The Fountain # 115 January-February 2017

Society has suffered most from the ignorant Especially when they thought the crooked was upright.

He sees himself at the zenith of knowledge yet he is just starting the a, b, c's.

For him he is a master; a master without having read a book. wants everyone to listen when he snarls

Chaos and Flourishing Hopes p.4 CANADA: $5.95 • TURKEY: 7.50

• UK: £4.99 • USA: $5.50 • AUD: $7.00 • NIGERIA: NGN 750

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TABLE OF CONTENTS /////

ISSUE

JAN • FEB 2017

Pesrpectives

ARTS & CULTURE

The Age of Self Awareness

Peace and Dialogue in a Plural Society Justin Pahl

“We Have to Move Forward, Collectively” Interview with Laila Muhammad

Poem

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The Mist

48

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Black History Month

Lead Article

Chaos and Flourishing Hopes

Sumayya B. Sharaf

Memoir

M. Fethullah Gülen

Grandma...

Nihal Balci

A Moment for Reflection

The Narcissist and the Pool

SCIENCE

Al Freeman

Turkey

What On Earth Has Gone So Wrong in Turkey?

Greg Barton

Religion

We Are Not Spectators: A Christian Perspective Richard Shields

BELIEF

35 62

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12 17 21 30 42 52 56

Caroline Halford

Book Review

Emerald Hills of the Heart

Walaya (Sainthood) Q&A

To Reach the Emerald Hills of the Heart

8 14 22 26 38 44 58

Science

Small Molecule Drugs Ali Fethi Toprak

Astronomy

The Universe: A Short History Civan Ozturk

Nature

The World through the Eyes of Honeybees Aidan Yielding

Medicine

Medical Imaging — An Overview Bilal Buruk

Technology

Technological Singularity: The Digital Rapture Yavuz Demirci

Agriculture

Quinoa: An Alternative Grain Adam Allison

Science Square

1.

2.

3.

Blind mice have vision restored The moon may be formed from a group of smaller moonlets Food poisoning bacteria eat cancerous tumors

EDITORIAL ///// ESTABLISHING PERSPECTIVE

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n this issue, we are celebrating Black History Month with Laila Muhammad. The grandchild of Elijah Muhammad, the founder of the Nation of Islam, and the daughter of Warith Deen Mohamed, she is recognized more by association with her family, but she has continued her family’s incredible legacy of community work. In our interview with her, you will not only read about her family, but you will also encounter a social activist with common sense and compassionate vision. Anyone who is involved in any type of community work will benefit from her words. “We have to move forward,” Muhammad says, adding “collectively” at the end, with emphasis. This message is more relevant than ever at a time when our society is growing more polarized on multiple axes of race, religion, and gender.

Laila Muhammad’s message resonates with a book Justin Pahl reviews in this issue: Peace and Dialogue in a Plural Society, by Fr. Thomas Michel.

Fr. Michel is a Catholic priest and a professor at Georgetown University who has been involved in interfaith dialogue with Muslims for many decades. He’s traveled and lived with Muslims in many countries including Indonesia, the Philippines, Turkey, the United States, and Europe. His research in this book focuses on the Hizmet Movement and how the movement’s educational and dialogue efforts around the world are contributing to peace in the plural society of the twenty-first century.

A complementary piece to the above themes is “The Age of Self-Awareness” by Caroline Halford. Halford writes, “The world became connected very quickly and with that came not only conflict, secrecy, and fear, but also progress, growth, and knowledge, or at least, attempts at these things.” This global plural society has stepped into an age of self-awareness in the twentyfirst century, Halford argues. Whether our self-awareness will diminish into self-obsession or will allow us to be great, continuing the legacy of those who came before us, is up to us.

This issue’s lead article “Chaos and Flourishing Hopes” redefines our relationship with the past, the present, and the future. While some of us delve into the glorious days of our past, others, especially younger people, submit themselves to fanciful thoughts of the future, Fethullah Gülen writes. Yet according to Gülen, the best path is to implement “what is required in every stage of life,” after which we will perceive the past-future-present as “the three angles of a single unit, and we will be able to experience each period of time with its own depth. The golden ages of human history have always been experienced when the concept of time has been perceived as such.”

As he defines a perspective as a concept of time, Gülen also establishes a prescriptive approach to misfortunes and ordeals: “Going through such ordeals is how we can overcome the weariness caused by monotonousness.

This is how we can always sense the pleasures and enjoyment to the same extent in the positive sense. This is in fact the transformation of difficulties and afflictions into spiritual prosperity.”

www.fountainmagazine.com

LEAD ARTICLE M. Fethullah Gülen

This aging, inconsistent, and exhausted world is in need of a revival. Our revival may revive the entire world.

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one of us are willing to remain in the period to which we belong; we use our imagination, journeying back to the vastness of the past where we experience scenes of courage, or we spread our wings towards the future, carrying hopeful expectations.

We live the scenarios we fictionalize. We live them with our faith, our trust in God, and our dependence on Him. We expand out into a world that can be seen only in movies. We interpret what we see in our imaginations, are absorbed in dreams bearing no relationship with the truth, and pursue various psychic visions.

The people of a peaceful and prosperous past, or to be more precise, who believe they had such a past, may occasionally plan journeys into their history within their inner worlds and constantly roam the meadows and fields of the past. But they are never truly successful in exceeding the boundaries of history.

Today, due to the expectations of life, the young, dynamic, and globalized generations, who are unaware of the past and after fanciful thoughts, submit themselves to their dreams of perfection and excellence, and pursue the climates of tranquility that they are unable to find today, in the coves of the future.

Indisputably, there is a degree of truth in each of these observations; however, conveying the past, with its own values and dynamics, into the present – as well as the ability to enter the future – depends on efficiently analyzing the present without overlooking a split second of it. Indeed, we can better begin the plans, projects, strategies, and implementations for the future if our emotions are purer, our hearts are more joyful, our souls are more enthusiastic, our bodies are healthier, our time is more abundant, our economy is more dynamic, and where our relationships among nations are more consistent and desirable. If we are successful in implementing what is required in every stage of life, then the past-future-present will become the three angles of a single unit, and we will be able to experience each period of time with its own depth.

The golden ages of human history have always been experienced when the concept of time has been perceived as such. At the present, if we can reclaim our own historical perspectives by keeping quiet and motivating our memories, then once again we will be able to recompile and listen to our own words, which once spread throughout the whole world; we will be able to sense the intensity of eternity from the air we breathe; and according to the scale we experience, we will absorb the spheres of security and tranquility of our good fortune, transforming these things into joy in our inner worlds in the same way that we breathe oxygen into our lungs. This abundance cannot be attained otherwise even if all contingencies overlapped for a colossal total and all complementing sources of blessings merged to pour to the same direction.

At one time, we became so alienated from these spiritual values that our emotions and thoughts turned uncivilized, to the degree that we were unable to foresee this separaJan / Feb 2017

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tion and were incapable of displaying our sense of loyalty. We weren’t even able to say farewell to our superior ideals! Farewell to the consciousness of being a great society!

Farewell to being a balancing power!

Farewell to the souls who blow the perception of independence, truth, and justice into the spirit of history!

Farewell to a legendary people bearing gowns of compassion, kindness, and integrity! Farewell to our philosophy of life and our social conceptions! Farewell to our values and superior principles.

Despite this, we remained silent about the abandoning, the pillaging, of a great history. Furthermore, while this world was weakened by the most uncouth transgressions, we were totally unaware of the numerous precious aspects of our own essence being rejected every day, as well as the cries of fear.

If only we realized from the very beginning that one by one our principle dynamics were gradually being weakened, that our dream of being a great society was gradually fading, and our standards, values, and glory of thousands of years were being destroyed and cast away like logs being carried away by flood waters! If only we could have foreseen that our many heritages of spirituality, each a component of excellence – as well our concept of civilization which emerged from the joint, collective perception of our people – would collapse, change, and eventually self-destruct!

If only we were capable of expressing our loyalty during the period when our collective and spiritual characteristics were taken and concealed within the depths of history!

Alas, the mental faculty of the people was transformed into a storage of unrealistic dreams and our collective spirit was entrusted to Satan.

During that inauspicious period, our society – which was once bonded with spiritual love, affec6

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tion, and sincere loyalty – was constantly weakened by a sense of decline and transience. The people pleaded with immense desperation before the painful manifest of fate as Jacob, who said, “I only disclose my anguish and sorrow to God…” If the past is a blend of knowledge, thought, morality, and culture, then it is still fresh. Its spirited and relevant aspects should be restored in today’s society and made “present.” If this is not done, then speaking only about the unpleasant aspects of the past and seeking retaliation are neither possible nor beneficial.

After years of oppressiveness, deprivation, and misery, today, many high-spirited souls are enthusiastic to move forward. We must face the challenges of our time with determination and consciousness, and, by maintaining our own spiritual essence, hope for a transformation of the world. This is the perspective that will determine the future. This aging, inconsistent, and exhausted world is in need of a revival. And who knows? Our revival may revive the entire world.

Today, time blows like a breeze, inspiring and conveying the past into the present. Events are calls which arouse our hope and determination, and strike our hearts as if reflecting the sounds of the gates to Paradise. It is as if we are journeying into the depths of the blue skies on a rocket, and existence finds sustenance on the path leading to the One. On this path, great prosperity flows into our souls. Our tongues cry out in ecstatic love, a sweet sense of freshness transforming our grievances into a reunion with the Beloved. The pangs of separation are transformed into companionship and solidarity.

Then, within our own existence, we experience a spiritual realm opening the gates to a creation beyond time and space.

In fact, the world of today has the blush of springtime being nourished from the past; we look to the future and see towns of the most enchanting colors and sounds appearing on the horizons of our faith and hopes; places where the divine benevolence can be heard showering upon each and every pasture and valley, like the raindrops on the wings of the angels. It is a time when we feel we are being embraced with compassion protected from thunderstorms and lightning streaks.

Many of our world’s most precious historical geographies and their most precious people have always been underappreciated.

It is necessary to have due awareness and analyze the world accordingly. If we are capable of perceiving ourselves and our world to this degree, then I believe that there will not be a reoccurrence of the disloyalties and disrespect displayed in the past. I believe that the extremely aggrieved, victimized, and deprived generations of the past, as well as the future laborers of thought, will have a greater awareness of the beauties of their own environments; that their relationship with the One of Eternal Power will deepen and they will be able to pass all the ridges of “historical deceptions”; and that they will eventually become successful in overcoming all of the past negativities.

On those colorful days in the future when we will be nourishing ourselves with undefiled resources, the pleasure, fragrance, color, and language of existence – and the significance it conveys – will surge from the great walls and towers, and flow into every village, town, and city, and according to the degree of our worthiness, will convey the joy of its celebrations even into our homes.

The emotions, thoughts, interpretations of life, and ideas of

eternity, which were unable to develop due to various suppressions, will flourish once again with their own specific depth of spirituality.

They will bloom like buds of prosperity and will present everyone with their fruits of charm and excellence. Indeed, when the season arrives, everyone will be able to savor the pleasure of existence, of being alive. They will attain divine knowledge and proximity with the One, recognizing and loving Him with great devotion and sincerity.

Amidst the melodies of spiritual elation, they will overcome all of the pain, afflictions, despair, and disappointments, and will continuously contemplate their vibrant fate with total submission to God. They will perceive the world in which they live, a narrow passageway towards the Hereafter, as a journey across the slopes of Paradise.

Indeed, the hearts of belief and the souls that perceive their own spiritual depth will submit to everyone they meet and every scene they observe with the compassion of a sincere companion and utter melodies of this solidarity. Experiencing the spirituality flowing into their souls everywhere they roam, they will say: “I did not know myself as I see me now. I wonder whether He is me or I am Him? This is the point where lovers lose themselves…” (Gadai). Their emotions will turn into a poetical array and their reflections will transform into spiritual pleasures. They will embrace their entire essence.

And those emotional, loving, and gentle days will each be like the eve of a great celebration. Those prosperous and radiant nights, in an atmosphere which transforms everything into joyfulness and pleasure, will enable everyone to come and go between the sense of astonishment and admiration with the following observation: “There is nothing more appealing

and more delightful than what we are experiencing.” It will adorn the scenes of their own fate.

Even during the prosperous periods, the environment can appear to be somewhat dark and cloudy.

What really is happening behind these dark clouds is in fact the diversification of the blessings constantly showered upon us. Going through such ordeals is how we can overcome the weariness caused by monotonousness. This is how we can always sense the pleasures and enjoyment to the same extent in the positive sense. This is in fact the transformation of difficulties and afflictions into spiritual prosperity.

After all, these kinds of difficulties and sufferings have occupied a marginal position in comparison with the long days of prosperity. As one of the great poets said, “Grief cannot be eliminated by judgment; it passes with the smile of joy.” All misfortunes come not as a whole but one by one and are in fact not beyond the limits we can endure; and they only disappear after they leave so much for us to benefit from.

In fact, humans expand in the pleasures, delights, and joys of spiritual elation in life to the degree that they perceive the relationship of existence and events with God. If everything they see, hear, and analyze opens the many gates to wisdom; if they constantly divert their thoughts to the realities beyond existence – to such an extent that every day, every week, these individuals awaken to life once again; if they constantly walk upon the paths of light; if they come and go continuously through the tunnels between the shores of this world and the hereafter, and share everything they relish with a pledge of bliss… then their emotions will be exposed to the blessings of the Creator, and He will constantly convey confidence and peace into their souls. Occasionally, events ca-

ress their strings with the language of the heart in order to convey the melody of life, like the strings of a plectrum; and this inspires them with such pleasures and such delight, like the joy of a child, the elation of a besotted heart! In their eyes, every season arrives with the magnificence of the break of dawn; every moment is bright and mild, and the relief conveyed by what they pledge is immense.

These individuals are happy with their lives, are content with their fate, and they open their hearts to God in supplication and attain a soundness of spirituality unattainable with any psychotherapy. On occasions when the atmosphere becomes dark and the skies appear gloomy, they change suddenly in their speech and manner; they hold their hands up in supplication, pleading to God. They bow their heads in fear and respect; they seek refuge in His compassion and convey ballads from the language of their hearts to Him. In the clarity of their hearts, amidst the depths of their desires and fantasies, they always live their lives in aspiration of the eternal life and in a state radiance and excellence, like the stars in the sky.

Occasionally, there are such exceptional periods where the full pleasures penetrate into the societal environment, to the extent that individuals feel as if they have been granted a great blessing. Undoubtedly, if we are heedful, we can continuously experience the cascade of this exuberant life. And the souls can pass over to the realm of spirits at any time, where the light always defeats the darkness and shines within the pavilions of our souls; where the souls yearning with passion can always taste the sherbets from the realm of the eternal union.

As long as the direction of spirituality is defined and the balance of the heart is adjusted accordingly, we can live in such a time.

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Increasingly, researchers are looking at “small molecules” as an effective treatment for diseases like Alzheimer’s, heart failure, and cancer.

MEDICINE Ali Fethi Toprak

Thanks to their high binding affinity to targets of interest like proteins, small molecules can easily alter their biological activity. They can easily move in the body and diffuse across cell membranes.

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n the pharmacology, a small molecule is described as a low molecular organic compound showing high binding affinity to targets of interest such as proteins, nucleic acids, or polysaccharides. This allows small molecules to alter their biological activity. Their small size allows easy transport in the body and a strong ability to diffuse across cell membranes, enabling them to reach their binding targets.

The functions of small molecules vary. In the body, natural small molecules can serve as cell signaling molecules. A number of neurotransmitters – which play a role in the communications between two nerve cells such as dopamine, acetylcholine, and epinephrine – could be given as examples of small molecules in the human body.

There are a number of small molecules used as drugs, too.

Researchers are searching for more small molecules that can be used to treat diseases in the future.

Small molecules as therapeutics The identification of active compounds holds the key to the future development of therapeutic agents. Upon synthesis of the analogs of these compounds, derivatives of the initially identified compound could be selected for increased activity.

Initially, scientists investigated peptides or oligonucleotides, hoping they would have some therapeutic qualities. However, poor oral activities, rapid clearance from the body, and limited bioavailability meant that peptides were not good candidates.

Small molecules, however, which generally have molecular weights smaller than 600-700, presented themselves as interesting candidates for therapeutic use. Screening these small molecules and forming a catalog of them become a major Jan / Feb 2017

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goal in molecular biology, with the hopes of developing new treatments for various diseases.

Small molecule stimulation of nerve stem cells to maturation It had been believed for decades that the adult mammalian brain could not grow new brain cells. Thus, learning and memory were thought to be due to new connections created between existing cells in the brain. It is now wellestablished that new nerve cells are being constantly created in the brain.

Scientists know that when a nerve cell sends a neurotransmitter to a stem cell it generates new nerve cells, but researchers are not sure which signaling pathways or genes are involved in this process.

Researchers at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas have discovered a small molecule called Isx-9 that stimulates nerve stem cells to maturate into nerve cells. Dr. Hsieh and her colleagues demonstrated that Isx9 behaves like a neurotransmitter signal. Compared to other commonly used neurogenic simulators, Isx-9 was three times more efficient in the generation of nerve cells while also preventing the stem cells from transforming into nonnerve cells. When they cultured cells from the hippocampus with Isx-9, the researchers found that stem cells formed clusters along with the development of spiky appendages called neuritis. Their finding provides a new opportunity to investigate the signaling circuitry specifying the fate of neuronal cells and offers potential new approaches for neuro-regenerative drugs. Using this approach, it might someday be possible to do a stem cell therapy using a patient’s own stem cells that could be grown in a culture and transformed into mature nerve cells by using small molecule induction. These could then be transplanted back into patients to treat various neurological disorders.

