difference stems from the lunar calendar. 16. Taking this information into account, some people calculate Ai-

sha’s age at marriage as least 14 or 22, up to 28. We have not focused on these as they are not supported by the sources.

17. Ibn Hisham, Sira, 1/176; Haysami, Majma al-Zawaid, 3/285; Ibn Kathir, Tafsir, 4/553; Bidaya, 2/214; Qurtubi, Tafsir, 20/195.

18. Bukhari, Salat, 70, Kafala, 5, Manaqib al-Ansar, 45, Adab, 64; Ibn Hanbal, Musnad, 6/198.

19. Muslim, 3/463; Mu’jam al-Kabir, 2/285, 286; Mu’jam al-Awsat, 12/145; Ibn Hisham, Sira, 1/243.

20. Ibn Hisham, Sira, 1/83. 21. Bukhari, Niqah, 11; Ibn Hanbal, Musnad, 6/210; Haysami, Ma-

jma al-Zawaid, 9/225; Bayhaqi, Sunan, 7/129; Tabari, Tarih, 3/161-163.

22. Savaş, Rıza, D. E. Ü. İlahiyat Fak. Dergisi, Issue 4, İzmir, pp. 139-144, 1995.

23. Berki, Ali Hikmet, Osman Eskioğlu, Hatemü’l-Enbiya Hz. Mu-hammed ve Hayatı, 210.

24. Nawawi, Tahzib al-Asma, 2/597.25. Ibid.26. Bayhaqi, Sunan, 6/204; Ibn Manda, Ma’rifat al-Sahaba,

Köprülü Kütüphanesi, No: 242, p. 195; Ibn Asakir, Tarih al-Damascus, Tarajim al-Nisa, Damascus, pp. 9, 10, 28, 1982; Mas’udi, Muruj al-Zahab, 2, 39; Ibn Sa’d, Tabaqat al-Kubra, Beirut, 8/59, 1968.

27. Ibn Sa’d, Tabaqat, 8/58; Ibn Abdilbarr, Istiab, 4/1881; Nadwi, Sirat al-Sayyidati Aisha Umm al-Mu’minin, Edition critique by Muhammad Rahmatullah Hafiz al-Nadwi, Dar al-Kalam, Damas-cus, 40, 49, 2003.

28. Ibn Athir, Usud al-Gaba, 3/467.29. Ibn Abdilbarr, Istiab, 2/108; Tahzib al-Kamal, 16/560.30. Ibn Sa’d, Tabaqat, 8/75; Nadwi, Sirat al-Sayyidat Aisha, 202.31. Ibn Abdilbarr, Istiab, 2/108; Doğrul, Asr-ı Saadet, 2/142.32. Tabarani, Kabir, 23/25; Ibn Abdilbarr, Istiab, 4/1937; Ibn Sa’d,

Tabaqat, 8/63.33. For such differences in narrations as “one and a half or two years

before the Hijra,” “when she was 6 or 7 years old,” “when Khad-ija passed away or three years after Khadija passed away,” “seven or eight months after the Emigration or the first year of the Hijra,” “Right after the Battle of Badr,” see Bukhari, Manakib al-Ansar, 20, 44; 36.

34. There are even those who react to this information as the mistake of the narrator, claiming that it should be, “I was 6 or 7 when the first revelation came.”

35. Bukhari, Manakib al-Ansar, 43, 44; Muslim, Niqah, 69; Ibn Maja, Niqah, 13.

36. Bukhari, Manakib al-Ansar, 44; Muslim, Niqah, 69; Abu Dawud, Adab, 55; Ibn Maja, Niqah, 13; Darimi, Niqah, 56; Tabarani, Kabir, 23/25; Ibn Abdilbarr, Istiab, 4/1938; Ibn Sa’d, Tabaqat, 8/63; Ibn Ishaq, Sira, Konya, 239, 1981.

37. Bukhari, Shahada, 15; Magazi, 34; Tafsîr, (24) 6; Muslim, Taw-ba, 56; Tirmidhi, Tafsir, (63) 4; Ibn Sa’d, Tabaqat, 2/65; Ibn Hisham, Sira, 3/310.

People who unify their limited free will with

the Supreme Will of the Creator reach infinity

with their finite will; they become powerful while

they are helpless, strong while impotent; they turn from being a drop into a

sea, from an atom into the sun, becoming an entire

being when previously they were nothing.

***

PHYSICS

MAY / JUNE 2009 46

E ven if we cannot easily grasp the real nature of “time,” we can understand its aspect of being a “dimension.” For ex-

ample, specifying only a place without specify-ing a “time’’ for an appointment would not be sufficient. Let us presume that we are on board a space vehicle or a helicopter and we are an-nouncing our present location by giving the ground coordinates, that is, the latitude, the lon-gitude and the height. We have to specify our current time, that is, the date and the hour, in order to make such an announcement meaning-ful and proper. Space–time is thus a four-dimen-sional measurement system, the dimensions in-separable from each other, like the nail and the quick of a finger.

We certainly fail if we try to consider time as only a matter of determining the hour. It is, in fact, a dimension like depth, height and length. One reason of our difficulty in perceiving time may be caused by the fact that our optical percep-tion is sensitive only to three dimensions, but no others. Many animals cannot comprehend the dimension of depth. Some animals see their environs in two dimensions as in pictures. We have difficulty perceiving other dimensions just as animals which see the world in two colors live without any awareness of other colors.

Humankind, with the most sophisticated aspects, has a very different and privileged posi-tion above all creation. In spite of this, we have limited sight, hearing, and other senses. Many a world that is beyond our senses remains imper-ceptible to us.

Osman Cakmak

MAY / JUNE 200947

Another aspect of time that supports its dimension-al feature is that it is in full conformity with and propor-tional to other dimensions. In terms of its extent, du-ration of events increases or decreases in parallel with spatial dimensions. Man lives for around sixty to sev-enty years, while microscopic animals live around one or two days. The life of the sun and the universe which constitute the macrocosmos is expressed in billions of years. On the other hand, the life of subatomic particles is expressed in billionths of a second. Thus, we assume them as being resonances. There is time reduction to-gether with and compatible with space constriction on the sub-atomic scale, and this fact is yet another proof that time is also a dimension.

How shall we understand the other dimensions of space? What does the fourth dimension of space mean? Let alone describing, it is not easy to even imagine this.

If a is the length, a2 is the area and a3 is the volume of a thing, then what is a4? If we see space as a giant plain sheet of paper, that sheet of paper has no depth but only a surface. If we fold crumple it into the shape of a sphere, we obtain “Riemann space.” Just like we perceive the three-dimensional earth as a two-dimen-sional surface while we are on it, this 3-dimensional sphere made of 2-dimensional paper will be perceived as 2 dimensional by us. We can only talk about the third dimension after we generate a depth, that is, af-ter we step outside the paper and move above and below it.

The fourth co-ordinate of space is a tunnel. Let us suppose that the universe is two-dimensional, that is, it is like a thin sheet of paper, and let us human beings be like pictures with no thickness over its surface just like the pictures on a newspaper. We are free to move in all directions on this sheet of paper. We can sense four di-rections. But we will never perceive the terms “up” and “down” (or “upper” and “lower”) since we will never leave the surface of this sheet of paper. Such terms will seem unacceptable to us even we are told of them. Ac-cordingly, we will never hear of a third dimension and our vocabularies will never contain such terms as “up” and “down.”

