Quest Magazine

From the Executive Editor - Summer 2009

By Richard Smoley

Originally printed in the Summer 2009 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Smoley, Richard. "From the Executive Editor - Summer 2009." Quest  97. 3 (Summer 2009): 82.

Theosophical Society - Richard Smoley is editor of Quest: Journal of the Theosophical Society in America and a frequent lecturer for the Theosophical Society

From time to time in my reading, I turn to some classic work of fiction that I've never gotten around to before. Recently I read Saul Bellow's novel Herzog, about a middle-aged professor whose wife runs off with his best friend.

Herzog is furious. At one point he gets an old horse pistol that had belonged to his father and goes to his ex-wife's house, intending to shoot her and her lover. But as he sees them through the window, he realizes that he will do no such thing. He goes off and eventually makes peace with his sorrow.

Herzog was published in 1964. I wonder whether a novelist writing today would be able to avoid the temptation to have Herzog use the gun. Anton Chekhov once said that you can't have a pistol onstage without having it go off. American art over the last few decades seems dedicated to the principle that pistols must be found everywhere and used at all times. This is true not only in mass culture but increasingly in the "serious" arts as well. Just today I read a New York Times review of a production of the Oresteia that features a great deal of red fluid spurting about.

Conflict is the key to drama: if you take a basic course in scriptwriting, that's the first thing you will learn. But if you watch the typical current movie or (increasingly) read the typical current novel, you'll get the impression that conflict is a spice that is dumped willy-nilly into every dish. Certain movies—Spike Lee's come to mind—have everyone shouting at one another at every possible juncture regardless of whether it's necessary to the plot or relevant to what the characters are experiencing. Other films have characters firing weapons at one another at every possible juncture.

It's easy to see why. If you're a mediocre filmmaker with little sense of plot or dialogue, you can always fill in the holes with gunfire. By now viewers have come to expect this practice as a matter of course, and a film that is lacking in bloodshed is often dismissed as slow or boring or, still worse, "foreign."

Since films remain one of our nation's chief exports even in a time of chronic trade deficits, our filmmakers are shipping this idea of America abroad. Possibly some or most of the anti-Americanism that we are seeing worldwide is the result of this image. If America is a country riddled with pimps, drug dealers, gang lords, and craven politicians beholden to them, and if we are a people who have to keep pistols in our nightstands so that we can sleep in peace, who would want to be like us? Who would not want to keep American influence at bay?

Nor is it just a matter of how we look to the world at large. One adage says that you become what you behold, so violence has become a central element in our self-definition as Americans. We still imagine ourselves as a nation of pioneers who must keep rifles over our hearths to fight off the savages—or, if you prefer, wary vigilantes holed up against the gangsters and psychopaths beating down our doors.

The usual punch line to this sort of reflection is that images of violence propagate real violence and that we must do something about this explosion of criminality on our viewing screens. Impose stricter rating standards, perhaps? Ban violence from TV? Unfortunately, such editorializing has gone on for decades with no result whatsoever.

I would like to suggest something different. We need to see that violence has become an artistic cliche. Like all cliches, it has simply become uninteresting. If you've seen one car chase through a crowded city, you've seen them all. If you've heard one movie gangster threaten a hero tied to a chair, you've heard them all. They are all the same, and all are incredibly tiresome: the clever heists, the drug deals gone bad, the sadistic hoodlums, the misfit cops who throw out the rules and do it their own way. The changes have all been rung on bloodshed, American style.

What's the point of this discussion? It's quite simple. People are, like it or not, herd animals, and by and large they (or rather we) follow the crowd. In the America of 2009, where attention spans are shrinking to nanolevels, there is nothing worse than being "so last year." It's time to move the crowd in another direction by bestowing upon violence the most poisonous of all stigmas: that of being passé. Brutality in our cultural imagination will not end with a bang or for that matter with a whimper, but we may be able to end it with a yawn.

Richard Smoley
Executive Editor

The Path of Sacred Service

By Jonathan Ellerby

Originally printed in the Summer 2009 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Ellerby, Jonathan. "The Path of Service." Quest  97. 3 (Summer 2009): 90-94.

Theosophical Society - Jonathan Ellerby holds a doctorate in comparative religion and is spiritual program director for the Canyon Ranch Resorts. This article is excerpted from his book Return to the Sacred: Ancient Pathways to Spiritual Awakening, published in January 2009The elevator moved slowly to the fourth floor. It was big enough for the wheelchairs and hospital beds that came in and out all day. Since my visits were in the evening hours, however, I was often the only one aboard. I stared at the outdated wood veneer and faded chrome handrails. The dingy floor and doors showed decades of wear and tear, and the occasional moans of the gears reminded me of its history—once shiny, promising, and new.

