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For me, this was a time of inventory taking. I did this especially at the end of a major phase in my life. My mind can compartmentalize itself and I am generally busy on my computer. So the inventory and contemplation did not require dedicated time. They flashed through me while I did other things, sometimes even while I slept. I had just come out of a gauntlet of a relationship, the most substantive one in my life, including my two marriages. I did not contemplate the relationship itself. It had been part of a much larger context of background, upbringing, religion, values, lifestyle.
Mother (Zekiye Sirman, born on 3/1/1918 in Aleppo, Syria, ages 1 to 10): with her father Dr. Hashim in Aleppo
during WWI (1918), with father (1921), at home in Giresun (1927), with Hat(ch)e (sitting) and Nazire (1928).
I was
evaluating the events since 1986, trying to resolve the intrinsic
conflict between the ideas "man makes his destiny" and
"karma ultimately decides the outcome." Apparently
other people were also aware of this conflict, for Mother often
cited her own version of the mantra attributed to Thomas La
Mance: "life is all those things that happen to you when you
were planning other things." This idea probably had no
direct bearing on the lives of people who lived on a straight
path. But for me this pithy wisdom summarized and augured life
better than any other insight. This was also true of Parents.
I was inclined to believe that neither theory was true alone, that both ruled life. Karma decided from the outset the genetic makeup and environment, including parents, the financial means of the family, and all sorts of other benefic and malefic elements. Despite these differences, most people had almost limitless opportunities to pave their destiny. And if karma did not interfere, the outcome could be extrapolated. But karma did interfere, sometimes suddenly and drastically, other times subtly and over an extended period. Jim Brady was an excellent example of how karma could overrule self-effort and decide life. He had made his destiny until karma changed that destiny, unless what happened to him was his ultimate destiny. That is, Jim Brady's ultimate destiny was not in public relations but in gun control. Karma had selected him as an ambassador and through him prompted America to deliberate the ramifications of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. If so, karma or God had caused injury to Jim Brady to achieve a greater objective. A sudden stroke and Jim Brady was not wounded but born again in front of millions of people. Neither the audience nor Jim Brady knew this then. The evidence came several years later when the Brady and the Crime bills were signed. Karma could doom some people while it blessed others and obviously it was not predictable. Albeit, what ultimately happened to Jim Brady had nothing to with self-effort; it had everything to do with karma.
I evaluated the premise of my thoughts. By presuming that there was a purpose to every person and to everything that happened to this person, I was introducing something like superstition to my thinking. Was this so? Did every person serve a purpose or only some people? What was the purpose of a child who suffered from the Down's syndrome, a punishment for past misdeeds of one or both parents, or even grandparents? People were mere peons in the games karma played. It randomly elevated some people while it canceled others. If God and karma were the same, or if karma was a tool of God, did this mean that God was cruel? Was it cruel when lions ate a gazelle that died by virtue of being eaten?
"Luck" may have been one of the first intangible words invented. The ancient people must have felt an urge to describe the seemingly random process by which karma picked victims for its entertainment. Although luck was not yet associated with karma, luck defined what karma did or brought. Accordingly, people were allowed to reap the benefits of their effort until karma interfered. Then, they were cursed or had "good joss." And karma could play odd jokes, like letting a person win the lottery at age 67, after a lifetime of hardship. Ancient people must have felt totally exposed to karma. Their helplessness probably consumed and terrified them. Some of them thought of appealing to karma to bring them good luck, hunting, harvest, something, but nothing bad. Someone decided to define these wishful thoughts as hope. Wishful thoughts evolved into mumbled voices. They were the beginnings of what people called prayer later.
I was not sure that my "theory of purpose" was correct. However, obviously karma played a decisive role even if purpose did not. Americans, who like to understand and dominate nature, could not allow something so arbitrary to interfere with their pursuit of happiness. So they confined karma to the dictionary and proposed instead the "man makes his destiny" theory. "Effort" and "will" were the tools by which man actualized destiny. Americans were not wrong. People could fashion their destiny, and many did, unmolested by karma. Just in case, Americans also prayed. When karma interfered in a big way, the incident was categorized as fate, tragedy, misfortune, "twist of luck," windfall, force majeure.
I sensed a correlation between my theories of karma, purpose, luck and superstition and then religion. In spite of all the progress humankind made, most people still felt at the mercy of karma, ultimately as much as they had been initially. In a recent television documentary, Ancient Prophesies, David McCollough stated "ever since the earliest civilization, man has studied the past, lived in the present, and feared for the future--a future so elusive, so unknowable, that he has sought help in divining the secrets of time, often turning to the workaday prophets for hire, the fortunetellers." He did not mention who the latter were. Astrologers, psychics, etc. only, or also the ministers of organized religions.