If a three-dimensional object existed above our fic-tional paper realm and if this object even slit our paper realm and went away, we still would not see it in three dimensions but only the part of it intersecting our pa-per realm. If such a thing were a sphere, for instance, we would see its projection in a circular form. Its lati-tudinal sections would gradually expand starting from the poles, reach their largest on the equator line and its ring-like (circular) shape would gradually decrease and finally disappear at the other pole. That is, we would see it only as its cross section or shade. Such a three-dimensional object would seem two-dimensional to us since we would suddenly see its cross section. The sudden appearance, expansion, decrease and final van-ishing of that spherical object in our two-dimensional realm would seem quite amazing to us since our shapes are fixed and immovable.

The three-dimensional shade of an extraterrestrial four-dimensional object overshadows our three-dimen-sional space. We see the linear tunnels in cross-section, not longitudinally, just as we see the sphere as circular. Though the sphere is a simple object, it amazes us.

HUMANKIND, WITH THE MOST SOPHISTICATED ASPECTS, HAS A VERY DIFFERENT AND PRIVILEGED

POSITION ABOVE ALL CREATION. IN SPITE OF THIS, WE HAVE LIMITED SIGHT, HEARING, AND

OTHER SENSES. MANY A WORLD THAT IS BEYOND OUR SENSES REMAINS IMPERCEPTIBLE TO US.

MARCH/ APRIL 2009 48

Let us now imagine a more complex form. Let us, for instance, reflect the shadow of a vase onto a wall and obtain various shades by turning it repeatedly. A fixed and immovable portrait on the wall would regard the shadow and its variations reflected over the same plane with surprise and fear, since that portrait, or that person without depth, sees only what is reflected on the wall, but not us and the vase. The wall is the only realm for him and there is nothing for him beyond and behind the wall even if we say so.

We humans tend to assess events within the nar-row limits of space and within certain dimensions, since we are bound within a single space–time cone. The conceptualization of space with its dimensions of height, length and depth is possible for us. How-ever, the fourth dimension, time, is an abstract and metaphysical measure even though it is studied within physics. The tunnel thus seems to us like an incredible dimension.

Our perceptions with the five senses in the visible universe can be considered as the projections of non-physical and multi-dimensional realities (the eighteen thousand realms) to our domain. Clearly, in order to gain a better understanding of those realms, which we do not see but which we feel exist, with the help of the physics, we need to emancipate ourselves from the narrow patterns of time and space in this world of trial. We need to travel toward the horizon of spirit and develop an all-new scientific language which ap-proaches physics and metaphysics together. Finally, we can say, in Bediüzzaman’s words, that the physi-cal and observable universe which is the domain of research for modern physics is an ornamented curtain veiling the world of the unseen.

Osman Cakmak is a professor of chemistry at Gaziosman-

pasa University, Tokat, Turkey.

WHATEVER WE SEE AND RECOGNIZE WITH

OUR FIVE SENSES IN THE UNIVERSE ARE ONLY

THE SHADES OF THOSE NON-PHYSICAL AND

MULTI-DIMENSIONAL REALITIES (THE EIGH-

TEEN THOUSAND REALMS) THAT SUIT OUR

CAPACITIES FOR PERCEPTION.

By virtue of belief, all the laws ordained

in nature, line by line, paragraph by

paragraph, turn into a significant message and make feelings and consciousness listen to the most effective sermons that do not have letters or words.

***

MEDICINE

MAY / JUNE 200949

The miraculous duty of the heart, which throughout life pumps the blood with no interruption and sends unpurified blood to organs like lungs and kidneys

where it is refined, is a clear source of contemplation and wonder for those who have any kind of awareness. However, some people encounter health problems connected with the heart and one of the remedies for some types of malfunction is open heart surgery.

Open heart surgery is performed after putting the patient to sleep under a general anesthetic. The chest is then opened by the surgeon, and the heart is temporarily bypassed or deactivated for the duration of surgery (although in some new techniques like beating heart surgery or minimal invasion heart surgery, the operation is possible without deactivation of the heart). During this period the functions of the heart are performed by an artificial lung mechanism called the heart-lung machine (cardiopulmonary bypass machine). Performing surgery on a working heart cases where there is no facility for beating heart surgery would be like trying to repair the engine of a car while it is in in motion. This is why it is necessary to temporarily prevent the functions of the heart during the operation, which requires great care and accuracy.Stopping the heartDuring this procedure the patient is connected to the machine, venous blood is aspirated through cannuls through the right atrium into the heart-lung pump, while oxygenated blood is returned to the arterial circulation through a cannula in the ascending aorta. Preventing the

Enis Turker

MAY / JUNE 2009 50

function of the heart is not a very difficult process. When the heart-lung machine is activated and the blood is cooled and redirected into the blood vessels, the body temperature is reduced to below 30°C, and this lowers the heart rate and assists the heart to stop functioning. The actual stopping of the heart is performed by feeding a serum containing a concentrated solution of potassium ions into the coronary artery, which feeds the heart muscle. Potassium ions are normally found in the human body but in a fixed proportion; potassium is an electrolyte which, if increased, causes a defect in the heart’s rhythm and can lead to ceasing of the heart function. Feeding the coronary artery rapidly with a rich potassium solution causes the heart to stop within a few seconds and allows the surgeon to perform the operation on a non-functioning, motionless heart.

The heart should not be stopped from functioning for a long period, even if the heart-lung pump is performing the function of the heart successfully. Under normal conditions the pump cannot perform the whole duty of the actual heart and lungs. When the body temperature is reduced, there is a reduction of functioning in many organs of the body to such an extent that they almost stop working, especially the brain.Restarting the heart To restart the heart following the operation a reversal of the procedure performed at the beginning of surgery is necessary; the temperature of the body is increased to 36.5–37°C again with the help of the heart-lung pump, and at the same time the amount of potassium in the blood is reduced to a normal level. This is usually executed by ensuring the normal function of the kidneys which discard the potassium from the body. This is when the function of the heart is monitored closely because there is a reversal in the process of inducing low body temperature and the excess of potassium which caused the heart to stop. In other words, the barrier which stopped the flowing river is removed; therefore, according to the laws of physics, the trapped fluid should flow again at great speed, and although following surgery the majority of hearts do

begin to function again when these procedures are performed, there is unfortunately no actual guarantee. There may be certain complications or even causes which we have not yet discovered, in which case an electric shock of 10–20 joules is delivered directly to the heart muscle to encourage it to function normally. If this is unsuccessful, medication such as adrenalin, which induces the functioning of the heart, is given to the patient. If, following these repeated procedures, there is no effect, and, regardless of all the effort, the heart does not function, then everything is performed again from the beginning, including the operation. But there is always the possibility that the desired result may not be achieved. Human beings always face the prospect of death in daily life, and although there is a very slim chance of death, with such a big operation there is always the possibility.The resultWe are normally totally unaware of the rhythmic incidents, a combination of great harmony, occurring within our bodies. Even breathing, a necessity for every living creature to stay alive, is not an action which we activate and continue of our own will. Sight, hearing, hunger and senses are acts of nature over which we have little direct will or power. Nevertheless, they are all events which we can only describe as divine miracles and what a great blessing it is that none of these complex functions of our bodies have been left to us humans.