I always said a prayer as I rode up to the spinal cord injury and amputee unit at the rehabilitation hospital. I wanted to be prepared for an evening of visiting and for bittersweet surprises that might be waiting. When the elevator doors opened, I could feel myself entering a new world.

It was quiet at night—strangely quiet—and the halls were sterile, white, aged. The day was done, and there was a different mood emerging as patients settled in for rest and the staff retreated for the day. A new rhythm emerged: the distant sound of a television, the occasional sharp tone from a computer monitor, the soft ring of a phone in the nursing station.

Staff members were friendly, attentive, and kind; and patients were typically subdued, mostly contemplative, depressed, or tired from the day's physical therapy. They were there because of something serious—something life-altering. Sadly, a surprising number of people on this unit of dramatic and extreme injuries and illnesses were under thirty-five years of age.

Perhaps the inner-city location played a role or perhaps it was the fact that patients from the surrounding rural region were funneled there for the comprehensive services offered at this site. The unit contained an amazing cross-section of society: old, young, diabetics, accident survivors, surgery casualties. A disproportionate presence of Native American and low-income people filled the beds.

Many lived in this rehabilitation hospital for several months; few were there for relatively short stints. Because of the long stays and complicated circumstances, it was an ideal and often challenging place to provide spiritual counseling and emotional support. As part of my chaplaincy training, I'd selected this unit to do volunteer work because I needed to accumulate hours of practice, but more from a deeper need to give back—a desire to serve a community of people who seemed to have little support.

The unit manager was a wonderful and ambitious woman who wanted more for her patients, but the hospital's budget restricted psychosocial care to a minimum. It was my pleasure to offer extra hours. When I began, I felt a sense of valiant pride. I had a secret ambition to be "the one to go the extra mile" in order to help the "less fortunate." I recall my first visit. Only hours after I began my work, it became clear that I'd greatly underestimated my task. I'd also underestimated the costs...and the rewards.

During my first week of visits, I met Vera, a Native American woman who changed my life. She was from a small Cree Nation community in central Manitoba, Canada, and she was dangerously overweight. Vera was in her mid-sixties, but she appeared much older, as she clearly bore the ill effects of a life full of challenge, loss, and chronic health problems. I examined her medical chart and created an image of her in my mind, but when I entered her room, I was shocked.

It took me months before I could fully grasp the overwhelming reality of a body that was truly in decay and deterioration. This was the beginning of that adjustment. Vera's complexion was ashen, she looked exhausted, her size was of concern, and the empty space in the bed where her leg used to be was a sign of worse things to come. There was a faint sickly odor in the dark room, which was scarcely illuminated by a reading light beside her bed. The other bed in the room was empty. The winter night outside was cold and black.

I was a bit nervous as I entered the room and introduced myself. I asked simple questions about her well-being and mood. Vera struck me as a kind of medical iceberg in that even to the untrained eye, it was obvious that any conditions identified were only a visible fraction of an immense complexity at work in her body and life.

I sensed myself already pulling away from her emotionally, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I could feel my heroic intentions diminishing. Rationalizations about why I probably shouldn't spend much time with this patient slowly surfaced. They attempted to hide my growing discomfort.

To my surprise, Vera responded to my presence and was far less reserved than many of the other Native American people I'd worked with in hospital settings. At first she was quiet and just stared at me, and as I ran out of pleasantries, we gazed at each other awkwardly. Vera looked away, and I felt that I'd overstayed my welcome. I immediately thought about leaving, but then she reached out.

"It's nice you came. I'm very lonely here," she said in a faint voice with a Cree accent. She cleared her throat a lot.

"No one comes to see me. My kids live and work back home, and it's so far away that none of them can make the trip. They have their own problems to deal with anyway. My eldest boy used to live in the city here. He would have come to see me, but he was killed two years ago in an accident." She paused and closed her eyes as if to swallow the pain of the memory.

"My husband is gone, too. He died of diabetes. It's been five years." She paused again. Pointing to the empty space in her bed beneath the sheets where her right leg was removed, she continued: "That's why they took this: diabetes. They want to take the other one now.

"How will I get around? Back home on the reservation, most of our streets are still unpaved. There's just dirt. When it rains, you can't get a wheelchair through the mud. But I can't stay here either—it's too lonely in the city. My husband didn't want surgery. He was a fisherman all his life and always worked so hard. He only came to the city once—to the hospital. But he never returned. When he found out how sick he was, he drank himself to death. I never drank. I went to church almost every day to pray for him. I tried to get him to go with me, but I guess we never did get along."

