A Farewell to John Updike

An author is only then dead for a real faithful reader when he has finished reading the last page of the latest published book. So for me the 25th of July 2009 is John Updike's date of death, not January 29th, the actual day.

There were still two new books to follow after John Updike had passed away. In March his poems Endpoint came out. In June My Father's Tears followed, a book with 18 short stories, whose last one The Full Glass I finished reading today, not without being rather touched.

Other than the poems whose final ones were written under the knowledge of the deadly threat that lung cancer posed to Updike's life, the short stories contain no hint that death is close at hand. Until the end the main character of every story (always clearly Updike himself, although disguised in different names and professions) talks rarely about old age and if, looks upon it with a humorous optimism, just as if life could go on for many more years.

In the last story Updike surprises the reader by choosing a rather practical profession for the narrator. He characterizes himself: My employment for 30 years, refinishing wood floors - and already the end of the long introducing sentence makes it clear, what to expect: […] has conditioned me against digging to deep. He is a craftsman, not an intellectual.

One can, of course, expect that this humbleness is a tricky way to get to other goals that Updike is pursuing. To my impression there has always been this particular one: to show his scepticism against all professional digging into people's souls. Not unlike his highly estimated model as an author, Vladimir Nabokov, who hated any kind of psychology, also Updike's art obviously grows from the knowledge that the human Psyche is too deep or at least too contradictory to be logic, an object of science.

When the craftsman at one stage of the narration does nevertheless dig something deep out of his soul (the secret relief that one of his former mistresses is dead and cannot go on to disturb his life from a distance) the idea is immediately withdrawn. There. You see why I am not given to introspection, to digging deep. Scratch the surface, and ugliness pops up.

So Updike consequentially keeps picturing rather mundane things that seemingly form a gentle stream on the surface, with little meaning. The truth, of course, is that there are many ways from here to reach deep into the secrets of human existence, and Updike knows all these ways.

The final scene describes the ritual of an average morning, shaving, taking pills and all. The glass of water that gives the story its title is raised to bring out an odd kind of toast. Updike here ironically pretends that he is not sure about what is in the drinkers soul. And so, half knowing and half not knowing, he ends his last story, his last book on earth:

If I can read the strange old guy’s mind aright, he is drinking a toast to the visible world, his impending disappearance from it be damned.

We will miss John Updike greatly.

Something Beautiful for Allah

When Mother Teresa, one of the last modern saints of the Catholic Church was, for the first time, asked to have her ministry filmed and reported about on television she was very reluctant. Only after an intervention from some Cardinal to whom the television people had turned for a favour she would finally give in and write them: “try to make the world conscious that it is never too late to do something beautiful for God.”

Something beautiful for God - the expression has inspired many people not only in the Christian world. People look for something beyond fulfilling a hard duty when they follow their religious principles, and beauty gives them a better direction than grey obligation. I am first of all writing this to encourage the work of my Muslim friend Nureddin Öztaş who already did a lot of beautiful things for his God, Allah. I know that he is worried about the lack of respect that a lot of Muslim people in the world receive. Maybe doing something beautiful for Allah is also a solution for this problem.

I have been connected to a wide range of young Muslims via the Internet, so I would secondly like to encourage all of them to do something beautiful for Allah. My wish is that they all find a personal way in showing the world the beautiful face of a life that is led under the assumption: there is a Living God. I know that many Muslims fear Islamophobia. To my opinion the best way to fight any negative feelings against Islam is to show the advantages of that faith, its beauty.

My friend Nureddin does something beautiful for God in, first of all, showing his personal friendliness to everybody around. Maybe this is the most important step to undertake. From Nureddin I learned that there is a very personal God in Islam and that you are asked to lead a life in his permanent presence. For Nureddin every daily human encounter carries within itself the chance to pass something on of the love and mercy that is the character of the ever-present God. Nureddin was born in Turkey and came to Germany when he was ten years old. He owns a pharmacy and he meets some hundred people every day. He tries to be friendly with them because he is aware of God’s presence.

When we first met I proudly told him about my own faith which I still think is very different from Nureddin’s: Christ became human so that his followers could live in the presence of a God-with-us. Nureddin replied gently that he liked the idea of such a God, even if he could not believe that God ever became man. In spite of our differences he agrees with every Christian that human life should be aware of the closeness of God and should mirror his presence in every possible situation.

Nureddin does a second beautiful thing for God. He engages in society projects. He is the president of a Ministry that gives lessons to school children after school, mainly children of immigrants with difficulties to get along in German schools. He and his friends are planning to have a complete new school open for Christian and Muslim children alike, a school where Islam is not taught but where nevertheless a spirit of respect and love shall reign, based on the principles of respect and love found in Nureddin’s religion. The plans for his school face a lot of objections in Germany because people here doubt that Muslims can run such a school without dark missionary ideas. From knowing Nureddin I am sure that people will soon find out that his school will be a good and decent place - a gift, brought by Muslim Germans to our society, something beautiful for God.

