Towards Paradise

A New Project

2010-02-20T12:30:00.000+01:00

After reading the Quran together with my friend Nureddin Öztaş a few months ago and reporting about it in a blog (with comments of the devout Muslim Nureddin) we both now will read a piece of the New Testament together and write about it in a new blog . Since last week we read the Gospel of Mark, print it off in sections and write some brief comments.

I am sorry that everything is still in German. My English speaking readers should nevertheless know that a project like this is possible and on its way.

My hope is that not only the specialists of the Christian-Muslim dialogue take interest in our blog. The old St. Mark's text might, if you read it in a mutual effort with Muslim and Christian glasses, contain something useful for all who look for new information about an old wisdom.

Synchronization

2009-11-01T21:30:00.007+01:00

Our travelling group consisted of a German-Turkish family (parents and two boys aged 10 and 12) a young married German Turk who travelled alone and eight Germans with German ancestors. Sitting in a bus for long hours together means to synchronize one’s desires to eat, drink, sleep and stop for a bathroom. It all went well, even though there were some habits to tolerate that might at first sight seem odd to part of the group.

The first problem was the regular Muslim prayer, five times a day. The prayers early in the morning and late at night could be done in the privacy of a hotel room, but especially the prayers at noon and in the early afternoon fell regularly in times when the group was on the road or visiting a tourist site. Sometimes Nureddin and Murat, the two men that prayed all the six prayers every day faithfully just stole away from our tour into a mosque or went to a side room when the group was having tea. We know they were praying and never had problems with delays through prayer times.

A second problem was Nilüfer’s the woman’s habit to wear a headscarf and relatively heavy clothing in a sometimes rather hot weather. The other women in their easy T-shirts or thin blouses obviously suffered with the poor girl and her heavy religious burden. Even if Nilüfer joyfully declared that there was no problem with the heat, a certain unspoken question remained: who is right and who is wrong with the respective clothing?

If a woman has to shelter herself away from the sexual desires of men than how can the other women so openly display their bodily features? And isn’t a headscarf a clear signal to a man: do not look at me, better even do not talk to me? If all man would carry weapon against thieves you would feel like a thief among them after a while. If women come in helmets and armours against male desire you might sometimes feel a kind of guilt.

Now, I know Nilüfer long enough to know she is not in arms against me. I had long talks with her and sometimes showed her my friendship by spontaneously highfiving her (which is not shaking hands, what she normally avoids among other believers). I came to the conclusion that wearing this or that kind of Muslim clothing is not a matter of administrative regulation (“no” in German schools or Turkish universities, “yes” in restaurants, public places etc.). It is a very personal decision and inevitably causes trouble to the woman who decides. She knows that the heat under a headscarf can be burdensome, she knows that maybe her sister will decide differently (and people will ask about the difference), she knows about the looks she gets in a typical “German” surrounding, say a restaurant.

She knows the problems, so I do not have to tell her my problems with her clothing, if I have any. My job is it to synchronize her life with mine, to make hers possible as other people make my life possible. Synchronization also means to make a Muslim friend feel at ease with my alcohol drinking habits. I came home with the decision to drink a little vine every now and then in front of Nureddin and Murat - let them understand how a wise use of alcohol is part of the joy that my Christian faith grants me.

The Open Society tolerates a huge bandwidth of different lifestyles. There are people next door to us with a very different set of ideas what life is all about. We make room for them, sometimes even enjoy that life is more colourful with them than without.

The Gülen-movement is a great help in all of these synchronizations. All the Gülen-people I met were well educated men with a good measure of success and wealth they had achieved. The rhythm of their world, our world, is clearly given by modern information technology, tough time schedules, the six-days-week of the industrialized world. If they would turn to the local clergy of the villages or towns they came from, they would never get an advice how to live as a Muslim in a world like this.

Here comes Fethullah Gülen in, as a guide. His is the world of Enlightenment as it came after 1700. He encourages his followers to accept the modern world an conquer it personally for their optimism, compassion and faith. And they repeat in a Muslim way what the Swedish novelist Per Olov Enquist has told about the Christians from the town of Halle / Germany around that time: that Enlightenment and a pious Renaissance are two sides of the same medal. The “Pietists” of August Hermann Francke lived side by side (though not always without tensions) with the leading philosophers of these days. And they also founded a huge social work, just like Gülen founded his schools and tuition organizations.

I came home with the steadfast desire to help people synchronize their lives with mine. Getting older I will need a lot of synchronization, too. So maybe my strategy will pay for myself.

In a rich man’s house (Șanlıurfa)

2009-10-31T08:30:00.002+01:00

Mehmet and his wife Mehtap own a flat of 200 square meters on the fourth floor of a new apartment building in Șanlıurfa. An average German couple would look jealous at the kitchen equipment, the rich carpets and the huge flat screen in the TV room (and the second, only a little smaller, in the kitchen). The couple and its three children obviously enjoy displaying its wealth and it can do so without being angered, as in the Turkey from 1971 that I remember, by bad roads leading to the house, poor gardens and a general feeling of disorder in front of one’s door.

We found fine solid roads even far east in Anatolia, the automobiles sheltered by security rails against accidents. The Aut0bahn-like roads that connected the mayor cities in the South East had toll-stations where you paid a cheap fee for travelling. We found a vivid but nevertheless comparatively well ordered traffic in the down town areas. Traffic lights were everywhere, and they were, again others than in former years, respected. Above all we found, most visible of all, an enormous amount of new buildings under construction. This is a country on a giant leap forward into a completely modernized economy.

Our tour guide’s interest in historical sites and old buildings lead us most of the time to the inner cities with their old bazaars and small shops. They looked like the Turkey I had remembered. But driving into town we would pass supermarkets, mainly run by the French Carrefour but also by Migros and others. We saw Burger Kings and signs of all the big global firms that deliver their goods to the Grand International Bazaar.
Ömer told us about his conversion to the Gülen-Movement 9 years ago. He was looking for something deeper, something that his wealth could not buy. Now he is glad to be member of a vivid community, many of them, as I guess, as successful as Ömer and as welcoming to new international connections as he is.

Serving a crowd of 14 guests and 5 family members a rich dinner he and his young sons did a great job. There was nothing left of the old Pasha-mentality that Old Turks often display. This was a modern man, and a pious one.

Digging Gold (Șanlıurfa)

2009-10-29T21:00:00.003+01:00

Turkish Schools are players in a Premier League of competing institutions that try to bring a maximum number of undergraduates through a tough national test system, similar to that in France. Every year a statistic of those students is published that qualified for the best places in the countries universities. And it is no longer the noble Robert College in Istanbul that ranks as number one with the highest number of qualifiers, like a Turkish kind of Eton. Other schools from all over the country have taken the first ranks.

Some of the newcomers pride themselves that their students come from the poorer regions of their hometowns: gecekondus, shanty-towns built in a fast illegal effort over night and tolerated by a law that gives squatters a right to stay where they successfully claimed a piece of ground for more than 24 hours.

The Gülen-movement knows about the human gold that can be found in these gecekondus. Their teachers visit the home of each child regularly and help poorer families to keep children at school even if the father’s little business requires the 10 years old son’s permanent presence. They sometimes just buy him out from his father if he is considered to be gifted enough.

Education is a good that private tutoring programs are competing for. In Șanlıurfa a big advertisement on a house front proudly showed the top four kids that were brought to university through such a particular tutoring program. The Gülen program that we saw (photo on top, okuma salonu meaning "reading saloon") equally displayed brass trophies with the names of the students that run particularly well.

Maybe statistics will soon show that a gecekondu is not a bad place to start an academic career from. The shanty-towns obviously are not a place for drugs and crime but stations of hope that a hard working county family soon leaves for one of the TOKI-apartments that the Turkish state subsidizes for those that sell their illegal squatter’s right back to the state and exchange a brand new flat for it.

Once you have learned what a gecekondu is you immediately see them everywhere at the outskirts of bigger towns – and also see how many of them are gradually torn down and replaced by big apartment structures, often four or six in a group, eight stories and more high. The white gold that lived in the gecekondus, human gen capital, is transferred to better dwelling places.

And it changes the face of the cities. We were told that oil and the big water dam projects rapidly improved the economy of Eastern Anatolia. But it obviously would be a dead wealth like in many Arabian States if it was not combined with the brain power of all these many young people that crowd the streets here.

Turkey is digging for white gold. It calls shepherds from the villages and sends their children to university; it welcomes poor farmers and soon gets skilled laborers in exchange. If the Germans only knew that the same raw material was washed to its shores, too!

New Posts

2009-10-29T07:00:00.000+01:00

I wrote a new post about the different stories the Quran and the Bible tell about Job / Eyyup and another one about the Arameans around Mardin and their old Jesus-like language. I put them under the dates of October 20 and 22 to keep a timely order.

Dear Dr. Erkan Saka with his much visited blog in Istanbul put a link to my blog. This is kind of an honorary Ph.D. in the blogger world...

Turkish Friendliness

2009-10-26T19:50:00.001+01:00

The most interesting thing in Turkey must be, as judged from the questions it gets and the attention it attracts, the person of the visiting tourist. Turks are curious people, especially the children.

I saw it back in 1971 when I worked in an Istanbul bank and it again amazed me these days: how they all keep a polite distance to the stranger in their midst, a great formal respect and nevertheless a charming openness towards him and a fine and noble way of keeping themselves proud of their own person, their heads and minds high up all the time.

Turks also have a natural talent to serve. I love the way in which the waiters in a restaurant or tea shop serve their customers. Some of them may be school boys, I guess it from their age and from the often casual things they wear. In smaller shops many of them are not professionals, maybe they are working for their family. In general, many shops here look a little bit over-employed, you almost never see just one man working alone, he would always have one or two companions as if labor was a thing you have to share compassionately with your neighbor.

The boys and sometimes girls serve you well and have a good look for what you need. But they are never devout, never showing you that you are from a better class, only because you can by afford to buy the things that they serve.

They keep a straight tenure, they look as if they love themselves, be aware of a hidden dignity in everything they do. You never see them roll their eyes about a nervous customer or reply impolite if offended - a typical German waiter's disease. They behave as if their own professional quality is a value above all others and beyond every doubt.

Turk be proud, work and trust! is one of Atatürks famous words. When I saw the noble looking and fine featured young man in Șanlıurfa cleaning the men’s restroom without the faintest visible awareness of doing a “low work” I had an idea whome he was following. Maybe he will be the town mayor 20 years from now.