WE ARE NORMALLY TOTALLY UNAWARE OF THE RHYTHMIC INCIDENTS, A COMBINATION OF

GREAT HARMONY, OCCURRING WITHIN OUR BODIES. EVEN BREATHING, A NECESSITY FOR

EVERY LIVING CREATURE TO STAY ALIVE, IS NOT AN ACTION WHICH WE ACTIVATE AND CON-

TINUE OF OUR OWN WILL. SIGHT, HEARING, HUNGER AND SENSES ARE ACTS OF NATURE

OVER WHICH WE HAVE LITTLE DIRECT WILL OR POWER.

ENGINEERING

MARCH/ APRIL 200951 MAY / JUNE 200951

A perfect balance exists between the movements and be-havior of a creature, its habitat, and anatomic structure. The sciences try to understand this triple mechanism in every species and put the knowledge they gain to use in

developing technology. Research developments in fluid mechanics have revealed the exis-

tence of particular mechanisms in the movement of fish in water. Through

the sensors they are equipped with,

THROUGH THE SENSORS THEY ARE EQUIPPED WITH, FISH PERCEIVE SURROUNDING VORTICES IN THE WATER

AND ADJUST THEIR POSITION IN SUCH A WAY THAT THEY GAIN EXTRA ENERGY FOR MOVEMENT. JAMES

LIAO PROVED FOR THE FIRST TIME THAT SCHOOLS OF FISH SAVE ENERGY BY BENEFITING FROM EDDIES.

Sami Polatoz

MAY / JUNE 2009 52

fish perceive surrounding vortices in the water and ad-

just their position in such a way that they gain extra

energy for movement. In 2003 James Liao from Cor-

nell University proved for the first time that schools of

fish save energy by benefiting from eddies.1 Another

researcher, John Dabiri, has developed a mathematical

model for applying this behavior of fish to mechanical

systems.2

Conventional water and wind turbines cannot

function properly in a whirling current; the working

of turbines depends on the existence of a steady and

regular flow. In order to be able to obtain energy from

vortices, turbines would need to mimic the movements

of fish, adjusting their position to the differing angles

of flow. A mechanical device to be developed in this

respect should perceive the angle of the current flow

instantly and adjust itself accordingly.

Normally, wind turbines are set up in high and

open places. However, in cities the eddies that are

formed by winds moving around buildings and roofs

prevent conventional turbines from working efficient-

ly. In order to overcome this challenge, scientists are

aiming to develop turbines that benefit from the dy-

namic principles apparent in the movement of fish,

though without imitating the fish exactly. They hope

that in this way it will be possible to produce energy

from turbulent currents as well. The projects being

devised aim to develop different types of turbines to

work in air and water. The energy production of these

turbines will naturally be relatively low in comparison

to common wind turbines operating in strong winds.

However, these new types will make it possible to pro-

duce energy from winds moving at less than 32 feet per

hour, when conventional turbines do not function. So,

the total annual energy they are expected to produce

will be no less than the regular wind turbines. If scien-

tists can successfully model the admirable engineering

applied in the bodies of fish, they will be able to boost

the efficiency of these devices dramatically.

Notes1. For further information see Liao J. C. et al., “Fish exploiting

vortices decrease muscle activity,” Science 302, 1566–1569, 2003.

2. Dabiri, J. O., “Renewable fluid dynamic energy derived from aquatic animal location,” Bioinspiration and Biomi-metics 2, L1-L3, 2007.

BELIEF

MAY / JUNE 200953

For a believer, the purpose of this life is simple: And I have not created jinn and men except that they should

worship Me (Adh-Dhariyat 51:56). In daily life, however, a believer does not (and apparently cannot) spend twenty-four hours a day worshipping God in the traditional sense (such as praying, fasting, etc.). This is not required nor recommended in the first place, as indicated by the following hadith narrated by Abu Juhayfa, one of the companions of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon them:

The Prophet made a bond of brotherhood between Salman and Abu Ad-Darda’. Salman paid a visit to Abu Ad- Darda’ and found Um Ad-Darda’ (his wife) dressed in shabby clothes and asked her why she was in that state. She replied, “Your brother Abu Ad-Darda’ is not interested in the luxuries of this world.” In the meantime Abu Ad-Darda’ came and prepared a meal for Salman. Salman requested Abu Ad-Darda’ to eat (with him), but Abu Ad-Darda’ said, “I am fasting.” Salman said, “I am not going to eat unless you eat.” So, Abu Ad-Darda’ ate (with Salman). When it was night and (a part of the night passed), Abu Ad-Darda’ got up (to offer the night prayer), but Salman told him to sleep and Abu Ad-Darda’ slept. After sometime Abu Ad-Darda’ got up again but Salman told him to sleep. When it was

Vedat Akyuz

MAY / JUNE 2009 54

the last hours of the night, Salman told him to get up then, and both of them offered the prayer. Salman told Abu Ad-Darda’, “Your Lord has a right over you, your soul (body) has a right over you, and your family has a right over you; so you should give the rights of all those who have a right on you.” Abu Ad-Darda’ came to the Prophet and narrated the whole story. The Prophet said, “Salman has spoken the truth.”1

So, how do we achieve a balance between our jobs, personal lives, and families, and, still serve the sole purpose of our existence: to worship God and seek His pleasure? The answer is what Bediüzzaman Said Nursi, one of the most prominent Islamic scholars of the twentieth century, describes as one of the four culminations of forty years of his life—“an-niyyah” or our intention.3

The intention of any given action can be defined simply as the true motive behind that action. Nursi states that “Intention changes ordinary acts and customs into acts of worship. It is a penetrating and pervading spirit through which inanimate states and deeds acquire life and become ‘living’ acts of worship. It is also through a special quality of intention that evil changes into virtue or good deeds. Intention is a ‘spirit’ that causes ordinary deeds and customs to become ‘living’ acts of worship.”2 Our intentions are indeed the spirit of our actions and therefore what makes our actions worthy of God’s pleasure solely lies in the sincerity of our intentions. That being said, a believer must pay particular attention not to fall into Satan’s traps by acting against the well-established principles of the religion and claiming that his or her actions still carry a good intention. For instance, under no circumstances is one allowed to skip the prescribed daily prayers, not even on a battlefield,3 and therefore there can be no good intention that involves skipping the daily prayers.