My third idea is maybe the most difficult: do something beautiful for God in finding freedom for others. There are only a few Muslim states in the world that have a working democracy. One of them is the Turkish, but Nureddin is nevertheless critical about the way in which the western world tries to impose, as he says, democracy on traditional Muslim societies. That is why he and I always disagree over the development in Iraq – I am glad for the Iraqis to have the chance for a living democracy, Nureddin is critical that it only means a forced-upon western style of life. Maybe we both are wrong, and that is why I propose a third way: to find a political system in which personal freedom is guaranteed and traditional values of Islam are guiding, reconciled with freedom.

My strong feeling is that right in this moment Mir Hossein Mousavi and his young followers in Iran are trying to find a way for exactly this kind of reconciliation. Wouldn't it be something beautiful for God, too, if they succeed? Showing the world the sympathetic face of Islam does not work without proving that all Muslims follow their faith in full freedom. Without freedom no real religion can ever live.

A personal word at the end: I got some new Muslim friends from following twitter. Search “iranelection” on twitter and you will get a whole bunch of people dedicated for freedom, for values, for Islam. Or type “marwa”, the first name of the Egyptian mother that was stabbed to death by a xenophobic madman in Dresden, Germany. You will find more young people, dedicated for dignity and non-violence. I am writing this not only for Nureddin but for all of you. Get out and do something beautiful for Allah. The world will see that beauty and love it – and love you.

The picture above contains words from Sura 1 and is taken from another blog.

From Germany

Searching Twitter for #Marwa you will find a lot of disappointment expressed by Egyptians and others that mourn Marwa El-Sherbini. She was stabbed to death in Dresden Germany. Her death obviously is not remembered strongly enough by the world community and especially by us Germans.

I mourn Marwa’s awful death and all its painful circumstances. And I certainly understand those people's disappointment. But I would like to ease it at least in such a way that no further damage is done to the relation between Muslims and Christians.

A huge number of German citizens are Muslims (3.3 out of 82.1 Million says Wikipedia). Most of them are descendants of Turkish immigrants and live her in the second and third generation. According to polls they love their country and are content with their situation – sometimes even more than the native Germans.

Muslim women with headscarves are often seen in German streets. Marwa did not die because she wore one. Maybe with her scarf she had problems in finding certain jobs, as some reports say. But this would first of all be part of a general problem of someone who applies for a job wearing a regional dress of his home country – a turban, a long African gown, even leather trousers as the Bavarians, a German tribe, sometimes wear. Admittedly, a woman with a headscarf has the additional problem that Germans might see it as a sign of a forced-upon limitation of her rights as a woman. Nevertheless more and more young women here show their headscarves with a strong self-consciousness and find it increasingly accepted as a sign of faith and also as a sign of freedom from being exposed as a sexual object.

The German state was blamed for the week security in court. When the police arrived they shot at Marwa’s husband instead of the murderer. This is thought to be a result of secret racism: in a dangerous situation you aim at dark people first. Apart from seeing not much darkness in the photo above I know from my visits to court (my job demands them once in a while) that the policemen there are often young and inexperienced people. My guess is that the policeman aimed at nobody and shot in the floor or the air. It is difficult anyway to separate murderer and victim with a gunshot as long as they are closely together.

I will report in this blog about the results of investigations. Certainly they will show that the controls at the entrance of the court building were weak. In my hometown court there is an airport-like arch and an x-ray device for bags (where they always find my nail scissors and make me deposit them there). The murderer would not have got a knife through this.

Nobody can deny that there is hatred against foreigners in part of the population here. In Dresden’s State Parliament the right wing National Democratic Party (NPD) has seats. The murderer of Marwa obviously was one of those right wing nationalistic people (strange enough, he was a foreigner himself). Nevertheless painting Germany as a country with a strong tendency towards xenophobia and towards hate especially for Muslims does not only put a blame on my country that it does not deserve after giving 3.3. Million Muslims a home. Even worse, it darkens the hope of many people around the world that there will ever be freedom, equality and brotherhood, the ideals of the French Revolution from 1789, for all of us.

I have been following the events in Tehran via Twitter and cannot separate the people in Tehran, Dresden and Cairo. hat is why I say: If Germany, almost 65 years after the Hitler-nightmare and with 60 years of democracy is still a dark and wicked country – what hope do the people of Tehran have if they want to overcome their own nightmare and find new ways of a democracy for themselves? What positive example have they to foll0w?