Overflow of impressions

2009-10-25T23:55:00.005+01:00

Our journey via Nimrod Mountain and Gaziantep (and safely home some hours ago) went on so fast that I could not follow writing everything down. I will use the coming days to look through my fotos and write down what is in my memory an on my mind.

There is an overwhelming impression that I have seen something excitingly new. Let me calm down to write more about that.

I will put some new posts under older dates to keep them in a timely order.

Giza Pyramids in the Alps (Adıyaman)

2009-10-23T20:15:00.001+02:00

The tomb of Antiochus I, emperor of the free Kingdom of Commagene, looks like an Egyptian pyramid put on top of a Swiss mountain. I have seldom seen such a spectacular sight (the photos do not give half the impression), visible from more than 50 km afar and looking ever more incredible when approached on long and winding alpine pass roads. The Commagene people have in a worldwide unique way changed the face of a complete mountain range.

Compared with the Giza pyramids in Cairo whose original height is close to 150 m the giant heap of rubble that is collected here is comparatively small (only 50 m) but raises from a mountain top that stands with more than 2.100 m higher than all the other summits around. This is Mount Nemrut.

I had never learned anything about the Kingdom of Commagene in my history lessons. It obviously has left no written witness of its own history. It is thought to be one with Kummuhu that is mentioned in Assyrian texts. The family of emperor Antiochus I. who called himself Theos, God of Commagene claimed to have Alexander the Great and Darius, the Persian King among its ancestors.

Antiochus I. lived from 86 to 38 before Christ. His successors tried to keep their independence from Rome, lost it, regained it but finally lost it in 72 AD for good. History forgot the Commagene people until in 1881 a German engineer, Karl Sester, building roads in Anatolia discovered it again.

The statues around the rubble hill are relatively well preserved. Experts see Greek and Persian art combined in their vivid faces. My favorite figure is the eagle with its harmonic design. The truth is simple, is what the head says. And strong.

The truth about a balanced culture, well in peace with its neighbors, precisely balanced between east and west, might be: if you are good to everyone nobody will remember you forever. Bad boys make history, good boys are forgotten.

I wished it was the other way around.

Nimrod the hunter (Adıyaman)

2009-10-23T08:00:00.003+02:00

The first man on earth ever to claim a kingdom was Nimrod, according to the Bible. He was the great-grandson of Noah and his kingdom began, as Genesis 10 says, in Babel. Many nations celebrate his memory; the Turks have Mount Nimrod, Nemrut Dağ, beautifully situated in Nemrut National Park - we are on the way to there today.

The Bible calls him the first gibor, a mighty one, and also gibor zayid, a mighty hunter. In my imagination his wild strength consisted of the ability to reconcile within himself the two poles of prehistoric existence: to either settle down as a farmer or roam as a nomad. Nimrod settled and founded cities like Ninive but nevertheless kept on roaming, being a hunter. Combining the strength of both ways of life he could not be defeated. His name reminds of marad in Hebrew which means to rebel against someone. He certainly was a man to be afraid of.

The Quran makes him responsible for an attempted burning of Abraham (Sura 21), where God personally intervened and called the fire to be cold. Abraham came out of the fire without a single injury.

Nimrods father was a man named Cush, as Genesis 10 says. Cush again was Ham’s son, the second son of Noah, the son that is thought to be the father of all Africans. Cush’s name survived in the Cushitic languages that are spoken in Eastern Africa. Nimrod’s origin from there would put him closer to Ethiopia than to Babel in today’s Iraq and give him a black skin. Anyway – he is an interesting ancestor for many, even for the Hungarians who claim that he fathered the twin brothers Hunor (father of the Huns) and Magor (father of the Magyars).

Green Democracy

2009-10-23T05:00:00.005+02:00

The Muezzin’s first call woke me up this morning like on all the mornings here. It comes before sunrise. In a big city like Șanlıurfa with its about a million inhabitants it is a whole choir of Muezzins that you hear around 5:30 on an autumn day like today. The one in the Mosque next to you wakes you up and suddenly you hear dozens of them, far an near.

Yesterday we were the guests of a wealthy man by the name of Mehmet Ö., real estate agent and head of the local employer’s organization. We asked him and his friend Hamit Y., a civil engineer, about a lot of things and then came to the question whether a devout follower of faith can be a good democrat. The picture below shows men praying in the big mosque situated near what is though to be Job's cave here in Șanlıurfa.

I have written part of the following already in Germany because it is very much on my mind and I knew that there would be only little time to write here. Can he, the Muslim but also the pious Christian wholeheartedly support an open modern society despite of all its shortcomings in the fields of moral values? Can he see the freedom of the press turned against the sacredness of his God, the minority rights of gays turned against the holiness of marriage, the freedom of a woman to decide about her pregnancy against the eternal promise that every life is given by God alone?

Yes! Say Catholics in Spain, Methodists in the United States, and Pentecostals in Brazil. No! Says a growing number of organized Atheist and Agnostics who run busses with “There is probably no God” on them around the world and believe that peace on earth will only then come when all religious fervor is finally done with.

Yes! Is my vote, too, and I am on my way to tie this Yes to those Yeses that are expressed in the Muslim world.

Our Yes has to be defended, mutually defended. It has to be defended first of all within our own community of believers against those who think that only a strict and pious and lawfully organized society can gain the grace of God and secure its own survival. That of course would mean that religious principles have to be imposed on that part of the population that does not follow them voluntarily.

It has secondly to be defended against those that expect democratic abilities only in people who are in the inner circle of one’s own faith. These prejudices turn Protestants against Catholics, Liberals against Orthodox, Christians against Muslims. Only in the third place it has to be defended against those who do not believe at all.

My expectation in Turkey is to find people who say Yes to a very special kind of self-government: Green Democracy. This Muslim form of what the founding fathers of the American constitution (as those who found the most common expressions for the freedom of mankind) were convinced of should be based on Islam. From there it might then develop new forms of a government of the people, by the people, for the people that are still unknown to us today.

Every nation and every faith has its own way to let people come together and decide about the fate of one’s own community. The Swedish form of social democracy obviously has some deep tribal roots going back to some old Thing-rites of read-bearded Scandinavians. Why shouldn’t a Pashtun Clan in Afghanistan similarly bring in its own tribal rules into democratic procedures?

The people I talked to yesterday know about a lot of Islamic rules that make sure people will not be governed without being asked for their consent. They are obviously sure that a strict obedience to Muslim laws does not exclude anybody from living in a western style democracy. They agree to live peacefully among people with different ethnical and religious backgrounds. They would accept what most of the people in the big capitals of the world have already accepted since many years: that their neighbor next door is not a member of their kinship.

I discussed with them last night, what the New York Times reported about recent developments in Lebanon. They were a little hesitant to concede what a prominent Beirut journalist was quoted saying there: “Bush had a simple idea, that the Arabs could be democratic” and that he opened a door for that idea in the whole region. I will go on to advertise that Bush at least had the nucleus of a good idea and that many people should follow.

Mosque near the cave of Job / Eyyup.

The sufferings of Job / Eyyup (His cave in Șanlıurfa)

2009-10-22T21:00:00.001+02:00

Jews and Christians alike live with the rather depressing wisdom that Job’s sufferings raise a thousand questions and leave us with almost no answers. It even looks as if God himself has locked all possible answers away. He asks Job

Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades, or loose the belt of Orion?
(Job 38:31)

and we silently add if not –shut up! Deep in our judeo-christian soul we nevertheless carry the unspoken optimism that not the answers keep us moving but the questions. Among life's many questions maybe those of Job are the most prominent that make Jews and Christians go on.

Not so the Muslims. Theirs is a simple story of an obedient yet sickly Job / Eyyup who lives in a cave for some times and gets his disease cured by a nearby spring that miraculously occurs out of nowhere. Cave and well can be visited in Șanlıurfa and a huge mosque next to the place invites to offer a thankful prayer, joined by the local population that wears, men and women alike, headscarves in a wonderfully gentle lilac color.

The Quran contains the complete Bible, so the teachers of Islam. But when I read the many shortcuts that the Quran takes to make a complicated Bible story simple, I doubt it. Or should I better ask: what would happen if the faithful followers of the Mighty Quran, peace be upon it, would begin to study the Bible, peace be also upon it?

In Mardin I asked one of the teachers whose university studies had taken him to Islamic Theology, whether he had also studied the Bible in the course of his lectures. Yes, he had read parts of it. Could he tell words from the Bible that he liked and kept in mind? Yes, he said, the parts (in the Gospel of John) where a Comforter is promised, a Paraklete which according to Muslim exegesis of the Bible refers to Muhammad.

I honestly did not like that answer too much. I had made an offert before and had told him that I liked Sura 103 with the order to encourage each other in the pursuit of truth and patience. His answer was given in a way in which people from my home town tease those from the neighboring town: the best thing there is the view on us…

I will not give up the hope that one day I will meet a Muslim that has read parts of the Bible and has found that it unfolds a deep truth of human existence. He may afterwards go back to his Quran. But he should know that the Quran’s wisdom sometimes consists in an abbreviation.

The City of Abraham (Şanlıurfa)

2009-10-22T06:45:00.007+02:00

What looks like a Christmas decoration in Germany is Şanlıurfa's welcome to the "City of Prophets". Peygamber is the Turkish word for prophet. The Arabs say Nabi, and so do the Jews. Şanlıurfa claims to be the home town of Abraham / Ibrahim and Job / Eyyup.

The Bible says that Abraham came from the city of Ur and that this city was in Chaldea. A long tradition places Ur into Northern Mesopotamia and makes it one with the Greek city of Edessa, which was later called Ar-Ruha by the Arabs and Urfa by the Turks. This is today's Şanlıurfa.

Now, 20th century's archeologists believe in another Ur in Southern Mesopotamia, situated near Tell el-Mukayya in Iraq. I grew up with the modern southern theory (as shown in the map below, with Abraham's journey into Kanaan as red arrows) but begin to tend to the old northern.

One reason for my newly gained cinviction is that the second city where Abraham settled was Haran. It should better be called Charran with a ch (like in Loch Lomond, pronounced the Scottish way) whereas Haran with only a simple h was the name of Abraham’s brother. Charran is today still called Harran or Charran and is a city in Northern Mesopotamia, today in Turkey. This is Abraham’s Charran, no doubt.

Now Charran is close to Urfa the northern Ur. That would give Abraham’s journey a shorter distance than in the map above (where Charran is the northern turning point) and more meaning. That is one reason why I am changing my mind about Ur.