By striving to achieve purity and sincerity in our intentions (known as ikhlas), we can expect the All-Compassionate and All-Merciful to treat our activities as if we spend our entire life in worshipping Him while still leading a regular, balanced life—provided that we demonstrate our obedience to Him by performing the daily prayers and avoiding major sins. Throughout the Risale-i Nur collection, Nursi places tremendous

emphasis on sincerity of intention. In the Twenty-First Gleam, which is about ikhlas—Nursi recommends his followers to read it at least once every fifteen days—he describes ikhlas as follows: “[I]n this world, and particularly in the services done for the afterlife, a most important foundation, and a greatest power, and a most acceptable intercessor, and a firmest point of reliance, and a shortest way to the truth, and a most answerable prayer, and a most blessed and marvelous means of achieving one’s goal, and a most sublime virtue, and a purest form of worship is sincerity, or doing something good or any religious deed purely for God’s sake.”4

In the following quote, Nursi points out the fundamental relationship between actions, intention, sincerity, and salvation: “[Intention’s] ‘soul’ is sincerity or acting solely for God’s sake. Salvation is found only in sincere actions done in His way. Sincerity multiplies an action’s worth, and through it one can reach Paradise with a little action and in a short life.”5

During a finite lifetime, we can engage only in a finite number of actions. Thus, from a mathematical point of view, we cannot earn eternal happiness unless infinite reward is given to our finite actions. God is so merciful that He grants eternal happiness to believers in exchange for a finite number of deeds in a short lifetime. Yet, in order for this to happen, He expects purity and sincerity in our intentions. In other words, the secret component in this finite to infinite conversion is nothing but sincerity.

So it turns out that ikhlas, or sincerity of intention, is not optional but mandatory, and it is of the utmost importance. So, how do we achieve ikhlas? Nursi defines the first rule of gaining and preserving ikhlas as follows: “You should pursue God’s good pleasure in your actions. If He is pleased with you, even if the whole world is displeased, it is of no consequence. If He approves, it has no effect even if all others reject your ideas and actions. When He is pleased and approves, even if you do not seek the approval of others, should He will it to be so and His Wisdom requires it, He will make others accept it and be pleased with you.”6

In our daily lives, we might perform daily prayers, observing the fast, reading the Qur’an, and performing other traditional forms of worship. During these activities, it is critical that we make sure that our intention is to seek divine pleasure and nothing

GOD IS SO MERCIFUL THAT HE GRANTS ETERNAL HAPPINESS TO BELIEVERS IN EXCHANGE FOR

A FINITE NUMBER OF DEEDS IN A SHORT LIFETIME. YET, IN ORDER FOR THIS TO HAPPEN, HE

EXPECTS PURITY AND SINCERITY IN OUR INTENTIONS. IN OTHER WORDS, THE SECRET COMPO-

NENT IN THIS FINITE TO INFINITE CONVERSION IS NOTHING BUT SINCERITY.

55 MAY / JUNE 2009

else. A prayer performed to make others think one is pious, a fast observed for health benefits, a Hajj made to enjoy an excursion, or wealth distributed to obtain good reputation will not only dishonor the owner of these deeds in the Hereafter, but also be rejected as the intention behind these actions is impure, insincere, and has no ikhlas in it.

There are numerous other activities in our daily lives that at first look like regular daily activities and seem to be unrelated to the sole purpose of our existence: to worship God and seek to attain His pleasure. We go to school or work every day, we eat, we sleep, we love our parents, spouses, and kids, we spend time with our families and friends, we brush our teeth, and so forth. God the Most Merciful tells us that he will treat these activities as worshipping, but only if they are carried out with the right, sincere intention (again, conditioned upon performing the daily prayers and avoiding major sins).

The key to being rewarded for simple, regular activities such as those listed above and achieving ikhlas in our daily lives is to ensure that our sole intention in every single one of our activities is to obey God’s laws and seek His pleasure. Each individual can achieve ikhlas in different ways in different situations, but the ultimate goal is always the same: to have the right intention and be sincere about it. For example, a man might work late every day so that he earns lawful (halal) money to provide for his family and still have enough money to make donations to just causes. Another person might go to school to study and thus appreciate the All-Knower and All-Wise Names of God. Another might eat so that he or she can be grateful for the food and be healthy enough to perform daily prayers. Others might sleep so that they can get rest and be more productive at work so that they really earn their pay. Yet another might brush his or her teeth just because he or she knows the body is a gift from God and we are each responsible for taking good care of our own body. If God is pleased with our intentions in these activities and if He wishes to do so, He might bestow upon us worldly rewards as well, such as success in work, health, or blessed offspring. A potential pitfall here is that the person might start expecting these rewards to continue and see his or her actions as a prerequisite for them, losing the purity of his or her intentions as well as those worldly rewards. Prophet Muhammad said, “If anyone’s intention is to seek the hereafter, God will place his sufficiency in his heart and order his affairs, and the world will come to him submissively; but if anyone’s intention is to seek worldly good, God will place poverty before him and disorder his affairs, and only so much of it as has been ordained for him will come to him.”7

As another example, Nursi cautions that love for worldly things such as delicious foods, fruits, or parents, spouses, children, friends, and so forth, needs to be for the sake of God and that all this love needs to be given to God Almighty’s Essence, Attributes and Names. To achieve ikhlas in love, he provides the following guidelines: “Loving delicious foods and fruits because they are favors and bounties of Almighty God, the All-Merciful and All-Compassionate, means loving the Names the All-Merciful and Giver of Bounties . . . Loving and respecting one’s parents on behalf of the Mercy and Wisdom that equipped them with affection and tenderness, and that raised you through their compassionate hands, are included in God’s love. . . . Loving one’s children with utmost care and compassion, as they are the All-Compassionate, All-Munificent One’s gifts, is included in one’s love of Almighty God. . . . Your love for friends, on account of their being believing friends of Almighty God who do good deeds according to the principle of loving for the sake of God, also is included in love of God In addition, this is true of the love you feel for your spouse, your companion in life, because he or she is a sweet gracious gift of the Divine Mercy.”8

In summary, sincerity is a critical component of our belief system and we are in utter need of instilling sincerity and ikhlas in ourselves. Nursi warns that believers should avoid things which would harm sincerity in the same way that they would avoid snakes and scorpions. One should, however, keep in mind that achieving sincerity in each and every one of our actions is a process and might not happen right away; yet we should also keep in mind that nothing done for His sake shall go unrewarded.9 May God help us achieve sincerity in our intentions, include us among the believers to whom He has shown the true path to ikhlas, and May He forgive our sins, be pleased with us, and reward us with eternal happiness with all the people we love for His sake. Amen.

Vedat Akyuz has a PhD in applied mathematics and statistics.

Notes1. Bukhari, Vol. 3: 31(189).2. Nursi, Bediüzzaman Said. Al-Mathnawi Al-Nuri, NJ:

Tughra Books, 2007, p. 113.3. See the Holy Qur’an, an-Nisa 4:101–103.4. Nursi. The Gleams, NJ: Tughra Books, 2008, p. 225.5. Nursi, 2007, p. 113.6. Nursi, 2008, p. 226.7. Tirmidhi, 5320.8. Nursi. The Words, NJ: Tughra Books, 2005, pp. 649–650.9. See the Holy Qur’an, al-Zalzalah 99:7.

BOOK REVIEW

MAY / JUNE 2009 56

In spring 2008 I was asked to accompany a group of people from the United States during their stay in Istanbul. I was told that this group was working

on a documentary and they would spend some time in the Middle East exploring themes for their project. I agreed to spend a few days with them.

The group consisted of two priests, a nun, a pub-lisher, and a director. For me as a Muslim, it was the first time I had seen Franciscan monks in their habits, a long, hooded, brown robe, tied at the waist with a white cord, and with large concealed pockets in the arms. I thought they were wearing them simply be-cause they wanted to make everything in the documen-tary appear as if it were in the Middle Ages, but, no, it was their everyday attire, and they wore their habits all the time we were together.

