What a fantastic story. This is the way that peace and morality can be gained back, through the individual efforts of great men such as he. Makes me proud of my Turkish ancestry on my maternal grandmother's side ;-)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081028.wturkey28/BNStory/International/home?cid=al_gam_mostview
How Kurdish Mr. Fix-It resolves blood feuds
In Turkey, where disputes last decades and can lead to loss of life, the 'Peace Father' works his magic with words, tears
DIYARBAKIR, TURKEY — Murat and Farida didn't know about the feud between their families when they first met at the university in this stone-walled town, a place where residents cling to long memories and ancient traditions. They found out only when Murat went home to tell his family, the Kamcis, that he wanted to marry a girl he had met at school whose last name happened to be Tarhan.
The news appalled the Kamcis and they forbade the nuptials. For 36 years, ever since a young Tarhan boy innocently let his goats graze on a Kamci pasture, the families had been at war. A member of the Kamci family slapped the Tarhan boy that day in the field and the blood feud was on. Four people were killed as a result of that slap, and dozens of others had been driven from their homes to preserve the dignity of the two names.
Distraught by their families' reaction, Murat and Farida went to see the local imam for advice. He told them that if they wanted to get married there was only one way - they must seek out the man known as the Peace Father.
Sait Sanli, the Peace Father's real name, is the 64-year-old wise man of Turkey's Kurdish southeast. Diminutive of stature, exceedingly polite and admittedly prone to tears, the former butcher is the man local residents turn to for advice when their blood starts to boil. By his own count, Mr. Sanli has resolved 449 blood feuds in the eight years since he agreed to mediate his first dispute, and he says none of the pacts he negotiated have since been broken. But his favourite story is the tale of Murat and Farida, the real-life Romeo and Juliet.
"They were crying. They told me they loved each other, but they couldn't get married because their grandfathers had a problem 36 years ago," Mr. Sanli said. "I cried with them."
The next day, Mr. Sanli went to work, travelling to see the elders of both families, as well as the widows and orphans on each side. He took an accounting of how much wrong had been done by each side over the decades. How many had been killed by each family (three Kamcis had died versus one Tarhan) and how much farming income had been lost (the Kamcis had seized 15 hectares of Tarhan land). Then he proposed a solution: Hadn't the blood debt owed by the Tarhans to the Kamcis been repaid by 36 years of free rent and farming income?
It was a simple suggestion, but one the two clans had never considered before. Mr. Sanli offered that the Tarhans should be allowed to return to their homes and that Murat and Farida get married. The two sides accepted and held a festive dinner in the Peace Father's honour.
***
Read the rest of the article, and you cannot help but be so totally charmed, as I am, by his humility and dedication to this great personal calling. More people should imitate him, for sure.
Showing posts with label Turkey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Turkey. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Important article about Turkish schools
I really approve of the schools described in this article. It is a great example of the Holy Spirit at work in the world, and also of getting the formula of faith and reason done correctly. My compliments to all who are instrumental in this organization.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/03/asia/04islam.php?page=1
snip
"Kill, fight, shoot," Kacmaz said. "This is a misinterpretation of Islam."
But that view is common in Pakistan, a frontier land for the future of Islam, where schools, nourished by Saudi and American money dating back to the 1980s, have spread Islamic radicalism through the poorest parts of society. With a literacy rate of just 50 percent and a public school system near collapse, the country is particularly vulnerable.
Kacmaz (pronounced KATCH-maz) is part of a group of Turkish educators who have come to this battleground with an entirely different vision of Islam. Theirs is moderate and flexible, comfortably coexisting with the West while remaining distinct from it. Like Muslim Peace Corps volunteers, they promote this approach in schools, which are now established in more than 80 countries, Muslim and Christian.
snip
"Private schools can't make our sons good Muslims," Niazi said, sitting on the floor in a Quetta house. "Religious schools can't give them modern education. PakTurk does both."
The model is the brainchild of a Turkish Islamic scholar, Fethullah Gulen. A preacher with millions of followers in Turkey, Gulen, 69, comes from a tradition of Sufism, an introspective, mystical strain of Islam. He has lived in exile in the United States since 2000, after getting in trouble with secular Turkish officials.