The second reason of course is that we now are in Urfa and would like to think of walking in Abraham’s footsteps. And in Job’s since also he is thought to be from Urfa. Placing him here, too, is a Muslim tradition, where Job / Eyüp plays an important role in the Quran.

The Bible only says, that he was from eretz (g)uz the land of Uz, the g sometimes pronounced (like in Gaza) and sometimes not. One of the catastrophes that Job meet is an assault of the Chaldaens that rob his camels and kill his servants. So maybe he lived near them or among them (Chaldeans being another name for people in Mesopotamia) and could have been a citizen of Urfa, too.

Urfa was named Şanlıurfa, (pronounced SHUNN- leh-oor-fah) "the glorious Urfa" in 1984 to commemorate its strong resistance in the Turkish War of Independence between 1919 and 1923.
The center of old Harran is a mournful desert of a vast archeological site and poor houses of poor Arabs. I have always felt rather uncomfortable in old ruin fields and have often doubted that the archeologists ever get any real information out of what they look into, the debris of centuries. Here in Haran the only visible result of the digger’s job is a small façade of what is thought to be a mosque and the rest of a tower. They say that the Arabs built it around 700 but that the Mongols came some 300 years later and destroyed it. The peasants around built houses with the old stones and left a sad heap of rubble over the centuries.

The region around is receiving water from the giant Turkish dam projekt. It is a green garden with corn, mais and cotton. In our bus we feel like "Down in Louisiana" and beginn to sing that good ol' Cottonfield song.

Children (from Mardin to Midyat)

2009-10-21T15:42:00.003+02:00

When a group of Turkish teachers visited a school in my home town some years ago, a friend of mine who worked in that school brought them to my house. After a polite exchange about the beauty of Germany etc. I finally asked them whether they found at least one thing strange here. After some hesitation one of the teachers smilingly said: “in Turkey there is a lot of noise on the roads and a lot of silence in the schools. In Germany it is the other way around.”

I expected such a “silent school” when we visited our first Gülen school in Mardin but was surprised to find a bunch of lively children between the age of 6 and 16 there. Our group was in a way treated like celebrities, say like Bayern Munich visiting a school in Upper Bavaria, surrounded by groups of children asking questions whenever we stopped to watch. They showed respect but where in no way subdued or shy.

The teachers were, as I had expected, mainly fine slender young men, carefully dressed, obviously giving an example in their whole appearance. The children wore school uniforms, blue the older children, orange and grey the younger, what made them look like a happy Dutch national team.

Gülen was nowhere visibly present, Attatürk was the man, also here, with a statue in front of the entrance and pictures inside. I liked the whole atmosphere and waved the children good-bye from out of our car. They had given me a good time and had made me feel like a star for at least once in my life.

A perishing Aramean (Midyat)

2009-10-20T21:50:00.004+02:00

The Syriac Orthodox Church carries an old Aramaic dialect as official Church language through the centuries. A young German member of the Church whose ancestors came from Midyat and who is working for two month in St. Gabriel / Mor Gabriel Monastery (photo above) told me, that the Church often simply calls itself after that language Aramean.

The Syriac Orthodox are spread over the whole world, yet many of them still live here in the region around Midyat and Mardin. The head of the Church is called the Patriarch of Antioch and resided for many years in the monastery St. Ananias / Mor Hananyo in Mardin. After political problems with Turkey in 1933 the Patriarch moved to Syria and resides now in Damascus.

The Aramean language is Jesus’ language. In his time it was lingua franca for wide parts of the region between Egypt and Persia. It is part of the Westsemitic family of languages and thus related to Hebrew and Arab. In Mel Gibson’s Passion Aramean is the language spoken by evrybody except the Romans, a softer, melodic and less guttural version of Hebrew and Arab.

For the Jews the mentioning of Arameans carries memories that reach wide back into the time of Abraham. One of the basic Jewish confessions is written down in Deuteronomy 26,5:

And thou shalt speak and say before JHWH thy God: A perishing Aramean was my father, and he went down to Egypt with a few, and sojourned there, and became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous.

The perishing Aramean is an eternal picture for someone whose life has not yet been touched by God. His national distinction is unclear. He is roaming about, getting lost in the desert, that is what the original arami obed means. Only when he gets even deeper into despair, Egyptian slavery, he calls to JHWH and He listens.

The ancestors of our guide Gabriel in Mor Gabriel lived here for centuries with a clear ethnic and religious distinction. They and the Turks were good neighbors, the Muezzin’s call and the sound of Church bells got along well. The secular governments that came with Atatürk caused problems, the Arameans obviously feel today more comfortable with the Islam-centered government of Erdogan.

The photo below shows a minaret and a Church steeple in Midyat.

An old Armenean from Bern / Switzerland who is visiting his old Church in Mardin recited the Lord's Prayer Our Father in Aramaic to me. I later found a transciption in the internet:

aboon dabashmaya
nethkadash shamak
tetha malkoothak

Hebrew would read:

avinoo b’shamayim
yitkadash shemkha
tetha malkotekhah

Soulmates and Neighbours (Mardin)

2009-10-20T05:20:00.003+02:00

(Foto: Mor Hananyo, the Saffron Monastery, Deir ul-Zafaran, near Mardin)

Manyfold are the Gods that have been worshipped in the land where Tigris and Euphrates are born. Greek and Roman Gods once came – and went again, whenever the Persians took over. The Persian Gods later had also to make room, for the One God of the Christians who in turn was replaced by the One God of the Muslims. His was the final reign after the Buddhist Mongols went back to Central Asia. The Muslim Osmans installed around 1550 what the Arabs, centuries ago could not keep for long, a Muslim government. But even this reign was not undisputed. In Mardin a rest of what in some ways looks like the old Persian faith in Zoroaster or Zarathustra remained until today: the Yazidi faith.

Wikipedia has an article about the Yazidis that live here or used to live here since many of them went abroad just recently. Their origin is unclear, obviously they took elements from most of the other religions in the area, baptizing or circumcising children without making a difference. They believe in transmigration, the walking of the soul from one person or one being to the next.

I like one idea of them: every person has a soulmate, a yonder-brother (biraye achrete) or -sister that will spend eternity with him or her. Your brother or sister will guide you through the heavenly gates, may take over some of your moral responsibilities in front of the eternal judge and so prepare paradise for you. The thought amazes me – in my society where nobody really cares for a second live up in heaven the idea of a friend that is already there seems strange. I wished I had one…

How did the Muslim faith come to Eastern Anatolia and how did it get roots to stay? The Arabs conquered the complete region between Egypt and Syria within 20 years after the death of Mohammed in 632. That included Eastern Anatolia, too. Both superpowers in the region, the Persians and the Byzantine Romans had weakened their respective forces in yearlong fights against each other. That was one of the reasons for the Arabs sudden success. Nevertheless the enormous victories of the Arabs that afterwards went to conquer Persia and parts of India and Central Asia have until today never been fully explained.

The Arabs could not hold the region for long. Other forces came back, first the Armenians. They kept a kingdom for many years. When after them around 1100 the Seljugs came in from Central Asia it was the second Muslim nation to govern the region. Without the exact knowledge of the different ways that the Arabs and with them the Muslim faith took into Central Asia the Seljug Islam looks nevertheless like a “re-import” of a faith that had been there before.

It was later threatened by the Buddhist Mongols who conquered the region around 1240. Other Turk tribes took over some 100 years later and brought Islam back but were again defeated by the Persians in 1502. The Osmans finally installed a Muslim government that lasts until today. Islam was the first faith from then on, but a variety of Persian and Christian faiths was allowed to exist here, also. This variety went along with a broad ethnic spectrum of the old Byzantine and Armenian population blended with people from Mesopotamia, Persia, Arabia and of course Central Asia.

They all were addressed when around 1925 Attatürk came and asked “The Turk” to be proud, to go to work and to trust. Without justification for every hardship he imposed on people to unify his country and to standardize his vision of what “Turk” meant one gets a high respect for a man who at least could think of this colourful patchwork of nations and beliefs to be unified under a single flag, a red one with a moon and a star on it.

From the Monastery St. Ananias / Mor Hananyo we have a wide look into the Mesopotamian plain that stretches, flat like an ocean, below the mountain range of Mardin. Mor Hananyo is called the Saffron Monastery because of its color and has a Syrian Orthodox Church in it that has been there through the centuries.

One of its members tells us that the situation of the Church during the times of the Turkish Republic never has been better than among the ruling Erdogan party, which is under the permanent suspicion to be Islamist.

The directors of a Gülen school in Mardin that we meet at night tell us the same: there is a growing peace between the ethnic and religious groups here, and it can be used to improve education among the many schoolchildren.

These Gülen-men are gentle people, very down to earth, easy going yet with a strong vision of a better life for all the many children they see. I try to imagine them working for a Christian ministry, and I would be glad to have them as ambassadors of my faith.

Competition with a movie star (Batman)

2009-10-19T07:20:00.003+02:00

According to Wikipedia this town in the valley of Tigris in times had some fun with the movie character of the same name. One politician came to the idea to sue the filmmakers for using the name. I do not think that the whole thing was a serious act.

The town is in no need to make money from suing foreign corporations for abuse of name rights since they found oil here and made a development out of their own powers. From our first impression the whole region made big steps into a better economic situation – good roads from Van on, the towns on our way with the typical series of small shops, open till late seven days a week and brightly advertising the local products but as well all sorts of consumer goods that the Great International Bazaar (as Fukuyama calls it) supplies, Carrefour-magazines even Burger King fast food.

Buildings are under construction, most of them with a solid concrete framework that is later filled in with brickwork. The whole of Turkey has always been threatened by earthquakes and one hopes that the concrete frames are laid out in a way that they can stand a quake.

Our tour guide says that the water projects brought money to the region. The upper valleys of Euphrates and Tigris were locked with numerous dams to create artificial lakes that are among the biggest in the world. A system of tunnels distributes the water in the whole area. Our guide has no ear for the complaints of Syria and Iraq at the lower course of the two rivers – they get their full share of water, only with a delay, as he says. This is obviously not true, the newest project is in the meanwhile protested worldwide. We will visit the valley where it is planned, Hasankeyf lies in it, one of the oldest cities in Turkey. It would be completely flooded, if a further dam was build. That makes even many Turks protest the project.

Turkey vs. Armenia 2 - 0

2009-10-18T23:58:00.002+02:00

Van, site of the old Armenian settlement, destroyed after 1920

Ever since I read Franz Werfels Fourty Days of Musa Dag some 20 years ago I have been convinced that the cause of the Armenian people against the Turks is right. I read the 800 pages of the novel breathlessly, during a short sickness in bed and almost without a pause. I have later searched other books and more recently the internet for the full truth. What I found is that Werfel was right and the killings should be called a genocide.

