Reconciled Society within the Perspective of Solomon Model

 

By Prof. Dr. Bunyamin Duran

Friday, 12 August 2011 09:35

 

Introduction

In this study I want to begin with the formulation of Kees who was speaker before me, taking his different phases of human being into account. Then I will try to explore the possibility of reconciled society which can be characterized by personal maturity, political freedom, social equality, spiritual brotherhood and sisterhood and universal anamnestic solidarity. I will make an attempt to set up a model, ‘Solomon Model’ taking many arguments from Nursi’s corpus*.

In this meanwhile I will try to simplify this analyzes through the means of an imaginary spiritual journey under the title of ‘trinity cyclical journey’.

Kees’ formulation of ‘I’ and ‘We’ Kees has formulated the different stages of man and society by pointing out that a man and a society has different social and psychological phases; ‘First I Phase’, ‘Second I Phase’ and ‘First We phase’, ‘Second We Phase’. ‘First I Phase’ represents egoistic, narcissistic and hedonistic human characters. This situation seems very parallel to the Adorno’s notion of ‘infantile narcissism’ and Nursi’s ‘false ego’. ‘First We Phase’ reflects itself as a pseudo society. ‘Second I Phase’ is an individual situation a person begins to criticize all proposals and statements offered society as well as begins to ask question related to relevant statements. This phase is similar to the Kantian responsible ethics. Finally ‘Second We Phase’ represents o social situation in which society emerges in harmony and peace.

I would like to suggest here ‘Solomon Model’ through which I will try to show the possibility of reconciled society. I think it is very similar to the Keesian model. Possible distinctions may be in tone and nuance.

 

Solomon Model

In my opinion, to reach to the Keesian Second I Phase, man has to successfully complete spiritual journey which I derived from an Islamic philosophy and conceptualize in the title of ‘trinity cyclical journey’: from creature to creature; from creature to creator; and finally from creator to creature. Before departing to explore different stages of journey, it will be beneficial to say something about Solomon Model.

 

Solomon model: balance between spiritual and material

Why Solomon? First of all Solomon is a significant common figure between Muslims, Christians and Jewish. However Solomon isn’t accepted as a prophet by Christians, but he is one of the famous prophet according to the Qur’an. Actually, in the Qur’anic view he was not only a worldly king, but at the same time he was a great prophet. What we derive from the Qur’an about the characteristics of Solomon are the followings: first he has many moral qualities, such as thankfulness, humbleness, love, compassion, respect, hardly working, adherent of peace and security and so on. Second he was very pious person; he had a faith that God is creator of all things and gives him whatever he asked. Third he had a conviction that he has to work hardly in worldly affairs and also be responsible for his own personal choices. As a result of those characteristics he was deeply obedience to God. But this obedience was not a blind one but obedience based on wisdom. (21/78-79) His worldly position, precisely, was open to a narcissistic and arrogant attitude. Even though he was given nearly all material and immaterial productive powers, he has conciseness that he has to avoid as a political leader from all narcissistic and arrogant decisions. He must be a servant to Almighty God. (27/19) Furthermore, he had deeply love and compassion for both fellow men and animals. The tales concerning his lovely relation with a racehorse, a given bird and an art are mentioned in the Qur’an in detail. In short, Solomon’s life reflects an ideal synthesis between spiritual and material life. His personal and social life can be viewed as a reconciled life. That is to say, his life style doesn’t ignore material world for the sake of spiritual one and vice versa.

 

Trinity Cyclical spiritual journey and Nursian Ego

From creature to creature For Nursi, the man in the ‘First I Phase’, as implied above, in a pseudo identity, when he begins to discover his own faculties; his faculty of reasoning, imagining, loving, knowing, willing, making and so on, he thinks of himself as an extremely powerful, creative being, so to say, a kind of god. However, this feeling is very vital, as we shall see later on, in the course of journey, especially in the process of understanding God’s attributes and manifestation. The most important point here is that this man has to continue his journey further, without stuck to this very primitive situation. He needs, of course, at this point a powerful reasoning. Those who have no capacity of deeply reasoning they hardly transcend this psychological barrier. Indeed, if he doesn’t use deep reasoning to discriminate between his own capacity and fellow men’s, he will remain in an illusion believing that he is a unique god in universe. To be able to free from this under-developed narcissistic stage he must begin a new mental and emotional journey, namely a journey from himself to other fellow men. This journey is grounded on a ‘comparing activity’.