Gulen's idea, Aytav said, is that "without science, religion turns to radicalism, and without religion, science is blind and brings the world to danger."
The schools are putting into practice a Turkish Sufi philosophy that took its most modern form during the last century, after Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey's founder, crushed the Islamic caliphate in the 1920s. Islamic thinkers responded by trying to bring Western science into the faith they were trying to defend. In the 1950s, while Arab Islamic intellectuals like Sayyid Qutub were firmly rejecting the West, Turkish ones like Said Nursi were seeking ways to coexist with it.
***
Here's Wikipedia's entry for Mr. Gulen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fethullah_G%C3%BClen
It reads like a balanced report of a man with good intentions and the right perception of how faith and reason must balance. It does contain, however, a very disturbing quote about Catholics, blaming them to be like a "rat nest" behind-the-scene power brokers. If only that were true ha ha. I'm no longer surprised when even the most educated and reasonable Muslim has made that assumption in the past. These are the same people who shout "Crusader!" as if anyone today would go to a crusade about God or anyone else. They confuse the Western secular power block with Christianity. Since the Vatican is the only Christian "power block" they assume that any power broker behind the scenes activity by Western agents is Catholic based. LOL. Catholics today are so marginalized that they are lucky to get an invitation to a Halloween party, say nothing about being super secret power brokers. So when an uneducated and unkind quote shows up by even someone we expect much better from, some charity and education are called for. I guess I didn't get my secret ballot for the rat nest hidden agenda power broker meeting yet. Maybe the Protestants got it instead of me when I did my latest address change ha ha. At least it makes a nice change from accusing the Jews of being behind everything. Just wait until people find out that alien believing idiots are really behind everything. Oy vey! What a disappointment THAT will be. Catholics will look really swift in comparison!
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/03/asia/04islam.php?page=1
snip
"Kill, fight, shoot," Kacmaz said. "This is a misinterpretation of Islam."
But that view is common in Pakistan, a frontier land for the future of Islam, where schools, nourished by Saudi and American money dating back to the 1980s, have spread Islamic radicalism through the poorest parts of society. With a literacy rate of just 50 percent and a public school system near collapse, the country is particularly vulnerable.
Kacmaz (pronounced KATCH-maz) is part of a group of Turkish educators who have come to this battleground with an entirely different vision of Islam. Theirs is moderate and flexible, comfortably coexisting with the West while remaining distinct from it. Like Muslim Peace Corps volunteers, they promote this approach in schools, which are now established in more than 80 countries, Muslim and Christian.
snip
"Private schools can't make our sons good Muslims," Niazi said, sitting on the floor in a Quetta house. "Religious schools can't give them modern education. PakTurk does both."
The model is the brainchild of a Turkish Islamic scholar, Fethullah Gulen. A preacher with millions of followers in Turkey, Gulen, 69, comes from a tradition of Sufism, an introspective, mystical strain of Islam. He has lived in exile in the United States since 2000, after getting in trouble with secular Turkish officials.
Gulen's idea, Aytav said, is that "without science, religion turns to radicalism, and without religion, science is blind and brings the world to danger."
The schools are putting into practice a Turkish Sufi philosophy that took its most modern form during the last century, after Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey's founder, crushed the Islamic caliphate in the 1920s. Islamic thinkers responded by trying to bring Western science into the faith they were trying to defend. In the 1950s, while Arab Islamic intellectuals like Sayyid Qutub were firmly rejecting the West, Turkish ones like Said Nursi were seeking ways to coexist with it.
***
Here's Wikipedia's entry for Mr. Gulen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fethullah_G%C3%BClen
It reads like a balanced report of a man with good intentions and the right perception of how faith and reason must balance. It does contain, however, a very disturbing quote about Catholics, blaming them to be like a "rat nest" behind-the-scene power brokers. If only that were true ha ha. I'm no longer surprised when even the most educated and reasonable Muslim has made that assumption in the past. These are the same people who shout "Crusader!" as if anyone today would go to a crusade about God or anyone else. They confuse the Western secular power block with Christianity. Since the Vatican is the only Christian "power block" they assume that any power broker behind the scenes activity by Western agents is Catholic based. LOL. Catholics today are so marginalized that they are lucky to get an invitation to a Halloween party, say nothing about being super secret power brokers. So when an uneducated and unkind quote shows up by even someone we expect much better from, some charity and education are called for. I guess I didn't get my secret ballot for the rat nest hidden agenda power broker meeting yet. Maybe the Protestants got it instead of me when I did my latest address change ha ha. At least it makes a nice change from accusing the Jews of being behind everything. Just wait until people find out that alien believing idiots are really behind everything. Oy vey! What a disappointment THAT will be. Catholics will look really swift in comparison!