Development of neuroprotective small molecules The degeneration of the hippocampus and loss of neurons occurs in the early phases of Alzheimer’s disease. Current approaches are often inadequate to treat symptoms associated with Alzheimer’s. As such, scientists are frantically searching for novel therapeutics.

The hippocampus plays a critical role in learning and memory. Researchers screened a library of 1,000 different molecules to identify the ones that can enhance neuron formation in the hippocampus of mice. This quest for a drug that could keep brain cells from dying led to the discovery of a compound: a study by doctors McKnight and Pieper found that a small molecule called P7C3 may protect newborn neurons from dying.

One advantage of such a small molecule as a drug is the availability of means to modify the compound to improve its actions. Further studies are needed, however, to see if P7C3 can block the death of mature nerve cells.

Modifications may allow its usage in treating different types of diseases such as Huntington’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. As a small molecule, P7C3 has the ability to penetrate the blood-brain barrier. It achieved stability in animal models and cell culture settings, and activity even at nanomolar concentrations.

Cardiogenic small molecules for heart regeneration The current treatment for heart failure is transplantation. Unfortunately, only about 30% of patients survive until they can get new hearts. The major problem in cardiac dysfunction is the death of muscle cells after a heart attack. Cardiac regeneration is the key to a non-transplantation form of treatment for heart failure following myocardial infarctions. Use of novel small molecules could help to fight one of the deadliest diseases of modern times.

The search for small molecules that enhance myocardial repair has led to the discovery of a number of potential cardiogenic small molecules. Stem cell therapies for heart regeneration rely on understanding how cells differentiate into cardiac genes from stem cells. Researchers identified small molecules 10

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that involve the activation of a cardiac gene called Nkx2.5 in various mouse stem cells, including human mobilized peripheral blood cells. This family of small molecules, called sulfonylhydrazone (Shz), was tested in bone marrow cells and transplanted into rat hearts. This procedure improved heart function after cardiac injuries.

Fighting cancer using small molecules Some cancers are known to depend on certain genes for their survival. Pancreatic and a particular lung cancer known as non-small cell lung cancer are particularly dependent on TBK-1 activity for growth. Researchers believe that a number of lung and pancreas cancer patients would benefit from the inhibition of TBK-1 activity. The researchers tested about 250,000 compounds for their effectiveness at fighting tumors in mice. Three and half years of investigation led to the discovery of a highly effective compound called 6-aminopyrazolopyrimidine. This small compound inhibited the activity of TBK-1 by about 50 percent in lung cancer and pancreatic cancer tissue cultures, resulting in a reduction of cancer growth. This is an important finding for the future of fighting cancer, as this could potentially turn off a gene that cancer cells hijack to survive. Though it happened to be effective in reaching different parts of a mouse’s tumor, researchers are not yet sure whether it will penetrate solid tumors in a human body.

Quest for drug sensitizers: microRNA inhibitors MicroRNAs are non-coding small RNAs that regulate protein expression. These RNAs form tiny RNA strands that make complexes with proteins and target another mRNA to negatively regulate its translation (its generation of protein). MiRNAs are involved in various cellular pathways, and a miRNA can elicit multiple effects in a cell.

Aberrant microRNA expression in cancer has been well studied. MicroRNAs are involved in tumor progression and metastasis through various mechanisms involving migration, invasion, cell proliferation, angiogenesis, and apoptosis (cell death).

MicroRNAs are thought to be potential therapeutic targets for personalized cancer treatments. Different cancer types and patients demonstrate different levels of response/ resistance to chemotherapies. This resistance could be correlated with the expression of a microRNA profile, and studies are being performed to increase drug sensitivity toward the treatment of cancer. For example, paclitaxel, a mitotic inhibitor used in chemotherapy, is used, along with a library of chemically synthesized inhibitors that contains all known microRNAs, in non-small cell cancer cell lines. This will hopefully identify microRNAs and microRNA inhibitors that modulate cellular viability and sensitivity.

As humans, we inevitably face diseases, some of which do not have any treatment options. To understand the epidemiology of these diseases, as well as to develop treatments, researchers have pursued different approaches. Understanding and discovering novel compounds, especially small molecules, may help us to better treat disease in the future.

References

Pieper et al. Discovery of a proneurogenic, neuroprotective chemical. Cell. 2010 Jul 9;142(1):39-51.

Ou et al. TBK1 Directly Engages Akt/PKB Survival Signaling to Support Oncogenic Transformation.

Molecular Cell. February 2011.

Sadek et al. Cardiogenic small molecules that enhance myocardial repair by stem cells. PNAS. April 22, 2008 vol. 105 no. 16.

White et al. Metastamirs: a stepping stone towards improved cancer management. Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology 8, 75-84 (February 2011).

Paclitaxel. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paclitaxel Schneider et al. Small-molecule activation of neuronal cell fate. Nature Chemical Biology, 15 June 2008.

Researchers create molecule that nudges nerve stem cells to mature. http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/ utsw/cda/dept353744/files/468005.html Small Molecule. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-molecule Purves D, Augustine GJ, Fitzpatrick D, et al., editors. Neuroscience. 2nd edition. Sunderland (MA): Sinauer Associates; 2001.

Pertsemlidis Lab. http://compbio.swmed.edu/ Jan / Feb 2017

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BOOK REVIEW Justin Pahl

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Peace and Dialogue in a Plural Society

t is a difficult global moment for the Hizmet movement, the civil service group inspired by the ideas of Fethullah Gülen. Targeted in a far reaching witch hunt by the Turkish government, Hizmet has been forced to defend its noble goals of peacebuilding, dialogue, and religious tolerance. Thomas Michel’s book Peace and Dialogue in a Plural Society is a great source to discover these goals.

Michel, a Catholic priest, has studied the Gülen movement for decades. As an outside observer and religious scholar, he’s able to both verify Hizmet’s extraordinary contributions to the world of education and service, while also explaining its ideology and history to readers who might not be familiar with the context of Islamic civil society groups.

The book is a collection of essays, speeches, and articles Michel has written over the years, and they encapsulate his knowledge of, and interactions with, Hizmet.

Broken into two parts, the book begins by placing Gülen’s work as thinker and teacher in its proper context. Gülen has been called many things over the years; none of them, Michel argues in his first essay, quite accurate. Despite the claims of his critics, Gülen is not a politician, and he is the antithesis of an extremist. Though he shares elements with traditional Sufi sheiks, Gülen is not a traditional

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In Fethullah Gülen and Hizmet, Michel finds a prime example of dialogue, consensus building, and unity.

Sufi, either. Instead, Michel posits, he follows in the footsteps of many great thinkers. Chief among them are Bediüzzaman Said Nursi and Rumi, whose faith and devotion, as well as their commitment to love and acceptance, deeply affected Gülen and his philosophy.

Michel also draws on Gülen’s extensive connections to thinkers from the other Abrahamic faiths, including Pope John Paul II. He examines the strong commonalities between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, and the way Gülen’s open, tolerant teachings have sought to build bridges between the faiths – an important task when too many people are seeking to exploit differences.

Of course, the differences in modern society are not just between faiths, but between ideologies. One of these major differences would seem to be between religion and science. Too often, people of faith and people of science are placed on opposite poles and held up as combatants. Gülen, however, believes differently. He believes that reconciliation is not just possible, but necessary. From page 65: [Gülen] asserts that a new style of education is necessary, one “that will fuse religious and scientific knowledge together with morality and spirituality, to

produce genuinely enlightened people…”

Education is key to understanding any of Gülen’s writings, and the first section of Michel’s book builds neatly to the final two chapters, which examine Gülen’s role as an educator. Michel first encountered Gülen’s writings, as well as the Hizmet Movement, through the network of schools, in around 160 countries, that have been opened by friends and admirers of Hizmet. These entrepreneurs have taken to heart Gülen’s belief that education is the best weapon against hatred, enmity, and ignorance.

Michel has visited many of these schools, and he recounts his experiences with them. Not surprisingly, the so-called “Gülen” schools tend to be very strong in the sciences. And though Michel finds their staffs to be guided by a deep personal faith, he also notes that the schools are not religious schools. In fact, every institution fulfills the legal requirements of its host country.

Once Michel has established the foundation of Gülen’s philosophy in the book’s first section, he examines the Movement known as Hizmet – or, alternatively, the Gülen Movement – in its second.

160 pages ISBN 9781935295594

As with the section on Gülen, Michel traces in this section the origins of Hizmet, from its humble beginnings in Turkey, where Gülen established “lighthouses,” which were safe havens for people of faith during the tumultuous 1970s, to the multinational civil society movement of today. This piece does a good job of charting Hizmet’s history.

Of course, history is nothing without context. In the rest of this section, Michel roots the humanitarian and educational efforts of Hizmet in Said Nursi’s teachings – in particular, his belief that humanity has three “common” enemies.” These three enemies – ignorance, poverty, and disunity – are shared across religious, racial, and national bonds. As such, diverse groups of people should be able to come together and make common cause to battle them.

This, as Michel shows, is exactly what Hizmet has done.

Though much of Hizmet’s humanitarian work has been done in the name of fighting ignorance, the Movement has also fought poverty through its aid organization, Kimse Yok Mu? (Is Anybody There?), and disunity through the many dialogue centers it has opened. These centers have hosted countless multicultural and diversity forums, conferences, and events, and have worked hard to perform community outreach in their host communities, cities, and states. Many of Michel’s speeches come from such events, and his essays explore his

own associations with a variety of Hizmet organizations.

Though Michel’s book hasn’t been updated with the most recent information, including last summer’s attempted coup in Turkey, he manages to address the questions some people, especially those unfamiliar with Hizmet, have asked about the movement. By examining both Gülen’s focus on peacebuilding and education, as well as the diverse makeup of Hizmet – the Movement includes doctors and lawyers, civil servants and business people, teachers and journalists – Michel easily lays to rest any doubts certain people have about the intentions of the Movement. Gülen’s entire career, and all of Hizmet’s activities, have been devoted to humanitarian, not political, ends. The Movement has no interest in power, but instead strives for peace – and does so with humility.

Because the book is a collection of pieces, and not a standalone book, it can, at times, be repetitive. One area of commonality that Michel doesn’t address but that is increasingly important is that of climate change. It makes sense that Michel wouldn’t talk about climate change, since the book is an introduction to Fethullah Gülen and Hizmet, but moving forward, one of the main areas of agreement between almost all of the world’s religions is the belief that our world is sacred, and humans are simply its stewards. As the effects of global climate change become more and more apparent, it is incumbent upon the faithful people of the world to set aside their minor differences to achieve the common goal of protecting God’s gift to us.

This is one of the areas where Hizmet’s idea of dialogue could be most effective.

Any criticisms of the book are minor quibbles, though. The themes Michel returns to, time and again, are worthwhile themes – and necessary, at this time of great division.

Near the end of his book, Michel writes about the continuing need for finding common ground. In Fethullah Gülen and Hizmet, he finds a prime example of dialogue, consensus building, and unity. It is an example that we should all try to heed as we move forward into a divided, uncertain world. Both Michel and Gülen are reminders that despite superficial differences, we have the most important things in common.

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H ASTRONOMY Civan Ozturk

THE UNIVERSE A Short History

as the universe existed forever? And how much do we really know about it? Only 4-5 percent of the universe is made up of what we can see today: stars, planets, and galaxies. This means that all of today’s known scientific information is from about just 1/20th of the universe. Scientists cannot detect and comprehend the remaining 95%.

Dark matter, the mysterious unseen mass, and dark energy, the universe’s mysterious force, comprise the rest of the unknown universe. We still know very little about dark energy and dark matter. Dozens of institutes and thousands of scientists have organized international collaborations in search of both. In fact, scientists hope the biggest energy particle collider [1], the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, will help solve the puzzles of dark energy and dark matter.

It is common for people to ask, how did the universe begin? After decades of observing and measuring, today the majority of scientists explain the beginning of the universe via the Big Bang theory. Two astronomers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, established the Big Bang theory of cosmology by observing the cosmic background of radiation [2]. According to their theory, everything in the universe was contained in one single mass and there was no space or time. Everything started with the explosion of this extremely dense and hot mass. This explosion was not like an explosion into an empty space; rather space itself began with this explosion.

The idea that led scientists to the Big Bang came from observing the universe’s expansion. Edwin P. Hubble found that almost all galaxies are moving away from the center of the universe [3]. He did so by measuring the light from these galaxies to determine their velocities. This proved that the universe was not static, but was instead expanding. After scientists realized that the universe is expanding, they thought that there must be a beginning to this expan-

Dark energy, scientists found, was one way to measure the expansion rate of the universe over time.

sion. Then, using the speed of this expansion, they calculated the life of the universe. Through this, they were able to show that the universe has a beginning. Today, almost every scientist agrees with the Big Bang, and they can support it with scientific evidence.

The idea of the universe, let alone an expanding universe, can be pretty incomprehensible. Let me make it a bit more comprehensible. Think about a balloon. There are two spots marked on this balloon. When you inflate the balloon, you’ll see how these two spots are moving away from each other. The balloon is the universe and the two spots are matter in that universe.

This example shows how matter “rides” the expanding universe.

Until about 20 years ago, most scientists thought that the expansion of the universe was getting slower. In 1998, observations of the Type la supernovae revealed the existence of dark energy. Dark energy, scientists found, was one way to measure the expansion rate of the universe over time.

This discovery was proof for the universe expanding at an increasing rate. Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt, and Adam G. Riess have been awarded the Shaw Prize in Astronomy in 2006 [4] and Nobel Prize in Physics in 2011 [5] for their breakthrough study on this topic.

But though scientists know the universe is expanding faster and faster, no one yet knows why.

Let’s go back to the beginning of the universe and see how everything was induced into a perfect order. At the beginning, when the Big Bang (BB) occurred, one might think that this came with chaos and disorder. The perfect design of the universe came from that mess.

If we could get precise information all the way back to the Big Bang, it would help us to solve many outstanding mysteries.

Unfortunately, we are unable to gather this information because

the cosmos, in its infancy, was foggy and full of light rays. After about 300,000 years, the universe became transparent and many particles fell away; the furthest distance we can see across space is 13.7 billion light years, which is when the universe became transparent.

Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) was formed almost 380,000 years after the BB. That is the cosmic background radiation, or thermal radiation, and it is believed to be a leftover from the BB. The CMB is the source of the oldest light in the universe and it represents the kernel of stars and planets.

In the early stages of this CMB time, elementary particles were formed. These particles acquired mass while passing through the Higgs field and interacting with the Higgs boson [1]. These particles are mainly divided into two categories: fermions and bosons.

Fermions are the most fundamental particles, known as quarks and leptons. The quarks and leptons are further divided into six flavors and corresponding antiparticles.

Bosons are photon, gluon, W-Z bosons, and graviton. They carry forces, included the four main forces in the universe – electromagnetic, strong, weak, and gravitational.

The basic building blocks of matter are two composite particles, baryons and mesons, which are formed by the combination of quarks. Baryons are made of three quarks, such as protons (two up and one down quarks) and neutrons (two down and one up quarks), of the atomic nuclei. Mesons are usually found in cosmic rays and are composed of quarkantiquark pairs. Today, more than 200 subatomic particles have been discovered at sophisticated particle accelerator laboratories. Most of them are composite particles, composed of other fundamental particles.

Figure 1.1: A computer-generated map of our surrounding universe by the 2 MASS. Credit: 2 MASS/ J. Carpenter, R. Hurt & T. H. Jarrett.

After the creation of these elementary particles, stars, galaxies, and planets were formed, step-bystep.

First stars: 200,000,000 years after Big Bang According to the results of NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), the first stars were formed 200 million years after the BB. The clumps of matter were brought together with the gravitational force and they grew like a growing snowball until they have enough energy to start nuclear fusion process, which is the main process behind the shiny stars up in the sky.

First Galaxies: 1,000,000,000 years after Big Bang 1.6 million galaxies have been identified according to the location of the Milky Way Galaxy by The 2 Micron All-Sky Survey (2 MASS).

Figure 1.1 is a computer-generated map of our surrounding universe by the 2 MASS, which shows nearly 50,000 galaxies near our galaxy, Milky Way (2 MASS/ J. Carpenter, R. Hurt & T. H. Jarrett).

The Milky Way, which includes our solar system, began to form 5 billion years after the BB. There are approximately three hundred bil16

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lion stars in our galaxy, and there are estimated to be 100 billion galaxies in the universe. Scientists do not know the structure and features of these galaxies. But then, they don’t even know everything about our galaxy.

How big are objects in the Milky Way? Everyone knows about the moon and the Earth, as well as the other planets in our solar system. The largest star in the Milky Way is VY Canis Majoris, a Red hyper-giant. It has a diameter of 280 million km, which is so big that an airplane flying at 900 km per hour would need 1100 years to circle the star. There are approximately 200 billion stars in Milk Way alone and the sun is only one of them.

When thinking about all the space in our universe, it makes the order of our own solar system and galaxy seem quite extraordinary.