Some people have ability to transcend successfully this stage by comparing his capacity with others. Thus he can discover a reality that not only himself but at the same time other people has similar capacity. Even he can see and understand that some people have knowledge, skill, and ability to discover, for example, more than he does. And then he will begin to admire and take other people examples. This phase is, however, very important progress compared with former one. But, it is not real ‘Second I Phase’ yet. It is possible that in this phase he may be under arrest by a negative nationalistic or pseudo occidentalistic and orientalistic traps.

In order to reach to a humanistic phase he needs to understand that human being has a dignity and equality regardless of their nationality and religion. All man is equal as children of Adam and Eve without any discrimination. In addition to this, he also needs to realize that men himself is an aim, not an instrument at all.

From an Islamic perspective this social and ethical phase is not ideal one, because this phase may include a polytheistic content, namely exaggeration of principle the value of human being to a degree that it replaces God. There is a fundamental principal in Islam that nothing, beyond God, has right to be worshiped. Thus, man has to determine the exact place and value of human being and God. Even though man is a very significant khalif of God, but it can not be God so that it is worshiped. In order to overcome this barrier he should continue to extra reasoning reaching to the belief in God as the absolute and perfect.

 

From creature to creator

At this stage traveler is able to discover the existence of God and begins to compare his own qualities with God’s attributes. At this moment he begins to think about the creator of the things. His starting point is a very simple analogy: in this world nothing can come into existence without an actor and agent; even very primitive relics. Everything never delegated to the blind power of nature, but they are attributed to a historical actor. If so, how can perfect and complex mechanisms and organisms be delegated to the blind power of the nature or to the incidence? So, by such reasoning he will discover the creator of all things. When he comes to a knowledge concerning God’s existence, God would create a faith in his heart. Thus, coming into knowledge is an epistemological human activity, while creating faith based on relevant knowledge is a God’s gift. From a given Islamic point of view, one may conclude from that that there is no divine coercion on and discrimination between man to be believer or disbeliever. Everybody has capacity to come to believe in God. He is, then, responsible from his choice; believing or disbelieving. Another important theological reality which one can conclude from here is that a faith attained trough reasoning activity is a healthy faith. On the contrary, a faith which is inherited from society, without reasoning is a pseudo-faith. Hence there is sharp debate among theologians whether the faith of imitators real faith or pseudo-faith. If so, all people have equal chance to be believer and disbeliever, of course, if they have enough intellect. As we shall see later, those who has no enough intellect, he is not responsible to believe in God.

 

Reconciliation between reason and revelation

In this process the role of reason is very decisive. First of all there is no responsibility for man who has no effective reason through which he is able to discriminate between essences. Whoever has reasoning capacity, then, he is responsible to come into believing in God, even without any divine guidance and revelation. This is a pure human activity. In this context nearly all theologians have taken Al-Farabi’s notion of intellect into account and applied it into theological issues. Al-Farabi divides intellect into four categories: potential, actual, acquired and the active. The first three are the different states of the human intellect and the fourth is divine one. The potential intellect represents the potentiality of grasping, like baby’s intellect which is shared by all human beings. And the actual intellect is a phase of intellect through which man is able to distinguish between essences, for example, between iron and gold, between good and evil. The acquired intellect is a degree of intellect by this, man is able to grasp deep relations between things and events, like intellect of philosophers. Whoever has the actual intellect is responsible for understanding God’s existence and His qualities. Namely, the degree of actual intellect is the starting point of all religious and ethical responsibilities, in terms of believing in God and being a good human. It should be worthy to note here that there is a fundamental distinction between instrumental reason and objective reason in terms of reasoning.

