BELIEF AND UNBELIEF

There are many different religions and creeds in our world inhibited by billions of people. All over the world, there are mosques, churches, and synagogues. Since the earliest times of the history, people of many different colors and many different nations have been worshipping in innumerable houses of wor­ship, praying to idols that they themselves made in countless temples. It is an undeniable fact that humans have a need to worship. A person who does not believe will surely feel an emptiness inside. After losing his religious faith, Tevfik Fikret, the well-known Turkish poet of the twentieth century, felt the need to believe and complained as follows, "All is empty, earth is empty, sky is empty, heart and consciousness are empty, I'd like to hold on to, but there is no point in front of me." Mehmet Akif (the author of the Turkish national anthem) said: "A faith­less, rusty heart is nothing more than a burden in the chest."

Even today, no matter how much they have become materi­alistic, people have still been unable to stay away from religious belief. Russia is a most recent example of this fact for the whole world. Religion that was banned by the communists could not be eliminated. Despite all efforts, the view that says "Religion is the opiate of the masses" proved wrong.

How did Rumi view these "religious feelings," the inevitable spiritual need for human beings? Since Rumi saw humans as beings that carry the Divine Entrustment, he loved people no matter to which faith or greed they belonged, and therefore respected all religions. It is for this reason that behind the coffin of that great saint, not only Muslims but also Christians and Jews shed tears. As Aflaki writes, a preacher in Konya, when speaking of Christians, said: "Praise be to God that He did not create us among the Christians. " When they related this statement to Rumi, Rumi said about that preacher: "He is wrong himself and also makes others go astray He is weighing himself with the bal­ance of the Christians and boasting because he happens to be one gram heavier. If he came and weighed himself with die balance of the prophets and saints, then he would realize his real value. "Since everything, all beings, reflect the manifestations of Divine Attributes, events that seem to be contradictory are based on a supreme wisdom our minds may not comprehend. Everything is under God's control; everything comes from Him. The follow­ers of all religions and creeds are carrying out His orders and walking on the line of destiny that He has drawn. We have no right to criticize anybody in this regard. Every follower of a creed has known his belief as right and walked on that path although it is wrong with respect to other creeds. Rumi explains this mat­ter in the following couplets of the Mesnevi:

In the world there are invisible ladders, (leading) step by step up to the summit of Heaven.

There is a different ladder for every class, there is a differ­ent heaven for every (traveler's) way:

Every one is ignorant of another's condition (in) the king­dom (which is) wide and without end or beginning.

Since God's predestination in the eternal past and His will are manifested in people's way of worshipping and believing, those who remained outside the "path of guidance" are people who walk on the "path of misguidance" and are all known to God. Therefore, the Holy Qur'an does not begin by saying "Lord of the Muslims" but "Lord of the Worlds" (Lord of all beings, everybody, and everything other than God). We have to know it very well that God alone creates guidance and misguidance. Everything depends on His will and predestination in the eter­nal past. If God wills, He can guide a misguided person to the true path. He also can misguide someone walking on the true path to the path of misguidance. This is God's will that no mind can grasp. It is also so that as much as finding the true path or going astray from the true path is a result of predestination in the eternal past, with God's permission, our effort and endeav­ors also have a role in it. It is for this reason that the gnostics have said: "The predestination of the eternal past loves effort. " If one pays attention, one can see and sense that God leads everyone to success in the field where he spends his effort. If a person's soul is rotten with evil, bad deeds and inappropriate attitudes emerge from him. If a person's essence is good, good deeds and pleasant acts emerge from him. That is to say that the goodness or badness of the deeds depends on the goodness and badness of the essence.

There are many common beliefs among the religions of the world. For example, murder, theft, and lying are vices in all reli­gions. Considering these common aspects of the religions, Akbar Shah, the great Turkish-Mogul ruler of India, wanted to invent a new composite religion by merging all religions and creeds, but the great saint Ahmad Sirhindi prevented this attempt and helped millions of Muslims in India, Pakistan, and Java to preserve their faith.

Rumi also viewed faith and unbelief differently and explained these notions differently:

With the eye of the heart, look at the believer and unbeliever. They don't have anything but the cry 'O Lord!' and the scream 'O Ever-Alive!' according to their own beliefs.