It was a noteworthy mission that merged from differ-ent parts of the US (Texas, California, Ohio) in order to set out on a tiring journey passing through Istanbul, Urfa, Damascus, Cairo, and Damietta, meet lots of people, and visit a great number of places. The project was named the Damietta Project, Damietta being the city where St. Francis of Assisi (d. 1226), the founder of the Franciscan order, met the Muslim sultan in the heat of war in 1219. I learned that it was a very cordial encoun-ter between St. Francis and Sultan Al-Kamil, and the monks hoped that their documentary would serve to build a peaceful world by presenting a model from eight hundred years ago.

John, the publisher in the group, presented to me as a gift a copy of this book by George Dardess. This is why I am referring to this group and their project, for their

philosophy resonates in the core message of the book.Due to the limited space available, I will not give a

comprehensive review of the book, for almost every ar-gument carries baggage, and a fair review would entail a lengthy analysis. I will briefly touch on some aspects of the first part of this book, which I believe is an ef-fort by the Franciscan order to help remove interfaith misunderstandings. In this respect, the author, who is a member of both the Muslim-Catholic Alliance and the Commission on Muslim-Christian Relations in Rochester, is the right author, and this makes the book worth reading. The opening prayer given in the introduction indicates the sincere efforts of the author, and thus of the group, to be revealed in the later pages:

God, creator of us all, master of the universe,we ask you to be present with usas we search to know younot only in our own sacred scripturebut also in that of our Muslim sisters and brothers.Help us forget past quarrelsas well as present fears and suspicions.Help us instead to keep our minds open,our spirits free,and our hearts joyfulas we ponder:whether the god we both worshipis you.amen.

Praising the Nostra Aetate (Declaration on the Re-lationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions) of the Second Vatican Council, Dardess points to a

Do We Worship the Same God?Comparing the Bible and the Qur’anBY GEORGE DARDESS978-0-86716-731-3St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2006

Review by Ihsan Orhan

MAY / JUNE 200957

great achievement on the side of the Christian world, as they managed to move away from Dante’s inauspi-cious depiction of the Prophet in The Divine Comedy, to acceptance of Muslims as worshipping the same God as Christians. Although this step toward dialogue received relatively little elaboration in the Council doc-uments, it was still a positive effort. Nevertheless, this fragile step was threatened after 9/11, which makes books such as this one invaluable contributions to eliminating misconceptions about Islam.

The author’s intention in writing this book is sum-marized in his willingness to worship together with all humanity, as one family: “If we . . . come to the under-standing that we do indeed worship . . . the same God, we can find ways of praying to that God together with-out violating our significant differences” (p. 6). The author does not deny the fact that it is not easy pass the stumbling block of the Christian attribution of divin-ity to Jesus versus the Muslim belief that he was not divine, but he argues that the purpose of this book is “to open up the possibility of [such] enrichment, even at the point when dialogue seems impossible” (p. 26).

The author does not skip over details such as the word “Allah,” which is perceived by some non-Muslims as some kind of god for Muslims, like an idol. Dardess care-fully notes that “Allah” is not a special name peculiar to Islam but simply the Arabic word for God. Many Chris-tians in the West are not aware that their co-religionists in the Middle East use the word Allah for God, as well. Dardess underlines the fact that God of Islam is not a God of wrath: “... the Muslim approaches God, not in abject fear, but in the profoundest gratitude” (p. 18).

The author lays down a very objective historical background to Islam for novice readers who have a su-perficial knowledge of its history, the Prophet Muham-mad (peace be upon him), and the Holy Qur’an. In this section, Dardess carefully notes that “honest dia-logue depends upon having enough confidence in our own religious identity to be able to explore the religious identity of others without tension or defensiveness” (p. 30). In the comparison he makes between the Chris-tian Eucharist and Islam’s holy book, the Qur’an, he states a principle, which is essential in true dialogue: “only lovers understand other lovers” (p. 30).

Analyzing further Qur’anic language, the author rightfully underlines that “words like Jihad, Allah, Mus-lim and Islam have so lost connection [in English] with their original context that they have become more truly

English words than Arabic ones. The words convey our own understanding of Islam, not the understanding of Muslims themselves” (p. 31). Dardess points out that it is more of a linguistic challenge than a doctrinal one for Christians to understand the Qur’an. Language dif-ferences are no doubt a barrier in any human context, but in the case of the Qur’an, a specific branch of schol-arship, tafsir, has been developed since the advent of Islam, as a result of which a number of interpretations have been produced to help readers understand the uni-versal message of the Qur’an, not only for non-Arabs but also for Arabic-speaking believers. Surface reading of the divine text—actually any text—is never a profound reading of it, and it might even be misleading at times. Besides, the emphasis on the preservation of the original text should never be underestimated, for not only in the case of the Qur’an but in all translation works, it is of the utmost significance to be able to refer to the true original text in its original language.

In the Middle Ages, when Muslims were the pio-neers in science, their works were translated from Ara-bic into Latin for many centuries, and this resulted in the European Enlightenment, which, according to the author, is “humankind’s greatest achievement, the one against which [we] must measure all other civilizations” (p.31). This last statement is problematic in itself and needs to be addressed. Western perceptions of the East have been shaped largely within the framework West-ern social sciences have drawn. The dress sewn for the Western context does not fit the Muslim world and so-cial movements therein; however, social analysts work on the same model in their efforts to understand the East. So, the author’s argument to “measure all civiliza-tions against European Enlightenment” contradicts his overall positive approach to understanding Islam.

Nevertheless, the book is a significant contribution to the literature on interfaith dialogue despite some of the shortcomings pointed out above. As the author mentions in the introduction, “the discussion itself is more important than the answer.” Those non-Mus-lims who are curious about Islam will certainly benefit a lot from this book: What exactly do Muslims believe? How do those beliefs differ from their own? What do Muslims believe about Jesus? Mary? Satan? Creation? The Holy Spirit? Do we worship the same God? Guid-ed discussion questions in each chapter encourage readers towards further reflection and dialogue.

Ihsan Orhan is a staff editor at The Fountain.

SEE-THINK-BELIEVE

MAY / JUNE 2009 58

Every artist wishes to present his work to admiring eyes. In the whole universe, from atoms to star systems, God shows all the de-tails of His art to you, a conscious being; and among His works, He

Irfan Yilmaz

MAY / JUNE 200959

has installed the most splendid ones in your body. He has given you rea-son and knowledge so that you can easily see and understand them. With knowledge, you can appreciate the meaning and different qualities of ex-istence. However, you need another tool, your five senses, through which you will look at and learn about the material world around you and then turn this knowledge into an apprecia-tion of the meanings behind God’s creation.

Everything speaks in its own tongue in order to introduce God to people. You use your eyes to per-ceive the things that speak with the wavelengths of light. You use me to perceive other wavelengths called “sound,” which is caused by the vi-bration of molecules.