Instrumental reason is a human skill expresses itself in success of physical issues, such as skills in economics, engineering, medicine and so on. On the contrary, objective reason (ontological reason) is a human capacity by this, man is able to grasp the essence of things, such as the essence of nature, history, God, human lot and so on. Some scientists, for instance, may have very bright instrumental reason, but they not hove objective reason. So, they will not have ability to think and understand the essence of history, God, human lot and so on. But they may be a great physicists and economist. On the other hand, a philosopher may be ignorant in simple daily affairs; however, he is able to discover of very deep social and ethical laws, for instance.

By deep reasoning he will able to come to belief in the existence of God. At this stage of journey it is enough to be believer before God. But he lives in a social and political circle; he has to declare his inner identity before public. As we shall see later on, the declaration is very important to build a society which based on trust and transparency. Reason provides ability to think only about God’s existence, not God’s Quidity. We can not speculate on God’s Quidity, because God’s Quidity transcends our reason. It is naturally beyond our reasoning capacity. Men can understand God’s qualities and actions starting from his own qualities and actions. Through analogy and comparison he understands that he has life, also God has life, he has knowledge, also God has knowledge, he has love and also God has love and so on. At the end he recognizes that God’s qualities are absolute, while his faculties are very limited and weak. One can read the following tradition of Prophet of Islam within this perspective: “God created man in the image of the All-Merciful One.” It means that God’s actions, attributes, and Names may be understood through human actions and qualities. Since man is in a form shows the Divine Name of All-Merciful in its entirety.

Through the insight of belief he will begin to love God and then His entire creatures. Also he will feel a brotherhood to all the people who have perfection. Through his new identity he will free largely from the fear of dead, since death is not destruction or nothingness; it is not eternal separation, or non-existence. Rather, it is being discharged by God. It is being dispatched to eternal bliss, to men’s true home. "(Nursi, Twenty Letters, The Seventy Phrase) In this way he would feel an infinite happiness due to the happiness of all his friends. (Nursi, Fourth Ray, First Degree)

 

Encountering with revelation

When he comes to believe in God, he also comes to believe in His revelations and messengers. The key question here is that how he understands content of revelation? It is obvious that revelation is given us in a written text. We know that the written text is exposed with hermeneutical problems. That is to say, there must be a number of types of verses in openness and vagueness in sense; namely some of them may be metaphoric while others clear and obvious. How can one distinguish between metaphoric and obvious verses? Some verses, for instance, express God’s Encompassing All-Power, while others human freedom. Furthermore, some verses tell us an anthropomorphic God, while others a transcendent one. Based on relevant reality one can bring to a conclusion that it is impossible to understand God based on Text only. He needs a further guide to help him to be able to discriminate between verses. This guide is reason, according to Muslim philosophers and some theologians. They take the principles of reason as a criterion to distinguish metaphoric and non-metaphoric. What reason tells us that it is metaphoric; it must be understood as a metaphoric and make an attempt to interpretation in the light of reason and vice versa. Therefore, human reason is very decisive means to understand Islamic content and God’s desire.

The decisive role of reason is very important also in believing in God’s qualities. There is no verse, for example in the Qur’an which attributes qualities to God. But there are many beautiful names which the Qur’an mentions in detail. Depending this reality some scholars, like Salafiyyun, avoid attributing any quality to God. The position of Sunni scholars is very interesting in relevant to Qualities; their stating point is logical relation. They argue that there is a logical interrelation between names and adjectives, all names are derived from a given adjective. Although there is no verse which attributes qualities to God, but we must do this due to relevant logical necessity. In this way, it can be said, a great part of Sunni theology is grounded by reason and worldly logic.