Nevertheless I came to discover a new truth. It says that the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who died in 1915 need a different form of reconciliation compared with what the Jews and my history-haunted Germans achieved after 1945. Three things are different.

First, not too important, but not to be overlooked: the time factor. Germany could begin to regret what it had done immediately after the war. Turkey did something similar in punishing people who were made responsible for the atrocities, even sentencing some of them to dead. But soon after those trials time began to run out for any kind of deeper insight in the nature of the crime. The result was a deep and painful unrest all over the world and also in Turkey, at least for those who were not deaf to morality and international complaints.

The second difference: a more complicated historic truth. Some of the Armenians were openly fighting for an independent state, a re-birth of the great Armenian Kingdom in East Anatolia around the year 900. Turks were killed by Armenians, whereas the Germans never shed a single drop of their own blood from Jewish hands.

The third difference came out only recently: the Turks can support the newly born post communist Armenian State in a very unique way and are obviously about to do so. Armenia is geographically locked in between an unloved post soviet Georgia, some even more unloved small Muslim neighbor states – and Turkey. Turkey could be a natural partner for all kinds of trade, it could even be again what it was before nationalism broke out: a second home for those poorer Armenians who seek work abroad.

The number of illegal Armenian workers in Turkey is estimated to be 70.000. Now a benevolent fate put Turkey and Armenia into one qualifying group for the next Soccer World Championships. Both did not qualify, but both were happy to send their Presidents Sarkissjan and Gül to the two matches in Yerevan and Bursa (that both ended with a Turkish 2 – 0 victory). They used their informal contacts to kick off a treaty that will open the borders and find new forms of cooperation.

In Werfel's novel there is a noble old Turk, the Agha Rifaat Bereket in Antiochia who is an old friend of Gabriel Bagradian, the Armenian hero, and his family. Bagradian turns to him for help and the Agha promises to travel to the "atheists in Istanbul", as he says, the Young Turks that have given up the idea of a government based on faith in favor of nationalism. The Agha knows: nationalism is hatred and thus against the Quran. He recites a Verse from Sura 16 saying that God has "created in different colors".

Maybe the return of faithful people into the Turkish government will help to reconcile two nations whose history has been narrowly connected over the centuries, most of the time peacefully.

Paradise for tomorrow, this city for today (Van)

2009-10-18T06:15:00.002+02:00

The city of Van is known for the beauty of its surrounding. "Van in this world, paradise in the next" is an Armenian proverb, dünyada Van, ahirette iman say the Turks similarly ("Van for this world, faith for the next"). Mt. Ararat (5.165 m) and Mt. Süphan (4.058 m), in the photo below seen from the incoming plane, watch over it with a solemn might that reminds of Mt. Fuji in Japan.

Many nations have fought to own Van. The long row of emperors dates back to the mythic people of Urartu with their name connected with Mount Ararat, which lies 50 miles from here. The Medians and Persians and Alexander the Great owned it, before around the time of Christ King Tigranes of Armenia was the first to put it under Armenian control. The name Van is Armenian and means village.

After the conquering Romans the Persians (Sassanides) came again, followed by the Byzantines and for a short time by the Arabs. The Armenians also came again, around 900 and founded the kingdom of Vaspurakan only to be followed by a wave of people from Central Asia. The Mongols took Van from the Seljuks, the Timurid Turks took it from the Kara Koyunlus, the only stable reality from than on was the government of Central Asians and from around 1400 on also the Muslim faith.

The Ottomans, a fifth Central Asian party, finally held Van for almost 400 years. In Turkish they are called Osmans a name taken from their first leader Osman I who lived in western Anatolia from 1258 – 1326 as the head of one of the local Emirates.

He and his family gained an ever increasing control in the West that, under Osman’s grandson Murat I lead to the famous victory over the Serbs in Kosovo 1389. Murat died there but his children and grandchildren went on fighting and finally in 1453 conquered Istanbul. Mehmed II “the conqueror” was the seventh Sultan in the row beginning with Osman.

The series of victories in the West went along with problems in the East – fights with other Sultans, Mongols, Persians. It took the Osmans another 100 years from Istanbul until they could install an undisputed government also in Van.

The Osmans / Ottomans did not ask their people to convert to Islam. At the end of their reign Van had about as many schools for the Muslim Turks as it had for the Christian Armenians, both nations obviously not too much interested in a clear concept what Turk or Armenian meant after centuries of migration from in and out Central Asia and also from the various regions that Armenia did possess and loose in the course of history.

The much contested paradise finally turned to hell when democracy came and claimed that freedom can only exist in a national state with a clearly defined national character. Some people would later say, simplifyingly, that a State is a language with a police. From that it was obvious that Van had one language too much, the Armenian.

Ethnic cleansings, to say the least followed. The Treaty of Sèvres 1920 (after Versailles 1919) to end World War I was rewritten by Attatürk’s Army that took Van by force from what was planned to be the Democratic Republic of Armenia but had problems to come into a short-lived existence before falling into the hands of the Russian Communists.

The Kurdish boys that help uns to climb the old city castle are proud to be Turks, so they say. But new problems arise in the East: illegal workers from Iran and Afghanistan come into the town and "cause problems" by working for lower wages as the local Turks. This is what the boys say. Are there also illegal Armenians in town? The boys say no.

We will leave the city with a fresh sun tan on our skin and the mountain wind in our hair. Paradise is as far away from here as it is everywhere on earth but Van in ggod days certainly is a place where you can get an idea how paradise may look like.

Cuneiform and Kyrgyz riders (Van)

2009-10-17T17:00:00.005+02:00

A bright day with Mt.Ararat shining in the distance, when our early morning plane from Istanbul took a long curve over the lake and then landed in Van. With an altitude of almost 1.700 m the lake is situated as high as the lakes near St. Moritz, Switzerland in the Upper Engadin.

The bare mountains around the town are impressive, we went some 20 km east to see the remnants of an Urartian stronghold, witness of one of the oldest cultures in the region, giver of the name Urartu/Ararat.

An old man sold stones with tiny inscriptions in the writing of the Urartians (and later the Hetites, Assyrians and others). Yes, it is “Keilschrift”, he knew the German word for cuneiform, and he was an expert. He had neatly carved the stones himself and claimed that he, Mehmet Kuşman, was among the only 36 people in the world that could fluently read and write this ancient kind of scripture. Some years ago they were still 38, when Mehmet Hoca followed an invitation to California for a gathering of experts. Two Russians had died since and now 36 of the wise and learned men remained.

The stronghold was beautifully placed over a wide fruitful plain behind which higher mountains rose. They were close to Persia from were in the course of history many invaders came to claim their ownership of this rich mountain country near the big lake.

Later, in a visit to the old castle that overlooks the southern part of the town of Van, we were happy to get into a televised Kurdish wedding. It was a real wedding except for bride and

bridegroom who were actors. The colorful gowns of the young people, the horses, guns and horseman of the Kyrgyz riders, the muttons roasted over an open fire, everything was real.

The Kyrgyz faces obviously were part of the feast, and not strange, although for us almost belonging to a Chinese kind of people. The only strangers here were we. Happy strangers in the golden light of a warm setting sun.

Great Expectations (II)

2009-10-15T13:00:00.003+02:00

Apart from looking forward to see paradise (which, of course is not a serious expectation) my wish is that our journey will take us to fresh waters of Green Democracy, that is: to people that are likewise pious Muslims and modern citizens of this world. Our tour is guided by people of the Gülen-movement and the hosts that will open their houses for us will be part of that movement. They are believers inspired by the philosopher Fethullah Gülen. In 2008 the readers of the US-Magazine Foreign Policy put Gülen as Number 1 among 100 world’s top public intellectuals.

Gülen is 68 years old and lives in Pennsylvania/USA. Gülen's inspiration is leading my friend Nureddin Öztaş, our tour organizer, into a life as a devout Muslim with regular prayers and a deep awareness that his life is filled with God’s presence. To fill more and more of the world with that presence Gülen teaches first of all one thing: education. Muslims should, according to him study a lot and so get to the front of modern science. Since God is the creator there is no taboo in research. It will always lead into finding God’s traces anywhere.

Gülen-schools are opening in many countries around the world. A homework-support for schoolchildren was what my friend Nureddin started with. He is now about to open a complete regular school in a town near Cologne/Germany.

Gülen teaches that obedience to Islamic rules does not contradict life in a modern society. He encourages Muslims to meet Christians, Jews and people of other religions and to learn from them. Nureddin’s and my friendship is on his side deeply rooted in the optimism that Nureddin is getting from Gülen. Without him we would not be on this journey to East Anatolia together. Nureddin obviously likes me not although I am a devout evangelical Christian but because.

My expectation is to find conservative Muslims with an open heart for a modern life in the framework of an open society. Words like liberal or western or democratic are over-used but they nevertheless still give an idea of what people all over the world are searching for. If they combine their search with a deeper desire for spiritual foundation it should not necessarily lead to contradictions.

There has been a long period of secular government in Turkey. People have thought that faith would rather hinder the development of a western kind of democracy. Today the ruling AKP is more open to religious influence and has tried to prove the secularist point of view untrue by installing democratic reforms. The Kurds are treated as an acknowledged minority for the first time in Turkish history, the Armenians are welcomed in again (a treaty to open up borders again was signed last Saturday, see photo above) the demands of the European Union for better civil rights have been accepted not as a burdensome requirement for economic cooperation but as a chance for renewal.

There is a lot of modern Muslim democratic reform on the way. My hope is to find it proved also in Eastern Anatolia.

Through Twitter and Facebook I have been in contact with Muslims worldwide that also strive to reconcile faith and life in a world with almost no borders. I greet Adel in Bushere / Iran, Ashfaq in Mauritius, Ahmad (an Egyptian) in Abu Dhabi / Dubai. I also greet Bijan, a Bahai-Persian in Mecklenburg / Germany, David, a Jew in Tel Aviv, Joshua a Texan in California (and a conservative with a heart for immigrants) and, of course Erkan in Istanbul who encouraged my blogging a lot.

And a river went out from Eden

2009-10-13T19:30:00.003+02:00

Paradise was in former days thought to be near the sources of Tigris and Euphrates. The bible says in Genesis 2 that a river is going out from the Garden of Eden and that this river splits up into four arms which are called Pishon, Gihon, Hiddeqel and Perat. Hiddeqel is thought to be Tigris (arab.: Didschla) and Perat/Pherat is used for Euphrates in all parts of the Hebrew bible.