The wavelength of the sounds that I can perceive ranges between 20 and 20,000 Hertz. I am unable to sense frequencies of sound that are above or below those limits. In-deed, it would be better to call this an advantage given by God rather than an “inability.” If the Creator of every-thing in the universe had not created me with this limited capacity, you would be facing unbearable pain in your head. If He had made me work with a wider range of hearing, you would be disturbed by the footsteps of a little ant, the moaning of an in-sect laying eggs, the buzzing of bee-hives, and the sound of the fluttering birds. Therefore, the fact that I have sufficient sensitivity for you to meet your needs is an advantage and an in-dication of God’s mercy. After all, my Creator gives everybody exactly what

they need in a most suitable way and in the best measurements; He never does anything absurd. Do not ever want to have an ear like that of a bat. I am the best one for you.

Do not ever think that my outer, visible part is too simple. My outer ear, which sometimes turns red when you are nervous, is placed in the best position according to the shape of your head so that it can receive sounds in a most efficient way. Because it is made up of elastic cartilage, my outer ear (A) is very flexible, and it won’t break when you lie on it. The curves on me (known as the helix) and the hairs inside my channel are not made without a reason, either. My cartilag-es have the perfect shape to channel the sound down towards my middle ear according to the intensity of the sound and the direction it comes from. Because this special shape is formed according to the genetic code of a person, it is different in every per-son. The hairs in the canal serve to protect me from foreign objects like insects or dust. The canal that con-nects my outer part to my middle part is pretty wide, but if too much fatty wax accumulates here, I might experi-ence temporary hearing loss.

My outer part is followed by my middle ear, which begins with the ear drum (tympanic membrane) (C). Attached to this thin ear drum are three bones: the malleus (D), the in-cus (E), and the stapes (F), which are all placed in order. These little bones are jointed to each other at an angle of 105 degrees. With an action like a piston, they amplify even the smallest sound vibration coming from the ear

DO NOT EVER THINK

THAT MY OUTER, VISIBLE

PART IS TOO SIMPLE.

MY OUTER EAR, WHICH

SOMETIMES TURNS

RED WHEN YOU ARE

NERVOUS, IS PLACED

IN THE BEST POSITION

ACCORDING TO THE

SHAPE OF YOUR HEAD

SO THAT IT CAN RECEIVE

SOUNDS IN A MOST EF-

FICIENT WAY. BECAUSE

IT IS MADE UP OF ELAS-

TIC CARTILAGE, MY

OUTER EAR (A) IS VERY

FLEXIBLE, AND IT WON’T

BREAK WHEN YOU LIE

ON IT.

Life without

me is only

silence

MAY / JUNE 2009 60

drum and transmit it to the middle ear. My middle ear space is connected to your pharynx by a very thin canal called the Eustachian tube (G). In order to protect my ear drum from rupture, I recommend that you open your mouth during an explosion or an intense sound. In that way, the sound waves that enter through your mouth will balance with the sound waves in my canals so that my ear drum is protected.

My inner part, followed by my middle part, is the most vital and sensitive area. Therefore, it is surround-ed and protected by the bones of your skull. This in-ner part, which is an amazing piece of art and technol-ogy, comprises two wonderful receptor components. Those two little parts are placed in the same narrow area inside the temporal bone, but they perform dif-ferent tasks. One of them is the cochlea (H), which is involved with hearing. The other part is the balance (vestibular) canals, which consist of the semicircular ca-nals (I), the saccule (J), and the utricle (K). This balance organ enables you to stand straight and walk, run, or move without bumping or falling.

Like carved marble or forged metal, those parts are crafted out of bones that form a beautiful and intricate whole. My cochlea is divided widthwise by a bony tube. The upper compartment above the tube is connected to an oval window, which is an outlet to the middle ear. The lower compartment below the tube is connected to a round window. My inner part is a labyrinth of fluid-filled tubes. The fluid in the bony labyrinth, between

the bone and the membranes, is called perilymph, and the other fluid within the membranous structure is called endolymph.

Situated on the basilar membrane (L) of my cochlea is a very small and special organ that you call the organ of Corti. The organ of Corti contains the hearing cells (or hair cells), the receptors (M) that are sensitive to sound waves, and other supporting cells. Because the length of the cells in the organ of Corti varies, different parts of my cochlea are sensitive to sounds of different wavelengths.

The sound waves travel via the malleus, the incus, and the stapes and through my oval window, agitat-ing the perilymph of my cochlea. After that, the sound waves cause Reissner’s membrane (N) in my cochlea to vibrate, which then results in a wave movement in the endolymph. The wave movement continues along this membrane until it reaches my organ of Corti. The special receptor cells (or hair cells) of the organ of Cor-ti are the ultimate vibration receptors. Their surfaces consist of very small strands (cilia). Those little strands bend and twist when the sound waves are received. Right at this point, a very important event occurs: it is the movement of these strands which converts the mechanical energy (that is produced by the vibrations of the sound waves) into electrical impulses. Those electrical impulses are then sent to your brain via the auditory nerve (nervus cochlearis) of the brain, where they are perceived as “sound.” The same sound waves continue their way to the perilymph and pass into the

MAY / JUNE 200961

round window, the section between the middle ear and the inner ear. The round window pushes out to dis-sipate the sound vibrations in the perilymph and thus lessens their pressure.

The speed of the hearing depends on the speed of the sound that travels through my membrane and little bones. However, once the sound waves begin to pass to your brain as an electrical impulse along the auditory nerve, the hearing process increases its speed. Then your brain immediately interprets and reacts to the sound waves. You are not aware of all these rapid activi-ties which are done perfectly in fractions of a second. You only say that you can hear something ordinarily. Have you ever thought before about how hearing takes place? Do you think you would have a clue about the sounds and music in the universe if God had not cre-ated me as your hearing organ? Think about it, Peter! If there were no God, would such a complicated organ as your ear form by itself in your skull? Maintaining your balanceSo far, what I have told you about is my duty to hear. Now I must also tell you about my duty of balance, so that you can better understand how miraculous I am.

Have you ever seen an acrobat walking on a rope or a mountain climber in action? Or shall I give a better example that might be more familiar to you? Remember what you do on your bicycle to keep from falling off. At the slightest mistake, the acrobat might topple from the rope, the climber might slip off the cliff face, and you might fall off your bicycle. While you are making unconscious (reflex) movements to keep your balance, have you ever thought about what busy operations are going on in my system? I have been equipped with very sensitive receptors which help you stay stable during your continual, different movements. Those receptors immediately recognize the changes occurring as a result of your slightest mo-tion; they warn your body to adjust to your new posi-tion by sending out information to the spinal cord and to the brain about the new situation.

How do you feel the sensation of balance and how do you react with the right reflex action? To find an answer to that, you need to re-examine my anatomical structures mentioned before. At the base of my semi-circular canals is a bulb-like enlargement which opens to the saccule and the utricle. My three semicircular canals are situated at 90-degree angles to each other in three-dimensional space.