Loving God is an action depends upon both reason and emotions It is generally known, that loving is an emotional relation more than a reasonable one. But it is wrong. Emotions are very important tools to love God, as we shall see later, without reason, emotions couldn’t be sufficient to love God. If so, the crucial question here is how man is able to love God? We know that man is created in a situation that his heart is filled with love and compassion. But his love generally is devoted to mortal and finite things. It is quite normal. In addition to this he has capacity to change his love’s direction from mortal to immortal One. This change fortunately occurs without any decrees in his love; since change takes place only in the content of love, more than in the volume. We know that all parents have very refined compassion for their kids. This compassion may be very important starting point to reach to love of God. Hence baby is point of concentration of all Names of God. When one attempts to contemplate on baby he sees and understands that baby is a very bright mirror of God’s manifestation. Departing from baby, then, he/she begins to love and admire God. Taking compassion into consideration it is may be said that there are not seventy thousand veils between mother and God but only one. Mother can eliminate this veil very easily by her compassion. Her contemplation on baby is enough to connect with God. Compassion is the first way through which a person can easily bind his own heart to God. The second one is brotherly love. But this way is somewhat difficult in comparison with the first. It is a heart activity; it functions as changing the direction of love from mortal things to immortal One. It occurs by discovering the contingency and mortality of beloved worldly things. This occurrence can take place also by deep reasoning, as well as feeling and observation process. One has to feel the pain of contingency and finiteness of beloved things by witnessing the deprivation of them again and again. Nursi emphasizes this situation by saying that: ‘Indeed, man loves firstly himself, then his relations, then his nation, then living creatures, then the world and the universe. He is connected with all these spheres. He may receive pleasure at their pleasure and pain at their pain. However, since nothing in this world is stable, man's wretched heart is ever wounded. Because man loves things believing that they are eternal. But worldly beloved things are exposed with mortality and finite. (Nursi, Twenty Fourth Word, Fifty Branches)

Through feeling contingency of beloved things some people may come to an understanding that their love is a nominal love, not real one. Since they are going to nothingness, they don’t posses any sustainable pleasure. The pleasures which they possess are like a honey which mixed with poison. It is nothing more than an illusion. They, then, think that they have to abandon nominal love and direct their heart to immortal and eternal One. When he begins to love God he loves all creatures in the sake of God, then all things will begin to seen to him as a letter and product of God’s beautiful names. He will see all things as very important gifts of God which are given to him.

Shortly man completes this part of journey trough the cooperation of reason and emotions.

 

From creator to creature

This stage is not a final point of journey, he must continue to his journey further; namely he should return from creator to the creature with his baggage which attained during the journey. In the following journey he would be need the guidance of revelation to build a good society based on love, respect and solidarity. At this stage reason largely shares its authority with revelation, theological doctrines, religious experiences, parables, moral principles, daily practices, and rituals. Since this phase offers a fascinating experience, he may lose his conciseness of real identity and may want psychologically remain there. But the journey is not a complete yet. He may isolate himself from social and political world, being content with God’s love and manifestation. To be a perfect mature man he has to return to the human world in which all contradictions are blended each other. He has to share his faith and experiences with his fellow men by returning again to the human world. He has to spend effort to build a world in which human dignity and justice is rendered as a main aim. In short, he has to return to the world to realize Upholding the Word of God.

 

Upholding the Word of God: jihad

Upholding the Word of God has two dimensions; first one is related to one’s inner development; the second, to one’s social and political improvement as well as his relations with other societies such as secular society and non-Muslim society, namely dialogue activity. First dimension is expressed in a tradition of Prophet of Islam, he said when they were returning from a battle: "We now return from the small struggle (Jihad Asqhar) to the big struggle (Jihad Akbar)". His companions asked, "Oh Prophet of God, what is the big struggle?" He replied, "The struggle against nafs (Ego). (Adûnî, Keşfu'l-Hafâ', I, 425)