The medieval Ebstorf Map found 1830 in a monastery in Lower Saxony has the paradise with its four rivers in it.

Paradise is, in the imagination of Islam full of irrigating channels. My old German translation of the Quran says there are creaks rushing through (durcheilt von Bächen). In the Biblical imagination paradise is itself a source of rivers supplying the world around.

The Bible begins and ends with a river or stream flowing from paradise – first the four-armed river from Genesis 2 and then at the end a crystal clear river from Revelation 22, the last chapter in the bible.

Here the crystal river in the old English of the King James Version:

And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal,
proceeding out of the throne of God.

A River Runs Through It is the title of a book and a film about two brothers who go out fly-fishing. It contains all the beauty that is in the quick flow of clear water. Paradise must be a lot like this. Will we get an idea of how it looked liked, before time began?

Great Expectations

2009-10-07T19:00:00.002+02:00

Christiane, my beloved wife of 35 years and I will visit Eastern Turkey between October 16th and 25th. We will fly into Van, a city on the eastern shore of Lake Van, about 50 miles from the Iranian border. From Van we will go by boat and bus over seven days via Mardin, Urfa and other cities back to Gaziantep, a town close to the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean Sea.

Our road will lead us along the borders of Iraq and Syria. We will cross both Tigris and Euphrates. They have their sources in Turkey and run down into the Gulf of Persia. Both are giving water to one of human life's cradles: the eastern half of the “fertile crescent” the half-moon-shaped region stretching from Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean.

Old world maps show paradise right at the upper course of Tigris and Euphrates. That is about where we will be around October 20th. Great Expectations!

A Farewell to John Updike

2009-07-25T21:30:00.004+02:00

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

2009-07-14T06:30:00.004+02:00

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

2009-07-11T13:14:00.007+02:00

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

2009-07-03T20:36:00.006+02:00

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."

New York Times' Analysis June 30

2009-06-30T21:55:00.002+02:00

from today's New York Times

Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, who recently visited Iran and filed several stories on Iran’s contested vote and its aftermath is among the Times staffers answering readers’ questions.

Will Protest Movements Have an Effect?

Question: I would like to know if you think this green movement will lead to regime change?

Bill Keller: I’ll gladly defer to my colleagues who have spent far more time in Iran than I have, although I trust all of us will shy away from making predictions. One thing that struck me forcefully, though, as a novice watching the country move from pre-election euphoria to post-election outrage and repression, was that for Iranians themselves this month has been an eye-opening look behind a thick curtain. They have seen prominent figures in the modern history of Iran, veterans of the Islamic revolution, quarreling fiercely among themselves. They have seen the supreme leader, for the most part an unchallenged voice of civic and religious orthodoxy, openly (if, for the most part, subtly) challenged. They have seen their elections, which are designed to confer a gloss of popular legitimacy on theocratic power, derided as fraudulent. They have seen a significant cohort of their compatriots take to the streets. They have flocked to alternative information sources — foreign TV broadcasts, the Web, social networks.
The day before the election we interviewed a reformist presidential candidate, Mehdi Karroubi, and asked what would happen if the opposition lost. He said he couldn’t predict whether the popular energy unleashed by the electoral campaign would continue or whether the nation would “go into a coma.” Indeed, the educated middle class that provided much of the impetus for change does have a history of slipping into disenchantment and disengagement after defeat. Many of them deliberately sat out the election that brought Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power in 2005. But I wonder whether an experience like the one Iran is going through now cannot help having an eventual corrosive effect on the regime itself.

Mousavi's letter

2009-06-28T12:27:00.004+02:00

Mousavi remains defiant

By MUHAMMAD SAHIMI in Los Angeles 28 June 2009
from: TEHRAN BUREAU

Iran’s Guardian Council — the Constitutional body that vets the candidates and certifies the validity of the elections — has formed a special committee to look into the irregularities of the presidential election, and to recount 10 percent of the votes. It has invited the candidates to introduce a special representative, so that the recounting can take place. But in a letter to the Guardian Council, Mir Hossein Mousavi, the main reformist candidate, insisted that the entire election process was fraught with numerous violations of important articles of Iran’s election laws and, therefore, there was no way to rectify the situation other than annulment of the election and holding a new one. In his letter, Mousavi divides all the violations of the government and the Interior Ministry, which supervises the elections, into four categories, stating:

Based on what I already informed the Council about [in Mr. Mousavi’s previous letters], the extent and depth of the unlawful acts [of the government] in four distinct categories, namely, The election campaigns, and what the government did prior to Election Day; The collection of the votes [on June 12] and their enumeration; Summarizing the results and announcing them [and], What has taken place after announcing the results, are such that there is no remedy for them other than annulment of the entire election and holding a new one. As examples, I point out certain violations and unlawful acts that are recognized by Article 33 of the laws of presidential elections as violations that influence the overall result of the elections and, therefore, leave no choice but annulment of the elections:

Explicit and widespread violation of Article 68 of the elction laws that forbids the use of public resources for, and the intervention of the cabinet members, senior officials, governor-generals, and managers in favor of the candidate of the establishment [President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad].

Violation of the neutrality of the Voice and Visage [Seda va Sima: National Iranian Radio and Television Network], and making unfounded accusations [against the reformist candidates] by that organ, the unlawful nature of some of which has also been confirmed by Iran’s Chief Justice [Ghorbanali Dorri Najafabadi], as well as widespread campaign and propaganda by governmental organizations, such as IRNA [Iran’s official news agency], newspapers, and websites in favor of the establishment’s candidate.

Widespread violations of Article 33 of the presidential election laws: buying votes by distributing the so-called “justice stocks and shares” and cash among the peasants. Threatening, as well as bribing by cash, members of the city councils, influential people, etc.

Lack of confidence in the ballot boxes being empty before they were sealed [before voting], disappearance of the voting forms and ballot boxes after voting, due to the fact that [our] monitors had been barred from being present at the voting places, as well as based on reports that have been received.

Denying people’s rights to vote by limiting the hours of voting, and many other violations, such as lack of voting forms at the voting locations.

Fraud in voting by not having enough voting forms at voting places, even though 12 million additional forms [on top of the 47 million needed for the number of eligible voters] had already been printed, and printing of an additional 2.5 million forms (and perhaps more) that had no official serial numbers had also been authorized by a member of the Council. Such violations can undoubtedly be proven by comparing the completed voting forms with the information in the Information Bank [that the government keeps of all the Iranian people].

“Recommendation” to people by the officials working at voting places for whom they should vote, and selecting such officials and monitors from amongst the ranks of the establishment candidate.

Intimidating the voters and supporters of the reformist candidates in the week before the election, and attacking their campaign headquarters and their supporters in the legal gathering and rallies around the country.

Setting many limitations for the [reformist] candidates’ monitors to attend the meetings of the executive committees [that supervise the elections], be present at the centers where the votes were collected and counted, as well as at a significant number of voting locations.

Cutting off, on the voting day, all means of mass communications, such as SMS and cell phones, which are used for monitoring the elections and reporting unlawful acts to my campaign headquarters, so that we could pursue the legal channels to stop them.

Collecting the votes in a way that could not be monitored, and announcing the results in an “engineered” way (while, even before announcing the results by the Interior Ministry, the websites that are linked with the government, the Sepaah [the Revolutionary Guards], and [the daily] Kayhan [the mouthpiece of the hard-liners] had already announced the results).

Widespread intervention in the elections by some parts of the armed forces prior and during the elections, which is against the explicit order of the Imam [Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had forbidden the military from intervention in political affairs].

The existence of more 170 voting districts [out of a total of 368] in which the percentage of the votes cast was between 95% and 140% of the total number of eligible voters.

Attacking my [Mr. Mousavi’s] campaign headquarters throughout the country, shutting down my central campaign headquarter [in Tehran], and arresting the campaign chairman and its active members, which disrupted our work for collecting information and documents on the violations of the election law.

The letters continues to insist that the aforementioned violations of the election laws cannot be remedied by a partial recounting of the votes. It also casts doubt on whether the special committee can, in fact, be trusted:

All the above items indicate the existence of prior planning and organization for violating the election law. Since the Guardian Council has already stated that investigating some of the violations is beyond its authority, and because some of the violations were committed by the Interior Minister [Sadegh Mahsouli], other senior officials in the Ministry, and some members of the Guardian Council who violated the principle of neutrality, an impartial investigation of the violations cannot be done by the Guardian Council, as well as any committee that is appointed by the Council. Indeed, some members of the committee were not neutral in the elections, and have stated their positions before the investigation has been conducted and, therefore, cannot contribute to removing the public’s doubts about the elections.

Therefore, I [Mr. Mousavi] insist once again that the best way of addressing the issue and regaining the nation’s trust in the election process is by annulling the election and appointing a national adjudicating team that can be trusted by the public and its verdict can be accepted by it. Thus, I suggest that the issue should be referred to an independent legal team trusted by all the candidates and the religious leaders.

The special committee that the Guardian Council has formed consists of former Foreign Minister Dr. Ali Akbar Velayati; former speaker of the Majles (parliament) Gholamali Haddad Aadel; Chief Justice [and former Minister of Intelligence] Ghorbanali Dorri Najafabadi; Mohammad Hassan Aboutorabi, a conservative Majles deputy and a deputy Speaker; Mohammad Hassan Rahimiyan, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s special representative in the Shahid [martyr] Foundation; and Goudarz Eftekhar Jahromi, a legal scholar, university professor, and former member of the Guardian Council. Of these, Dr. Valayati has criticized Mr. Mousavi for calling for the annulment of the election. Mr. Haddad Aadel [whose daughter is married to a son of Ayatollah Khamenei] supported the candidacy of Mr. Ahmadinejad for a second term, and Mr. Rahimiyan has stated that, “those who could not get people’s votes [meaning Mr. Mousavi and Mr. Mahdi Karroubi, the second reformist candidate], instead of pursuing the matter through legal channels, resorted to alternative ways that have only made our enemies happy,” hence stating his opposition to mass demonstrations against the rigged elections. It should also be noted that Mr. Karroubi has stated that, in order for his representative to participate in the work of the special committee, two members of the committee who are not considered neutral must be replaced by others, but has not specified which two.

Copyright © 2009 Tehran Bureau

People in TwittIran

2009-06-26T21:48:00.010+02:00

The heroes of my Twitter World are of course those that live and fight and suffer in Iran. They give their names quite openly, one can find many of them in a blog and follow them on Twitter.

