In Rumi’s Footsteps: Sufism in the Modern World
Service Leader: Penney Kome
Guest speakers: Malik Muradov , Emine Gurbuzer
Sound operator: Hendrik Schaink
Welcome (Board member) and Greet your neighbours
Chalice lighting: The lamps are different, but the Light is the same: it comes from Beyond.
If thou keep looking at the lamp, thou art lost: for thence arises the appearance of number and plurality.
Fix thy gaze upon the Light, and thou are delivered from the dualism inherent in the finite body.
O thou who art the kernel of Existence, the disagreement between Moslem, Zoroastrian and Jew depends on the standpoint.
(by Jalala al-Din Rumi)
Introduction: Why Unitarians should care about modern Sufis and the Hizmet movement
Hello everyone. My name is Penney Kome. I’m a member of the Church Services Committee, and I will be your Service Leader this week. This year, our Sunday services are highlighting inspiration from other religions. This service is part of that series. We’ll project the text of the service on the screen here, as a guide, but not necessarily as word-for-word text for what we are going to say.
Today, we are very fortunate to have two guest speakers from the Intercultural Dialogue Institute, an organization with branches across Canada. With me at the front are Mr Malik Muradov, Executive Director of the Calgary branch, and Ms Emine Gurbuzer, head of the local women’s section.
Being able to introduce these two long time Calgarians to this congregation brings me special pleasure because I think our two faiths hold many principles in common. The IDI vigorously promotes interfaith dialogue and religious freedom, which are causes dear to many Unitarian hearts.
The Calgary IDI often hosts events, celebrating occasions like International Women’s Day, or Black History Month, which draw people from communities all over Calgary, often including local politicians. The group is also closely connected to the global Islamic Hizmet peace movement, which promotes education and religious tolerance in 140 countries around the world. The word Hizmet means, “service for the common good,” and I suggest it corresponds to our Unitarian commitment to live our faith.
“Hizmet” is another name for the Gülen movement, which began with writer and former Imam Fethullah Gülen’s modest effort to connect struggling post-secondary students with volunteer university students – in other words, to give a few local kids some free tutoring. Decades later, Gülen leads an international network of non-profit private and public schools, many funded mostly or completely by donations. These educational initiatives have earned him a fair amount of influence in his native Turkey, especially among Turkey’s media, judiciary, and civil servants who obtained their training this way.
Last April, TIME Magazine named Gülen one of the 100 most influential people in the world – noting that as “the most potent advocate of moderation in the Muslim world, Gülen is waging an urgently important campaign.” The Economist reported in 2008 that, “With his stated belief in science, inter-faith dialogue and multi-party democracy, Mr Gülen has also won praise from many non-Muslim quarters.”
Lately, Fethullah Gülen has clashed openly with Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, even though (according to the Christian Science Monitor) a decade ago, the two of them worked together on legal challenges that broke the military government’s hold on power. Now Erdogan's government is reeling from allegations of graft and corruption, including plans to move against some of Hizmet's schools. As a journalist, I think Fethullah Gülen is a story! As a Unitarian, I think any struggle between a spiritual leader and a government deserves careful examination.
Finally, of course, most Unitarians know at least a little about the immortal Sufi poet, Rumi. He was born in 1207 in what is now Afghanistan, forced to flee the Mongols as a toddler (with his family) and therefore raised in Turkey. Writing in Persian, Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi crafted verses that have influenced all of Persian, Arab and Muslim literature and other arts across the centuries. His is called “the ecstatic faith,” the faith of falling in love with the divine over and over again, in both its divine and human form.
Rumi’s poems dare us to test ourselves and our senses, to think outside convention. Most of us have heard the famous line from one of his poems that offers, “...Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there” -- a deliberately shocking invitation to liberate ourselves to follow our joy. Similarly, the whirling dervishes remind us that everything in the world is whirling with the force of love.