One’s struggle against one own nafs is very crucial operation in his journey. Even it can be said that without inner training and discipline one not able to reach to a situation of maturity. The elements which constitute human maturity are unlimited, but it is possible to reduce all of them to these: love other, solidarity, honesty, trust and so on. The importance of love is strongly expressed in a saying of Prophet. He said: 'You will not enter Paradise until you have faith, and you will not have faith until you love each other. Shall I direct you to something which if you fulfill you will love one another? Spread peace among yourselves.' This love is not sexual love, but brotherly love. Sexual love is a kind of love based on instinct. As you know this takes place only among two persons, while brotherly love extents to all fellow men, fellow creature as well as God. Brotherly love is a bunch of activities more than an emotional feeling. It is an activity of giving, as Erich Fromm pointed out, more than receiving. It rises on the ground of some significant human actions: on knowledge based on wisdom, judgment based on justice, moral responsibility, friendly alliance and finally lovely unity. We know that only mature man is able to love his fellow men and fellow creature. Let me cite how a love rises and establishes in man very briefly. It can be said that the more successful he is in his journey, the more love he does. The key question here is that how one can successfully attain that effective brotherly love. Actually, there are number of obstacles to prevent man from this brotherly love. These barriers range from selfish love to addiction, from hedonistic inclination to reification, alienation and commodity fetishism and so on.

As Nursi points out that the source of love is perfection. That is to say perfection is itself beloved. Whatever and whoever have perfection they beloved automatically. Therefore there is no discrimination among beloved, regarding its nationality, class, or religion. The Qur’an gives permission to Muslims to marriage to the members of the People of the Book to build a lovely and a friendly relationship. Main condition is chastity. When he/she married to a non-Muslim he/she has to love him/her. Marriage without love is only a strategic action. We know that the strategic aim in marriage contradicts with the essence of marriage. It means that there is no discrimination between Muslims and non-Muslims in love. In this context, Nursi says that not all attributes of a non-Muslim must be necessarily immoral; some of them may be moral; likewise not all qualities of Muslims are necessarily moral. Some of them, unfortunately, may be immoral. Thus, then, Muslims have to love non-Muslims who have good attributes, such as trust, solidarity, chastity, truthfulness and so on. Other moral principles are also very important both in individual and social life. The basic difference between hypocrite and believers, according to Prophet of Islam, lies in these three universal principles: 1-when the believer speaks, he speaks the truth; the hypocrite lies. 2-the believer restores exactly whatever is given to him in trust; the hypocrite betrays his trust. 3- the believer keeps his word when he gives it; the hypocrite breaks his word.

There is an interconnection between freedom and honesty; namely between honesty and democracy. The honesty, in the strict full sense, in my opinion, can only be attained in climate of freedom; all autocratic systems are destructive to honesty. Also honesty is main essence of democracy; without honesty there is no democracy, likewise without democracy there is no honesty. One form of honesty is the principle of keeping promise. It is necessary to dwell on this a little, for the possibility of both man planning his human future, and his living together with others in particular joint fields, is based on whether or not this principle is properly practiced. The healthy functioning of family, business and political life in society is tied to keeping their words. Keeping in mind the Prophet’s words, we may make the following generalization: the stronger the power of belief of the members of a society, the more they keep their promise. The second aspect of Upholding the Word of God is economic and scientific development.

 

Economic development: ‘land of milk and honey’

There is a close relationship between economic development and Upholding the Word of God by Nursi. Upholding the Word of God means a bunch of actions directed to build a society based on justice, wisdom, human dignity, solidarity, chastity, brotherhood and sisterhood and so on. These can be applied to daily life only with economic and material development. Taking this reality into consideration Nursi says that Upholding the Word of God in our century can only be fulfilled by economic and material development. Similarly he says: “We shall wage jihad with the weapons of science and industry against the most danger enemies of Upholding the Word of God, which are ignorance, poverty, and polarization,”

To reach to this social stage as a society in general, and as a globe in particular, our traveler will feel himself that he has to take responsibility to improve economic and scientific conditions. And he will begin to arrange his own life in the direction of Upholding the Word of God. So, he will work hardly to build a social cohesion in which either social welfare or peace and harmony would be attained. Our traveler will be aware of the fact that Upholding the Word of God doesn’t exclude dialogue and cooperation with non-Muslims, thinking that it is impossible to build global peace and cohesion without dialogue between secular and religious and also between Muslims and non-Muslims.