A solar system in general consists of a star at the center and rotating astronomical objects (planets, moons, etc.) around that star. In our solar system, the object in the center is the sun and everything orbits around it. There are eight planets including the earth and their natural satellites orbiting the sun. So far, 3946 comets, many asteroids, and

thousands of near-earth objects and minor planets have been discovered [6] around the sun. The sun is attracting all these objects with the gravitational force and they counter this attraction by means of their centrifugal force. These forces are balanced and keep the objects in their orbits. All of these are formed and located perfectly with a magnificent balance. How does this kind of order form from a disorder spontaneously?

References 1. Kara, Cihan, “Will CERN Reveal the Origin of the Universe or Cause the End,” The Fountain Magazine, Issue 92, 2013.

2. The Large Horn Antenna and the Discovery of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, https://www. aps.org/programs/outreach/history/ historicsites/penziaswilson.cfm 3. Hubble Space Telescope, https:// www.spacetelescope.org/about/history/the_man_behind_the_name/ 4. The Shaw Prize in Astronomy in 2006, http://www.shawprize.org/en/ shaw.php?tmp=3&twoid=51 5. The Nobel Prize in Physics 2011, https://www.nobelprize.org/ nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2011/ 6. The Minor Planet Center: http:// www.minorplanetcenter.net/

“We Have to Move Forward, Collectively” Laila Muhammad: “Fall in love with God, and then yourself, your family, your community, and just do what you do when you love somebody: take care of them, listen to them, support them, educate them.”

INTERVIEW Hakan Yesilova

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aila Muhammad is the Family Counseling Coordinator at Compassion Action, a New Jersey-based foundation. Community work and advocacy are a family legacy for Muhammad: her grandfather, Elijah Muhammad (d. 1975), was the founder of the Nation of Islam movement in the United States. Her father, Warith Deen Mohammed (d. 2008), was voted into leadership of the movement after his father and led a great majority of its members to adopt more mainstream forms of Islamic faith and practice.

When we visited Laila Muhammad in her office at the foundation, we found her involved in a number of important programs: aid for underprivileged families in the Newark area; a charity drive raising school and office supplies for orphanages in Haiti; raising funds helping patients-in-need get cataract surgery. We spoke with her on the responsibilities she inherited from her family, her involvement in interfaith dialogue, the current problems haunting our world, and how we can move forward from here.

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The Fountain: Your family made history in the US. You carry on your shoulders a heritage of wisdom and a struggle for civil rights that will be studied for many decades in the future. How would you describe that heritage?

Laila Muhammad: My parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and community members, we call them pioneers. I have really embraced that idea, maybe in the last fifteen to twenty years. Prior to that, I didn’t really understand it. But I also know that it is a great responsibility. Before, I loved my family; I understood that my grandfather, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and my grandmother Clara Muhammad, as well as my father Imam Warith Deen Mohammed, were historical people and leaders, but I didn’t understand the dynamic of it. Sometimes as a child or young adult I was a little irritated, because I had to share my father with people, or because I felt like everybody was watching me. But, God made me know that I am really blessed. Sometimes I am almost afraid and I ask God to make me worthy of this blessing.

Every blessing comes with responsibility.

This must be perhaps why you are with Compassion Action. Tell us about it: what is Compassion Action?

Compassion Action is, firstly, a family. I moved to New Jersey in August 2016 because of my job in another organization, where I was doing domestic violence work and life coaching. I had applied to be a counselor at a rehab center, a transitional house for women. It was good, but God knew better!

I had been acquainted with a brother who is also a Compassion Action member. My background is early childhood education, and I really wanted to teach. So, I talked to him about the possibilities of my teaching.

He offered me the opportunity to join with Compassion Action where I could teach… So our brother, our family, has opened the door to me. It is such a blessing that I am now in a building with them – where the call to prayer is called, and a friend is welcoming us at the door with greetings of peace. In how many buildings can you have this welcome? … It is so comforting to see that God is doing everything; and when you look back you understand, “That’s why it happened.”

I went for my minor pilgrimage (umrah) twice.

When you go around the Ka‘ba, you are not going to make it if you do it on your own. But when you move with the flow of all the brothers and sisters, it becomes much easier. This is how I am trying to live my life: just go as if I am around the Ka‘ba and know that God is going to guide me. My father passed in 2008 – may God forgive him and reward him. He meant a lot to me; he was my daddy, he was my imam, he was my friend, he was my employer. I miss him a lot. I relied on him 18

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a lot. Any question I had, I would call him. Then I prayed to God to let me see his guidance. God let me see that my life experience through my family parallels what I see as the understanding and experience of Compassion Action and the Hizmet movement it is inspired by. The ideas and goals are very similar. This is not surprising: if we are both living as God tells us in the Qur’an and as Muhammad ibn Abdullah, then we will be the same. So, I feel blessed to work with this family, and to help families in need.

How would you describe these goals?

The number one goal is to please God and serve Him. We serve God by giving to the world and leaving behind something when we leave… One of our similarities with Compassion Action is that we are both open to people. This was a great part of Imam Muhammad’s work. As you know my grandfather, Elijah Muhammad…was working with African American people. …I think one of my father’s main accomplishments was that he showed the community that came from my grandfather how we fit and how we are a part of the (larger) human family. I think that as Muslims, if we miss that, then we miss what God is asking from us.

Because we all come from Adam, we all are one family.

If we treat each other and love each other as brothers and sisters, there won’t be a problem.

Going back to your childhood, what are your earliest memories of spirituality?

I can remember two things that always stand out to me. One is that my father always taught me to be a thinker. He and my mother always taught it was OK to differ with them, as long as we did it respectfully.

They had a son after my father's three girls; I was the oldest, and kind of treated like a boy sometimes. I was very comfortable with speaking my mind… I was born a Muslim, but my mother converted; she was raised Catholic. I had lots of cousins who were Christians… I remember once when I was 12 or 13, I was reading the Qur’an, and it was a serious reading because it was Ramadan. I remember reading the verse, “Those who believe (i.e. professing to be Muslims), or those who declare Judaism, or the Christians or the Sabaeans (or those of some other faith) whoever truly believes in God and the Last Day and does good, righteous deeds, surely their reward is with their Lord, and they will have no fear, nor will they grieve” (2:62). I also remember that God says, “For each community We have appointed a clear way of life and a comprehensive system. And if God had so willed, He would surely have made you a single community; but (He willed it otherwise) in order to test you by what He granted to you” (5:48). It was a lightbulb moment for me, but it was also a sigh of relief. Because I really loved, and I still do, my mother's sisters. I respect them. They were very nice ladies.

When I read these verses, I said to myself, “This is a fair God, this is the truth.”

Then I also learned that God judges you on your intention. He knows your intention. That’s just fair. That was spiritual moment for me – to declare my testimony of belief because of my thought process, not because of my birth.

We know you are actively involved in interfaith dialogue.

You have just mentioned your multi-faith family background.

There are some groups within the domain of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism who oppose interfaith dialogue. What is your take on interfaith dialogue?

The rule is very simple. If we are here living together, why should we not talk? That’s what dialogue is: conversation… I have done dialogue for many years; so I personally prefer a particular type of dialogue. My first interfaith dialogue was with the Focolare movement.

Their leader was Chiara Lubich, who passed away in 2008. She and my father met at an event, and their spirits connected… they wanted their communities to meet.

And for fifteen years, we have had

relationships with each other.

Those relationships developed organically. We would go to meetings together, have lunch together, sometimes large summer outings together. Then we began to come to each other’s conferences. I went to Rome three times, the last of which I had the pleasure of meeting Pope Francis. This was an organic growth of getting to know each other. And that’s the type of interfaith dialogue I like. I have been to other types of dialogue, which are very structured, where they tell you, “This is what we are going to be doing; this is the project we will work on,” etc. I believe when it is too structured like that, it gets in the way of the heart… It has to come from the heart so that it can organically grow and connect you.

Considering the rise of governments and leaders in different parts of the world who have authoritarian tendencies, with nationalist and xenophobic discourses, do you think we should fear for our future? Do you think history is repeating itself? Are we circling back to the 1930s?

I don’t think we should fear for our future. No matter what the situa-

tion is, especially what is happening in America, Turkey, and in other places, we should be prepared. We should do as a person does when he or she knows it is winter as opposed to summer. You should prepare yourself. Maybe it is not snowing today, but you know where your wool hat is. We should not be reactionary. We should not move on emotion. We should be strategic, and most importantly – and this goes back to the previous question about interfaith dialogue – I think we should form alliances...

It’s been reported that there were more refugees around the world in 2016 than any year prior. People are fleeing their own countries because of war, oppression, or extreme poverty. … What are we expected to do at this point in history?

Where is the world heading on this matter?

You know, I am not a political person… But I believe that when things have become really bad, they are about to turn around. We should not fear. We should be open to helping and accepting change…

I think we should go through life as we would if this was not occurring.

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God... I remember my father said many times that work is worship…

Are we going back to the ‘30s?

I hope not. But we have to know what took place in the ’30s and study the strategies of how the people survived then, so that we can survive now. We just have to move forward, collectively. This is what is good about this interview and about this new relationship for me with our brothers and sisters in the Hizmet Movement, which is that we collectively do this work. I don’t believe that we can work isolated...

Recently, Islam has been abused by various terrorist groups to legitimize their attacks. However, no group has gone as far as ISIS. Beheadings, child assassins, all sorts of brutality. All committed – or so they claim– in the name of God. How have they made Islam a tool of their violence?

What should Muslims do in response?

Being a mother myself, when I think of ISIS, I think of young people. Those horrible behaviors and tragic things ISIS has done… those people have mothers. How do Muslim children become that?

As parents, we have to educate our children. We cannot teach them that they are just Muslims. We have to let them read the Qur’an themselves and not just obey imams.

Because the imam may be corrupt.

That’s what I think happens to a lot of people. They get brainwashed by corrupt people and they really believe they are right. I am not saying this has to do with only imams or Muslims… We just cannot think somebody is a Muslim because they say it. You have to judge people by their behavior. You have to cover yourself with God and move forward. It is very frightening when young people and children are doing this. As I said earlier, we have to be strategic and we should not be reactionary…

As a woman active in social 20

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matters, where do you see female empowerment headed?

Some perceive Islam as oppressive to women. What would you say to that?

Islam is what frees me. Islam is what gives me my voice. I have never felt disempowered by Islam. Have I felt disempowered by misinformed people, misinformed Muslim men?

Yeah. Islam is like anything else; it is made up of human beings. My grandmother would say, “There is nothing bad of Islam; there might be a bad Muslim, but it’s nothing bad about Islam.” Part of the human experience is that people take femininity for weakness. But it is not. All life comes from women. We bear the burden. We carry the child, give birth to the child. The Arabic words “community” (umma) and “mother” (um) are coming from the same root. That’s powerful to me…

What is happening in this world today, I think some folks are trying to take us backward. I am not worried, because we have people like Sojourner Truth, Clara Muhammad, Harriet Tubman, Khadija, and Aisha… We are going to be fine as women. (I think about) our sister Betty Shabbaz and the work that I do with domestic violence. I tell people all the time, “Your situation is really bad. But did you ever hear about what Dr. Betty Shabazz went through?” Of course they say no. “Did you ever think about the fact that her husband was assassinated in front of her, in front of her children, and she was pregnant?”

I say, “That’s horrible, right? But then she moved on. She was 27 years old. She was a nurse, and became a PhD. And she raised her girls. We can do it. We can do it.”

Muslims have many problems in their own countries, but also in diaspora. What do you think Muslims should do to better represent their religion?

The number one thing is we don’t think of it as (just) Muslims. The

Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “You will not have faith until you love your brother and sister.” That’s the first thing we should do. We should love God. I went to a women’s conference once, where my friend, Attorney Maaria Mozaffar, was speaking. I am saying her name for a reason; I think she is going to be great, greater than she is now; a very intelligent woman.

She has this Skinless Project. I went to her conference… Muslims from all different nationalities and ages. She said, “Fall in love with God.” That’s powerful. That’s what we have to do as men and women.

Fall in love with God, and then yourself, your family, your community, and just do what you do when you love somebody: take care of them, listen to them, support them, educate them. It is such an evil thought when some people say, “We Muslims do not do the love thing; it is what Christians do.” But our Prophet is saying otherwise. We do the love thing.

For instance, It is very heartbreaking to see what the Hizmet community is going through. Last time I went (to Turkey), I met with people; they hosted us back then, but now they are not even in their country. Because they had to run out, unjustly. I don’t even think you have to say who is right or who is wrong. But we know in Islam, and in a world of civilized people, that people have the right to a trial. How can you accuse people and try them all in the same moment? That’s wrong in anybody’s book. That’s what I stand on… You are taking their livelihood, kicking them out of their homes… that’s wrong. So, I am praying for them. My heart and my arms are open. I am encouraged, because I know that God is in charge, and He has promised the righteous servants victory.

(Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited due to word count restrictions.)

INTERVIEW Hakan Yesilova POEM Sumayya B. Sharaf

Love is in the air, in the early morning mist.

I inhale, and inhale This secret should be kept Here in the heart.

Only then will I hear, It was never in the air.

All love comes from within.

Never tell that I revealed this secret for humans to know.

I do not steal from others Neither should you.

Even if it slipped between the lines With the burden of love, the heaviness of the message, And the light, Only the hearts That have it inside out Will hear Because it is not the air That carries this secret In words, spoken.

Rather, It is the unsealed hearts and eyes Sending it to self-conscious Ears of love Love is a monk in the human heart.

To meet that sanctuary is the moment of coming to life.

Being alive, or alove when it shines inside out: only then, when it reaches the wind, Does it not travel Ear to ear, Does it not whisper, But conquer Jan / Feb 2017

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NATURE Aidan Yielding

When studying the unique eyesight of honeybees, it’s possible to see that every creature is given the traits and abilities they need to survive.

T

he earth and the sky are filled with “light,” which are really colors of countless different wavelengths. Different colors are visible or invisible to the naked eye. When we say “visible,” we usually mean, “visible to the human eye.” However, certain kinds of light that are invisible to humans are visible to other species. In spite of living in the same world, all creatures see and perceive different worlds.

One kind of light that is mostly invisible to the human eye is polarized light, which comes from sunlight reflecting off brilliant surfaces. Polarized light spoils our clarity of vision on sunny days. It appears as flashes on the sea or an asphalt road. In order shield our eyes from this light, we use sunglasses.

We need to do this even though the naked human eye only perceives a very small amount of the polarized light on earth. However, this is not a shortcoming. On the contrary, it’s a blessing to us. If we were better able to perceive polarized light, we would not see any object clearly, owing to the dazzling lights around us.

As evidenced by polarized light, the human eye is actually quite limited. Just as it cannot see radio or television waves, it cannot see ultra-violet light either. Since ultraviolet light is harmful to the retina of a human eye, it is prevented from reaching the retina by the eye’s external structures.

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Every animal has a different ability and threshold when it comes to seeing colors. For example, honeybees have three-color vision, just like humans do. In the human eye, there are three types of conical cells that perceive wavelengths in red, green, and blue. All other colors are perceived as mix-

tures of these three colors, albeit in different proportions.

Just as there are colors like green or red, ultraviolet light has a color of its own. We do not name the color, for we cannot see it, but ultraviolet color exists for many other creatures. Since it is a very dense and brilliant form of purple,

other colors would be more distinct and difficult to perceive if humans could see ultraviolet.

Bees have very complex eye structures including comb-shaped units made of cells that perceive ultraviolet color. These cells are necessary for bees to be able to see ultraviolet light, because they locate their own position and the direction they will fly according to the existing position of the sun.

They use ultraviolet light to find their hives or flowers with nectar. In experiments, researchers observed that when another source of light was used instead of sunlight, bees were unable to find the direction of their hive. Even on a cloudy day, it is easy to perceive ultraviolet light. Thus, bees can locate the position of the sun and then find the direction and place of flowers containing honey. Surely, the colors and patterns of flowers appear differently to bees than they do to humans.

Honeybees also see polarized light.

They use it to determine the exact location of the sun at any given moment. However, as polarized light might dazzle the eyes and reduce clarity of vision, the eye cells of honey bees are placed at the back and upper part of the eye’s structures. Since a honey

Bees’ eyes are surrounded by a dense layer of tiny hairs with nerve extensions, which help them to navigate in windy weather. They can sense the slightest hint of wind. bee does not see polarized light with the lower part of its eye, it is not dazzled by such flashes and reflections. It uses the upper and back portions of the eye to see polarized light, and can thus to determine which direction to fly. This trait is not unique to bees; for instance, hummingbirds, which feed on flower nectar, also perceive ultraviolet light.

Bees’ eyes are surrounded by a dense layer of tiny hairs, which help them to navigate in windy weather. These tiny hairs have nerve extensions within them. They sense the slightest hint of wind, sending the relevant information to their brain and pointing them in the right direction.

As mentioned above, a honeybee’s eye is a very complex structure. It is a unified form of more than 8,000 hexagonal and simple eye units. Each of these simpler units has its own lens, crystal, and sight cells. This united (or combed) eye system enables a honeybee to perfectly perceive the slightest movement that occurs around it. While the human eye can only see movement across 180 degrees, a bee’s eye will recognize the slightest movement across 360 degrees. Thus, it can notice every kind of possible danger and take protective action.

A honeybee sees moving objects better than unmoving ones.