My semicircular canals contain few sensory hair cells but there are plenty of them in the bulb-like en-largement. The strands of these cells, which are placed delicately, have enough elasticity to twist and bend dur-ing a movement. The receptors for balance in the sac-cule and the utricle are covered by a thin membrane which contains a gelatinous layer and tiny calcite crys-tals (cupula terminalis). Depending on its density, the endolymph fluid in my semicircular canals moves against the direction that your head and body move in. Similar to the uncontrolled movement of passengers in an accelerating or moving vehicle, depending on the speed and the direction, the movement and the speed of the endolymph differs from the general movement of your body. For example, when a car turns right, the passengers move to the left with the turning accelera-tion, and when a fast-moving car brakes suddenly, the passengers are thrown forward. Similarly, depending on its acceleration and momentum, every change in your movement causes the fluid in my semicircular canals to move. Triggered by the movement of the endolymph fluid, the gelatinous mass with the calcite pieces is displaced, causing the strands of the receptors to twist. Every movement of your head warns the cells of different parts, and via the vestibular nerve (nervus vestibularis) the nervous system is notified of changes occurring in your balance.Thankfulness and contemplationIf you visited a hospital, you might see a lot of scenes which would lead you to think about God’s blessings on you and thank Him. Serious ear illnesses include middle ear infection (otitis media), which is frequently seen in children; otosclerosis, which is the limited abil-ity of the stapes to transmit sound waves because its base becomes fixed to the oval window; and several hearing disorders which might be present at birth or occur later in life, depending on the level of damage to the auditory nerve. Witnessing the effects of those illnesses, you would understand how important it is to be able to hear and stand straight and balanced, and so see how blessed you are.

Peter! Until now, you have used me to listen to oth-ers, but today it was my turn to be listened to while I told you about myself. My main aim here is to draw your at-tention to me, and thus let you know our God and bring you closer to Him. I hope I am successful in that.

Irfan Yilmaz is a professor of biology at Dokuz Eylul Uni-versity, Izmir, Turkey.

MAY / JUNE 2009 6262

uestion: What are the matters that believers should always keep in mind with regard to the fact that both indi-

vidual and collective misfortunes and disasters are results of their sins?

“THERE ARE ONLY TWO TO ENVY:

A PERSON WHOM GOD HAS

GIVEN WEALTH AND HE SPENDS

IT IN THE RIGHT WAY, AND A

PERSON WHOM GOD HAS GIVEN

WISDOM (RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE)

AND HE GIVES HIS DECISIONS

ACCORDINGLY AND TEACHES IT

TO OTHERS.”

Answer: By courtesy of belief, all living and non-living things smile into people’s faces as if they change their color, shape, pattern, nature, and therefore transform and fly into the hearts of believers to become spirit and meaning. Stone and soil, tree and leaf, rose and flower, bird and insect—everything, yes every single thing, whispers something to the souls of believers from the horizon of the heart. Moreover, all the laws ordained in nature, line by line, paragraph by paragraph, turn into a significant message and make feelings and consciousness listen to the

most effective sermons that do not have letters or words.

The real reasons for disastersIn fact, the laws in nature take effect, sometimes at individual and other times at social level, in accordance with people’s spiritual life and their relations with God Almighty. Unfortunately, when the reasons for floods, earthquakes, catastrophes, and even the corruption of whole ecosystems cannot be fully understood, they are considered to be natu-ral events, and consequently the message that they are to convey cannot be interpreted properly.

Humans, however, are a conscious and intelligent fruit of the uni-verse. Looking into the connection between the universe and human-kind, we can consider two perspectives. From one perspective, human-kind has been created in the context of the natural world, and we have developed and attained our present level in relation to nature; from another perspective, the general circumstances of the universe have been shaped to be suitable for them. In the former perspective, the universe is the cause and humans are the effect, and in the latter per-spective, people are the cause, while the laws in nature and the universe are the effect. Understood in this way, the laws in nature and human beings are closely interconnected. Thus, an earthquake, for instance, is strongly linked to a tremor in people; yet this can only be seen by the eye of a believer.

MAY / JUNE 20096363

In one’s individual and social life, as in the laws in nature, experiences of failure or the occurrence of undesirable events are themselves closely connected to spiritual well-being. Almost all misfortunes begin within one’s inner self; then, being nourished in the earth of the self’s weakness, they gradually develop and appear in existence. Hence, the true cause of disasters is humankind, and it is impossible to make realistic comments on the cause–effect mechanism until this very particular relationship is understood.

In this sense, the first step toward searching out and finding the real cause is to question oneself. To say, “This misfortune occurred because of me; my in-consistencies and my disconnection from God caused these things happen!” and to recognize the connection between the disaster and failure to manage one’s free will, and consequently to seek forgiveness is the at-titude of a true believer. Indeed, when an individual sees himself or herself as the source of problems, this manner becomes indirect remorse, penitence, and re-pentance.

Regarding this issue, the Holy Qur’an states, “Whatever affliction befalls you, it is because of what your hands have earned; and yet, He overlooks many (of the wrongs you do)” (42:30). Therefore, troubles that target believers are penance for them. Neverthe-less, some disasters are not the direct results of sins. For instance, the troubles of one who strives to serve on the path of God cause him or her to attain higher levels of righteousness. Thus, when other people are involved, thinking that their sins are the source of di-sasters is an erroneous belief. Believers, who are en-joined to think well of others, should suppose that other people, through disasters, attain the splendor of God’s closeness. On the other hand, they should think critically about themselves thus: “Drought and famine are occurring; it’s because of me! Things are not go-ing right; it’s because of me! That issue ended up as a fiasco; it’s because of me!”Do not destroy my nation because of my sins!As is widely known, during the era of noble Umar’s

caliphate, a great famine took place. The famine was so severe that new regulations for the rationing of provi-sions were instigated and people were supplied with limited food and drink. Umar (may God be pleased with him) said that his standard of living should have been the standard of the poorest person in Medina. When he learned that the majority of the people were eating bread dipped in olive oil, he did the same thing, too. As someone who had always lived in a humble way, the great caliph was very sensitive about obey-ing the new rules on rationing. As long as the famine continued, he never put a delicious dish such as meat or fish into his mouth; moreover, he thought that the common disaster was his own fault. He offered sup-plications such as, “O God! Do not destroy the nation of Muhammad by famine because of my own sins!” Aslam, who never left Umar’s side, reports, “If the famine had lasted a little while longer, the Leader of the Believers would have died of his sorrow! I often saw him prostrating. He was always offering supplica-tions and weeping. Sometimes, he was totally drowned in tears. He kept moaning, “Oh, God! I think that the famine and drought are the results of my sins. Please, do not destroy the nation of Muhammad because of me!” and shaking with sadness.

This example above is an expression of perceiving things with the eye of the heart and a sign of being con-nected to God. It is only those who are detached (from the true path) who, when some bad incident happens, always impute sin to others, and seek different reasons to blame, and accuse others. They never ever say, “This problem happened as a result of my fault.” They do not see events from this perspective. Consequently, they do not feel a need to repent (for their sins), to try hard to compensate their fault, or to plead with God. They cannot find the real culprit since they do not link the incident to themselves. They cannot be saved from the fault of blaming others.

Today, how many people consider themselves re-sponsible even for changes in the laws in nature, run to their prayer rugs, and mourn as in, “Please, O God!