 

Dialogue between secular and religious community

At this stage he will reach a conviction that he is living in a plural society. Pluralism, then, is not the sheer fact of plurality alone, not simply tolerance and not simply relativism. Rather it involves active engagement with people. Pluralism requires that people make a genuine effort to understand their similarities and differences through encounter with one another. In modern (or post modern) society polarization among different cultures as well as different communities is a predominant reality. There are many suspects and prejudices among secular and religious society as well as among Muslims and non-Muslims. Unfortunately this gab is increasingly widening in our age parallel to the depth of secularization process on one hand and authoritarian inclination on the other hand. Philosopher Habermas, among others, is aware of this fact and he spends many philosophical efforts to mitigate this tension. His very new theory, post secular society might be seen as a well-designed project in this direction.

In the views of Muslims Nursi’s and Fethullah Gülen’s -who has been inspired by Nursi, shall be taken into account in dialogue process. Let me explore Nursi’s idea very briefly.

Nursi’s expectation and global peace Nursi hopes that Muslim and Western society eventually will attain a global peace and harmony. His optimistic expectation was based on the possibility, even necessity of dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims, Jewish and Christians.

According to the hope of Nursi, Western civilization, in general sense, would encounter with the wisdom of the Qur’an and then its positive side would be dominant. By this way human being will attain a globe peace and harmony. (Nursi, Damascus Sermon)

 

History does not move linear, but cyclical

According to Nursi, history does not move linear, but cyclical; time does not run on a straight line so that its beginning and end draw apart from one another. Rather, it moves in a circle, like the motion of our globe. Sometimes it displays the seasons of spring and summer as progress and sometimes the seasons of storms and winter as decline. Just as every winter is followed by spring and every night by a morning, mankind, also, shall have a morning and a spring. (Nursi, Damascus Sermon) What Nursi is saying here that mankind has capacity to build a world where murderers don’t triumph and innocents be protected perfectly. Furthermore it’s possible to build a victimless society just a society as expected from Messiah, Jesus at the end of world. Actually Nursian messianic notion and interpretations assume a historical cycle in which there is no innocent community. This perfect historical period would be achieved, according to Nursi, together by Muslims and Christians, through efficient cooperation.

 

Dialogue and cooperation between believers

The goal of interfaith dialogue is the transformation of long standing feelings and misconceptions that Muslim, Jews and Christians have toward one another. Interfaith dialogue moves beyond simply learning about the other to an active engagement with Islam, Judaism or Christianity. Interfaith dialogue, resting on good will, objective studies, and positive cooperation, improves the following elements: 1) the ability to enter into another religious tradition without losing one's boundaries, 2) movement beyond tolerance to a genuine pluralism, and 3) keener awareness of both similarities and differences among religious traditions. By processing the interfaith dialogue, the trust, openness and respect between believers will be established. This atmosphere can be achieved by deeply committing own faith traditions, by accepting the critics on own traditions, by knowing about and respecting others traditions, and by keeping the importance of educational processes in promoting transformations of longstanding feelings and misunderstandings in mind.

 

Peace, reconciliation, and friendship between Muslims and Christians

Nursi was aware that Muslim-Christian relations were not limited to an alliance of believers in critically confronting the dangers of modernist ideology, to the resolution of conflicts, but should move in the direction of peace, reconciliation, and even friendship. Five years before his death (1955), in supporting the Baghdad pact, he noted that an advantage of the pact was not only that Turks would gain 400 million brothers and sisters among Muslim peoples, but would also gain “the friendship of 800 million Christians” and be a step towards the peace that was needed. Also he argued that according authentic traditions of the Prophet of Islam that the end of time the truly pious among the Christians will unite with the People of The Koran and fight their common enemy, irreligion. And at this time, too, the people of religion and truth need to unite sincerely not only with their own brothers and fellow believers, but also with the truly pious and spiritual ones among the Christians, temporally refraining from the discussion and debate of points of difference in order to combat their joint enemy-aggressive atheism. (Nursi, Twentieth Flash, Second Cause)