Until we arrived in the United States, religion had not been an issue in our lives. We became a curious audience to the way America practiced religion and later found ourselves on the receiving end of intolerance, which fueled our curiosity even more. America was undeniably a very rich, powerful, and advanced country, but we did not feel in an enlightened environment. Intolerance was one obvious contradiction and even now, thirty years later, it had undermined and ultimately doomed my relationship with Sharon.
Born a Moslem, I had attended a private Jesuit school for five years and had spent four years among predominantly Catholic people in Germany. My first wife had been a Protestant American, my second wife, also an American, the offspring of a Catholic mother and a Jewish father. After fourteen years in America, I had lived among the Saudis for five years. And I had spent the last seven years in a marriage-like relationship with this Fundamentalist Christian woman. Since religious compatibility had never been a consideration before, I viewed it as an invented obstacle, not worthy of educated and enlightened people. As far as I was concerned, all organized religions were fake insurance policies against the fear karma induced. Advanced societies indulged in them with modern tools on TV; primitive people did the same with smoke and bones in the jungle.
My thoughts about religion emerged from common sense and reasoning, not blind faith. Education played a part in this, as also the cultural milieu we left behind in Turkey. Kismet (spelled "kIsmet," pronounced as kîsmet, in Turkish) plays an important role in Turkish life. When an unusual event interferes with someone's planned destiny, like winning the lottery or a major accident, friends and neighbors categorize it as "kIsmetmi(sh)" (it was kismet). This expression says "it was the will of Allah" to an orthodox Muslim. That is, since religious folks regard Allah as the supreme ruler, they attribute all things to it. People being people, these thoughts are the same among religious people in America and around the world. So kismet is indeed a universal concept and applies to every religion, because every culture must acknowledge that inexplicable events do occur. The only exception is atheism. Atheists are inclined to view all events as random, not attributable to anything.
Although the American TV shows Moslem people seemingly always at prayer and talks a lot of Muslim Fundamentalism as if every Moslem were a Fundamentalist, the (large) majority of the Turkish people do not even say the daily prayers in words, let alone go to a mosque and perform the rituals. The people shown on TV are orthodox Muslims, like orthodox Jews and Christians. Modern Turks are educated, enlightened, and sensible. They perceive a logical inconsistency in the notion that Allah rules everything and the fact that the good, kind, and generous Allah then turns around and does horrible things to people, and for no apparent reason. However, they cannot escape the fact that unusual and horrible events do occur. For them, "kIsmetmi(sh)" attributes these events not to Allah but to the realm of the unknown and inexplicable. They know that religion, regardless of the dialect, has no control over this even more powerful realm of kismet. And if religion does not protect people against bad kismet, the only explanation as to why it exists, they reason, is that religion is a technique of brainwashing by which various religions enslave people, in the name of God, to their ministers, how these organizations built their empires.
Of course, these enlightened people keep their thoughts to themselves, knowing how cruel and bloody the other side can be when openly confronted. Salman Rushdie's situation only confirms their fears, but they know this can happen also in America. If a presidential candidate were to declare "religion is a joke," he would sacrifice not only his candidacy but also become a target to gun-toting fanatics. They know even America cannot equate "freedom of religion" to "freedom from religion."
Like most Westerners, the Turkish people also see self-effort as the essential determinant of what a person can achieve in life. However, they would construe the American suggestion, "man makes his destiny," ultimately as arrogant, indeed heathen, nonsense. The reason is obvious. If Allah/God does exist, the last thing people would want to do is to anger Allah/God by insisting they have equal power, that they can decide everything that happens to them. No Turk would be this brave. So since "man makes his destiny" advocates categoric denials of both God and karma, the Turkish people live life instead by something like "man makes his destiny, but . . ." Kismet replaces the "but" part of the statement. It represents all the things over which people have no control.
All religions must ultimately conclude that kismet is also a word in their vocabulary and way of life. This includes Americans, regardless of their jabber about man and destiny, if they are truly religious, i.e., not merely enslaved to a preacher or church. In daily life, kismet is often synonymous to luck or lack of luck, why some soldiers in a group die while others in the same group survive. Self-effort, religiosity, prayer, being a "good" Christian-Muslim-Jew-Hindu, etc. have nothing to do with where the killing mortar shell falls. Kismet is what happened to Jim Brady; it is also buried in Mother's mantra.