Therefore, honeybees are more likely to visit flowers shaking in the wind. For this same reason they are more likely to attack people running away or moving their arms or legs. Honeybees see moving objects better than stationary ones because their vision is very blurry, at least relative to human eyesight. They see objects with 1/60th the clarity of human vision. In other words, an object we comfortably recognize from a twenty-meter distance, a bee must be as close as 30 cm to recognize. Thus, honeybees see the whole world virtually like a honeycomb. For example, they see a human face in a fragmented and blurred way, as if looking at it from behind a milk-glass.

Bees are supposed to harvest honey from flowers, and the sight system they possess is exactly as needed for this purpose.

Conversely, the human eye consists of a single cornea and lens system. For this reason, humans see an unmoving spot much more clearly and smoothly. While we cannot detect flower nectar from afar, humans are endowed with the ability to behold and appreciate the beauty of a flower. And this is what we are meant to do.

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MEDICAL IMAGING AN OVERVIEW MEDICINE Bilal Buruk

Innovators have been proposing new ideas and methods to assist doctors and radiologists in diagnosing diseases in their early stages.

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edical imaging is used by medical specialists to create images and sets of data about humans and animals. This information is then analyzed in the hopes of preventing, diagnosing, or examining diseases.

The objective of this article is to give an overview of medical imaging to readers who may not be familiar with the process.

As a field, medical imaging incorporates many disciplines, such as medicine, radiology, engineering, science, mathematics, and statistics. In order to discover innovative new findings in this field, knowledge and experience from different disciplines is necessary. Therefore, research teams consist of people from these diverse disciplines. It should be noted that with the increasing demand and interest in medical imaging, there are expected to be more job opportunities in the near future.

Medical imaging can be broken down into two steps: 1) Image acquisition; and 2) image analysis. In the last decades, there have been important improvements in both fields. Innovators working on the image acquisition side have been developing imaging machines to obtain better resolution images while also trying to minimize the radiation doses applied to, or drawbacks suffered by, patients.

It’s likely most people are familiar with the most common forms of medical imaging: Computed tomography scans (CT scans), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and ultrasounds. These are not the only forms of medical imaging, but they’re certainly the most well-known.

Each form of imaging has been produced for specific purposes. For instance, MRIs are usually used to view soft tissue, such as internal organs. CT scans are usually used to view more solid parts of the body, such as in the case of bone injuries, chest and teeth imaging, and cancerous tissues [1].

While MRIs are usually used to view soft tissue, such as internal organs, CT scans are usually used to view more solid parts of the body, such as in the case of bone injuries.

Each form of imaging has its own pros and cons. For example, in CT scans, exposure levels (X-ray tube amperage and peak kilovoltage), slice thickness, and volume of interest (VOI) affect the resolution of the images. Higher exposure levels, bigger VOI, and smaller slice thickness produce better resolution images. However, optimum parameters may not be used in order to limit the radiation dosage, which can be harmful to humans. Another difference is that CT scans take a shorter time than MRI scans.

On the other side of the process, innovators working on the image analysis have been proposing new ideas and methods to assist doctors and radiologists in diagnosing diseases in their early stages.

The earlier a disease is detected, the better the patient’s long term prognosis. For instance, early detection of cancer tissues in organs, calcium plaque in arteries, or osteoporosis in bones, improves the odds of successfully treating a patient.

How can diseases or disorders be diagnosed using medical images? Important features (such as color, shape, movement, volume, etc.) of the organ or object of interest should be clear enough to analyze. The doctors or specialists analyzing the images obviously need knowledge about the normal and abnormal behaviors of the object of interest. Let’s examine what some abnormal situations are and how medical imaging can diagnose them.

1. Early detection of the body rejecting a kidney transplant According to the National Health Institute (NIH), 17,600 kidney transplants were performed in the United States in 2013 [3]. Many of these diseases lead to kidney transplants, which can lead to the body rejecting the transplanted organ. Early detection of the rejection can be a matter of life and death.

Currently, rejection is diagnosed via biopsy, but a biopsy subjects a patient to risks like internal bleeding and infection. Moreover, the relatively small needle used in a biopsy may lead to over- or underestimation of the extent of inflammation in the entire graft [11]. These problems can be compounded by the fact that transplanted kidneys face a number of surgical and medical complications anyway. Therefore, a noninvasive and repeatable technique is not only helpful, but Jan / Feb 2017

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also necessary for early diagnosis of acute renal rejection.

Researchers have been introducing automatic methods to determine both normal kidney function and symptoms of kidney rejection by using dynamic contrast enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI). In DCE-MRI, a contrast agent called Gd-DTPA is injected into the bloodstream, and as it permeates into the organ, the kidneys are imaged, rapidly and repeatedly. During the permeation, Gd-DTPA causes a change in the relaxation times of the tissue and creates a contrast in the images.

As a result, the patterns of the contrast give functional information.

MRIs can also provide good anatomical information, which help in distinguishing between diseases that affect different regions of the kidneys.

2. Diagnosing osteoporosis Osteoporosis is a bone disease characterized by a reduction in bone mass, resulting in an increased risk of fractures [4]. With osteoporosis, a patient’s bone tissue has less than the normal amount of calcium. Low bone mass and osteoporosis occur more frequently in women. Without diagnosis and prevention, a woman 28

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can lose 20%-30% of her bone mass during the first 10 years of menopause [5]. Based on a Surgeon General’s report [6], there were approximately 10 million people over 50 with osteoporosis, and an additional 34 million with low bone mass or osteopenia, in the United States in 2002. Unfortunately, the total number is expected to increase to 61.4 million by 2020.

To diagnose and properly treat osteoporosis, doctors need the bone mineral density (BMD) measurements of the vertebral bones.

The BMD measurements are strong predictors of fracture risk. In the Surgeon General’s report, it is stated that the relationship between the BMD score and future fracture is stronger than the relationship between cholesterol levels and future heart attack [6]. The BMD measurements are also used to track bone changes in treated and untreated individuals, allowing doctors to assess the effectiveness of certain drug therapies.

Dual x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) and quantitative computed tomography (QCT) are the most widely used method for taking the BMD measurements. QCT measures the true volumetric density in units of grams per cubic centi-

meter rather than the areal density measured by DXA. QCT has an advantage in that it can be performed on any commercial CT scanner with the use of specially designed calibration phantoms and analysis software.

Improvements have reduced the initially high radiation dose [4].

Once the test is done, a patient’s BMD is compared to the mean value in a reference population of young, healthy adults. The difference between the scores is referred to as a “T-score.” In the BMD measurements, each T-score decrease corresponds with a 1.5-2.5 times greater risk of fracture [6].

3. Identifying symptoms of autism Autism is a neuro developmental disorder characterized by impaired social interactions and communications, and also by restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behavior. It occurs in all ethnic and social groups, and affects every age group. Experts estimate that 1 out of 88 children aged eight might have autism, and males are four times more likely to have autism than females [7].

To detect autism in the brain, the intensity, shape and volume of the corpus callosum region are an-

side of the large intestine [9]. Certain processes help to make the image clearer, enabling a doctor or specialist to make determinations about the different polyp types [10].

5. Low radiation dose

alyzed via medical imaging. Data sets are classified into two categories: 1) training and; 2) testing classes. Training classes consist of information about patients that is already known. The objective is to detect the differences between a normal and an autistic corpus callosum in the testing data sets by means of information extracted from the training data sets. During the past two decades, studies of autism’s neuropathology have increased dramatically. One can find an example study in [8].

4. Virtual colonoscopy A virtual colonoscopy can be used to check for symptoms of pre-cancerous growths (called polyps), cancer, and other diseases of the large intestine and colon [9]. Since colorectal cancer is preventable, it is crucial to detect and treat the cancer in its earliest stage.

Most colorectal cancers begin as polyps. As polyps get bigger, they are more likely to develop into cancer, which then has the ability to spread throughout the body.

Polyp size can help to distinguish benign polyps from cancerous ones [10]. In a virtual colonoscopy, a computer puts the images together to create an animated, three-dimensional view of the in-

Unfortunately, the CT scans that reliably identify tumors also expose the patient to an X-ray dose.

“It’s known that a radiation dose can increase the risk of cancer, but nobody knows exactly how much,” said Jeffrey Fessler, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at University of Michigan. “In repeat scan situations, it’s crucial that the dose be very low,” he said [13]. Based on the report in [13], Fessler’s team has been investigating methods to reduce the dose from around 2 mSv to between 0.24 and 0.4 mSv. The drawback is that the images taken at these low X-ray doses do not have good resolution as higherdose. The advance would also benefit children and adolescents, who are thought to be more sensitive to radiation. Now, the National Institute of Health (NIH) has provided Fessler and his team $1.9 million to achieve low dose CT scans with high resolution [13].

Recourses to do discoveries As we can see, medical imaging plays an important role in diagnosing and treating many diseases – and the above list is just a snapshot of the many ways medical imagining is used. To maintain these many projects, there are important national offices supporting these projects. In the US for instance, there is the National Institute of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), and other national and private institutes. In 2010, the total budget of the NIH was approximately $31 billion, which covers all its expenses [12]. The NIH devotes around 10% of its funding to research within its own facilities, whereas 80% of its funding in research grants is given to outside researchers. The NIH

spent $10.7 billion on clinical research, $7.4 billion on genetics-related research, $6.0 billion on prevention research, $5.8 billion on cancer, and $5.7 billion on biotechnology.

References 1. http://www.diffen.com/difference/ CT_Scan_vs_MRI. 2. J. L. Prince and J. M. Links, Medical imaging signals and systems, Prentice Hall, 2005.

3. https://www.niddk.nih.gov/healthinformation/health-statistics/ 4. G. M. Blake, H. W. Wahner, and I. Fogelman. Dual energy x-ray absorptiometry and ultrasoung in clinical practice. Martin Dunitz, 1999.

5. S. Tapp. A markov model of secondary prevention of osteoporotic hip fractures. Ph.D Dissertation, 2003.

6. Department of Health and Human Services. A report of the surgeon general: Bone Health and Osteoporosis.

U. S. Public Health Service, 2004.

7. http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/autism/detail_autism.htm.

8. HossamAbd EL Munim, Aly A. Farag, and Manuel F. Casanova, “Frequency-Domain Analysis of the Human Brain for Studies of Autism,” Proceedings, 7th IEEE International Symposium on Signal Processing and Information Technology, ISSPIT 2007, Cairo, Egypt, December 15-18, 2007, pp. 1198-1203.

9. http://digestive.niddk.nih.gov/ddiseases/pubs/virtualcolonoscopy.

10. Dongqing Chen, Aly A. Farag, Robert L. Falk, and Gerald W. Dryden, “Variational Approach Based Image Pre-processing Techniques for Virtual Colonoscopy,” Book Chapter of Biomedical Image Analysis and Machine Learning Technologies: Application and Techniques, Editors: Fabio Gonzalez and Eduardo Romero, 2009.

11. Farag, A. A., El-Baz, A., Yuksel, S. E., El-Ghar, M., &Eldiasty, T. (2006).

A framework for the detection of acute renal rejection with dynamic contrast enhanced magnetic resonance imaging. In Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging, (pp. 418-421), Washington, DC: IEEE Press.

12. http://www.wikipedia.org.

13. http://bme.umich.edu/faster-imageprocessing-to-fight-lung-cancer/ Jan / Feb 2017

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MEMOIR Nihal Balci

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T

he sun is shining down on us. We are walking down the road that encircles the small island. Men and women, young and old; the faces are solemn, earnest, and their steps neither fast nor slow.

She is taking her last tour of the island. We are all following her. She loves this place. Who wouldn’t? As we turn the corner, we feel the breeze on our faces. A few yards to my right the waves

are crashing on the small, pebbled beach, forming white swirls of foam that dance back and forth. The lake is blue-green, beautiful, with specks of light caressing the surface. There are about two hundred people living on this island. During the summer, the number increases dramatically. Like now. With a few exceptions, all the locals are here, though.

After passing beautiful stone and timber houses, we move past the historical Agios Stephanos Church and its arched windows. God knows how many last tours it has witnessed. We are almost there. We all meander to the left, and after walking a few more yards, smell the freshly dug soil.

With one hand, I am holding my daughter’s hand; with the other, I brush the tears on my face.

My grandmother is up front. Not walking this time though, but on the shoulders of men, in a wooden box. She died in Istanbul, two days ago. It was her will to be brought here.

She even had her own grave built, and her name carved on the stone a few years ago. She was born, raised, got married, and had three kids on this small island. Even if she later went to Istanbul, I guess her heart always remained here.

We turn right for the graveyard and gather in the open space reserved for funerals. After she is placed on the pedestal, people start lining up. In less than thirty minutes, she will be in her final resting place,

Every blessing comes with its own negatives. Listen to many beautiful women about how hard it can sometimes be. Kids are great, but they are also too much work and responsibility.

her last home she picked herself. Don’t think that she was all done and ready to go: I have rarely seen people as full of life as she was. In fact, she had so many plans and dreams, even at 85 years old. ~ After the funeral, we head back to her house, to continue with the prayers and to serve food. We do not walk along the lake, but take the small paths through the interior of the island. I try to look away from the gravestones. I don’t want to read the names. When I was a child, it was said that you should not read too much of what is on gravestones or billboards; doing so would make you forgetful. I guess the logic behind this was that a lot of little details would clutter up your mind, slowing it down.

The footsteps on the small pebbles make a hushed sound, as if they are telling me, “Shhh, everything is going to be okay.” They remind me of the summers when I came here with her.

When we walked on these roads to visit her friends or on the way to a house of someone in need.

My grandmother had a colorful life.

She had three sons, two daughters, and thirteen grandchildren. She had been poor, she had been rich. Her house was very crowded with kids, in-laws, and company, but she also had times later in her life that she would just be by herself. She worked hard, experienced difficult times, but always managed to enjoy herself. I grew up with real stories from her life, stories you can’t find in the best story books. On the way back to her house, and the whole upcoming month, I would wonder, among many other things, about one thing she never endured: forgetfulness.

Five days ago we were in her hospital room. Doctors were asking her about her past, checking if her memory was still intact.

“When did you do the hajj?”

My mom and dad looked at each other. They couldn’t remember, but she could, providing not just the date, but the details.

After they left, I took out my camera and asked her more questions. The details she could remember, from both the 32

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recent and distant past, were amazing.

She always knew when her appointments were, when it was time for her to host her monthly meeting with her friends, or where they were meeting when she was not hosting. She never put these dates on an agenda; never even had one, in fact. She cooked and baked wonderfully, but never had a recipe book, to remind her the exact amount of milk or baking powder she needed to use. How could she not be forgetful, even at 85? And why do people from my generation forget so much?

It is really hard to blame our forgetfulness on visits to the graveyard. But we don’t even need to, do we? How many ads do we come across daily? When we turn on our TVs, when we open our mail boxes, read the paper, or even just take a walk, we are basically bombarded with thousands of unnecessary details. ~ We are back at her house. The prayers start and they take a while. Many people leave after the modest ceremony, before we all gather again for dinner at the coffee house. Some are on the veranda enjoying the good weather. A group of my grandmother’s close friends and family are together in the living room. I find an empty seat between Aunt Hatice and Aunt Memnune. I ask them about my grandma’s strong memory and why our generation forgets so much. Aunt Hatice is the leader of their reading and reflection group, and basically a fountain of knowledge. Her green eyes penetrate deep into mine. She talks slowly and clearly: “Every blessing comes with its own negatives. Listen to many beautiful women about how hard it can sometimes be. Kids are great, but they are also too much work and responsibility. You would like to be the top person in your company, but be prepared for longer hours. Technology is great, too.

But it is taking away something that we can’t buy back. “ I think about Alzheimer’s and dementia rates, which are at all-time highs. Alzheimer’s is officially the 6th leading cause of death in the United States. It kills more than prostate and breast cancer combined. An estimated

Imagine how much free time people would have for real conversations with real human beings – or to read books, listen to the birds, stop and smell the roses – if they had one less social media account or TV show to follow.

5.2 million Americans had the disease in 2014. Due to its slow-developing nature, it is the most expensive condition in the nation, costing an estimated $214 billion.

“Aunt Hatice, do you think with all the videos, tablets, apps, and calculators, we have too much stuff to help us, which makes our brains lazier?” I ask.

“Like an unused muscle shrinking,” she replies.

“When I was in high school, I knew all my close friends’ and relatives’ phone numbers by heart. I only know a few right now. I just find the name on my phone and dial it,” I add.

Aunt Mesude is my grandmother’s younger sister. Her positive energy is irresistible. No matter your age, you will never get bored spending time with her.

She starts talking, too. “Hatice, they have too many details to think about.

When we were young, our lives were much simpler.”

She has a point.

“We make choices on a daily basis about so many things, from which clothes to pick from our cluttered closets, to matching our outfit with the right jewelry, purse, or shoes. We have to choose whether to listen to local or global news, then react to them by checking social media posts, tweets, and popular videos on YouTube,” I say.

“Some of which just is a waste of time and would never bring any good to our lives or anybody else’s, for that matter,” my Aunt Mesude adds with a smile.