 

Islam and Interfaith Dialogue

Here rises a crucial question: does the Qur’an provide the needs of dialogue among Muslims and non-Muslim? What is the fundamental approach of the Qur’anic to the dialogue? Do we have a right of interpretation of some verses, which are opposed to the dialogue? Do we have also, a right to prefer some verses in the place of others? The Qur’an and the interfaith dialogue In spite of a few verses, the Qur’an is an important religious source for supporting the interfaith dialogue and learning. Based on the Qur’ans’ verses we can attain the following stages of dialogue:

1-Encountering

2-Learning of the common principles

3-Mutual confidence and

4-Social, economic and political relations.

In the first stage the dialogue necessitates the mutual meeting and communication; because there couldn’t be a dialogue and encounter without meeting and communicating. The following verse encourages communications and meeting among people: ‘O mankind! We have created you from a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know one another. Surely the most honorable of you in the sight of God is the most pious of you. Indeed God is All-knowing, All-Aware.’ (49/13) The meeting and encountering are necessary human actions to eliminate misunderstandings and prejudices among people and to establish a feeling of security among them. The encountering is also the first step towards mutual respect among people.

It is important to note here that the meeting and encountering process is different from an ordinary and superficial conduct and contact, but it means a realization of mutual deep relations and an actual learning process.

In the second stage the dialogue necessitates the searching of common principles among believers. It is evident that the unity of God is the common principle among Christian, Muslim and Jewish. For this reason the Qur’an calls all believers to union in the common principles. (Qur’an, 3/64) According to the Qur’an the God of Christians, Muslims and Jews is the same God: “And do not dispute with the people of earlier Scriptures, save in a good manner; except with those of them who do wrong, and say: we believe in what has been revealed to us, and what has been revealed to you, and our God and your God is one, and to Him do we submit.” (Qur’an, 29/46)

In the third stage the Qur’an encourages individual dialogue among believers through marriage. In my opinion, the best way to realize dialogue among different religious persons can be found through marriage. The Qur’an allows the marriage of Muslim man with Christian and Jewish woman. “All that is good and pure has today been permitted to you, and the food of the people of the scripture is permissible to you, and your food is permissible to them, and you are permitted to marry chaste believing woman and chaste woman from among the people who were given earlier scriptures….” (Qur’an, 5/5)

 

The dialogue with unbelievers

In fact, Qur’an encourages dialogue and good discussions, not only between Muslims and other god-fearing people, but also with unbelievers. There is an interesting verse in the Qur’an, which explains the style of relationship between Moses and the Pharaoh of Egypt that is an appropriate religious source for us, as a method of religious dialogue and discussion. According to the relevant verse, God had ordered to Moses and his brother Aaron (Harun) to go to the Pharaoh of Egypt and to speak to him in a gentle way: “Go both to Pharaoh, surely he has become inordinate; then speak to him (mildly) a gentle word, perchance he may mind or fear.” (Qur’an, 20/43-44)

Another verse of the Qur’an advises Muslims to realize good relations with all societies of those who have not hostile feelings against Muslims: “God forbids you not with regard to those who have not fought you in the cause of religion, nor expelled you from your homes, that you should be considerate and deal justly with them, surely God loves the just.” (Qur’an, 60/8). This verse has to be regarded as a theological guaranty for the political and social peace and harmony between religious and secular societies.

 

Conclusion

The Keesian Second I Phase can be attained through the Trinity Spiritual Cyclical Journey. But, the crucial question here is that how this journey be completed successfully by a person living in a refined secularized milieu and despotic society?

* I took materials relevant to said Nursi from the following link: http://www.saidnur.com/en/index.htm

 

http://www.bduran.nl/bduran/artikelen/2-articles-in-english/117-reconciled-society.html