Expanding on kismet's significance, everything about every religion is subject to debate, including faith which is often malfunctioning common sense, and the subjective interpretations of God by the Muslims, Christians, Jews, etc. There is no such incongruity in kismet. No religion or philosophy can refute it: events beyond control do happen and can be more consequential than things people do on their own. Even atheists cannot deny kismet, for kismet encompasses these events whether they occur randomly or by design.
If it is assumed that kismet is not an autonomous entity but under the control of higher system, perhaps a tool of God, it follows that God is universal, because kismet functions everywhere without boundaries. But if God is universal, then everything about any religion is detail, invented or irrelevant detail. Or kismet is autonomous. That is, one can pray to God and hope for the best, or not pray and hope. Kismet seems to work regardless and always unpredictably. Surely many Jewish people were praying very hard when they were being led to concentration camps; surely many were not in a position to pray when they were finally rescued.
Most enlightened Turks arrive at these conclusions instinctively. Education helps as also the fact that they are not enslaved to a minister. Thus, although they are Muslim on paper, most Turkish people are really universal in outlook. They are among the most tolerant of all cultures. It so happens that they also follow most of the Ten Commandments, not as "holy" rules, but because they make sense. In my case, I found kismet logically consistent. Rather than choosing atheism, I accepted the idea of a universal God, perhaps a higher order, and broadened it, in terms of "Phases of Existence," to Hindu karma. Phases of Existence is the idea behind Gail Sheehy's "Passages" which she probably borrowed (and westernized) from Hindu philosophy. As for the beauty of philosophy in practice, no religion can match the simplicity and dignity of the American Indian way of life. The idea of oneness between man, nature, and the Creator seems the most sensible and complete formula. Americans should be proud to have such a dignified and enlightened culture in their midst.
As immigrants, we had to assimilate to America in part also through our neighbors. Assimilation does not proceed in a vacuum. It is assisted and hindered by experiences. So when intolerance surfaced and we became aware of the degree of xenophobia in America, experiences, incongruities, and things we witnessed began to interfere with our assimilation, sometimes causing regressive assimilation. We felt what we had was infinitely superior to what we were seeing. On the one hand Parents (especially) wanted to hold on to their existing identity and culture; on the other, they were in America. This conflict became our story in America. We began to debate the distinction between superstition and religion, wondering if America qualified as a religious or a superstitious country. As in Turkey, many gullible souls in America hugged religion supposedly to escape superstition, to belong to something, to bribe God, whatever.
Reviewing what we knew about how religion evolved, it seemed to us that the medieval people were more sensible than their counterparts today. Surely they were more courageous. This is when religions were emerging as empires and were the most brutal. Yet, some people had dared to oppose religion even then, and others were not totally convinced, though they were threatened with "hell" and eternal burning. Somehow the clergy could convince people that this cruelty had something to do with an understanding, forgiving, generous, and kind God. The mere suggestion that God would do such things was already a blasphemy and floccinaucinihilipilification (rendering worthless) of God and religion. But such details did not concern the clergy. They knew they owed their existence not to God but to decent people who were scared and gullible.>/p>
The real intention of these threats was to enslave people to the clergy. If the skeptics were not conquered, there could be a mass exodus from the empire. Hell and fear of excommunication put the "fear of God" in the masses, but they did not deter the sensible infidels. The recalcitrant had to be dealt with in a way that would teach the survivors a lasting lesson. People were burned, tortured, quartered, ostracized, robbed, and punished in every way the demented clergy could imagine. Sometimes entire nations were decimated in the name of God. In the end, the clergy could claim that unlike superstitious people their flock was religious and thus presumably not superstitious. The masses were now separated by a semantic boundary. This artificial separation later became a mire of prejudice and discrimination.
Religious atrocities happened also in America, when America was already a nation. For example, how many citizens in this country of fair-minded people, excellent scholars and free press knew or cared about the history of the Catholic Church in America, say of the lovely Franciscan missions in and around Santa Barbara? Supposedly they were built by the mellifluous Catholic missionary Junipero Serra (Miguel Jose‚ Serra), also known as "the Apostle of California," in the period 1772 to 1784. Americans cried over the Alamo, in the Cyclorama in Atlanta. Who cried over Santa Barbara? Did the residents, millions of visitors, and aficionados of missions know or care that these quaint temples of God were indeed memorials and headstones to the thousands of Chumash Indians who were decimated building them for Serra? After being enslaved and tortured for years, the Chumash were buried by the thousands in mass graveyards nearby, some of them in the mission gardens. Perhaps America was being wise and prudent to keep quiet about these atrocities. Obviously it was too late to xeriscape the landscape of the blood. Outraged Americans might embarrass the archbishops, and the next time the Pope visited, they might not vertiginously celebrate him like a rock star.
