It began two days before I left for Istanbul, when my dog ate my passport. No kidding. Literally.? From 10pm - 2am I learned that you cannot get a passport in 24 hours, no matter what they say.? I learned that places like Walgreen's, which advertise passport photos 24 hours a day, do not do so. However, if you make an appointment and get yourself to a United States Passport Agency, (the closest to us are in New York City, Norwalk, CT, Philadelphia and Boston), you can get a new passport in a matter of hours. The price is high,but I like my photo much better than the old one. Little did I know that such a disorienting beginning would presage my whole trip to Turkey.
I went to Turkey to immerse in Islam and Rumi with a small group of students from the Starr King School for the MInistry, (www.sksm.edu). It is part of our Unitarian Universalist identity to look for the wisdom and truth in other religions and learn from it to enrich our UU'ism. I had never been to Turkey, despite living in Greece twice, and I knew I would never do on my own what this group proposed to do. It's one thing to learn about a religion: the Five Pillars of Islam, the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism and the like, but it is another thing to live among people practicing that religion. I was, and am, convinced that we have a skewed picture of Islam in this country and that we will all benefit by getting to know more and seeing a more nuanced whole. Western culture does not acknowledge the extent of Islamic influence upon our history and our heritage. We have made Islam, and Muslims, "other" and we load our stereotypes, fear and distrust upon them. I'm tired of demonizing people and I wanted to see Islam with new eyes. Personally, I realized that I also had considered Islam as "other." As a harsh and exclusive religion. On some level I had bought into what the history books tell us from the Crusades through today. I don't like to admit my own prejudice here, a prejudice born of fear and ignorance. So I went to Turkey to open my own mind and heart.
Every now and then someone will say that all religions come down to the same thing, either that we all believe in the same God or the like. It reminds me of the joke -- two people sit next to each other on an airplane and in their conversation, one identifies as a minister and one as an astronomer. The astronomer says to the minister, "Aren't all religions the same? Don't they all come down to belief in God?" The minister considers this a minute and replies, "Isn't all astronomy the same? Doesn't it all come down to Twinkle, twinkle little star?" I don't think all faith filters to the same place. Religions can differ significantly in their understandings and beliefs and practices; in their emphases and idioms. Religions, as manifestations of humanity, are tied to their cultures, history, geography and tradition. So they differ.
But I also think that people are similar across cultures, times and places. Similarities not necessarily in what we think and what we believe and how we practice our beliefs, but rather similarities in how we respond to what we think and believe and practice. As Universalist Hosea Ballou said, "We don't have to think alike to love alike." Thus anything that gets us in the midst of our differences will also show us our similarities.
What follows is a very partial account of my experiences with Islam in Turkey. Please understand, these are my experiences. I do not, and cannot, generalize for the practice of Islam; nor am I an Islamic scholar. What you hear is a piece of a large and complex and diverse whole, in the way that putting together a portion of a jigsaw puzzle does not reveal the entire scene to you. But it is a glimpse and for me, it is a glimpse that challenges pre-conceived ideas and assumptions. It turns me around, disorients me and lands me in a new place.
Islam has a unique character in Turkey because Turkey is an intentionally secular country, in a somewhat paradoxical relationship with religious expression. Turkey, governed by the Ottomans, fought on the losing side in WWI and after the war the victors planned to partition the Ottoman Empire. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk led a resistance movement which became known as the Turkish War of Independence, against the occupying western powers and in 1923 established the Turkish Republic. He undertook major cultural, economic and religious reforms, with the intent of modernizing the country. The separation of government from religious matters, particularly through education, was a keystone of this effort.