Those are my main reasons for inviting Malik and Emine here to speak with me before this beloved community. Please make yourselves comfortable and join us in looking at Rumi's Light.
Story for all – Nasreddin Hoca story
Emine Gurbuzer
Sing children out: Go now in peace, go now in peace. May the spirit of love surround you, everywhere, everywhere, you may go.
Hymn #188: Come, come, whoever you are (Round)
Reading: Fethullah Guüen on faith and community
Emine Gurbuzer
“...Faith makes a believer a person who inspires trust to one’s environment, even to the entire creation. It makes one’s narrow world into a universal one. True Muslims see the universe as a cradle of amity, and thus see everybody as brothers and sisters to a certain extent. As Ali ibn Abi Talib stated, they see others as brothers and sisters, Muslims being in faith and others being in humanity. Surely, their perspective of believers is very different, owing to the belief that they will be together in the intermediary realm, on the Day of Judgment, and the final reckoning.
“...People with such faith will not reduce their relationship with their environment to opportunistic expectations from others; on the contrary, they will try to establish a bond and relationship that will continue in the next world as well. If such a bond and relationship have a different value in God’s sight, then this will let believers become closer to God and make them succeed in both worlds, which is another promise made by faith.
“It is possible to see the Prophet’s blessed statement, “God’s hand (of support) is with the community,” from this perspective as well. That is, as God Almighty protects people who act with a collective spirit in this world from evils and grants them success, He will grant exceptional blessings to them altogether. In other words, acting in the collective yields not only worldly fruits, but otherworldly ones as well....”
(excerpted from Fethullah Gülen)
Multimedia: Listen to Rumi poem while watching this four minute video
Malik Muradov on why dervishes whirl, seeking to dissolve into the infinite
Offering: This congregation meets 100% of its expenses from free will donations. Let there be an offering to sustain and strengthen this place which is sacred to so many of us, a community of memory and of hope, for we are now the keepers of the dream.
(Brandoch L. Lovely)
If you have a Life Milestone to share with the congregation, please write it on a green card and put it in the offering basket, for someone from the Caring Committee to read from the front. After the basket passes you, you may come forward and light a silent candle of joy or concern, here at the sides. Meanwhile, please enjoy this video about Turkish marbling art
Caring committee report on congregational joys and concerns
Meditation:
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep. Rumi
Response to meditation: video about Muslim calligraphy.
Conversation: PK, MM, EG with questions and answers about the IDI, Fethullah Gulen, Rumi, and Noah's Pudding
Question: After 9/11 and ever since, I have seen and read stories that describe Muslims as scary people, people that Westerners will inevitably have to fight in what Samuel Huntington described as a “Clash of Civilizations”. My question to you is, do the Muslims you know think that Westerners are scary people too?
Question: I think some Christian organizations might be worried that dialogue could lead to some of their members converting to Islam. Does IDI try to convert people? What’s the purpose of stimulating dialogue?
Question: What kinds of reactions do you get from inviting dialogue?
Question: If you want to do good work, why don’t you feed the hungry instead of sitting around and talking?
Question: Why does Fethullah Gülen call his blog The Broken Jug?
Question: What is Noah's Pudding?
Hymn # 180 Alhamdulillah Arabic Allelulia (Round)
Extinguish chalice with
Closing words – #474: Unto the church universal
Unto the church universal, which is the depository of all ancient wisdom and the school of all modern thought;
Which recognizes in all prophets a harmony, in all scriptures a unity, and through all dispensations a continuity;
Which abjures all that separates and divides, and always magnifies all that unifies and brings peace;
Which seeks truth in freedom, justice in love, and individual discipline in social duty;
And which shall make of all sects, classes, nations, and races, one global community;
Unto this church and unto all its members, known and unknown throughout the world,
We [those of us present who agree with the goals above] pledge the allegiance of our hands and hearts.
(Keshab Chandra Sen/Arr. John Haynes Holmes)
Hymn # 123 Spirit of Life