While these inhuman acts continued, emperors, kings, and wealthy people volunteered the funds to erect castles for the sophisticated witch doctors. Artisans from every trade devoted a lifetime to the decorations. Everyone believed they were building monuments to God, as if God or his humble son needed such domiciles. No one dared to suggest they were only building homes and museums, equivalent to the ancient pyramids, for the clergy. The same two original sins, gullibility and fear of karma, perpetuated also religions. Together they defined the same thing: superstition.
If they were around today, many religious leaders who made religions what they are probably would have been hunted down as criminals. Their deeds continued for centuries and until they became civilized, religions and religious leaders caused unbelievable bloodshed. Yet these leaders somehow managed to be remembered as holy and wholesome historical figures. Hollywood contributed to this myth with heartwarming stories about early Christianity and peripatetic old men who scurried hither and yon spreading the word. However, even Hollywood could not imagine a wholesome epic about Christianity after that. ("Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction" said Blaise Pascal.)
Although movies continued to portray a monopolistic relationship between miracles and prayers, reality contradicted this relationship and the audience could be fooled only for the duration of the movie. Everyone knew that miracles and misery came to people who prayed and did not pray, just as randomly as karma always had wrought them. When the "Cardinal" (Henry Morton Robinson) and "Thornbirds" appeared, the church was already ubiquitous, very powerful, immensely wealthy, and well established. Now it did not matter that most people saw the church and its leaders for what they were, though they kept their thoughts to themselves. There were always more superstitious people and new generations to attend and innocent cultures to convert. And the church was finally doing also some good deeds.
Religion did not have a monopoly on smart rulers. As people became more enlightened, a few capable leaders on the outside decided to untangle the state from the claws of the church. However, this separation was only a perfunctory arrangement, even in the United States of America. A declaration and a few written laws could only achieve a most facile separation. These gestures did not separate the society from the clergy. Leaders were elected by people most of whom followed the dictates of a church. People who regularly went to church would not vote for a president, cabinet officials, senators, congresspeople, governors, mayors, and other leaders that did not share their beliefs. Educated leaders spoke proudly of "our Judeo-Christian heritage." People "redeemed their soul" in churches and then formed a state that was putatively separate from church. As if millions of Christ proteges and protegees would allow any leader to really purge Christ from the affairs of state. . .
Either this arrangement was oxymoronic or people who ran for leadership positions and many of the voters were Expedient Christians. That is, they went to church and acted Christian, because this was the thing to do, how they got votes and acceptance. Only one nation had succeeded achieving a true separation: the Soviet Union, by outlawing religion altogether. The Russians understood that people could not serve two contemporaneous empires and not clash. Their separation did not survive, but only because the USSR did not succeed economically and had to cater to the West, and its churches, to start over. This was still no victory for the United States. Its society was divided by seemingly perpetual clashes among fractious and disconsolate flocks of Conservatives, who claimed to be religious, and enlightened Liberals. They arm-wrestled ad infinitum over values, family, prayer, abortion, sex, and everything else.
The scientific community was also helpless dealing with karma. It could not even define it. A few mathematicians developed a "Model of Chaos" which supposedly anticipated chaotic events. (Karma must have smirked at this tool too.) Curiously, although scientists borrowed freely from all previous achievements, they decided to shun the oldest of all sciences: astrology. Religion had emerged as an insurance policy against bad karma. Astrology did even better: it claimed it could predict how and when karma would strike. This was potent medicine. Moreover, astrology relied on tangible tools and lent itself to tests. The clergy were scared and immediately declared astrology as "false prophet." They got help from an unexpected source: scientists, perhaps because they paid some of them. Of course, these scientists were being disingenuous. If "science" was the basis of their criticism of astrology, it made no sense for them to remain silent about religion, which was even more dubious scientifically and much more widespread and consequential.
Over the years, we have visited, together with enlightened Christians, Jews, Hindus, etc., mosques, cathedrals, and temples around the world and admired their architecture and the art in them. We listened to Kathleen Battle's tapes of church songs, because we liked their melodies, as we did Elvis Presley's "Are You Lonesome Tonight?". The quaint scenes of people emerging from churches on Sundays and sound of church bells also pleased our senses. We were convinced we had a solid spiritual foundation, because we exercised spiritual freedom, everyone in our family. Toleration was a minimum standard with us; we abhorred intolerance in any form; goodwill was our greeting card. Without native biases, we were free to interact with other people without prejudging them. This is not what we found in America.
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