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| Action and Thought
Fethullah Gülen The line of struggle followed by the
righteous people to whom God promised the future of the world may be
summed up in two words: action and thought. In fact, the way to true
existence is action and thought, and likewise the way to renewal,
individual and collective. It may even be said that every being is the
product of certain movements and disciplines and its continuance depends
on the same. Action should be the most indispensable
element or feature of our lives. Even at the cost of many losses, we
should take on necessary responsibilities and strive in action and thought
continually to realize them. If we are unable to initiate action in the
direction of our essential beliefs and concepts, we will inevitably fall
under the influence of others and be carried away by the way of their
actions and ideas, always reacting and at the mercy of their initiatives. Inertia and futile pessimism in the face of
the events around us mean consenting to melt away like ice dropped in hot
water. Such consent invites dissolution of the linked elements that make
up our essence. It is passive submission to any formation, alien or
adverse to our essential identity. Those who desire the competence to
remain truly themselves, should seek it wholeheartedly and with all their
strength, and try to realize it in actual life. Existence and its
continuance depend upon an inner tension and cohesion which (if authentic)
will never decay; they require resistance, power, and the appropriate
intellectual and spiritual equipment. We should know how to be ourselves and then
remain ourselves. That does not mean isolation from others. It means
preservation of our essential identity among others, following our way
among other ways. While self-identity is necessary, we should also find
the ways to a universal integration. Isolation from the world will
eventually result in annihilation. We must have nothing to do with
ambitions such as realization of self-interests or attitudes that
concentrate on selfish desires. Contentment for a man of true thought and
action lies in the contentment of the whole being, in this world and the
next. Therefore, he never conceives of restricting the sphere of activism
to any particular time or space. Rather, he pursues goals that encompass
all time and space. For this reason, he never considers any happiness
restricted as to time or space or segment of creation as true happiness. Action in this context then means embracing
the whole of creation with full sincerity and resolve, aware of journeying
to an eternal realm through the corridors in creation and equipped with a
power from that infinite, eternal realm; it means expending all one’s
physical, intellectual and spiritual faculties in guiding the world to
undertake the same journey. As for thought, it is action in one’s
inner world. Any truly systematic thinking entails seeking answers to all
questions arising from the existence of the universe as such. In other
words, truly systematic thinking is the product of a conscious mind
relating itself to the whole of creation and seeking the truth in
everything through its language. It is by means of thought that man’s
spirit becomes intimate and familiar with creation and continuously
deepens through learning and experience. Escaping from the illusions and
narrow confines of a mind only preoccupied with earning a livelihood, the
spirit awakens to the absolute truths that never mislead. In other words,
true thinking is equivalent to self-purifying, to preparing in oneself
room for metaphysical experiences. The last stage of thought is active
thinking. The basic dynamic of our life of action and
thought is our spiritual life, which is based on our religious values.
Just a rosebud turned towards light unfurls into an elaborate flower, so
we, in the past, appeared as a great nation in the historical and
international arena after we turned towards and embraced our religion.
This overall self-attainment caused our potentials to develop and secured
our existence for centuries. Again, just as our existence and
self-attainment depend on attachment to our religion and its values, our
integration with the whole of creation requires the same, as was the case
in the past. Indeed, every act of a believer is worship, his every thought
self-discipline, his every speech a supplication expressing his degree of
knowledge of God, his every observation a research, and his relations with
others a grounding in love and compassion. Spirituality of such degree and
quality requires intuition and logic, rationality and enlightenment and
being open to Divine inspirations. In other words, it is difficult to
realize unless experience is examined by reason, and reason accepts the
authority of Divine guidance, and logic becomes identical with love, and
love is transformed into love of God. Once spirituality of this degree is
attained, sciences become a beam of light in the hand of inspiration that
reaches everywhere, and the results of sense-experience and experimental
knowledge become a prism reflecting the meaning of existence. Then,
everything resounds with knowledge of God, love and songs of spiritual
joy. Those who are planning the happy world of
the future should be aware that what kind of world they mean to build,
what sort of jewels they should use in its construction, so that they will
not have, later, to destroy with their own hands what their own hands
built. Equipped with rational thought and religious values and historical
dynamics, they should know how to apply the principles of the Qur’an and
Sunnah and the judgments derived from them by conscientious scholars, to
the world they intend to build. They should never be given over to carnal
appetites and temporary aspirations. They should aim purely at gaining
God’s approval and strictly preserve the purity of their intention. They
should never neglect to perform their religious duties: in prayers and
supplications they should be aware that they are before One Who is nearer
to them than themselves. They should do their prescribed prayers in the
awareness that prayers are the believer’s means of ‘ascension’. They
should fast for the pleasure of going to the ‘union’ with God. They
should pay their alms-taxes in an attitude of returning to their rightful
owner the goods entrusted in their keeping for a time. And they should the
Hajj conscious of attending an international conference at which the
problems of all the world’s Muslims will be exposed and discussed in a
place where the spirit can observe and experience the luminosity and awe
of the higher realms of existence. However, the realization of such noble aims
depends on the existence of guides and leaders able to both diagnose our
external and inner misery and to be themselves in constant relation with
the higher worlds. There have always been and will always be such guides
who have built all the true civilizations and they will again carry, by
God’s Will and Power, all movements of revival to victory. With their
world of thought encompassing the material and spiritual, the physical and
metaphysical, and philosophy and God-revealed knowledge, those guides and
leaders, who are perfectly aware of the requirements of time and
circumstances, will develop new doctrines of law based on the Qur’an and
Sunnah, integrate regional features with Islamic universals, inject a new
spirit and give a new meaning to art, and unite what is modern with the
traditional. Thus, all the institutions of life will be re-molded and the
coming generations provided with knowledge, skills and profound
spirituality. Streets will become like school corridors, prisons (if any)
will change into buildings of education and houses will be transformed
into palaces of Paradise. Sciences will progress hand-in-hand with
religion, and belief and reason combined will yield ever-fresh fruits of
their cooperation. In short, the future will witness a new world built in
the arms of hope, belief, love, knowledge, and resolve, a world more
content and prosperous than the utopias dreamed of in the West. No one should argue that we are far from such a world. Who knows? We may be on its threshold. The whole of mankind will see, in a near future, what other ‘suns’ will be born from the ‘womb’ of the night before the day breaks. excerpt from: |