Of the changes Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's Nobel Prize winning novelist writes: ". . . in the secular fury of Ataturk's new republic, to move away from religion was to be modern and western; . . . But that was in public. In private life, nothing came to fill the spiritual void. . . . So in our house, it was left to the maids to fill in the void (and satisfy my curiosity -- if God didn't matter, why did they build so many mosques?). It wasn't difficult to see the foolishness of superstition. . . . all those pieces of cloth people tied to the sheikhs' turbes - tombs - . . . and the legacy of centuries of dervish orders that found its way into our republican, European household in the form of proverbs, sayings, threats and suggestions: They might all be nonsense, but they had left their imprint on everyday life all the same." (Istanbul: Memories and the City) A sheikh is a spiritual teacher and a dervish refers to a "poor one" as in relation to God. A dervish is a Muslim mystic, a Sufi. (Definitions are20from www.Dar-Al-Masnavi.org, page of Mevlevi Terms and Definitions by Ibrahim Gamard)
Ataturk's government passed laws outlawing institutional Sufi orders. "In the face of knowledge, science, and of the whole extent of radiant civilization, I cannot accept the presence in Turkey's civilized community of people primitive enough to seek material and spiritual benefits in the guidance of sheikhs. The Turkish republic cannot be a country of sheikhs, dervishes, and disciples. The best, the truest order is the order of civilization. To be a man it is enough to carry out the requirements of civilization. The leaders of dervish orders will understand the truth of my words, and will themselves close down their lodges [tekke] and admit that their disciplines have grown up." Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Kastamonu Nutku (August 30, 1925)
The Dervish orders persisted, although not as the institutions they once were. The present government of Turkey claims them as its cultural heritage, sponsoring a nightly sema, meaning "heavenly dance" or whirling prayer ceremony, (what we know as Whirling Dervishes) as part of the two week commemoration of Rumi's death in Konya each year. Our group, led by a sheikh, who is also a Vice-president and Professor at the Starr King School, Ibrahim Farajaje, lived and travelled with people from Dervish orders.
According to the Lonely Planet guidebook, (2007 version), 98% of Turks identify as Muslim. Historically, many pointed out to us that for centuries Christians, Jews and Muslims lived in peace together in Turkey. In 1492 when Ferdinand and Isabella expelled Jews from Spain, the Ottoman Empire took them in. In the 1930's when Hitler imperiled Jews in Europe, Turkey took them in. And the like. Perhaps in part due to the loosening of religious and political ties, the expression of Islam in Turkey is, according to many people, diverse and inclusive. Women of all ages go uncovered, or wear headscarves, or wear burkas. The new European parts of Istanbul look like western European cities, with their ads for the latest chic and sexy fashions and including the presence of Pizza Hut and Dunkin' Donuts (what is this world coming to?). At the same time when we walked the streets with Ibrahim, our leader, and he was dressed as a sheikh, people would stop him on the street and asked to have their picture taken with him.
Our first days in Turkey were holidays -- Bayram -- the Feast of Sacrifice commemorating Abraham's sacrifice of a ram instead of his son Isaac. Religious in nature, yet some museums, stores, government offices were closed. The city of Istanbul cleared out as people went home to their families. Muslim homes are asked to make a sacrifice and give a generous portion to the poor. We were invited to watch the sacrifice of a cow, which took place in a shed behind the restaurant in which we ate. While many in our group went, I did not.
Inside a cow waits on this Feast of Sacrifice, to be put to death. I do not object to it but cannot participate.Not because I disapproved or was turned off by the idea of sacrifice, but rather because I realized that I am still in mourning for my cousin and I did not want to witness another death right now if I could help it, however respectfully and carefully carried out. Living in Turkey with so much difference had the effect of opening me to myself and I became very aware of the movements of my interior life. Differences can do that -- open one up. Or close one off.
Islam, in my perception, is a very sensuous religion. The beautiful and powerful sound of the call to prayer, the sight of the high domes of the mosques, with their tiles and calligraphy, the body movements of the prayers leading one to touch the soft ground of the prayer rugs, the scent of rose oil on skin, the ablutions (ritual washing) performed before entering the mosque.
To my surprise, we were warmly invited to join in prayer whether Muslim or not and thus I got to see and experience a number of mosques, including the Sultanahmet Mosque, the Blue Mosque, in Istanbul. It is a wonder. When I mentioned this to Linda Mason LeBlanc, whose son Marc spent two years in the Peace Corps in Morocco, she told me that neither she nor Marc were allowed to enter a mosque in that country, unless it had a visitors' section, because they were not Muslim. The practice of Islam is diverse.