Over a long day on Twitter-duty they sometimes share some personal things – an exam coming close, problems with computers, anger about some people they dislike. There is a revolution going on but nevertheless a day’s routine engrosses everybody. After a while you think that you know them personally.

Apart from theme there is a number of people standing by and watching, like me. It is a compassionate watch, especially with people like Omid Nouripor, a German with an Iranian background. He is member of our Parliament in Berlin, in a noisy party (Green) that I would normally not vote for. Nevertheless I like his heartfelt comments and re-tweets and the way he often adds a #prayforthem to it.

In Germany people with a “Migrationshintergrund” (migration background) are mainly welcomed by those parties tending to the left. Those to the right (which I normally vote for) rather keep them at a distance, which is a mistake and leaves me sometimes standing alone and freeze in conservative circles.

Every movement has at least one beauty to look at. In TwitterIran it is Lily Mazahery from Washington D.C. Her Twitter account had her picture taken from behind, showing her classic profile and her lovely shoulders. Unfortunately Twitter would overlay the shoulder part with text, so for a long time you only could guess how it looked. Only when the internet was slow the shoulders would appear for a second. That was the only time you would bless a slow internet.

Now she changed the size of the photo and you see shoulders and all immediately, but in a much smaller seize. To my fortunate readers here I proudly present the old, big shot.

Lily is in Wikipedia, she is reported about in the New York Times and sometimes she is on TV in the United States. She is a lawyer and a Human Rights Activist, as that profession is called. I am sure TwitterIran would make her the next Shabanu if she would only accept it (which I doubt, she doesn't sound too much monarchist).

Also on TV and active behind the political scene is my dear Joshua Trevino from California. In my imagination he is my closest ally and friend – a little older than the students, a conservative, a man in business, all like me. Nevertheless I disagree with his Conservativism in the same way I disagree with another American friend’s Liberalism.

Both stick to the crazy believe that every change of government in the USA invents the country completely new. The reality is that America is only gradually adjusted from time to time and in the meantime busy to keep all their trade partners on he losing side. I say that although I love almost no other country in the world more than the United States. If they only could give up borrowing money from the Chinese and changing it into foul derivative papers that make you bankrupt within weeks after you have faithfully bought it.

Honestly, this of course is exaggerated. I wish I could write half as good English as Joshua does. Sometimes he is so brilliant that I don’t even get his wit. Sorry for the small photo, his website with bigger photos is under attack right at the moment. He obviously has enemies. If it was the Iranian Secret Service it would surely make all of us proud.

I love you all!*

* After writing down this phrase I see that Michael Jackson used it, yes he passed away last night, and yes, it is almost forbidden in TwitterIran to let oneself be distracted by this event. Nevertheless also here every second tweet has MJ in it.

From Iran, more matter (II)

2009-06-26T21:30:00.001+02:00

Here is Robert D. Kaplan in an article for the Los Angeles Times. I found it in the Turkish Newspaper "Todays Zaman" and thought it written by a Turk while reading it. The article has a lot of information about Sunnites and Shiites and the postive role a moderate islamic regime in Tehran could play.

From Iran, more matter

2009-06-25T23:47:00.006+02:00

Islam and democracy are incompatible is the contrast to Mousavi's letter. It is quoted in an article of the New York Times about Ahmadinejad (dated June 24):

At the same time, Ayatollah Muhammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s spiritual mentor, runs three powerful educational institutions in the holy city of Qum, all spun off from the Haqqani seminary, which teaches that Islam and democracy are incompatible.

As another contrast to Mousavi's letter here is a story that is circulating in the web, too. It is more critical with traditional Islam and openly says that the West is very like the Paradise.

The story is called Battle of The Melody. The full text is in a blog that is run by somebody that calls him- or herself Kafirtiti.

It is also in Infidel Blogger's Alliance where Khomeini is quoted as saying

An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humour in Islam. There is no fun in Islam.

Here is a small part of Battle of The Melody:

2. The West had ships that carried goods from hither to thither. They created large birds of steel, that could fly them to and fro, over a great many miles. The West also had music, beautiful music, played skilfully by well-trained musicians. And many other ways to entertain themselves.
3. Compared to the House of Allah and his prophet, may wasps nest in his stomach for eternity, the West was very like the Paradise written in their holy book, which told of Virgins, and rivers of wine and endless pleasures, if the believers would but die and kill for Allah.
4. And it made the lawless savages angry, because they must die and kill in order to attain the very Paradise which already was in the West!
5. And so it came to pass, that the Sons of Allah would go out from their House, and travel to the West.

From Iran, and not to be forgotten

2009-06-25T21:30:00.002+02:00

Some words and pictures that went around the world after the elections in Iran (on June 12, 2009) should not be forgotten. Around that day I happened to have my first experiments with Twitter. Here the stream of disturbing news did not end. It flew from a country where the government turned violent against it's own people - people obviously with no extreme ideas or radical intentions.

I would like to remember the dramatic last tweets from Persiankiwi. I read it on my computer and later found it printed out in a blog that collects words and images like my blog does.

Persiankiwi blogged the following on June 24, around noon local time. There were no new tweets from him or her since then.

just in from Baharestan Sq - situation today is terrible - they beat the ppls like animals -I see many ppl with broken arms/legs/heads - blood everywhere - pepper gas like war -they were waiting for us - they all have guns and riot uniforms - it was like a mouse trap - ppl being shot like animalssaw 7/8 militia beating one woman with baton on ground - she had no defense nothing - #Iranelection sure that she is deadso many ppl arrested - young & old - they take ppl away -ppl run into alleys and militia standing there waiting - from 2 sides they attack ppl in middle of alleysall shops was closed - nowhere to go - they follow ppls with helicopters - smoke and fire is everywherephone line was cut and we lost internet - #Iranelection - getting more difficult to log into net -rumour they are tracking high use of phone lines to find internet users - must move from here now - #Iranelection - reports of street fighting in Vanak Sq, Tajrish sq, Azadi Sq - now - #Iranelection - Sea of Green - Allah Akbarin Baharestan we saw militia with axe choping ppl like meat - blood everywhere - like butcher - Allah Akbar -they catch ppl with mobile - so many killed today - so many injured - Allah Akbar - they take one of usthey pull away the dead into trucks - like factory - no human can do this - we beg Allah for save us -Everybody is under arrest & cant move - Mousavi - Karroubi even rumour Khatami is in house guardwe must go - dont know when we can get internet - they take 1 of us, they will torture and get names - now we must move fast -thank you ppls 4 supporting Sea of Green - pls remember always our martyrs - Allah Akbar - Allah Akbar - Allah AkbarAllah - you are the creator of all and all must return to you - Allah Akbar -

I would also like to keep in mind a touching letter that Mir Hossein Mousavi sent to his followers on June 20. Not everybody likes his faithful comradeship with the late Ayatollah Khomeini. He mentions him frequently in his letter.

But Mousavi says you can preserve your spirituality while living a modern life and, in saying so he reconciles the old religious way with the new secular way that people more and more seem to prefer.

I quote the translation of TehranBroadcast.

In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful

Surely God commands you to make over trusts to their owners and that when you judge between people you judge with justice [Quran, 4:58]

The honorable and intelligent people of Iran,

These days and nights mark a crucial point in the history of our nation. People ask among themselves and also ask me what we should do and what direction we should take. I see it as my duty to share with you what I believe, to tell you and learn from you, so we would not forget our historical mission and not shrug off the responsibility that the fate of the ages and generations has bestowed upon us. Thirty years ago a revolution took place in our country in the name of Islam; a revolution for freedom, a revolution for reviving the dignity of human beings, a revolution for honesty and righteousness. In these years, particularly when our wise Imam [ayatollah Khomeini] was still alive, huge resources have been spent on strengthening its blessed foundations, may it be lives, material assets and reputations, which has led to valuable achievements. Our society was overwhelmed by a spirituality that we had not experienced before and our people found a new life that was sweet for them, although they went through the hardest of times. What they had achieved was dignity, freedom and the start of a pure life. I am sure that whoever experienced those days will not be satisfied with anything less.
Had we as a people lost something that made us unable to experience such a spiritual atmosphere anymore? I had came [as a candidate for the elections] to say that it is not so; it is not late yet and we are still not far away from that spiritual environment. I had came to show that you can preserve your spirituality while living a modern life. I had came to repeat our Imam’s [ayatollah Khomeini’s] warnings about fundamentalism. I had come to say that diversion from the law would result in dictatorship; to remind that respecting human dignity does not weaken the foundations of the establishment, but strengthens it. I had came to say that people expect their civil servants to be honest and sincere, and that many of our problems arise from lies and dishonesty. I had came to say that under-development, poverty, corruption, and injustice is not our destiny. I had came to invite you once again to the Islamic Revolution as it was, and the Islamic Republic as it should be.

My invitation was not eloquent but the true message of the revolution was so pleasant that it excited the young generation, even through my lame words, a generation that had not experienced those days and found a distance between themselves and that rich heritage. It resulted in scenes similar only to what I had seen in the days of the revolution and holy defense [Iran-Iraq war]. The spontaneous movement chose the color green as the symbol among themselves. I hereby confess that I was the one who followed them in this regard. A generation that is accused to be distant from religious foundations chose "Allah-u Akbar" [God is great], "Help is only from god, and victory is close" [from the Quran], and "ya Hossein" as their slogans, and they used Khomeini’s name to show that the fruits of this blessed tree are similar in all generations. They only came to these by following their own nature. How unfair are those whose petty interests make them ignore this miracle of the Islamic Revolution and call it a "velvet revolution" influenced by foreign entities.

But as you know, we all encountered lies and cheating in our path to achieving the wishes in the hearts of our young and old and a national rebirth; what we had predicted as the eventual result of diverging from the law actually happened in the most explicit manner in the closest of times.
The high turnout in the recent elections was first and foremost the result of efforts in creating hope and trust in people that there will be a suitable response to the management crises and massive social dissatisfactions whose accumulation can undermine the foundations of the revolution and establishment if not addressed properly. If this optimism and trust of the people would not be responded by safeguarding their votes, or if they cannot defend their rights in a peaceful and civil manner, then we will fall in a dangerous path. The responsibility of such circumstances shall be with those who cannot tolerate peaceful reactions.