64MAY / JUNE 2009

Do not destroy the nation of Muhammad because of me”? How many people are in tears of repentance con-sidering themselves as the cause of deprivation from the help and mercy of God. Indeed, the number of real believers in this world is equal to the number of the in-dividuals who believe that some misfortune happening in their country is because of their sins and feel sad to think of their share in Islam’s unsolved problems.It is narrated that in a time when misfortunes rained down on people, Salim ibn Qasim, a pious person, visited Muhammad ibn Muqatil, a great scholar of the time. He said, “There is a severe storm of disasters; earthquakes are happening one after another, and people are exhausted by poverty. You are our leader; please, for the sake of God, pray for us!” The humble scholar responded, “Indeed, how I wish that I were not the reason for your destruction! I am afraid that the storm rose because of me, the earthquakes never cease because of me, and my sins hinder Glorious Mercy from coming and embracing you.”

Next morning, Salim ibn Qasim once again, ran to Muhammad ibn Muqatil’s door. This time, however, Salim was smiling with great pleasure. He exclaimed, “Last night, in my dream, I saw our master the Mes-senger of God, the honor of the universe, saying, ‘God the most Glorious, released dreadful disasters and mis-fortune upon people. Yet, for the sake of Muhammad ibn Muqatil, who despises himself, prays, and begs humbly, God the Almighty turned the disaster away from your country!’”

Do you see how considering oneself responsible be-comes great repentance and supplication in God’s view? On the one hand, think about how God’s servant sees himself or herself; on the other hand, look at his or her value in God’s view. Do you understand how judging the self (nafs) to be the cause of disasters and asking for forgiveness with a sense of shame can raise people? Assuming responsibilitySome people may think, “What sins have we commit-ted so that we should blame ourselves for disasters?” Actually, the thought, “What sins have I committed?” is a major sin in itself; one who think in this way com-mits a major lapse. A very sinful person will be on the

way of forgiveness if he or she asks for pardon with very deep regret, while one who thinks, “What sins have I committed?” will be considered to be falling into the pit of catastrophe due to this question. For, individuals who are aware of their sins always have the chance of purification by repentance, whereas it is in-evitable that those who suppose themselves to be pure will be crushed under the full consequences of their overlooked minor sins. Yes, indeed, “What sins have I committed?” expresses a lack of knowledge of what sin is. Nonetheless, for those individuals, not establish-ing a relationship with God in accordance with God’s blessings on them, not understanding the great value of being Muslim—by preferring it even over the leader-ship of the world—and not doing their best to obtain the pleasure of God means that they are poor ones who have closed their eyes to the Glorious bestowal, and therefore it is unnecessary to search for any other sin for one who is sunk in ingratitude up to the neck.

On the other hand, some people admit their sins, but they say, “Who am I that there should be changes in the sky, famine should appear, or rain should fall be-cause of me?” Since they do not attribute any value to themselves, they never imagine that they have a share in causing misfortunes and disasters. This way of thinking can be seen as a sign of modesty and poverty from one point of view; however, it can be a temptation to escape from responsibility at the same time. In this manner, it is possible that a person who says “because of me!” for all kinds of disasters, whether major or minor, might be-come arrogant through a hidden channel under respon-sibility, since that kind of person assumes that many incidents happening in the universe are linked to him or her. “I am such a sinful person that everyone is af-flicted with disaster because of me!” expresses feelings of shame at first; however, if proper limits are not drawn, and if Satan’s tricks are not defeated, this expression can be transformed into a claim that “I am such an impor-tant person that events in the heavens and the earth are shaped in relation to me!” Consequently, it is essential to find the middle path and maintain the balance.

Yes, indeed, it is huge heedlessness for those not to consider that there can be their own share in collective

65 MAY / JUNE 2009

disasters; this negligence can be a result of not com-prehending how God Almighty values human beings. On the other hand, while saying, “All these events are related to me, I am the reason for things that do not go right,” hidden arrogance can enter one’s heart. There is a danger of veiled arrogance in the thought, “God Almighty pays attention to me; if I am in good shape, He administers events in a good manner; but if I have a bad attitude, he ruins the balance of events,” since one is imagining one’s ego as the ruler of vast realms. From this angle, every believer, as part of a larger com-munity, should feel the responsibility for every disaster to a certain extent. Also, with regard to responsibility, every believer should always be committed to the fol-lowing criterion: If I were involved in all the areas that are relevant to Islam and had decision-making power, I would certainly have to assert that “Today, all the trou-bles in Muslim communities and all that hinders the nation of Muhammad, peace be upon him, is happen-ing because of me.” Yet, I am not a strong agent in all areas; therefore, I am primarily responsible for the hin-drances that are somehow relevant to me. I should see every negative occurrence in my area from the “because of me” point of view and approach general disasters with the idea that “I have a share, too.”

The following hadith of our noble master, the Truthful Messenger of God, peace be upon him, draws attention to the criteria by which we should judge our-selves: “Beware. Every one of you is a shepherd and every one is answerable with regard to his flock. The ruler is a shepherd over the people and shall be ques-tioned about his subjects. A man is a guardian over the members of his family and shall be questioned about them. A woman is a guardian over the household of her husband and his children and shall be questioned about them. A servant is a guardian over the property of his master and shall be questioned about it.”Collective repentanceYes, indeed, it is veiled repentance for those individuals to identify their limits, positions, responsibilities and areas of responsibility, to ask forgiveness of God the Almighty after relating the problems in these areas to their own mistakes, and to revive their dormant enthu-

siasm in order to eradicate their mistakes. This kind of repentance is more sincere since it is not revealed, un-like that spoken aloud; this kind of repentance is more heartfelt than one that everyone testifies to. Hence, those individuals who judge their self as responsible for every disaster burn inside with great agony, but no one sees the fire; and they do not reveal their secrets. All alone, expressing penitence without letting anyone hear, they ask for forgiveness thousands of times, re-membering their sins, and continue, “O my God! It is not enough to ask for forgiveness once for my sins, I repent millions of times!” seeking numbers that can express infinity in order to show regret at the fear of having broken with the Almighty Lord.

In fact, if salvation is desired at the level of society, all members of the society should repent together and look for ways of atoning for their own sins. This is because regret for an individual mistake should be felt individually; sorrow for a sin in a family should be felt by every family member; likewise, a nationwide sin re-quires nationwide repentance. Hence, for the salvation of a society, every individual in the society should be purified from the dirt of rebellion.

It is narrated that Prophet Moses, peace be upon him, performed the ritual prayer for rain with his tribe. Although they prayed for several days, it did not rain. Then he asked of the Wisdom of God, “My Lord! You told us to pray for an end to drought, but You have not made it rain though we begged You with open hands.” God Almighty said, “There is a sinful person among you who has not repented yet!” When Moses asked for the name of that person who was an obstacle to the mercy of God, God Almighty said, “I am the Veiler (Sattar), and I veil the sins of my servants. I do not dis-close their mistakes and make them ashamed. Repent together so that this individual will be purified from sins, and thereafter your prayers will be answered.” We should not forget that success in attaining prosper-ity and peace in our society depends on the repentance of people who are connected to the destiny of this soci-ety in a material and spiritual way, especially the repen-tance of those who have dedicated themselves to the prosperity of their people.

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MARCH/ APRIL 2009 66

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LEAD ARTICLE

MARCH/ APRIL 2009 68

LEAD ARTICLE

MARCH/ APRIL 2009 68

In the context of refraining from what is unlawful, piety means being alert to the carnal pleasures

that may lead to the realm of the forbidden.