Respect for Humankind

Loving and respecting humanity merely because they are human is an expression of respect for the Almighty Creator. The other side of the coin, loving and showing respect to only those who think the same as one thinks, is nothing but egotism and self-worship. More than this, it is irreverent and self-conceited behavior to hurt the feelings of others who may not think exactly as we think, but who still are on the same main road with us in their thoughts and visions.

We dream of a generation who will embrace and build the future upon interpreting problems not according to the sources or reasons from which they arise, but with respect to their ideals. If we are passengers who are on different paths and using different strategies, but all heading for the same destination, then why should we defame the others who are with us on this sacred journey that has such a lofty goal?

The circumstances that will shape humanity in the future, in particular current world affairs, are forcing us to act with utmost care and alertness; in fact, they are forcing us to do so to such an extent that any decision hastily taken for temporary measures will result in errors that have no compensation. The architects of the future are obliged to build their world on the foundations of what human love and respect stand for and what they appear to be.

With its many dimensions, the modern world has pushed humanity into many dark alleys. And we have come face to face with many problems, the nature of which we have no idea. We are trying to cope with these problems, but they are extremely slippery and inconsistent, and in due proportion the outcomes are full of contradictions. There are thousands of Khidrs who are committed to fetch the water of life from Mount Qaf for humanity, but none of them possess any sign of the elixir of immortality. Despite all the efforts of these people who are “apostles-to-be,” respect for the human soul has been severely challenged by real dangers.

We have struggled for many years in this way; nevertheless, we have not accomplished any synthesis that will constitute the pillars of tomorrow. This has indeed been impossible. Our feelings and thoughts have promised and brought about discrete things, and we were like musicians with a broken record and an incomplete composition, swaying from one door to another, looking for a producer. When every individual denies all the other truths because of the portion of truth which they hold in their hands, and when they compel others to stick to their respective portions, will it ever be possible to have ideas line up one after another, to attain new syntheses, or to discover remedies that save? Can this ever be possible while some are harassing others with accusations of unbelief and sinning, or even physically assaulting them?

The present situation that we have reached today is very dramatic and thought-provoking. Those who walked side-by-side in the past are strangers to one another today. The truths and untruths have been shifted, in accordance with group preferences, from their foundational pillars to rest on slippery rails. Under such chaotic conditions, it is impossible to discern either the loftiness of the goal or the differences of the means to attain it.

Humanity today appears to have become fixated on a single flower alone, although they had set out to enjoy the spring. They have lost all their hopes for reaching the goal that is on this path; the means to do so are what they have been fighting for. Their efforts and actions are merely to engage in effort and action. Just like a guide who has forgotten the responsibility of serving the temple and their servanthood to God, who is absorbed by trying to entertain the visiting tourists, so too have those who devoted themselves to a clique or a party today become foreign and indifferent to the ideal and the goal.

The humanity of our time has been imprisoned by focusing on one flower on the way to the spring, and has been deceived by a drop while chasing the ocean. I feel that such slavery will be impossible to overcome until we have liberated humanity and given them a new outlook. We are burdened with the task of expressing the truth . . . I wish that we had been able to have done so!

No matter how charming and enchanting the atmosphere that catches the eye or fills the heart is there is no permission for us to forget the truth to which we are committed. We cannot stay alien toward each other while we are in the same camp. We do not have a monopoly of the good and the beautiful; therefore we cannot be allowed to wage a war with the passengers who are heading to the same destination but on a different path.

We may have some criticisms about the path and system of someone who thinks differently from us; this is an expression of minds that operate in different ways. But, if we are striving to reach the same horizon, we must at least respect the way others think. This is a prerequisite of heading in the same direction, sharing the same belief, utilizing the same terminology, and finally and above all, of respecting the sacred meaning glorified by God Almighty.

Let us be respectful to humankind! Let us respect the exalted truths they possess. Let us love them because of their Almighty Creator. If we can raise a community upon this perspective, people will eventually recover and they will manage to compensate for whatever they have lost.

Mr. Fethullah Gulen

Gulen was born in 1941 into a traditional family of five boys and two girls in the Pasinler district of Erzurum. His father, Ramiz Efendi, was a government-employed imam who performed his duties in various regions.Erzurum lies in the northeast of Turkey, and it is socio-culturally very conservative. It is a town that has, for long centuries, reflected the basic religious and national values in its social make-up.

Gulen spent his childhood in an atmosphere of traditional dervish orders and religious schools (madrasas) that defined and perpetuated conservative values. He had an insatiable curiosity and a love of knowledge. Thus, it was impossible for the limited surroundings of his town to satisfy his intellectual desires. At a young age, he directed his mind and attention to cultural, political, and social events in the outside world. Gulen remembers that during his first years in the madrasa, from time to time, he would focus on social problems. As he grew up, he came to discover the world of art and intellectual activities of his immediate social world. He completed his madrasa education within a short time, but he never had an opportunity to receive an official education.