If you only had two sets of clothes, like my grandmother had when she was young, one that she would wear every day, and one for special occasions, then you would not spend any time deciding what to wear the next day, or trying to match it with the right accessories. You also would not need to think about the clutter in your house, or the laundry and ironing. Just reducing the number of clothes one owns takes much off of your mind. Imagine how much free time people would have for real conversations with real human beings – or to read books, listen to the birds, stop and smell the roses – if they had one less social media account or TV show to follow.

“She was always surrounded by people, living in a big family. She also visited friends a lot, and had lots and lots of company,” Aunt Memnune says, joining in. She is another one of the sisters, and a very beautiful woman.

“She was a very religious woman.

She followed the Prophet’s way. You know: ‘Whoever desires the expansion in his sustenance and a prolonged life should treat his relatives with kindness,’” adds another local woman, quoting the Prophet.

Aunt Hatice adds, “Maintain the bonds of kinship.”

“Now people seem to be more isolated, watch more TV, play more games.

They have less time for others, even their own kids,” says Aunt Memnune.

Aunt Hatice mentions great scholars Shafi and Nursi, and she says it is a very difficult society in which to grow another Shafi or Nursi.

Shafi, an outstanding 9th century scholar, was once asked a question after class by his teacher.

“Did you understand?” the teacher asked.

As a person who would never lie, Shafi answered, “No.” His teacher made an interesting suggestion. “My son, quit sinning.”

Shafi said he listened to the advice, and as a result of this, God opened up his abilities, which were planted like seeds inside of him and then grew as big as oak trees.

Nursi, another prominent writer and scholar, whose books have been translated into more than 40 languages and have been in print for more than 80 years, and who was known to have a photographic memory, finished his whole education in three months, earning the highest qualifications. He had at least 90 books memorized. It is well known that when he went to Istanbul, he put a sign on his door saying, “All Questions Are Answered, None Will Be Asked.”

Many scholars came and took on this daring challenge. But Nursi never failed. A friend of his, whom he encountered 30 years later, asked him: Jan / Feb 2017

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The prayers, the good food, the help we have been given, the friendship we have been shown… all of it makes me feel the whole town is wrapping me in a warm embrace.

“We sat together at those desks.

You passed us like lightning. What is the secret of this?”

Nursi said he found a basket hanging down from the sky. He held on to it and it carried him up. When he was asked about the basket, he explained that it was taqwa, which he defined as a high state of the heart.

“Where do you find taqwa these days?” asks Aunt Mesude.

I knew Nursi’s answer, but I wanted to know Aunt Hatice’s.

“What is taqwa?”

“A person who has taqwa is conscious of God’s presence and it motivates them to perform righteous deeds and avoid the unlawful. It includes dressing modestly, and exposing our ears and eyes only to appropriate things.”

Inappropriate scenes may come up any time on your screen, even when you least expect them. Needless to say, with the latest technology, some images we come across are so powerful, they make a place for themselves in our minds, possibly pushing out other ideas and thoughts. I know the brain is a container which never fills up; the more you learn, the more you can learn. However, these ads, images, movies, and pictures are not learning. We passively take them in. And many images we see and videos we watch may drastically change the way we feel by affecting our hormones.

Aunt Hatice continues, “Taqwa can be compared to walking through a narrow tunnel with thorny bushes on both sides. A person passing 34

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through it tries their best to not get hurt.”

“The thorns must be the sins.

What are the clothes?” I ask.

“Your faith.”

“The less taqwa you have, the worse your memory will get,” Aunt Mesude adds.

“I once listened to Ihsan Kasimoglu, a much respected scholar from Iraq, who translates Nursi’s Turkish tafseer into Arabic. He said that he could not do any translations for a whole month after he listened to the local news for 20 minutes,” I contribute.

“Now think about all the unnecessary information that flows into our brains, from stories about celebrities, soccer games, and TV series; now just imagine how much this could affect our minds,” says Aunt Mesude.

Another local woman joins us.

She says, “Your grandmother never slept in the early hours of the sunrise and before dusk. Sleeping at those times is really bad for your brain.”

Aunt Memnune says, “If you want to have a good memory like her, eat 21 raisins with seeds each morning.”

“Also eat healthy and get enough sleep,” says Aunt Hatice.

“Think systematically rather than dreaming aimlessly,” says Aunt Mesude.

Then there is a short silence.

Aunt Hatice breaks it. “Since I believe the brain is created by God, I also believe that it would be wise to listen to the Maker about how to keep it healthier and prolong its life.

I would believe anything these women say. The way we dress and talk, the things we read and listen, the way we pray and exercise, what we eat and how we work: all these have an effect on our brain, hormones, and whole body. And it is an amazing thing that brain cells made out of matter can store and keep information for such a long time and bring it out whenever we need it.

I have so much more to ask these amazing women. Is my generation forgetful, or do we also have a harder time learning? Are we just forgetting mundane things, or are we also forgetting bigger things, like right and wrong, or even important memories?

But our conversation comes to an end. It is time for dinner. It will be a potluck dinner at the local coffee house situated at the center of the island. We all start walking. The coffee house has a yard where they put roundtables and portable chairs for funerals, weddings, or other parties.

The family is not supposed to cook.

The local people bring the food. A lot of people also help to serve the food. I meet some of my cousins, many of whom I haven’t seen in years. We sit and talk. After some more conversation, I also eat. The food is so comforting. I look around and drift off into my own thoughts.

All the actions and conversations around me turn into a hum, a song.

I feel warmth swaddling me. The prayers, the good food, the help we have been given, the friendship we have been shown… all of it makes me feel the whole town is wrapping me in a warm embrace. May you rest in peace, Granny.

Emerald Hills of the Heart

WALAYA

L

)SAINTHOOD(

iterally meaning a person, a community, or a country that is under the direction and rule of another, walaya (sainthood) denotes annihilation with respect to carnal selfhood and egoism in favor of awareness of being under the dominion of the All-Living, Self-Subsistent One and of the need to acquire nearness to the Necessarily Existent Being. Travelers on the way to God who has attained this level, having given themselves up to the direction of God, are favored with self-possession and live in nearness to God. The first step in sainthood is indicated in the verse (2:257): God is the Guardian of those who believe, bringing them out from all kinds of (intellectual, spiritual, social, economic and political) darkness into the light, and keeps them firm therein; and also in Know well that the confidants (saintly servants) of God—there will be no reason for them to fear (both in this world and the next, for they shall always find My help and support with them), nor shall they grieve (10:62).

One who has been favored with sainthood is called a waliyy (which literally means a guardian or a close friend or confidant). Waliyy is one of the Names of God Almighty. A person on whom this Name is placed and who has become a polished mirror in which this Name is reflected is considered as having been favored with “self-annihilation in God” and “subsistence by Him.” Nevertheless, this favor can never make a saint indifferent to the master of the creatures, upon him be peace and blessings. On the contrary, whatever rank a person has attained on the way to God, one of the most blessed and illuminating sources for the confidants of God, the Ultimate Truth, is the person of Muhammad, upon him be peace and blessings, who is the sun of Prophethood and the pure source of truth; he is the one they must follow strictly. Moreover, he is the first among those sources that are the means of guidance and attainment of sainthood for people. In several

verses, the Qur’an stresses exactly this point, bringing our attention to that source of enlightenment and that mine of truth. For example (3:31): (O Messenger,) say (to them): “If you indeed love God, then follow me, so that God may love you and forgive you your sins.”

This truth is expressed in a colorful language in Gulshan-i Raz (The Secret Rose-Garden) by Mahmud 1 Shabistari: The Prophet is like the sun, and the saint is like the moon facing the sun, which says: “I have a special time with God.” A saint can only find a way to so that God may love you, which is the meeting room with Him, through If you indeed love God, follow me.

As the moon receives its light entirely from the sun, so a saint is enlightened only by following the Prophet and becomes a polished mirror in which the Divine light is reflected. It can even be said that not only the saints that came after Prophet Muhammad, but also all the previous Prophets received their light from him, who is the sun of Prophethood, upon him be peace and blessings: He is the sun of virtues and the others are the stars that diffuse light for people at night.

All the miracles the blessed Messengers worked were because his light reached them.

2 (Busayri ) The word waliyy (saint) is used as an agent or as a past participle. It denotes, in the first case, one who resists sins and regularly fulfills the duties of worship and obedience with patience, while in the second case, it denotes one who has been favored with God’s help and protection. Both of these meanings are in accord with the covenant made between God and His servants, which is mentioned in the following hadith qudsi3: God Almighty declares: “Whoever shows hostility to My saint- ly servant, I will surely wage war on him. My servant Jan / Feb 2017

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Comprehension of the spirit of religion, attainment of good morals, strict observance of both the rights of God and the rights of the creatures, practicing what one has learned of religion and being blessed with its consequences, are among divine favors. cannot get near to Me with something more lovable to Me than fulfilling the things I have made incumbent on him.

Then, My servant gets nearer and nearer to Me until I love him by fulfilling the supererogatory acts of worship. When I love him, I become his ears with which he hears, his eyes with which he sees, his hands with which he grasps, and his feet on which he walks. (His hearing, seeing, grasping, and walking take place in accordance with My will and commandments.) If he asks Me for something, I surely grant it to him, and if he seeks refuge from (something), I surely take him under My protection.4 The saintly scholars have always dwelt upon two important dimensions of sainthood and consider them as two parts of a single unit: • An initiate’s scrupulous observance of God’s commandments and in return, • God’s taking him or her under His special care and protection.

Such care and protection manifest themselves as sinlessness in a Prophet, and protection against sins 36

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in a saint. Sinlessness and protection from sins are different from one another, but that not our subject matter here.

A saint is surely a noble, blessed one, and can be favored with working of wonders.5 However, the working of wonders is not a condition of sainthood. It is a disputed matter whether a saint knows or should know of being a saint. After all, a saint is surely an object or recipient of some special favors of God. Ibrahim Adham6 defines sainthood with its dimensions and the favors it receives as renunciation of the world (not in respect to earning a living, but rather with respect to loving it from the heart), turning to God with all one’s being, and continuously expecting His turning to oneself.

According to Yahya ibn Mu‘adh,7 sainthood is enduring every hardship and difficulty on the way to attaining friendship with God. Sainthood, in the words of Bayazid al-Bistami, is not to allow any desire to be known by others, despite

O God! Include us of among Your servants sincere (in faith and practicing the religion), and endowed with sincerity, and God-revering, pious, and abstinent from all forbidden things big or small, and nearstationed to You, and who love and are loved by You. Amen. one’s deep and continuous worship and obedience to God and one’s extraordinary care in fulfilling other duties of servanthood.

According to Abu Sa‘id al-Kharraz, God opens the door slightly to one qualified for sainthood by enabling regular mention of Him and recitation of His Names. When the initiate begins to take pleasure in mentioning Him or in the recitation of His Names, the One Mentioned leads him or her by the hand to the summit of nearness to Him. Then, He clothes him or her in the bejeweled robe of His close friendship according to the degree of the person’s loyalty and faithfulness.

In this position, the initiate feels Him only, thinks of Him only, keeps His company only, and holds back from everybody else other than Him, because of his or her duties to Him. Whomever God especially favors, they tremble with fear lest it lead to their perdition. While it is a requirement of a Prophet’s mission that he publicizes his Prophethood and the miracles associated with it as a manifestation of this special, sacred favor, it is required among the courtesies of sainthood that a saint keeps both himself and God’s special favors towards him concealed. Concerning this, Muhyi’dDin ibn-u’l-‘Arabi8 writes: It is compulsory for God’s friends to conceal the wonders they work; so do not ridicule yourself, nor become disgraced, by publicizing them. However, the Messengers are obliged to publicize their miracles, for their miracles are connected with the coming of the Revelation.

The wonders we mention are those that can be witnessed by others or worked through the agency of the external senses and organs, such as mind-reading, giving infor-

mation about things that are hidden or invisible, and crossing great distances or achieving many things in a relatively short time. Far from desiring them, saints of great stature have felt seriously uncomfortable even with the wonders that have proceeded from them unintentionally.

There is another kind of wonder related to the religious life which is not visible. Comprehension of the spirit of religion, attainment of good morals, strict observance of both the rights of God and the rights of the creatures, practicing what one has learned of religion and being blessed with its consequences, certainty in knowledge of God, sincerity and purity of intention in religious deeds and services, reaching the degree of acting as if seeing God when worshipping God in daily life, and similar attainments are wonders of this kind. Such Divine favors, which the common people cannot see and therefore attach no value to are the greatest values of the things that the distinguished servants of God should always pursue. Even if we should avoid publicizing such actions, seeking them out is tantamount to seeking out the Ultimate Truth. The heirs to the greater sainthood—the sainthood of the Prophet’s Companions, which is marked by meticulous observance of religion and selfdedication to serving it—have long been counted among the heroes of this attainment.

O God! Include us of among Your servants sincere (in faith and practicing the religion), and endowed with sincerity, and God-revering, pious, and abstinent from all forbidden things big or small, and near-stationed to You, and who love and are loved by You. Amen.

Notes 1. Sa‘du’d-Din Mahmud Shabistari (1288– 1320) is one of the most celebrated authors of Persian Sufism. Because of his gift for expressing the Sufi spiritual vision with extraordinary clarity, his Gulshan-i Raz (“The Secret Rose Garden”) rapidly became one of the most popular works of Persian Sufi poetry. (Tr.) 2. Muhammad ibn Sa‘id al-Busiri (Busayri) (1212–1296) was born and mainly lived in Egypt. He studied both Islamic sciences and language and literature. He is known primarily for his Qasidatu’l-Burda (“The Eulogy of the Cloak”), which he wrote in praise of our Prophet Muhammad, upon him be peace and blessings. (Tr.) 3. A hadith qudsi is a saying of the Messenger, the meaning of which is inspired directly by God. (Tr.) 4. al-Bukhari, “Riqaq,” 38.

5. Any extraordinary act or achievement with which a Prophet is favored outside the known “laws of nature” is called a miracle, while a wonder is an action performed by a saint. A saint’s wonder worked by following the Prophet can only be an imitation or copy of a Prophet’s miracle. (Tr.) 6. Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Adham, born in Balkh of pure Arab descent. He renounced his kingdom in Balkh and wandered westwards to live a life of complete asceticis , earning his life in Syria by honest manual toil until his death in 782. (Tr.) 7. Abu Zakariya Yahya ibn Mu‘adh ar-Razi, a disciple of Ibn Karram, left his native town of Rayy and lived for a time in Balkh, afterwards proceeding to Naysabur where he died in 871. A certain number of poems are attributed to him. (Tr.) 8. Muhiyi’d-Din ibnu’l-’Arabi (1165– 1240): One of the great and most famous Sufi masters. His doctrine of the Transcendental Unity of Being, which most have mistaken for monism and pantheism, made him the target of unending polemics. He wrote many books, the most famous of which are Fususu’l-Hikam and Al-Futuhatu’lMakkiyya. (Tr.) Jan / Feb 2017

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TECHNOLOGY Yavuz Demirci

As computers get faster and more powerful, one must wonder: will there come a time when they achieve superintelligence?

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ingularity describes the merging of human and computer intelligence and the rise of super-intelligence as a result. Proponents of the idea of singularity try to posit it as the next step in human progression, where humans will cease to exist as currently constructed and will instead transcend our given form and become a hybrid race that is part computer, part human. Singularity has been portrayed in popular culture in several movies, the most popular of which are the Terminator and Matrix movies.

History of discussion about singularity Vernor Vinge, a science fiction writer, first wrote about the vision of technological singularity and coined the term in 1993. He wrote, “Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.”

Ray Kurzweil, inventor and futurist, is a fervid proponent of technological singularity. Kurzweil predicts the timeline of singularity as follows: · By 2019, a $1000 PC will have the computing power of the human brain. It will be capable of performing 20 million billion calculations. · By 2029, a $1K PC will be a thousand times more powerful than the human brain; the human brain itself will be successfully reverse engineered. · 2045 is singularity: machines will have surpassed humans in intelligence and in fact will have created next-generation robots even smarter than themselves. We should either merge with our creations or step out of their way. Immortality! · By 2055, $1K of computing power will equal the processing power of all the humans on the planet.

In 2011, Ray Kurzweil sponsored a movie/documentary about singularity, titled “Transcendent Man,” which has been screened in five major cities in the U.S., as well as London. In December 2012, Kurzweil was hired by Google as a director of engineering to “work on new projects involving machine learning and language processing.”

In 2000, Bill Joy, a well known computer scientist and the primary figure behind the BSD operating system (on which MacOS was built on) and the widely used Java programming language, joined this discussion. In a Wired magazine article, “Why the future doesn’t need us,” Joy declared, in what some have described as a “neo-Luddite” position, that he was convinced

Several questions are raised about the aftermath of singularity. Can a downloaded personality replace the spirit? How does this equate to living forever? Singularity promises are similar to claiming that you can live forever by cloning yourself.

that growing advances in genetic engineering and nanotechnology would pose severe risks to humanity.

Arguments and counterarguments about the feasibility of singularity Proponents of singularity often cite Moore’s law to support their claim. Moore’s law states, crudely, that the capacity of computer chips doubles every two years.

That is, the speed and capability of computers grows at an exponential speed. Such an exponential growth is a powerful enabler. Consider the series 1,2,4,8,16,32... The small increments in the beginning may be misleading about the overall speed of the series’ growth. The 20th element in this series would be 1 million. The 266th element in this series is 1080, which is more than the number of atoms in the universe.