My wish for peace between Muslims and Christians is embedded in the other urgent wish that new generations of Muslims will find new ways to unite their old faith with modern forms of government. The Turks successfully show the road, Lebanon is struggling, Iraq is (one may add inshallah) on a good way, others like Marwa’s Egypt still have long ways to go.

They all, we all need encouragement. I hope that my country will carry on to be one, even with Marwa's bloodstains in its ground that should not be forgotten.

Democracy and Faith

For my friend Nureddin.

One of our prominent German theologians is Eberhard Jüngel (photo) from Tübingen. He wrote* about the affinity between Christian faith and democracy beginning critically, saying that faith makes a difference between the union of believers and the political community. That is why faith sees church and state fundamentally different. Nevertheless Jüngel finally came to the conclusion that among the existing forms of government democracy is the one that fulfills Christian criterias for a good government best.

I thought about Jüngel these days when in many places of the world the question is discussed whether there is an affinity between another faith and democracy – the Muslim faith. The question here obviously has a much sharper edge. Imagine a representative of the German Muslims saying something similar like Jüngel on German TV. He would immediately be blamed for seeing democracy only as a sheltered garden where sharia can grow and overgrow in the end all other plants.

In spite of this you meet an increasing number of modern Muslims who are, in many ways like Jüngel, convinced that they can live their faith nowhere better than in the framework of a western style democracy. They do not want to rearrange this framework, because they live in states where many different religions meet, with atheism as a secret main religion included. A rearrangement according to the principles of a single religious idea would only lead to a destructive form of tyranny.

These modern followers of Mohammed that want to reconcile Islam and democracy have many adversaries. Prominent among them are the Christians whose mistrust in any form of an earthly kingdom of God is paradoxically rooted in the historical experience that there is almost no way to bring about such a kingdom. The Christian mistrust is mirrored by those among the Muslims who also have the image of a kingdom of God before their inner eye and do not want to sacrifice it for a democracy that is seen as atheistic.

There is right now a bloody borderline in Tehran that separates the fundamentalist rulers from their reformist adversaries who, under the leading of Mir Hossein Mousavi have that one goal: to reconcile the old faith with a modern form of government and lifestyle. Ahmadinejad is known to be among those who think reconciliation impossible (more details in a New York Times article). Odd enough among the hardest critics of the regime in Iran are also those that do not believe in reconciliation either. They occur in the Internet as radical Infidel Bloggers Alliance.

The question of reconciliation is also in Turkey far from being answered. The governing party of Prime Minister Erdogan believes in it, the opposition doubts it and takes the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Atatürk as a witness. Apart from this scepticism there seems to be a traditional Turkish preoccupation against any form of Arabian government that makes it even harder to believe that there could ever be a working democracy in one of the Muslim main lands. This preoccupation lingers also in the mind of many of my fellow Germans and makes them half-hearted supporters if not critics of the democratic movement in Iraq. They would nevertheless not admit that, and would keep hidden behind their moral superiority over George Bush.

Also Israel has to ponder permanently whether Islam and democracy can go together. In the question of an independent Palestinian state the strongest forces of opposition arise from the doubts that this necessarily Muslim state could ever be democratic and thus reliable in its commitment to peace. The neighbours in Syria and Egypt and in some other countries obviously seem to give proof to the theory of both the radical conservatives and the radical progressives in the Near East that Islam and democracy do not fit.

Where are the friends and supporters of a possible reconciliation? In many personal meetings with modern Muslims I have seen a deep desire to be a natural part of what we call, a little simplifying the “Western World”. It is not western any more, it is rather an omnipresent area where people have the possibility of a worldwide exchange. The reign of this area has included more and more people in the last years and decades, and still more are waiting to be admitted.

I see Muslims everywhere that want to be part of this world, and see that, once they become actual members – as an example the Turks in Germany – show a high level of contentment with this world and the way they can lead their lives there.

These people want – also – to be religious. Many have to be religious in order to keep their inner voice of conscience audible in this noisy modern world full of voices. These people could be the heralds of a new reconciled way. You just have to open the door for them and give them a chance, in Iran, in Iraq, among the German Turks and everywhere.

*Eberhard Jüngel, Hat der christliche Glaube eine besondere Affinität zur Demokratie?

S. 111
..."der christliche Glaube die Gemeinschaft der glaubenden vom politischen Gemeinwesen und dementsprechend Kirche und Staat fundamental voneinander unterschieden weiß"

S. 377
"Unter den real existierenden Staatsformen ist die parlamentarische Demokratie diejenige, die den genannten Zumutungen mehr als jede andere entspricht."