Participating in prayer opened several other interior chasms for me as I felt acutely the absence of a personal god in my theology. Can I conceive of a presence bigger than me, bigger than humanity, that both transcends me and lives immanently within me? Yes. But it has no name for me, other than Life, and it has no personal characteristics. I communicate with it through practices like meditation, which enable me to feel connection on some deep level of my being. This is very satisfying to me, spiritually. I know that Allah is this, what I call Life, what others call the Ultimate, the Reality, the Is-ness, immanent and transcendent.
And Allah also seems to be a personal God for many. Allah is personally connected to individual lives. We heard phrases like "insha'llah" (if Allah wills), or "ma sha' llah" (what a wonderful thing Allah has willed, usually said in reply to a compliment) commonly and they appeared to be spoken sincerely, rather than as figures of speech. On that personal level I did not connect. So in the daily prayers and in the ceremonies of remembrance called Zikr's, in which the names of Allah and sacred phrases are chanted and sung, often with body movements, over and over, slow and fast, and many people speak of entering a state of love and joy and connection, I did not. Having received a warm invitation of inclusivity, I only experienced disorientation. At first that did not feel good at all. I wanted to accept this invitation so the challenge was to find room for myself. Rather than trying to chant the particular words, I focused on the sounds instead and could feel them resonate within my chest and belly and throat. I closed my eyes and moved more slowly and I discovered I could enter a meditative state which left me feeling refreshed and relaxed and peaceful. I surprised myself.
My roommate Cathy called Zikr's, with no disrespect intended, the Sufi moshpit. I wrote this tanka (a Japanese form of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables per line) about them.
The Sufi moshpit, also called the Zikr, the meshk, defines these holy nights. Ecstasy grabs the whole group. I sit in back, joining in. The other disorientation regarding prayer has to do with gender. Another tanka: I am in Turkey waking at the call to prayer waking with sage and chai, minarets, domes and water; scarves, burkas behind a screenThe adventure began right away in the Blue Mosque when we put on headscarves, which needed to cover all of our hair for the sake of modesty. This is not easy to do and the variations in styles of wearing headscarves amazed me. In the mosque the women were directed into the very small women's section, behind a screen, where we were quite crowded and unable to see anything. Interestingly, the experience increased the sense of solidarity I felt with the other women. It continued in other mosques and even one Zikr separated the male and female participation. This is complicated. It's not that women play a uniformly subservient role throughout Islam. Not every mosque requires women to be in a screened off area. The Mevlevi order, the one that continues the practices of Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, is currently led by his grand-daughter 22 generations later. Other Zikr's were led by female sheikhas. One of them, whom Ibrahim calls the Red Sheikha because she and her followers dress in red, chain smokes throughout the chanting and drumming and twirling.
In my personal context, given who I am and where I come from and how I live, this segregation by gender was uncomfortable and distressing. I got to the point where I felt as though I was being put into a closet and that was unacceptable to me. The challenge is to refrain from judging this practice based solely upon my own particular and cultural context. I'm not the final reference point. Other contexts exist here as well, and it is my responsibility to learn what they are, from the cultural and religious to the voices of contemporary Muslim women. The challenge is to honor my feelings while keeping my mind open to learning the larger picture before reaching any conclusion. Stay in the disorientation.
One last tidbit of connection between Unitarianism and Islam. In Istanbul there is a statue of one Ibrahim Muteferrika, born in Transylvania in the 17th c, to a (probably) Unitarian family, captured by Ottoman Turks and subsequently a willing convert to Islam. He promoted the first printing press to print in Ottoman Turkish and oversaw the publication of many books. He is buried in the Dervish cemetery. (History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey by Stanford Shaw)
I recommend immersion to you. I recommend the dislocation that it brings -- a dislocation that can precede a great opening. And who knows what happens after that?