Proponents of singularity argue that thanks to this exponential growth, the processing powers of computers will reach such high levels in the next few decades that it will be possible to simulate the human brain in high fidelity. The workings of each neuron in the brain will be simulated in real time, achieving a full simulation of the brain. At that point, the computer will essentially have the equivalent of human intelligence.

In the succeeding years, with the increase in capacity, the computer intelligence will be several folds ahead of human intelligence.

Opponents of the feasibility of singularity cite that exponential growth is hard to sustain. Exponential growth is seen in the beginning of a series, but then due to limitations/adversities, most series will level off and stay constant. An example of this is the population of rabbits. Initially, the increase is exponential; however, due to scarcity of food sources and an abundance of predators, the population stabilizes around a constant.

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larity argue that the exponential progress of computer processing speeds will similarly hit a brick wall. At the chip level, physical issues such as heating will make exponential speedup unsustainable.

At the cluster level, latency, consistency, and scalability issues will also prevent exponential growth.

Underlying all of Kurzweil’s ideas regarding the progress of technology and the singularity is the Law of Accelerating Returns.

This Law states that technological progress occurs exponentially instead of linearly, meaning that each new advancement enables several higher advancements instead of just one higher advancement, and, concordantly, every year brings more useful inventions and discoveries than were made in the last. The first generation artificial intelligence (AI) approaches failed, but simulating a human brain may work if we know the workings of the brain in excruciating detail. As a promising development, recently, “deep learning” and “deep neural networks” technologies achieved great success in image and speech recognition tasks.

There is no clear explanation about how thought occurs from signals transmitted from neuron synapses.

Brain-scanning techniques are improving, as they are based on computers, but the brain may throw us more complex surprises as we learn more about it.

However, the opponents of singularity like to point out that the workings of the brain as a whole are still a big mystery. We have information about the rough mechanism of how a neuron works. An excited neuron can transmit a signal to a neighboring neuron through its synapses. But, there is no clear explanation about how thought occurs from this process.

Brain-scanning techniques are improving, as they are based on computers, but the brain may throw us more complex surprises as we learn more about it.

In fact, much of the brain power comes about through organic materials, and the very low-level analog physical interactions between these materials. These physical phenomena could be close to impossible to model/simulate in a digital environment. Henry Markram, lead researcher of the “Blue Brain Project” for simulating mammal brains at the molecular level, has stated that “it is not [their] goal to build an intelligent neural network.” He claimed, “[That would] be very difficult because, in the brain, every molecule is a powerful computer and we would need to simulate the

structure and function of trillions upon trillions of molecules as well as all the rules that govern how they interact. You would literally need computers that are trillions of times bigger and faster than anything existing today.”

Another relevant question is whether we can develop the parallel processing architectures needed to support the parallel processing that goes on in the brain. The brain uses far more parallel processing than exists in most classical computing designs.

Even if a computer successfully simulates the human brain, whether such a computer design will be “scalable” to two times, ten times, or even one hundred times the brain’s normal power is an unknown; for the human brain’s computation power may be inherently unscalable. Also, if a computer models the human brain, human emotions would also be modeled.

Would the resulting computer be stable? As it scales up, would it become existential and suicidal, or perhaps become an arrogant killer?

The aftermath of singularity Several questions are raised about the aftermath of singularity. Can a

downloaded personality replace the spirit? How does this equate to living forever? Singularity promises are similar to claiming that you can live forever by cloning yourself. One copy dies, but another digital copy survives. But it is clear that the copies are different entities.

And it is also clear that this is not true immortality. If we stretch singularity’s approach to immortality a little further, we can argue that humans can achieve immortality through their work or art. And to this idea Woody Allen provided the best response: “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying.”

References Vernor Vinge, “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era”, 1993, available from https://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/ faculty/vinge/misc/singularity.html Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, Penguin Books, 2005.

Bill Joy, “Why the future doesn’t need us”, Wired 8 (04), 2000.

Henry Markram, “The blue brain project”, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 7 (2), 153--160, 2006.

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In our modern world the Narcissists still exist. Some build their own images in the media which serve as their pools.

Others are chained to themselves, so obsessed and caught up in their unfortunate altered reality.

A MOMENT FOR REFLECTION Al Freeman

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vid tells the story of Narcissus in his book Metamorphosis.

Narcissus is a hunter; one with talent, grandeur, good genes, and charm. But he is also an egoist. He is full of himself, to the degree that he cannot recognize anybody but himself. Eco is in love with him. But knowing Narcissus’ weakness, Nemesis leads him to the side of a pool and shows him his own reflection. Narcissus immediately falls deeply in love with this image.

Narcissus, or the Narcissist, is in love with what he sees in the pool. He loves it at the expense of the worldly reality around him. In a way, he is dependent on the pool, reality in a reversed form. The image provided by the pool makes him happy. Narcissus is nothing without the pool; it is that which enables him to replace the truth with an image.

Narcissus is so deeply immersed in his reflection that he is unable to recognize the image is just an image. He plays with his own image like a baby. In his sight, what he sees

in the pool is truer than the truth. Narcissus is in a pathological state.

However, even Narcissus cannot escape reality, in spite of his ability to deceive himself. One day, he touches the water with his finger. The water moves in waves, and the image grows ugly. This depresses him. The finger breaks the illusion and points to the truth. Instead of thanking the truth for freeing him from the cage of an image, he prefers to get angry with the truth, since he prefers seeming to being.

This situation isn’t just true in the parable, but in reality.

This inconsistency between reality and the image upsets the Narcissist’s balance. According to him, reality is ugly, and the image is beautiful. He does not know that real beauty is fostered in the bosom of truth.

Unfortunately, the Narcissist cannot break free of the image. He is ready to commit every kind of madness to maintain his altered reality. The poor Narcissist! In the parable, unable to resist reality’s taunts, he throws himself into the pool and drowns. He prefers being caged in that little pool to the sublimity of reality.

Every Narcissist has a pool. The same pool brings the end of every Narcissist. He needs the pool, for there is no image without it. The pool is a virtual shelter to escape when he is disturbed by reality. The pool is a trap. It offers an image, taking away character.

Unfortunately, in our modern world the Narcissists still exist. Some build their own images in the media which serve as their pools. Others are chained to themselves, so obsessed and caught up in their unfortunate altered reality. They either drown in their pool or remain caged in a lie.

Every Narcissist has a pool.

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AGRICULTURE Adam Allison

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uinoa, unknown in many countries, is an easy-to-digest, nutritious grain which contains the same amount of protein as meat and a greater amount of usable calcium than milk. In South America, the Incas consumed quinoa for thousands of years, viewing it as the “mother grain.� Increasingly, people around the world are coming to view quinoa with the same level of respect, and production of the grain is on the rise. In fact, the United Nations declared 2013 as the international year of quinoa, referencing its potential for combatting food shortages due to its high nutritional value.

Combatting famine Every organism needs a sufficient amount of food for the body to grow and develop. Although some countries are very prosperous, famine continues to be one of the world’s major problems. Almost half of the world’s population lives below the threshold of poverty – and a half of that population lives below the threshold of hunger.

While the world’s population increases 1.2% every year, grain production decreases at a rate of 1.2%. It is estimated that in 2050 the world population will be around 11.3 billion and we will need 60% more food than today. In addition, even if sufficient food production is achieved, it is still estimated that 300,000,000 people will face hunger.

Global warming and increased demand ensure grain shortages are inescapable in the near future. For this reason, by using the existing limited water sources and land to grow alternative plants like quinoa, which is not only highly nutritious but also resistant to extreme climate conditions, we may be able to address these shortages.

The mother grain The motherland of quinoa is the cold, high plateau of the Andes Mountains, along the Western coast of South America. Originally,

Quinoa contains double the protein of wheat, and three times as much as rice. It can be consumed in a salad or soup, and it can also be used in breads, biscuits, or pasta products.

In addition, it is used as an ingredient in medicines and animal fodder.

it was grown in Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Ecuador. As more and more people learn of its nutritional values, its consumption is becoming more widespread. In the US, more and more people are choosing quinoa over other grains, including corn. And as the most significant alternative to wheat and rice, quinoa is used by NASA for its space journeys.

While humanity is faced with a changing climate and a growing population, quinoa’s durability makes it an important grain. It’s grown in almost every kind of soil, from sea level up to an altitude of 4000 meters. There are more than 200 known types, and a quinoa plant yields about 1.5 or 2 times more product than wheat sown in 46

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the same field. Thus, it is not only a nutritious plant, but also a very efficient and profitable one. It is possible to grow quinoa in the presence of adverse conditions such as salty soil or irrigation water, draught, and frost. Some types can even resist water nearly as salty as seawater.

The health benefits of quinoa make it worth growing. Although quinoa falls into the family of sesames, it has a low fat content and a gluten-free structure. With these qualities, it can comfortably be consumed by patients with celiac disease. Those who have lactose intolerance or a milk allergy can meet their calcium need from quinoa.

Quinoa contains double the protein of wheat, and three times as

Many experts believe that highly efficient plants like quinoa are the way of the future. They can be used to fight famine and help humanity adapt to a changing planet.

much as rice. It can be consumed in a salad or soup, and it can also be used in breads, biscuits, or pasta products. In addition, it is used as an ingredient in medicines and animal fodder.

Just as quinoa contains the essential amino acids and many vitamins, it is also rich in calcium, sodium, manganese, magnesium, copper, phosphorus, iron, selenium, and zinc.

Since quinoa contains twice as much fiber in comparison to other grains, it is recommended for problems like constipation, hemorrhoids, and for controlling blood sugar. Quinoa is rich in iron, a mineral that helps carry oxygen to cells and is critical for brain functioning, retaining body heat, and producing energy.

The list of benefits goes on and on. Rich in vitamin B2, quinoa supports energy metabolism in the brain and muscle cells. Since it is rich in magnesium, it might help migraine patients. As an antioxidant, quinoa protects cells against the negative effects of free radicals and slows down aging. It also contains quercetin, a good support against spring allergies. The lignin in quinoa is a good protector against hormonal cancers, such as breast cancer.

As the world population grows and the global climate changes, there is projected to be a decrease in the harvest yields of essential grains, like wheat and rice. Many experts believe that highly efficient plants like quinoa are the way of

the future. They can be used to fight famine and help humanity adapt to a changing planet.

References FAO Web Site. Corporate Document Repository “Quinoa (Chenopodium quince) http://www.fao.org DaMatta F M, Grandis A, Arenque B C ve Buckeridge M S (2009). Impacts of climate changes on crop physiology and food quality. Food Research International 43: 1814-1823 Jacobsen,S.E. 2003. The worldwide potential for quinoa ( Chenopodium quinoa Willd.), Food Rev. Int. 19(1–2):167–177.

Comai,S., A.Bertazzo, L.Bailoni, M. Zancato, C.V.L.Costa and G.Allegri. 2007. The content of proteic and nonproteic (free and protein bound) tryptophan in quinoa and cereal flours, Food Chem.

100:1350-1355.

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PERSPECTIVES Caroline Halford

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ime periods are defined by the actions of those within the period and the thoughts of those who succeed them.

The intentions of past societies are oftentimes forgotten in lieu of hindsight bias, leaving only the events and records to be sorted out by following generations. No age can truly be defined by a title, but the human mind compels us to sort, simplify, and categorize every bit of information with which we come into contact. Thus, ages are reduced to a single, unified idea.

For those of us who witnessed very little prior to the twenty-first century, it has seemed an eventful century thus far. The internet has connected people from every kind of background, new technologies are being constantly released, and societies are attempting to educate themselves and others on large issues of global importance. Some would argue that these facts make this current century The Internet Age, The Technology Age, or The Age of Education, but, as a member of this current generation, I would like to make the argument that what we are doing today cannot be reduced to ideas as small as these. Internet, technology, and education are simply the manifestations of what I hope will be the greater theme of this age. This is the Age of Self-Awareness.

Globalization in the twentieth century was perhaps the greatest change the world has seen thus far. The ideas and customs of countries spread out to the larger world at an outstanding rate, international conflicts became abundant, and nations had to learn how to deal with major influences from other countries.

The world became rapidly connected, and with that connection came not only conflict, secrecy, and fear, but also progress, growth, and knowledge. It became popular in some cultures to borrow from others, whether it was through international cui-

As each successive generation becomes increasingly more selfaware, the time is coming when each individual must make a choice—to remain solely self-obsessed or to use the many advances that have been made in this age to look outward, at helping the global community.

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sine, dress, or customs. However, when this was attempted, it was not always done correctly or properly. Customs of Eastern countries were soon Westernized and Americanized. In other words, they were simplified so much that the original customs were lost in favor of the “Western” versions. As the turn of the twenty-first century came, however, a greater self-awareness developed, and we, as an international community, began to understand that what started as an attempt to understand and enjoy other cultures had turned into cultural appropriation. We, as a global community, began attempts to change this.

This self-awareness has not been limited to cultural appreciation and appropriation. Advances in technology through the internet have made it possible for people from all over the world to start global conversations about the shared global society in which we live. This is important, as the first step to achieving progress is understanding what can be changed and improved; to do that, we need to start talking. Through blogs, online videos, and social media, the internet has become a crucial tool in allowing the spread of ideas.

They have “democratized” information. People freely share ideas.

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who share their opinions face scrutiny, and even harsh criticism and hatred, from their oftentimes anonymous audience. This criticism has been present all along, to some extent, but it has now become an unprecedented force.

It does, though, serve as a sort of check-and-balance system. Whenever someone publishes a text online that is controversial in nature, there typically is an immediate check from another perspective, and on some occasions, a conversation is started, letting both sides of the argument make their opinion known – and allowing them to listen to other opinions, too.

Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule, and when it comes to publishing opinions in such a public way, there are many, many instances of excessive criticism and contentious arguments on social media. The internet is the ideal platform to give exposure to new, intelligent thoughts and ideas, but it’s also a great medium for ignorant ideas, too.

The current generation is very literate when it comes to these new technological developments.

Though many in older generations are, too, some view these new technologies with suspicion.

Members of older generations, especially Baby Boomers, oftentimes describe this current generation as degrading past accomplishments.

With our apparent addiction to cell phones, little to no civic activism, and a vast ignorance of global problems, it’s completely logical that older generations would think this about us.

While I don’t believe that my generation has degraded humanity’s many achievements, I do understand that we are facing major social problems, and they all come back to self-awareness. In every population, there are those who don’t see past their own needs and wants. There is an obsession with perfection, no matter the task or goal. Social media accounts are idealized versions of lives. Not only do teenagers and twenty-somethings share only the best parts of their lives on social media, but their day-to-day activities revolve around this stylized “lifestyle.”

Whenever a group of friends goes somewhere, many of them have probably already determined the location, pose, and caption of their Instagram post for later in the day.

Once the picture is taken, many will edit their pictures to remove any “flaws” they perceive in themselves. After they have posted, the real addiction starts—watching how many people “like” their photos. Some are so upset by low feedback that they try to maximize their likes by waiting for the ideal point in the day to post their pictures to gain the most likes, and

a few even pay for followers and likes. An obsession of self is causing this, and it is being forced on us from a very young age.

We as members of this society try to manipulate and control the way in which others perceive us.

This leads us to the many different highlights of this generation, whether it is global awareness, social activism, or an idealized outward appearance through “perfected” social media accounts and physical appearance. This will be defined as the Age of Self-Awareness, but the connotation of this title has yet to be determined, and, like the many generations before us, there will likely be arguments over the connotation.

As each successive generation becomes increasingly more self-aware, the time is coming when each individual must make a choice—to remain solely selfobsessed and continue to focus on matters as asinine as the number of likes his or her selfie receives, or to use the many advances that have been made in this age to look outward, at helping the global community. Members of today’s society have a chance to build on all that has been done before. If we utilize the education many of us have had the opportunity to receive to make genuine attempts to better the world in which we live, imagine what could be done. We

could solve many of the world’s problems, from hunger and disease to violence and ignorance. We could achieve more, experience more, and be more. However, what could make this the most successful and fulfilled generation in human history is the very thing that may cause it to be the least.

Through human history, our diverse needs intensified and seeking esteem and self-actualization have peaked since the Renaissance. However, since then, we have struggled in order to reach that self-actualized state, and it seems that now many people cannot reach as high as esteem. This is apparent through the social media obsession previously discussed. So, this is the challenge for this generation that will likely determine whether this will be The Age of Self-Awareness or SelfObsession—in order to reach the former and avoid the latter, we must strive for self-actualization.

We must refocus our lives on problem solving, morality, creativity, innovation, and justice. We must go beyond ourselves in order to be aware of not just ourselves, but the place each of us holds in this world.

This is the key difference between self-awareness and self-obsession: those who are self-aware focus on themselves only inasmuch as it allows them to understand what they are capable of doing for others.

Each of us has a choice. We, the people of today’s world, have an opportunity. We have been given knowledge from past generations that could make us the most selfaware generation ever, but it is our choice what to do with that awareness. Do we ignore it, or do we utilize it to leave this world a better place than we found it?

In order to do the latter, we must change – we must begin to truly consider the effects of social media, the internet, globalization, and education; and then we must use these many resources to improve the larger human community. This is not an impossible task; we need only look up and begin to pay attention to the world around us in order to see what needs to be done. In a globalized world, we can work together for change.

With the internet, we can discover new information and communicate ideas to the masses. And then one day, with education, we can take all that we have learned, created, and changed, and teach it to the next generation so they can be even greater than we hopefully will be.