If we view this sky as the dome of a great house of worship, under that dome there arise many mosques, churches, and syn­agogues. In many different ways, in many different houses of worship, in many different religions, and with many different words, people of many different colors all pray to the unique and peerless God and ask Him for his help. How glorious, how great, how mighty is He that His Holy Name is pronounced in many different languages. He knows all languages, understands what everybody says, listens to the prayers of His servants who pray to Him with their hands open, no matter where these peo­ple might be on earth or in which house of worship. He even knows what goes through their minds and hearts. In a couplet from the Mesnevi, Rumi explains how God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate, protects His servants, declaring: "Whatsoever the soul which is in man and woman strives to do, the ear and eye of the soul's King are at the window."

As Rumi states, both the Muslim who prays in a mosque with open hands and a Christian who makes the sign of a cross in the church and a Jew who prays in a synagogue all turn to God. If we get stuck in the formalities and overtaken by appear­ances, we categorize them as Muslim, Christian, and Jewish based on their beliefs and the houses of worship they attend. However, in the sight of God, no matter to what religion or creed they belong, they all are His servants. Therefore, Ziya Pasha says, "In the sight of God, the Muslim and the fire-wor­shipper are one." That is to say, both are His servants. "Infidelity, too, is wisdom in relation to the Creator, (but) when you impute it to us, infidelity is a noxious thing."

Do you not see that the moth flies into the flame of a candle—whether in a mosque, church, or synagogue—without making any distinctions between them, God has opened up His table not only to the Muslims, but also to non-Muslims and even to those who deny Him, and He feeds them all generous­ly. He does not distinguish between them as believer or unbe­liever, in terms of keeping them alive. In another poem, Rumi says, "Know well that belief and unbelief are like the white and yellow of an egg. There is a membrane that separates them. Therefore, they do not mix with each other. With God's grace and favor, when the mother hen takes it under her wings, both belief and unbelief vanish and the chick of unity cracks the egg and emerges. "

Rumi, who saw not the outer aspects of the religion but the truth of it, reveals in one of his quatrains: "Know this well that the lover of God cannot be a Muslim, in the sect of love there is neither faith nor unbelief. In the lover there is no body, no mind, no soul, no heart; and if a person is not like this then that person is not a lover of God."

These issues should not be misinterpreted. Rumi means that if the lover of God cannot reach the view of unity and believe that all people who worship in mosques, churches, and other houses of worship in many different ways actually turn to God, plead to Him in many different languages and that the essence of all religions is the same, then, that person cannot be a true Muslim. Such a Muslim's understanding of Islam is still in the imitation stage; he has yet been unable to ascend to the realiza­tion level. That is, that person could not become a Muslim in the true sense. In yet another quatrain Rumi says: "You are both the unbeliever and the unbelief and you are worse than these two. You are both the believer and the belief, and you are the head of the two. " We should know that this is another way of expressing the same belief. Just as the former is called kafir (unbeliever, "one who covers the truth), since he hides the seed inside the soil, a person who does not know what is in him and covers the truth is also kafir. By the same token, a person who knows what is in him is a holder of faith, a believer. Because in the Noble Qur'an it says that: "Wherever you may be, God is with you. "106 A per­son who is not aware of the Divine Entrustment in him is a unbeliever, and a person who is aware is a believer.

When we read couplets that contain the words "belief" and "unbelief" in the poetry of Rumi and other Sufi poets who con­sider these Sufi views, i. e., the view of unity, we should not be confused and misinterpret them. For example, let us examine this couplet by Rumi: "My unbelief, faithlessness, is the mirror of the faith in you. O son, you observe both belief and unbelief in me. "In this couplet there is an implicit reference to the Prophetic Tradition: "A believer is the mirror to another believ­er." Rumi means to say that whatever you believe in you, see it in me because I am your mirror; you watch and see the belief and unbelief in me. Rumi does not count the faith of those who worship in ostentation and those who value the form more than the spirit as faith. He wants them to advance their faith from imitation to realization. In a quatrain he says: "As long as the Islamic seminary and minaret are not torn down, the spiritual states of the lovers of God who walk on the paths of truth, in sincerity and without ostentation, will not attain stability. No servant of God can be considered Muslim until worship done for a gain and faith that is based on imitation are viewed as unbelief and until the faith of the seeker of truth, which is seen as unbelief by those who cannot comprehend the truth, is viewed as true faith. "In this quatrain, the theme is that the faith of those who do not rely on the love of God and who do not raise their faith from imitation to realization is not real, accord­ing to Rumi, but is unbelief.
While immature Sufis accuse the lovers of God, who do not give the first priority to formalities, of unbelief, the lovers of God view them as unbelievers because they do not penetrate into the essence and know the truth. Therefore, Rumi says, "Don't you know that our unbelief is the spirit of Islam?" Rumi reminds us frequently that it is wrong to call someone a unbeliever by just looking at his outer aspects. In another quat­rain, Rumi says, "If you walk without seeing, the path is the very essence of the mistake. If you rely on your eye thinking that you see everything, this is the arrow of calamity. How would you know the true place of people in the madrasa and the church and where they actually are just by looking at their form, in a metaphorical way, without knowing their essence?"