Thursday, June 7, 2007
At Vatican, whirling dervishes from Turkey
From Catholic News Service:
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0703211.htm
snip
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- In a Vatican palace decorated with frescoes and directly under a ceiling medallion invoking "the peace of Christ," a group of Muslim mystics -- commonly known as whirling dervishes -- danced in prayer. The June 5 event in the Renaissance Palazzo della Cancelleria, which houses several Vatican tribunals, was sponsored by the Turkish Embassy to the Holy See to mark the 800th anniversary of the birth of Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, a 13th-century Muslim mystic, philosopher and poet. Rumi's version of Sufism, Islamic mysticism, is known for its use of music and dance in prayer rituals aimed at helping the one praying experience unity with God. Cardinal Paul Poupard, president of the pontifical councils for Culture and for Interreligious Dialogue, said the evening was an example of how "intercultural dialogue often takes on the aspect of interreligious dialogue."
snip
The disciples of Rumi begin their Sema, the whirling dance, by praising God and "all his prophets," explained Ismail Taspinar, a professor from Turkey. The drumbeats accompanying the dancers' movements invoke all of creation, and the music of the flute represents the breath of God. Spinning and spinning and spinning some more, "the human dissolves in God," he said. The dancers hold one palm up to heaven and the other hand with the palm facing down to earth; topped by extra tall cylindrical hats, their heads are tilted to the right.
snip
Muammer Dogan Akdur, Turkey's ambassador to the Vatican... said the Turkish embassy wanted to promote the process by sharing an exhibition "inspired by a mystic philosophy of Islam in a sumptuous room of a Vatican palace."
"I think that this context and this exceptional place form a very symbolic and meaningful image of dialogue between cultures," he said
*****
Sounds beautiful!
King David, the great mystic, probably also danced in front of the Ark using these types of movements and acknowledgements of God.
If only there were more of meetings like these, and less violence and willful misunderstandings.
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0703211.htm
snip
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- In a Vatican palace decorated with frescoes and directly under a ceiling medallion invoking "the peace of Christ," a group of Muslim mystics -- commonly known as whirling dervishes -- danced in prayer. The June 5 event in the Renaissance Palazzo della Cancelleria, which houses several Vatican tribunals, was sponsored by the Turkish Embassy to the Holy See to mark the 800th anniversary of the birth of Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, a 13th-century Muslim mystic, philosopher and poet. Rumi's version of Sufism, Islamic mysticism, is known for its use of music and dance in prayer rituals aimed at helping the one praying experience unity with God. Cardinal Paul Poupard, president of the pontifical councils for Culture and for Interreligious Dialogue, said the evening was an example of how "intercultural dialogue often takes on the aspect of interreligious dialogue."
snip
The disciples of Rumi begin their Sema, the whirling dance, by praising God and "all his prophets," explained Ismail Taspinar, a professor from Turkey. The drumbeats accompanying the dancers' movements invoke all of creation, and the music of the flute represents the breath of God. Spinning and spinning and spinning some more, "the human dissolves in God," he said. The dancers hold one palm up to heaven and the other hand with the palm facing down to earth; topped by extra tall cylindrical hats, their heads are tilted to the right.
snip
Muammer Dogan Akdur, Turkey's ambassador to the Vatican... said the Turkish embassy wanted to promote the process by sharing an exhibition "inspired by a mystic philosophy of Islam in a sumptuous room of a Vatican palace."
"I think that this context and this exceptional place form a very symbolic and meaningful image of dialogue between cultures," he said
*****
Sounds beautiful!
King David, the great mystic, probably also danced in front of the Ark using these types of movements and acknowledgements of God.
If only there were more of meetings like these, and less violence and willful misunderstandings.
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