The world we leave the next generation will define this one. So, it’s up to us: will our self-awareness diminish into self-obsession, or will it allow us to be great, continuing the legacy of those who came before us?

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S TURKEY Greg Barton

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ix months on from the mysterious coup attempt of July 15, the situation in Turkey has become much clearer.

Unfortunately, it has also become much darker. In the confusing hours of that terrible night, President Erdogan’s declaration upon landing in Istanbul that, “This uprising is a gift from God to us because this will be a reason to cleanse our army,” was both enigmatic and foreboding. In the hours that followed, he sought to bring clarity to the confusion by alleging that a previously consistently pacifist civil society movement was in fact a terrorist organization and had been behind the coup attempt. At that moment, Erdogan had the empathy and attention of not just his nation but the global community. No one wants to see a military coup succeed and a democracy toppled – especially not when this democracy represented the hopes of the greater Middle East and entire Muslim world.

Whatever the circumstances of the coup, the president’s insistence on needing to root out the shadowy forces behind it were hard to argue with. In the days that followed, however, it quickly became clear that whatever prior knowledge Erdogan might have had of moves against

him, he was well prepared with a very long list of people and institutions that, he insisted, needed to be purged.

If his attribution of blame to an unlikely religious civil society network beggared belief, even stranger was the extent and scope of the post-coup purge. Almost half of the military flag offices, the generals and admirals, were purged, along with one third of the judiciary, and thousands of academics, including every single dean and university president. The rate of sackings, detentions, and arrests in the first ten days after the coup attempt was breathtaking. The regime made no pretense of needing to investigate; it simply asserted guilt by association with the “terrorists,” and quickly and methodically rounded up “known enemies.”

The purges began even as the coup attempt was being squashed, with the president urging crowds to take to the streets and stare-down the opposition. The response quickly took on the character of a witch hunt as neighbors, colleagues, and family members were urged to turn in the guilty, however slender the pretext. The accused were all declared guilty of supporting FETO, the pejorative term used to describe followers of exiled Sufi cleric Fethullah Gülen, even though many of those targeted in the purges, especially in the military, police, judiciary, and media were clearly Kemalist or leftist secularists with no religious affiliations of any kind. In the months that followed the net was widened to include Kurdish activists and prominent dissidents of all stripes. Guilt simply required being linked, in some way, with the “FETO coup plotters,” but no evidence or explanation was given. By year’s end, when the parliamentary commission to investigate the events of July 15 would be abruptly disbanded leaving behind many unanswered questions, the contradictions had piled up in accounts from officials of what had occurred.

Half a year on, the numbers purged are staggering – and are still growing by the week: over 124,000 people have been sacked, and of these, more than 84,000 have been detained. Around 43,000 people have been formally arrested. The number of academics sacked is now around 7,000 and they are joined by over 3,800 judges and prosecutors. Almost all of Turkey’s independent media outlets, in excess of 195, have been shut down, and over 145 journalists arrested. More than 2,100 schools, universities and associated colleges and dormitories have been shut down. And over 550 businesses, with tens of billions of dollars in assets, have been seized.

Within days of the coup attempt, the extent to which president Erdogan would “make good” on his “God-given opportunity” to cleanse and purge became clear as he declared emergency rule and suspended parliamentary government. It soon became evident, however, that he was focused not on national security, but on consolidating personal power. A measure of how far Turkey has fallen came on the 21st of October, when the World Justice Project (WJP) Rule of Law Index 2016 was released. Turkey had plummeted to 108th place out of all 113 countries surveyed in terms of constraints on government powers and fundamental rights.

By November, all hope for a quick return to democracy was lost. On the 4th of November, nine parliamentarians from Turkey’s third largest political party, the proKurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), were arrested in the wake of a series of purges against ethnic Kurdish organizations. Across the country, access to social media – Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp – was blocked, and in the Kurdish southeast access to the internet as a whole was cut-off.

On the 8th of November, President Erdogan and his increasingly authoritarian and Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) lodged criminal complaints against Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the country’s second largest party, the secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP), as well as other senior MPs. They were accused of making gross insults against the president. In a statement the previous day that had triggered the legal action the CHP said that, “Turkey is now going through a dark and authoritarian coup staged by the presidential palace.”

The hitherto compliant left-of-center CHP issued the statement after an emergency party meeting called in response to the arrest of the HDP MPs and the October 31st detention of the editor-in-chief and eight other senior journalists of the sole remaining significant opposition newspaper, Cumhuriyet (the Republic – a paper closely aligned with the CHP). The statement added, “The current political situation poses a serious threat against the freedom of our people and future of our country.”

On the same day, Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said of the purges, “These are methods, one must say this bluntly, that were used during Nazi rule.

And there has been a really, really bad evolution in Turkey since July that we as the European Union cannot simply accept.”

Even before these events, on November 1st, the New York Times editorial team was sufficiently concerned about the situation in Turkey to write that, “The United States and Europe are horrified that Mr. Erdogan has strayed so completely from the track he was on when he first became the Turkish prime minister in 2003 and was hailed for building a model Muslim democracy.” In the eyes of one of the world’s most respected newspapers, the situation was unambiguous: “What is unnerving in President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s march to authoritarianism is how dismally familiar it is: the coup that becomes a pretext for a massive roundup of real and imagined enemies; the claims to be the one man who can withstand the onslaught of foreign foes; the invocation of purported historical slights; the silencing of the news media. The world has seen this before in other countries. The pattern is tried and true; the tough question is how to break it.”

At the same time, German Minister of State for Europe Michael Roth said his country would willingly accept asylum requests from Turks. He said Germany is “open to all those politically persecuted as a matter of principle.”

Finally, in its November 12th issue, The Economist published an article entitled ‘While you were watching Jan / Feb 2017

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Trump…Turkey locks up dissidents: President Erdogan keeps on purging.’ The article concluded with the line, “Turkey’s democracy is on life support. Mr. Erdogan is holding the plug.”

What was happening in Turkey was not lost upon friendly governments. Even as the coup-attempt was unfolding, there were reports of international intelligence agencies intercepting transmissions which suggested that the coup-attempt was being seized upon to consolidate the president’s authority.

This was not entirely unexpected.

Erdogan had for some years begun to act in a more overtly authoritarian fashion. The decline began with the Gezi Park protests of mid-2013 and the serious corruption allegations against Erdogan and his family which surfaced in December 2013.

In August 2014 Erdogan had transitioned from the office of prime minister, where he had substantial formal authority, to the office of president, where his formal authority was largely symbolic and insubstantial. From the outset he made it clear that he intended to push through a constitutional referendum that would confer upon the office of president extensive executive authority. Achieving this required the AKP to perform strongly in the 2015 general election, held in June.

Despite Erdogan’s creeping authoritarianism, as recently as these elections, most observers inside and outside of Turkey were optimistic that Turkey’s democratic cultural institutions would overcome the turbulence caused by one man’s ambitions, and would self-correct. Unfortunately for Erdogan – and, it turned out, Turkey – the June 2015 election results saw the AKP losing support and dropping to just 40% of the popular vote, whilst at the same time the HDP Kurdish party finally crossed the 10% threshold required to take seats in parliament.

Tensions between the government and the large Kurdish minority were already high. On June 5th, just two days before the election, four people were killed and dozens injured when twin bomb blasts rocked a HDP election rally in Diyarbakir in 54

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Turkey’s Kurdish southeast. No actor claimed credit for the attacks but suspicions fell on both the PKK and ISIS. The next day, a young Kurd, Orhan Gonder, was arrested. He was from the southern Turkish town of Adiyaman, less than 200 km north of the ISIS capital of Raqqa. Later reports confirmed that he, like many in Adiyaman, had been recruited by ISIS, and, after spending months with terrorist group in Syria, had been sent back to carry out the bombing of the HDP rally. Erdogan responded to the provocation of the Diyarbakir attack by resuming hostilities against the PKK, as ISIS had hoped that he would do. The resumption of open violence between the Republic and the Kurdistan workers party (PKK) was a clear harbinger of trouble to come.

When a coalition government couldn’t be formed – this “failure” was demanded by Erdogan – snap parliamentary elections were set for November 1st, 2015. This vote was marred by irregularities and threats to free expression. The results, however, were very mixed for the AKP government.

On the one hand, it succeeded in getting its popular vote back to almost 50%, where it had been at the height of its powers. On the other hand, the HDP, which the government accused of being closely linked with the PKK, managed to remain above the 10% threshold required to keep its parliamentarians in office. This meant that the path to a referendum that would confer upon Erdogan true executive powers continued to be blocked. It is not surprising then that the first half of 2016 witnessed a steady slide towards authoritarianism, with major media outlets such as Zaman newspaper and Samanyolu television being seized by the government, while trustees were being assigned to schools and businesses. Many of the media outlets and schools were supposedly linked to the Hizmet movement, inspired by Fethullah Gülen, which Erdogan accused of trying to overthrow his government even before the coup attempt. By now it was very clear the Turkish democracy was ailing as Erdogan was determined to let nothing stop on his way. The crackdown on schools and

businesses linked to the Gülen Hizmet movement surprised outside observers who simplistically described Gülen as “a former ally” of Erdogan sympathetic to his Islamist politics. In reality, Gülen was never close to Erdogan and resisted Erdogan’s attempts to co-opt his support. He also rejected Islamism and advocated democracy as being more true to Islamic values.

Erdogan recognized that the Hizmet was far and away Turkey’s largest civil society movement and that respect for Gülen’s religious authority unparalleled. He was desperate for Gülen’s public support but knew that Gülen’s sufistic, apolitical orientation was at odds with his own fundamentalist, Islamist convictions.

Nevertheless, Erdogan’s AKP attracted many of the same small-town conservative, religious Turks that were drawn to the Hizmet. And throughout its first decade of the AKP government benefited from strong support from the broader Hizmet community, who saw in it Turkey’s best hope for reform as well as respect for religious values.

The simmering tensions between the Hizmet and the AKP, which finally erupted in 2013 with the Gezi Park protests, came not from the grass-roots but from the highly educated intellectuals who served in Hizmet-linked universities, civil society organizations and media outlets.

For ten years, they had uncritically promoted the AKP government but slowly came to recognize that it fell short of the commitment to clean government and democratic reform that they had projected on to it. As they began to speak out tensions gave way to open confrontation.

At the end of 2013 Erdogan was rocked by a ten-billion-dollar “gas for gold” scandal. On December 17, whilst the prime minister was on a state visit to Pakistan, 52 colleagues and associates were arrested, accused of assisting Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab in exchanging Iranian natural gas with gold bullion, in contravention of international sanctions. Four days later 14 further arrests were made and eventually a total of 91 were taken into detention.

Prime Minister Erdogan, already

smarting from critical reporting over the Gezi Park protests, was incensed by “treasonous” reporting on the corruption investigations by Zaman and Samanyolu. He responded by declaring the corruption investigation to be a “judicial coup” and ordered the issuing of government decree on January 7 that saw 350 investigating police officers purged. He accused Fethullah Gülen and “international conspirators” of being a nefarious plot to destabilize his government. Subsequent allegations of supplying weapons to Jihadi fighters in Syria and of buying ISIS oil were also met with harsh crackdowns on the media outlets and journalists responsible. In 2015 it was the secular Cumhuriyet (Republic) newspaper that broke the news of the Turkish intelligence agency MIT being involved in the supply of weapons to Jihadi militia in Syria.

Even without the “gift from God” that was the July 15th coup-attempt, President Erdogan had no trouble steadily consolidating his power. His Western allies, though deeply concerned, had little choice but to watch on quietly and say little. The Turkish military, after all, was the second largest military in the NATO alliance – and this alliance was facing one of its greatest challenges in modern times, as it dealt with the horror of the civil war in Syria and the rise of ISIS in northern Syria and Iraq. Turkey was viewed as an important bulwark against the terrorist group.

This conflict, of course, not only saw hundreds of thousands of lives lost, but five million Syrians forced out of their homes. Turkey, to its credit, accommodated almost three million of these refugees. Nevertheless, many sought to find asylum in Europe, and Turkey became the key to regulating the flow of asylum seekers flooding across the continent.

At the same time, Russia, which had severed ties with Turkey over the shooting down of a Sukhoi Su-24M ground attack jet, by Turkish F16s above the Turkish-Syrian border on the 24th of November 2015, had begun to make overtures of rapprochement.

In the wake of the July 15th coup attempt, Vladimir Putin reached out

to Erdogan offering solidarity and practical friendship in the midst of trials. Suddenly, the prospect of Turkey turning its back upon Europe and the West became an immediate reality. The fact that most of the long serving Turkish generals working in NATO headquarters became victims of the purge along with fellow Western orientated generals back at home raises the real possibility that Turkey might even withdraw from NATO. Given this precarious predicament, Turkey’s Western allies have been mostly muted in their criticism of the developments in Turkey – doing their utmost to keep the NATO alliance intact and to prevent everything from unravelling. By November, however, even this dynamic was not sufficient to mute the expressions of deep concern. The scale and nature of the purge was such that European officials began to draw parallels between what was happening in Turkey in 2016 and what had happened in Germany 80 years earlier.

When the civil war in Syria broke out in 2011, and al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) transitioned into the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Erdogan chose to turn a blind eye to the thousands of foreign terror fighters flooding through Turkey into Syria, believing that support for ISIS and other radical Islamist militia was the lesser of the evils so long as Bashar al-Assad, his erstwhile friend, refused to take his advice and step aside.

Under strong pressure from NATO partners, Turkey reversed its position in early 2015 and began to strongly oppose ISIS. Then, in mid-2016, Turkey swung again and aligned with Russia against the Salafi Jihadi militia in East Aleppo. This development in the second half of last year angered many in Turkey and appears to have been the motivation behind the December 19th assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey by a young police officer who reportedly had strong connections to Erdogan’s AKP party and had worked on numerous occasions in the president’s security detail. The incongruity of this is partly explained by the fact that even as Erdogan turned away from supporting Islamist

extremists in Syria, he continued to use the rhetoric of Islamist extremism to bolster domestic support against those he accused of being behind the attempted coup.

This shooting wasn’t the only attack, as the last year has seen dozens of shootings and bombings committed by both ISIS and the PKK. Such attacks have been more frequent due to the shakeups in the Turkish military and police forces. The practical implication of these crackdowns has been that just as Turkey faces its severest challenges from both Kurdish and Islamist terrorist networks, it is at its weakest point in terms of capacity for counterterrorism.

This goes some way to explaining how the gunmen at the Reina nightclub was able to not only shoot his way into the club and murder dozens, but was then able to make his escape and disappear before being confronted by police. The ruthless efficiency of this killing spree meant that he was in-and-out in 10 minutes. It suggests that the gunman likely had backup support and almost certainly had combat experience. On this occasion, and during the nine attacks previously thought to have been the work of ISIS, the primary victims were not from the more religious half of Turkish society that strongly supports AKP and Erdogan.

Indeed, the first attack in June 2015 was on ethnic Kurds campaigning for the June elections and appears to have been designed to restart open conflict with the PKK. There is every indication that Erdogan will use this latest attack to justify his demand to be given strong executive powers. The media blackout that came immediately after this and previous attacks suggests that he would rather not confront the problem of radical Islamism. But if he thinks that ISIS can be contained and controlled, then he, and Turkey, are in for a year of further nasty surprises. The sad reality in Turkey today is that the collapse of democratic good-governance has made Turkey more vulnerable than ever to threats that even strong democracies struggle to contain.

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d, orl w the air or d d n p rou o des en an er a nce e in t st list pow e l e o v u f vi ot gi ey m ve th o n e a h fac s can ad, t ey h eace. e h r e h t p In t elieve . Inst that bout b tion ing g a c z n ina reali to bri , act

RELIGION Richard Shields

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n a letter to G-20 leaders in 2013 Pope Francis stated, “It is regrettable that, from the very beginning of the conflict in Syria, one-sided interests have prevailed and in fact hindered the search for a solution that would have avoided the senseless massacre now unfolding.” The head of the Roman Catholic Church proceeded to call for “a renewed commitment to seek, with courage and determination, a peaceful solution through dialogue and negotiation of the parties, unanimously supported by the international community.” In hindsight, his words were prophetic. It is now 2017. The atrocities of ISIL, and Boko Haram and the devastation from armed conflict world-wide have increased. The flow of refugees into Europe from Syria has reached epic proportions, testing the ability of diverse and at times conflicting religious cultures to establish mutual understanding and trust. But the situation of ethnic and religious conflict goes beyond narrow Muslim-Christian differences and extends to intra-religious, intra-ethnic, and intra-cultural hostilities.

Sustained commitment and constructive dialogue become difficult when one crisis supplants another in the non-stop flow of information-as-news.

Real resolutions require diplomats and politicians to reach an (increasingly unlikely) agreement as to what is at stake, before rational decisions can be made about what to do. With global political discourse focused on “country” and “region,” “national interest” and “homeland security,” responsive

strategies lose sight of “the people” and their human right to life, safety, and self-determination. Military intervention does not honour that right; nor do Western strategies favouring partisan economic and geo-political options.

The degradation of human dignity and the apparent overwhelming power of evil is a cause of bewilderment for believers in a loving God, the all-merciful Lord of the worlds. From a Christian perspective the words of Pope Francis, in Joy of the Gospel, resonate with me. “Sometimes I wonder if there are people in today’s world who are really concerned about generating processes of people-building, as opposed to obtaining immediate results, which yield easy, quick short-term political gains, but do not enhance human fullness.”