Those years were the years when the Turkish Republic had just lost its founder and had yet to build its institutions and establishments. Since the Ottoman Reformation (Tanzimat) period, the country had been, and still was, witness to many political, economic, and socio-cultural problems. The country’s intellectuals experienced a fall from grace; they felt they were part of a defeated and lagging Islamic civilization. There were dozens of intellectual problems that were discussed over and over again. These problems had no obvious resolution and were left to the state to solve. The country’s intellectuals were too tired to speak of even the simplest of matters. Issues having to do with Islam and religious social life already seemed long buried. Turkish democracy was fragile, oscillating between a single-party and multi-party system. Political and sectarian fights, inner feuds, continuous economic crises, poverty, and numerous other problems caught hold of Gulen’s young mind. He thought of the Muslim world’s two-centuries-long decline and tried to find remedies that could reverse it. Gulen revisited these problems through the perspective of contemporary cultural values. He thought it was imperative to filter the most essential elements of issues that had been lost in complex detail, in order to organize them once again to form new areas of will and enthusiasm.

In the last two centuries, two lines of thought were influential in the philosophical and political viewpoints that were put forward to explain and bring solutions to the decline in the intellectual and religious circles of Turkish society, and thus to facilitate participation in the world of modern civilization. One of them was extreme conservatism, and the other was based on rejection of the historical legacy—of both traditions and social practices. The latter preferred to join the world of Western civilization without questioning the process and freed itself from its traditional social identity. The former interpreted the dynamics of progress totally within the boundaries of the tradition with a conservative mindset; the latter defined progress through the material and cultural values of Western civilization and the way of life these values produced. Naturally, there were those who proposed a third or a fourth way, and there were some who advocated a synthesis of the first two.

Fethullah Gulen Hocaefendi emerged from a traditionalist community. Accordingly, he progressed on a path defined by ready-made models and traditional norms. His close vicinity was not very likely to welcome new interpretations which would be considered “out of order.” This is why his first initiatives encountered a conservative reaction. Gulen is a man devoted to traditional values. Over the years, however, he has never shied away from bringing traditional cultural values face to face with contemporary Western civilization. In that respect, his enterprise contains elements that bring new openings for the contemporary and the traditional in both theoretical and practical terms. From the first period of his religious and social activities up to his later educational activities, his mission has been to illustrate that religion and traditional cultural values, on the one hand, and scientific facts, on the other, do not contradict one another. On the contrary, they support one another and they can be put to the service of humankind in genuine harmony. Gulen has never hidden his religious identity. He has always acknowledged with self-confidence that he perceives this world to be nothing more than what he learns from his deep religious experience. He believes that religious identity and practice are not separate from humanity’s social presence. In that respect, he has a worldview consistent with his beliefs. He stresses the idea that a genuinely sincere and religious character would benefit the state and the society. Contemporary thinkers have generally concentrated on the state, city, and economy. Gulen, however, has directed his attention to the human being that lies at the heart of all this. According to him, the most important problem of contemporary civilization is education. If the individual is virtuous, he or she will be virtuous in all things: the state, the city, and the economy. Gulen, however, does not consider the issue of the human being to remain a purely intellectual topic. He has transformed his considerations into a serious project of social practice.

Conservative attitudes tend to hold that in the face of new issues, following traditional precepts gives one more confidence. New ways of looking at things can be noteworthy to the extent that they are in keeping with the accepted arguments that have been formed in the past—that is, in the light of traditional values and norms. Such a perspective abstains from adding new interpretations and experiences. Gulen tried to formulate a new way of proceeding, a new way that has a firm hold on both the confidence that tradition gives and on the new social values. This was a greatly incorporative attitude.

As a young man, Gulen found himself in a position to deal with two different cultures, Islam and the West. Beginning three generations before him, people had experienced an identity crisis between these two cultures and civilizations. Gulen had a good view of the transforming cultural view of his age. Rather than falling into emotional or ethical despair in the face of social and institutional transformations occurring in Turkey and the world in general, he did not shy away from drawing on both individual and traditional experience while actively engaging with current social transformations by way of conscious participation. He developed a perspective that fed his personal, ethical, and cultural ideals with new repertoires of knowledge.

As early as the age of fifteen, Gulen entered an atmosphere thick with such thoughts, and he was a young man who had already matured in thought. Both the environment of his family and the conservative madrasa circle in which he grew up had led to this early maturation. Inside himself, he already had spiritual experiences, and his mind was rich with great enthusiasm and activity.

Source: http://www.fgulen.org