If the huge volume of rigging and manipulating votes, that has burned away people’s trust, would itself be used as a means to deny the cheating, then the republic essence of the establishment would be undermined and the inconsistency of Islam and democracy would be practically proven. Such an achievement would overjoy two groups; one is those who opposed the Imam from the first years of the revolution and and consider an Islamic government to be a dictatorship of the righteous and wrongfully want to force people into heaven, and the other consists of those who claim to defend the right of the people and see religion and Isalm as an obstacle in achieving democracy. The extraordinary achievement of the late Imam was to nullify both of these curses. I had come to, following the Imam’s path, cancel the efforts of the magicians who had emerged again.

Currently the officials have, by approving what happened in the elections, accepted all responsibility for it. They have set a limit for the extent of the results of any further investigation into the ballots: that it would not result in annulling the elections and would not change the outcome, even though in more than 170 electoral districts, the number of votes is more than the number of eligible voters.

We are asked to follow our complaints through the guardian council. This is while the guardian council has proven not to be impartial in its actions, before, during and after the elections, and the first condition for any kind of judgment is neutrality.

I still strongly believe that a request of annulling the elections is a definite right that we should pursue through a neutral and nationally trusted committee. It should not be dismissed as impossible beforehand. People should not be prevented from any kind of rallies and demonstrations by suggesting the possibility of bloodshed. The national security council should not divert attention from itself when asked about the plain-clothes forces and their role in attacking people, damaging public property, and causing tension in public gatherings, and blame others for the disasters that have taken place.

When I look at this setting, I see it as a preparation for goals beyond imposing an unwanted government upon people, but as a means of imposing a new political lifestyle on the country. As a companion that has seen the beauty of your wave of green presence, I will not allow myself any action that may result in lives being endangered. But I also insist on my strong belief that the elections are invalid, and I will persist on attaining the people’s rights. Despite the limited capabilities and resources that I have access to, I believe that with your motivation and creativity you can continue to pursue your legitimate rights in new civil faces and forms, and achieve them. I assure you that I shall stay by your side. What this brother of yours suggests in seeking these new solutions is not letting liars and cheaters steal your flag in defense of the Islamic establishment, and do not let untrustworthy strangers confiscate the valuable heritage of the Islamic Revolution which is a resource which we have payed for by the blood of you righteous fathers. From now on continue the pursue of you rights with trust in God and hope in the future and reliance on your capabilities, while abiding by the constitution and the principle of non-violence. In this path we are not against the basijis; they are our brothers. We are not against the Revolutionary Guards; they are the safeguards of our revolution and establishment. We are not against the army; they ensure the safety of our national borders. We are not against our sacred establishment and its legal structures. These structures preserve our freedom, liberty and Islamic Republic. We are against lies and diversions and we aim to reform them; a reform that brings us back to the pure principles of the the Islamic Revolution.

We advise the officials to not only allow peaceful demonstrations, based on article 27 of the constitution, but to encourage them, in order to ensure peace and safety in the streets, and to lift the restrictions from the national television so it may stop its insults, and one-sided coverage. They should let the voices turn into arguments, and constructive debates, and be corrected and modified by being expressed in free media, before they turn into shouts. Let the press criticize, report the news as it is and, in short, give people a free environment where they can express their agreements and disagreements. Let those who like to shout "Allah-u Akbar" and do not consider that as disagreement with yourself. Obviously if this happens, there will be no need for having police and armed forces in the streets, and we shall not encounter events that seeing them or hearing about them would break the heart of any one who loves the revolution and the country.

Your brother and companion - Mir Hossein Mousavi

A Potsdam Conference

2009-05-25T20:30:00.005+02:00

My Turkish friend "Nureddin", known to the readers of my Quran-Blog under this pen name, and I will go to Potsdam tomorrow. We will participate in a Jewish-Christian-Muslim conference that deals with the thoughts and teachings of Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish contemporary Philosopher.

"Today's Zaman" from Istanbul is reporting today. Zaman means "time".

Academics to discuss Gülen movement in Germany

The University of Potsdam's Institute of Religion and the Forum for Intercultural Dialogue Berlin are organizing an international conference on “Muslims Between Tradition and Modernity -- The Gülen Movement as a Bridge Between Cultures.” The conference, which will be held at the University of Potsdam on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, is supported by the German Orient-Institute, the Abraham Geiger College and the Protestant Academy of Berlin. The conference is hoped to provide a platform for the objective and rigorous examination of the activities of the Gülen movement. It is the first of its kind in that it has no Turkish or Muslim names on its editorial board, which instead features academics such as Professor Karl-Josef Kuschel from Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen, Professor Christina von Braun from Berlin's Humboldt University and Professor Markus Witte from the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt. The organizers of the conference have referred to Fethullah Gülen as one of the voices that have promoted peaceful coexistence in Europe and throughout the world.

Over 20 academics will present papers at the two-day conference. The first panel of the conference will discuss whether the Gülen movement can offer a solution for the problem of European Muslim integration. Professor Karel Steenbrink of Utrecht University will present a paper titled “A Turkish Solution for a Dutch Problem.” Participants at the conference will also discuss whether dialogue can help overcome the clash of civilizations. In this part of the conference Professor Reuven Firestone will present a paper titled “Religious Identity in a Competitive, Pluralistic World: Cultural Capitalism, the Gülen Movement and Religious Education,” and Professor Claudia Derichs will present her impressions and findings from the activities of the Gülen movement in Australia. Professor Johann Hafner will discuss attitudes toward apostasy as a criterion of religious tolerance, whereas Dr. Klas Grinell will try to read Fethullah Gülen as a political thinker as a postcolonial option in reference to conservatism and democracy. Journalist and academic Dr. Reiner Hermann will assess the place of Fethullah Gülen and the movement named after him in modern Turkey.

25.05.2009 News TODAY'S ZAMAN

A Poem by John Updike (and a weak German translation)

2009-04-05T12:40:00.001+02:00

Fine Point
December 22, 2008

Why go to Sunday school, though surlily,
and not believe a bit of what was taught?
The desert shepherds in their scratchy robes
undoubtedly existed, and Israel's defeats -
the Temple in its sacredness destroyed
by Babylon and Rome. Yet Jews kept faith
and passed the prayers, the crabbed rites,
from table to table as Christians mocked.

We mocked, but took. The timbrel creed of praise
gives spirit to the daily; blood tinges lips.
The tongue reposes in papyrus pleas,
saying, Surely - magnificent, that "surely" -
goodness and mercy shall follow me all
the days of my life, my life, forever.

Feinschrift
22. Dezember 2008

Warum zur Sonntagschule gehen, unwillig,
und ohne das zu glauben, was man hörte?
Die Hirten in den groben Kleidern gab's
doch zweifellos, und Israels Niederlagen -
der Tempel in seiner Heiligkeit zerstört
durch Babylon und Rom. Und dennoch,
die Juden hielten ihren Glauben und gaben
ihre Gebete weiter und krause Riten,
von Tisch zu Tisch. Und Christen lachten drüber.

Wir lachten und wir nahmen. Das Tamburin des Preises
gibt dem Alltag Geist und Blut den Lippen.
Urworte auf Papyrus erfrischen die Zunge,
daß sie sagt Gewiß - groß, dieses „gewiß" -
Gutes und Barmherzigkeit werden mir folgen
mein Leben lang. Mein Leben. Für immer.

John Udpike lived from March 18, 1932 until January 27, 2009.
His last poetry book Endpoint was published these days.
An Audio Book read by Charles McGrath will follow,
samples can be heard in the New York Times.

Proceed to Extraction

2009-02-27T13:30:00.001+01:00

"We must proceed to extraction," says the dentist to Thomas Buddenbrook*, and he answers "Very well, proceed, then”. The operation fails. The tooth is broken, before it is brought out, and the Senator dies shortly afterwards from the effects.

It went incomparably better with me today. The friendly and skilful Doctor Reitz got the back tooth out in almost no time and in only one piece, under a strong local anaesthesia. He also cleaned the part of the bone where the dead root had permanently inflamed the body and caused disorder.

I am sitting right now, three hours after surgery, almost pain-free in my house and am already planning what kind of meal I will mash in the mixer.

In the last few days the idea had frequently occurred to me that I could do like the Senator and decease after the operation. Those are the thoughts that torment people who read too much.

* In Thomas Mann’s novel „Buddenbrooks“. Original: „Wir müssen zur Extraktion schreiten“, sagte er nach einer Weile und erblich noch mehr. „Schreiten Sie nur“, sagte der Senator und schloß die Lieder noch fester.

Among immigrants, being an immigrant myself

2009-02-09T14:40:00.005+01:00

For Erkan Saka’s sake who kindly put a link to this new blog I should add a little detail to my latest post: the quarter where my immigrant great-grandfather started his business in 1898 and where he lived until his death in 1939 is now one of the centers of the local Turkish population*. So I use to tell my children that our people were the first Turks in town.

I sometimes talk to my Turkish friend Necattin, whose father came to Cologne around 1965 about our mutual experience of being offsprings of immigrants. He of course denies that I am his equal, because my great-grandfather “only” immigrated within Germany. But he listens well when I tell him that my great-grandfather walked two days from his village 60 miles south of here, whereas it took Necattin’s father only three hours with Türk Hava Yollarι from Ankara.

The history of the worldwide migration from village to town is still unclear to most of us. Why did they all walk out from the beauty of a rural setting into the ugliness of modern cities? I am sure that the reasons why my great-grandfather and Necattin’s father went must have been pretty similar. I will try to find out more about both men.

*somewhat around 10% of the 120.000 inhabitants of Remscheid

A sad end after 111 years

2009-02-06T19:50:00.002+01:00

Yesterday, my cousin Hermann Runkel went to the local court and declared the 111 years old contractor’s firm of our family Christian Runkel insolvent. The company belongs to my brother and four cousins, all great-grandsons of the founder Christian Runkel who lived from 1860 to 1939.

He immigrated to what is now the city of Wuppertal around the year 1880. He came by foot, as a seasonal worker from an area about 60 miles south of here. Later he founded his company 1898, in Remscheid.

My own company carries the same name, but is not affected. We run a different business, a small office for real estate administration. It was a small department of the contractor’s firm until 1986. I then formed an independent company out it.

After 23 years I nevertheless still feel strongly with the old company in which I worked for the first twelve years of my professional life. I am not only connected through the name but also through many friendships with the firm’s owners and employees.

People will find various reasons for the sad end of the old firm. I have no complete and safe knowledge myself. Maybe the current economic crisis will be seen as the main cause, however, there has been a tight financial situation before.