As seen in the above examples, Rumi transcended faith and unbelief; he attained love and unity and found God and truth. He explains this matter very clearly and very well in the following quatrains: "Outside the world of faith and faithlessness there is a place. It is not the place for every young, immature, and beautiful person. To attain that unique place and extraordinary level one has to sacrifice his life and heart as thanks for attaining that place. "This spiritual level is not a rank that any servant can be blessed with attaining. In another quatrain Rumi tells of the gnostic who attains this level: "There is a plain outside of unbe­lief and Islam. In the middle of the plain is our love. When the Gnostic arrives in that plain, he puts his head on the ground and prostrates because in that plain there is no unbelief and Islam. " In the following poems, Rumi explains how he overcame the obstacles of unbelief and faith, yaqin (certain faith) and skepticism with the love of God and attained God and truth: "And if he speaks of infidelity, it has the scent of (the true) reli­gion, and if he speaks of doubts, his doubt turns to certainty. "I melted like salt in the sea of clarity, the sea of spiritual joy. There remained no unbelief, faith, yaqin or skepticism in me. There appeared a star inside my heart. Such was the star that the seven heavens and everything within them vanished inside it. "When you hear about Rumi's views on religion, faith and unbe­lief, do not suppose that he is putting forward new ideas, i. e., carrying out reforms in the area of religion and faith. These views are not only held by Rumi. But the fact remains that since Rumi was a great and very talented poet in addition to being a great saint, he explained this very difficult to understand matter in a beautiful clear manner. Other poets also showed interest in this issue. For example, Hafiz of Shiraz (d. 1390) says, "There is no difference between the Ka'ba and the temple of idols. Wherever you turn you are with God, and whatever you see is His Power and Art. "Another poet writes, "Sometimes I seclude myself in church, sometimes I sit in the mosque. O God, I am looking for you house by house. "While yet another poet says: "O God, I throw into the fire and burn this religion and this creed that does not lead me to you. Instead of a creed I make your love my guide. Until when can I hide your love? All my aim is You, I want you. I have nothing to do with religion or creed. “Do not consider this poet as irreligious and creedless. He means to say: "O God, I have taken your love to the fore­front; I throw into fire and burn this religion and this creed that does not lead me to you." When the Turkish poet and mystic Yunus Emre said: "The creed of love is religion to me,” did he mean to say "I have no religion"? And was it not Yunus Ernre who took the love of God to the forefront and sincerely pro­claimed to God that he was not aspiring to paradise?

What people call "Paradise! Paradise!" Is a few houses and hour’s. Give them to whoever wants them But I long for You.

These views that center around the belief of unity and divine love are not mere individual attempts. It is for this toler­ance in the Islamic view that Muslims have looked at the reli­gion of the people in the lands they conquered with respect; they did not intervene with their beliefs nor touch their church­es. It is due to this belief that Mehmed II, the Conqueror, who was a young man in his early twenties, showed respect to the Byzantine patriarch and reinstated him as the patriarch.

I would like to end this section with a couplet by Hafiz of Shiraz. As commonly known, Jesus said, "If someone slaps your face, turn the other cheek. " The people of Ta'if stoned the Prophet and made his holy feet bleed. If Prophet Muhammad had used his authority as a prophet, he could have made stones and fires rain on them from the sky, or he could have devastated them with hur­ricanes and strong winds. However, the dear prophet prayed to God: "O Lord, do not punish these people because of me, forgive them, they are ignorant people, they do not know what they are doing. " This is because the prophets knew very well that one could not hate people created by God without upsetting Him. Contrary to a common misconception, unbelief is not only deny­ing God. Unbelief is turning one's back on the Islamic principles. Unbelief is not living Islam. Hafiz of Shiraz expressed this idea in his couplet: "Let us be loyal, let us take the blame, let us be looked down upon. But let us still be content and happy with our state. Let us not feel offended by anyone because in our Law, being hurt, upset, and offended is unbelief. "

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