Homeland security or global solidarity?

None of us—neither Christian nor Muslim—stands outside this concern; none is unaffected by the suffering. In a 2013 vigil, Pope Francis prayed that God give all “Christians, and our brothers and sisters of other religions, and every man and woman of good will,” the resolve to “cry out forcefully: violence and war are never the way to peace!” And he offered, in a non-particularistic phrase, the “goodness of creation” as the moral standard for judgment. Those who call “Allah, the Lord of the worlds” and those who call “God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth,” appeal to a moral measure beyond national security or sectarian interests to a shared sense of humanity, whose dignity cannot be negotiated at the tables of political or economic power.

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While calling on divine intercession and protection is an authentic expression of religion, without meaningful deeds on the part of believers, these words become routine and empty.

Moral outrage without decisive action toward significant resolution leads to hypocrisy.

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Against such a profound understanding of human dignity—a dignity that transcends even human legislation—it is difficult to argue in favour of bombing or boots on the ground, which will inevitably feed international crises, create divisions among groups, and erode human hope. It is equally untenable to stand by, numbed and inactive, in the face of the enormous and relentless degradation of humanity.

A creation perspective would allow governmental and legislative policy makers to let go of the Gordian knot of irreconcilable—because partial—positions on what ought to be done. It is difficult enough to define justice in peaceful times – and most difficult when the definition is skewed by particular interests and shared biases that pass for common sense.

On the Catholic side of the dialogue, Pope Francis stresses our moral obligation, not only to respond to violence, but to look at the prejudices that enforce and are enforced by entrenched positions, especially those of cultural and economic exclusion.

One of these prejudices is the idea of distance or of space or territory, where we view boundaries and borders as principles of containment or security—a notion pursued by both terrorists and anti-terrorists. “Giving priority to space means madly attempting to keep everything together in the present, trying to possess all the spaces of power and of self-assertion; it is to crystallize processes and presume to hold them back.” The Pope calls for “giving priority to time ... being concerned about initiating processes rather than possessing spaces.” He readily concedes, however, that while easily imagined such hopes do not readily penetrate the heart and move the will. He blames a mindset that compromises truth and goodness through political self-interest, a “globalisation of indifference,” and an intellectual laziness that can no longer be bothered with authentic “dialogue and reconciliation.”

If the Pope appeals to the conscience of world leaders, he appeals more directly to the conscience of every person.

Both Christians and Muslims have substantive reasons for opposing war, not least of which is the economic hardships suffered by the poor in their respective nations. But we in the West are joined to the victims in the Middle East and Africa, along with all those following dangerous migration routes in hope of new lives. We are connected as well to the impasse to peace created by dominant economic and political structures benefitting the West. As Pope Francis says, “Today in many places we hear a call for greater security. But until exclusion and inequality in society and between peoples are reversed, it will be impossible to eliminate violence.” Economic and political structures have a causal relationship to the oppressive conditions and revolutionary anger that fuel violence not only in the Middle East, but across the world and within our own nation and neighborhoods.

While calling on divine intercession and protection is an authentic expression of religion, without meaningful deeds on the part of believers, these words become routine and empty. Moral outrage without decisive action toward significant resolution leads to hypocrisy.

It is not enough to feel bad about the wanton violence and degradation of life that has become commonplace, or to make moral judgments about the failure of politicians and governments to act effectively. Pope Francis insists, “We need to give priority to actions which generate new processes in society and engage other persons and groups who can develop them to the point that they bear fruit in significant historical events.”

Only communicative action and authentic conversation can contribute to a satisfactory outcome—not one that brings about “eternal peace” (as was the dream of Kant), but that creates the conditions for human progress, an alternative to the current cycle of decline. Here is an appeal to conscience, a summons to act.

Conscience is more than a moral judgement about something “out there;” it makes a claim on the one making that judgment. We are not spectators in an evil world; we are connected to that world, and share in that evil—some by being its direct victims. The continuation of soul-destroying violence threatens to extinguish everyone’s sense of human dignity and the value of life.

Formation of conscience and the task of building a moral community Conscience is often portrayed as a mysterious inner voice that tells us that what we have done, are doing, or thinking of doing is morally good or evil.

The pinch of conscience, in this view, can torment a person until he or she repents. While we may try to dull it, conscience can never be totally silenced.

Conscience is not a moral “app” that works like something independent of who we are. Its range is often limited by bias and culture to individual actions, choices, and attitudes. Moral education for most of us has not included weighing our relationship to or responsibility for the violence, suffering, and pain that is so real in the lives of millions.

However, the incessant reports of unspeakable violence and insufferable circumstances of the lives of countless others is a summons to find a space where we can leave behind the rhetoric that narrows our understanding and feeds the impatience and indifference that leads to the apathy of despair or the anger of militarism. But we must go further in order to become a strong social force.

Because the world’s Muslims and Christians do not belong to a single organization or community in the simplest sense of that word, one cannot expect a spontaneous emergence of a shared understanding and common will that leads to peace. We need a process that fosters the development of a collective moral consciousness among and between Muslims and Catholics, and enables groups and individuals to make decisions and take actions that offer alternatives to war.

Religious leaders must lead and not just moralize. How can they demonstrate that believers are able to act with cooperative, conscientious responsibility? First of all, Muslims must dialogue with other Muslims, and Christians

More than a war for territory or property, this is a struggle for the minds of people. It requires an acknowledgement of the feelings, and even despair, of heartbreak and compassion as a necessary prelude to talking about how to respond.

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In the face of the atrocities multiplying daily in centres of violence around the world, Catholics cannot be spectators; they must be actors. For moral opinion to become formative of public will, and for social justice to become a mass social movement, something has to change.

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with other Christians, about how they can respond in faith to suffering and injustice. An internal discussion is not a substitute, but may be a condition for a Christian-Muslim exchange. It is also a prerequisite for dialogue with other citizens and the formation of public opinion with transformative potential in the face of current fatalism over the possibility of harmony in the world.

The kind of process and dialogue that leads to resolution and action requires structure and organization, which in turn depends on leadership and inspiration. If the religious leaders believe in what they preach, they will recognize this moment as a transformative opportunity, an opportunity to bring their followers together to think seriously about the senseless escalation of violence in our world.

The kind of dialogue that is needed will require coming together in prayerful resolve, to gather often and share at length in order to even begin to gain some understanding of what is happening. A transformative moral consciousness in Islam and Christianity can only take root in the lives of people.

Resistance to the radical rejection of life inherent in escalating global violence is not just a matter of religious morality. Wherever people of conscience raise their voices and act against the de-humanizing intent and consequences of terrorism, we are all summoned to stand with them. Standing up to any threat to humanity is not a “Christian” or “Muslim” issue. But it is one that challenges all believers to make clear what faith means in terms of the real lives of people in tangible solidarity with the victims of violence.

More than a war for territory or property, this is a struggle for the minds of people. It requires an acknowledgement of the feelings, and even despair, of heartbreak and compassion as a necessary prelude to talking about how to respond. We don’t need simplistic or naive ideas. We don’t need to fall into hasty reductionisms that reduce “the whole problem” to this or that. Dialogue must be patient, and, as Pope Francis suggested, it needs us to not be overwhelmed by the urgency, so that we do not lose sight of the other and not hear what they are saying. If neither side learns from the other, nothing is accomplished.

Such a process is risky and can get out of hand. It may be subject to conflict between people with entrenched or simplistic political opinions. But the development of a moral will for peace requires leaders who can help participants learn mutual respect and gain the capacity for conversation.

The hope, however, is that as we learn to listen to one another and that the bonds of inter-religious community will, in the vision of Canadian philosopher Bernard Lonergan, “make the experience of each resonate to the experience of others and arouse in all a drive to understand and an insistence on behaving intelligently that generates and implements common ways, common manners, common undertaking, common commitments.”

In the face of the atrocities multiplying daily in centres of violence around the world, Catholics cannot be spectators; they must be actors. For moral opinion to become formative of public will, and for social justice to become a mass social movement, something has to change. The process of creating a truly human moral consciousness, capable of peace-making, with the credibility and persuasiveness to influence world politics, begins with the recognition that we are not spectators.

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS TO REACH “THE EMERALD HILLS OF THE HEART” QUESTION: What are the pathways to better experience and benefit from journeying into the horizons of our spirituality, which is also called “Emerald Hills of the Heart”?

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irst of all, we should accept the “Emerald Hills of the Heart” as a horizon and a goal. We should try our best for at least a glimpse of those sacred spaces even if it is through a crack in the door, and see their glory with their stars twinkling, the moon and sun rising and setting. It is important to outline basic principles for reaching those targets.

For example, habitual prayers and remembrances are one of the most important vehicles. Prescribed prayers observed in due reverence to the One Who cannot be known is another vehicle to sense the divine. Contemplation that will make people say “We are unable to know You as duly befits” and that will transcend your imagination is yet another vehicle.

Sometimes a person can reach the target quickly because the intermittent distance is short.

Sometimes due to the hardness of his heart, his being closed to meaning, and obstacles like giving importance to appearances, not even forty years is enough for a devotee. The great mystic Junayd al-Baghdadi said that according to his internal observations, the maximum period was 60-70 years.

Imam Ghazzali’s assessment of this matter is a little different.

In his memoirs related to the development of his awakening, he states: “In my first 40-day spiritual retreat I had some awakening. In my second retreat I saw that what I had observed in my first retreat was wrong and I became aware of more profound things. With my third retreat I was able to catch the real horizon.” According to him,

Emerald Hills of the Heart always show the roads to abandoning corporeality and rising to the life stations of the heart and spirit.

three spiritual retreats are needed to reach the desired depth.

Yes, the forty-day spiritual retreats, the ticket and documentation for the journey embarked upon to discover the secrets of the spiritual realms, are at least a fortification of will by drying up the roots of the inclination towards evil and an invigoration of tendencies toward goodness. After this perhaps a door to the realm of meaning can be opened up and a message of transition to other realms can be received. What really matters is a person’s persevering even if it takes years. There is an anecdote related in regard to Jalaluddin Harzamshah: Every day a dog comes to a garbage dump and after foraging for food, leaves. Aware of this situation and following it for days, Jalaluddin Harzemshah asks the dog one day, “What is the secret of your coming here and searching for something everyday although

you never find anything?” The dog replies, “I once found a bone here!” Putting the dog aside, in order to catch a divine horizon it is necessary to touch the doorknob of His door and not leave until an answer is given.

In addition, it is necessary to walk on that path in accordance with its rules of conduct. Otherwise, it is possible to become stranded on the way. For example, in this realm of causes, it is not possible to get anywhere with prayers made haphazardly. Of course, God’s grace is boundless; if He wishes, He can even reward any particular person for what may seem so insignificant to us. However, it should not be forgotten that everything has its own rules. From this respect, those who do not act within prescribed limits, but who say, “I have not been awakened to anything; I did not sense anything,” should first be told about methods that will take them to the target.

If someone cannot attain any awakening, it does not mean that they are of no value and are unable to experience the pleasure of being open to the beyond. God’s mercy is broader and deeper than everything. Perhaps with His mercy He can transport even those who can fulfill only minimum requirements to summits beyond our imagination.

In summary, the Emerald Hills of the Heart are a goal that needs to be reached. In order to do this, first this must be believed in and then the path must be trod in accordance with the rules, unhurriedly, without compromise and without becoming fed up. Yes, the Emerald Hills of the Heart always show the roads to, in the words of Bediuzzaman, freeing ourselves from our animal state, abandoning corporeality and rising to the life stations of the heart and spirit.

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SQUARE

Blınd mıce have vısıon restored

Your ability to read these words relies on your retina, the eye’s nerve center. Light passes through the lens and iris and strikes the retina at the back of the eyeball, which consists of light-sensing rods and cones.

This process allows you to see these letters. When things go awry in the retina, people experience partial or complete loss of vision; to date, no efficient treatment has been found to stop or reverse blindness.

Researchers have been trying to transplant new photoreceptor cells into the retina for the last decade, but the success has been very limited, and the transplanted cells usually did not survive long enough to restore vision. In a recent study, researchers were able to restore vision in completely blind mice by transplanting photoreceptors derived from human stem cells. They demonstrated that the blind mice were able to perceive light as late as 9-months following the transplantation. The key to their success was simultaneously blocking the immune response that causes transplanted cells to be rejected. The researchers determined that the mice which lack the immunodeficient IL2 receptor gamma (IL2rl), a specific immune cell receptor that rejects transplanted foreign cells, experienced longer-term survival of the transplanted cells. These findings give a lot of hope that the same stem cells used to cure blind mice may also be used to treat humans. It is now possible to identify other small molecules or recombinant proteins to reduce interleukin 2 receptor gamma activity in the body, increasing the possibility the body will accept transplanted stem cells.

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Rufu et al. A multiple-impact origin for the moon. Nature Geoscience, January 2017.

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The moon may be formed from a group of smaller moonlets

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Zhu et al. Immunosuppression via loss of IL2rγ enhances long-term functional integration of hESC-derived photoreceptors in the mouse retina. Cell Stem Cell, January 2017.

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The moon’s formation was a unique event, but it remains poorly understood. However it came to be, our moon – like all the moons in the solar system – has a stabilizing effect on our planet. Scientists have always been puzzled why Earth only has one moon, while other planets have multiple – for instance, Saturn and Jupiter have 62 and 67 moons respectively. A new study suggests that the Earth may have had numerous smaller moons at some point, but they crashed together to form our current moon. Earth was born about 4.5 billion years ago, and scientists think the moon began forming a short time later. The leading explanation for the moon’s origin, known as the giant-impact model, suggests that our moon formed when a large protoplanet, Theia, crashed into Earth 4.4 billion years ago, tearing out a moon-sized cloud of debris. But the new study ran 1000 sophisticated simulations modeling this ancient impact and found that instead of one giant collision, the Earth likely experienced many smaller ones. Each of these smaller impacts would have torn away debris that could have coalesced into a moonlet. The current moon was likely formed by the combination of 20 moonlets over the course of 100 million years. While the new model proposes some compelling ideas, it cannot explain how the Earth got its tilted axis, which was also explained by the giant impact model. Experts say more lunar samples through the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program will help us to differentiate between the two models in the near future.

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Mehta et al. Bacterial Carriers for Glioblastoma Therapy.

Molecular Therapy – Oncolytics. December 2016.

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Food poısonıng bacterıa eat cancerous tumors

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Who doesn’t hate food poisoning? Salmonella is responsible for more than a million cases of food poisoning every year. But a team of researchers found that Salmonella might be our best ally in fighting the most aggressive form of brain cancer known to man, glioblastomas. Glioblastoma is an extremely aggressive form of tumor. Patients diagnosed with it have a mean lifespan of only 15 months. The cancer is protected from conventional drug and radiation-based therapies due to the blood-brain barrier.

Surgery is also an imperfect option, because if even a single cancerous cell is left behind, it can spawn new tumors. In a recent study, scientists genetically engineered the bacterium Salmonella typhimurium so that it does not attack the human gastrointestinal tract, but rather the glioblastoma tumors.

Specifically, they made the bacteria deficient in the crucial metabolite purine. Since tumors are packed with purine, genetically engineered bacteria were attracted to the tumors like flies to honey. Scientists also integrated two new genes into Salmonella to produce the compounds Azurian and p53, which both cause cells to self-destruct, specifically in low-oxygen environments such as the interior of a tumor, where bacteria are rapidly multiplying. With this method, both the tumorous cells and bacteria eventually die off over time. A major challenge in treating glioblastomas is that the tumors spread with no clear edge, making them difficult to completely surgically remove. So designing bacteria to actively move and seek out these tumors, and to express their anti-tumor proteins only in hypoxic, purine rich tumor regions, has great therapeutic potential. In rats, the treatment basically doubled the survival rate and lifespan of those suffering from glioblastoma. Although success in rodent-based trials does not guarantee the same for humans, the results are nonetheless impressive and promising.

On Life, Knowledge, and Belief

PUBLISHER The Fountain is published bimonthly by BLUE DOME, INC. 335 Clifton Ave., Clifton, NJ, 07011, USA Tel: (973) 777 2704 - Fax: (973) 457 7334 E-mail: info@fountainmagazine.com Web: www.fountainmagazine.com EDITORIAL Editor Hakan Yesilova Copy Editor Justin Pahl Editorial Advisors Alp Aslandogan, Philip Clayton, Sophia Pandya, Huseyin Senturk, Daniel Skubik, Mustafa Tabanli, Howard Wettstein, Irfan Yilmaz South Asian edition Suat Erguvan CONTACT The Fountain Magazine 335 Clifton Ave., Clifton, NJ, 07011, USA Tel: (973) 777 2704 Fax: (973) 457 7334 E-mail: contact@fountainmagazine.com To submit articles: Correspondence should be addressed to the main office. For electronic submissions please log on www.fountainmagazine.com/fmps SUBSCRIPTIONS US& Canada Individual: $33.00 Institutional: $49.95 International Individual: $36.00 Institutional: $59.95

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Spring flourishes in the heart of autumn Snow melts, ice defrosts, the earth muscles up Let the pessimist keep on in their misery Who knows, how many more blessings are on our way