The various owners of the company handed down from generation to generation the fear that one day you will have to go to court "in a black suit, the ledger under your arm". They would have often talked about that day, and viewed the fear as the main motive of their daily activities.

Now their sons and grandsons had to face the bitter step. I hope and pray that in some respect the step will prove to be a step into freedom.

John Updike (1932 - 2009)

2009-01-31T22:30:00.000+01:00

He was in an old-fashioned sense my favourite author because he could narrate the world so that you could understand it. It was a limited world, Updikeland inhabited by the American middleclass, people much alike among each other. But it was a world into which you happily stepped in with every new book and to which you became easily familiar.

Despite of its peculiarity and limitations, this world was closely related with my own world, similar to Tolstoy's world with its aristocratic houses standing high above but being inhabited with people like me.

Updike was very explicit and detailed in sexual things. If I ever had met him I would first of all have asked him, why. But I imagine that he would have told me about the old tradition of the Realists, to whom he and Balzac, Flaubert, Dickens, Tolstoy, Fontane and Thomas Mann belonged. All of them were very much concerned about their credibility and all were working hard to be accepted as trustworthy by the reader. The credit would often depend on whether the furniture in the living room was correctly described before the hero of the novel would enter.

So Updike used the events in the bedroom instead of the furniture in the living room and proved his correctness to the reader through his detailed knowledge. At least this is my theory.

By the way, there was nothing like the Tragedies of the bedroom, which Tolstoy, suffering a lot in this respect assumed behind all the tragedies of mankind. Updike reports a lot of sins, but most of the time there is amazingly even more grace, so that sin must not necessarily cause tragedy. This has certainly to do with Updike’s lifelong confession that he was a Christian.

As a young man he found a simple formula* for his faith:

1. If God does not exist, the world is a horror-show.
2. The world is not a horror-show.
3. Therefore, God exists.

This may not suffice to build a dogmatic structure upon, but you can try this rule of three occasionally as a household remedy in case the existence of God will appear questionable.

Whether this approach is sufficient to get into heaven is a different question. Everybody wishes for John Updike that he was well received up yonder after his death on January 27, 2009.

According to Catholic understanding, the Protestant Updike could have taken advantage of his second wife's testimony. She said about the man who smiles friendly on most of the photos, that he is the most good-hearted man in the world.

This is how I want him to remember.

* quoted from his autobiography, "Self-Consciousness" of 1989, published by Knopf, page 230

From The Hague II (Vermeer)

2009-01-26T22:25:00.000+01:00

According to the explanations given in the exhibition from which I have reported yesterday, there is a lot of politics in Vermeer's Gezicht op Delft. The Nieuwe Kerk in the right part of the screen (here a part of the painting) was deliberately brought into the light, while the left half of the screen is still overshadowed by a cloud of rain.

The Nieuwe Kerk was painted, so the exhibition says in that special light because of its importance to the royal family. The church is, in fact still today one of the largest churches in Holland and the burial place of the Dutch royal family. Most recently, Prince Claus von Amsberg was buried here, in 2004.

We read this kind of political theory and remember the lesson unfolded a thousand of times: the equality of politics and art. It is repeated over and over again by educative radio programs and television broadcasts. Since Napoleon told Goethe that Politik ist unser Schicksal (politics is our fate) art is subordinated to politics.

We hope there will one day be a new Willy Brandt (Die Schule der Nation ist die Schule, the school of the nation is the school) telling us that fate is our fate. Life means to love, to be loved, to eat, drink, sleep, and - did not Mozart say so? – to shit a warm shit. All this forms the basis for a personal fate, a destiny, never influenced by politicians.

From Vermeer’s standpoint as an artist, the placement of the church into pure sunlight and the decision to leave the roofs on the left side in the draining rainwater, has many plausible reasons. The church with its yellow walls sparkles most beautifully in the bright sun, whereas the roofs shine wonderfully salmon, since the rain has wetted them and the light falls a little subdued on them.

What can be known about Vermeer's plans for the picture is that he has painted the church much lower than it realy was. A bolt broke the top of the tower, later in 1872, it was replaced thereafter by an even higher tower, which today measures 109 m. Vermeer wanted to paint the city skyline as an almost uniform band and has therefore pressed down the existing towers and has bended the gate on the right side towards the side of the screen.

Nothing of this has to do with politics.

Marcel Proust lets his poet Bergotte die at the sight of the painting, in a Paris exhibition. Bergotte’s last look goes to a small piece of wall, right next to the gate, in the bright half of the screen, at the edge of the painting.

His dizziness increased; he fixed his gaze, like a child upon a yellow butterfly that it wants to catch, on the precious patch of wall. "That's how I ought to have written," he said. "My last books are too dry, I ought to have gone over them with a few layers of colour, made my language precious in itself, like this little patch of yellow wall.

Rendre ma phrase en elle-même precieuse, comme ce petit pan de mur jaune.

And then Bergotte dies, mumbling repeatedly petit pan de mur jaune avec un auvent, petit pan de mur jaune.

Little patch of yellow wall, with a sloping roof.

From The Hague I (Rembrandt)

2009-01-25T21:00:00.016+01:00

A stone's throw away from the court, where we fight for to the right to use the Dutch holiday house of my sisters and brother as tweede Woning (second dwelling) there is the famous museum "Mauritshuis". According to Marcel Proust, it contains the most beautiful painting in the world, Vermeer's View of Delft (photography on top). Facing a negative ruling from the court, we find some consolation, at least for our eyes visiting this wonderful painting with its play of light and shade, sun and rain.

The upper floor of the Mauritshuise displays a special portrait gallery these days. The paintings stem from the 17th Century, the rich and powerful period of the Dutch, their Golden Eeuw (Golden Age). The prosperity and self-consciousness of the people back then has advanced portrait painting and brought forth countless masterly works.

The most successful portraitists of these times were Rembrandt and Frans Hals. If you stand in front of the lively picture of an elderly businessman and his wife (I add a clipping, the man's name is Jan Rijcksen) whom Rembrandt has painted just as if he had surprised the couple through his appearance, you can get an idea how startled people must have been to find themselves reproduced in such a lifelike form.

I wonder for a moment whether Jan Rijcksen did agree with his portrait. I am almost sure he did. Perfectly sure is that at least the children and grandchildren of the family Rijcksen in later years would watch the painting and say "that was him!"

In spite of these qualities Rembrandt's style often remains an enigma to me. It is so little photographical, so foggy and in some details so vague, sometimes even so blurred that the images often appear as if looked upon through a veil. The style gets even more mysterious in some paintings when you walk closer and take a longer look. You will find confirmed what you have noticed at a first glance only intuitively: sections with accurate details alternate with others that look carelessly drawn and done with the left hand.

Two images at the beginning of the exhibition particularly catch one’s eye in this respect. They give a hint at a possible solution of the riddle.

The first one shows Rembrandt in a small self-portrait as a young man whose face is painted sharply and precisely in only a few parts. Other regions look like outside the range of depth - so for example the right part of the face (seen from the viewer) and nearly all of the hair. They are in the shade and therefore are only dimly visible.

Next to the self-portrait there is a bigger painting, also a self-portrait in which Rembrandt wears a fine hat with feathers. The hat is painted in exact details. Rembrandt with the hat turns to the viewer over his shoulder. He looks a little critically at the viewer, captured alive in an instantaneous pose, just as if the viewer had surprised and even annoyed him. The reproduction here is a little brownish, the colors of the original are much better.

Below the precisely painted feather hat the face again looks peculiarly vague in some parts. The red-blond mustache hangs somewhat disorganized over the mouth. I have looked at the mustache several times to find out whether the lips can be seen through the beard or not, and whether the lips are open, as you might imagine if you watch them from a certain angle.
Miraculously, you can't tell, even after a long and repeated glance. The critically looking face seems to say: don’t look at me all the time, you know already well enough who I am!

Maybe here is an approach to Rembrandt's paintings: they do not want to be looked at for long, not as a map, whose details you study slowly and gradually. They want to catch the lively impression, exactly as it arises in the eye and brain of an observer, all in a fraction of a second. The recommendation for the viewer seems to be: look - and then immediately turn away! And you've got the whole impression.

Of course it is not forbidden to stay longer in front of a Rembrandt painting like in front of every other painting, watching all its details. Each picture in the world invites us to be read exactly. But the viewer of a Rembrandt should not expect to learn much about the details of the portrayed face. He should not wait for the second glance on pores and pimples, which he might have missed at first sight. He should learn instead what "first sight" really means, learn something about seeing itself.

He will understand the mystery of the depth of field, discovered long times before the first knowledge of the optical laws. He will see the interaction between eye, brain and heart in the second when they all share this moment of the first sight, a brilliant concert of all participating senses.

In one of the paintings Rembrandt has the golden embroidery on the fine red cloak of a noble Lord done careless and with only a few yellow square strokes. One might for a moment suspect that the portrayed man, Jan Six did not completely pay the price and therefore had to accept the delivery of an only half-finished painting.

But if you look at the thoughtful, somewhat absent and yet intense look of Jan Six, you will guess that a meeting with him would make you perceive the embroidery just as vague as in the image. His gaze catches his counterpart.

Another painting shows a younger man with the still unfinished face of an only half grown-up adult. You will soon forget the face and perhaps remember only its red nose and red cheeks. The man is portrayed as a person of fresh air. The viewer is surprised to see how little one learns about this face. He will keep his look instead on the wonderfully and precisely painted leather collar of the man’s robe. With its reinforcements and rivets it seems to be part of a wearing armor or even a harness of a horse.

I assume that in former day one could recognize the man's profession by this doublet with the collar that he wears. Maybe he had a special task as policeman or a soldier. In any case, Rembrandt certainly did not offend him through the preciseness of the collar and the blurredness of the face. After all, the man or his friends paid a lot of money for the painting. There must be something deeply correct in Rembrandt’s observation that the collar says more about the man than his face.

Rembrandt painted pictures of a first, holistic impression and so remains singular among the colleagues of his era that usually tried to work out much more photographic paintings.

If you finally see Rembrandt in his self-portraits as an old man, a second veil is laid over the details of the painted face: the veil of charity. You feel the drama of a late life of bitterness, setbacks and extinguished passions. Like the other paintings these images, too are perfectly true despite of the details they are lacking. Maybe the viewer would be even hurt by the power of these details. Fortunately there is the veil and not all of the pain is disclosed.

Even through the veil the ravages of old age are clear enough to see. If there is something that
can make them bearable, it is the memory of the light that has appeared in this man's life, and his unique ability to let his paintings radiate that light.