She paused as her breathing became strained. "I always went to church, since I was little. I think he hated that about me. It made him feel guilty about his drinking, so he used to beat me up. I couldn't stop going, though, because it was the only place I felt safe.

"He was always drinking, always angry. And it just got worse at the end. I guess I knew it would be like that, but I'd always hoped it would turn out differently."

There was such sadness in her eyes, and I was at a complete loss for words. The immensity of her pain was more than I could bear. Most patients take their time to share such intimate details about their lives. In the hospital where the majority of my visits were unannounced and unrequested, people usually needed time to build a sense of rapport and connection. Then they'd eventually begin to open up more. Vera was different.

I was thinking about all those visits with patients, always wishing they'd share sooner. I never realized, however, that the timing was really to my benefit. I was unprepared for the sudden and intense nature of Vera's story, and it left me reeling. Up to that point in my training, I'd helped people face many of life's traumas and setbacks. But it was still all new to me, and this was too much and too honest—abuse, loss, illness, poverty, isolation. Then I remembered my commitment: service would be my gift, my path.

So I pulled a chair over to her bed, and we quietly sat together. Vera stared at the ceiling. I recalled a practice that I thought might help me feel better, if not her as well. I closed my eyes for a moment and imagined my heart as a large, glowing pink rosebud. Then I took some slow, deep breaths into my belly and imagined it opening into a radiant bloom. I said a little prayer asking for her healing and comfort and visualized a soft white light shining out from my heart to hers. I pictured a beautiful light of healing surrounding her.

Vera turned to me and smiled as I opened my eyes. Her eyes were bright, and she said, "Thank you. Can we say the Lord's Prayer together?" I was caught off guard. It was as if she felt the "energy" I was sending.

"Of course," I replied, and we began reciting, "Our Father, who art in heaven. . . ."

We held hands as Vera led the prayer, her voice growing stronger with each word. When we came to the end, I paused and she continued praying for healing for her grandchildren, children, and community. She prayed for her husband's peace in the Spirit and for the ability to forgive him. She prayed for me and the "hard work of the heart" that I was doing. She prayed for all the people in the hospital—staff and patients. Finally, she prayed for herself. I was moved by the sincerity and generosity of her wishes for me, a stranger. I felt myself choke up with emotion.

"I haven't been able to pray since I got here," she said. "I felt like maybe my life was a failure and that God was disappointed in me. This place can feel so empty. No Spirit. But you came, and I can feel that you care. You want to do what's right. It makes me feel like I am worth something. People do care, don't they? God didn't forget about me. You're the proof!"

My hopes of being a hero dissolved in a wave of deep humility. I was embarrassed for the ways I'd judged Vera in my mind when I had first arrived. I felt her unconditional acceptance despite just having met me. I found myself aware of an awakening in her—and in me as well. As her mood changed, I saw a twinkle in her eye. I felt a sweetness in her voice and presence. As she spoke of her gratitude for my company, I felt myself falling under the spell of compassion that was growing between us.

As I gazed at Vera, I saw images of her at different ages floating through my mind. I saw her as a young mother, a beautiful child, and as an active member of her community. I saw story after story flow through me—a gentle stream of thoughts and feelings.

"Vera," I said, putting my hand on the remaining part of her amputated leg, which was missing from the knee down, "God is not punishing you, and you haven't disappointed anyone. Life isn't easy, and it rarely goes the way we expect. But there's always hope, always change, and always something greater to remember and stay connected to. It's a choice, isn't it?

"I know that your children want you home, and your community misses you as much as you miss them. If we're going to get you back soon, you can help by lifting your own spirit. 'Standing tall' is something we feel inside; it's not about your legs or how fast you move. Try to pray more, and think of the good times that might be waiting ahead. What else can you do with the time you have? Remember springtime at home, and the fresh smell of rain on those muddy country roads."

She smiled and held my hand tightly as I got up to go. "You'll come back?" she asked.

"Of course. Every time I'm here." And I did. I visited her every time I was on the unit. She and I became friends, and her mood and energy steadily lifted. Even though she had to have part of her other leg amputated, I watched the changes in her attitude and saw her resilience grow from one visit to another.

One day when I arrived on the unit, one of the nurses stopped me in the hallway and asked me to be sure to visit Vera. I asked if she was OK. The nurse explained that she'd been doing well emotionally but was experiencing pain in her newly amputated leg.

"Every time you visit," the nurse explained, "her discomfort goes away. We don't have to give her any pain meds for at least twelve hours or more after you leave. When you aren't here, though, she needs them every four hours. Whatever you're doing, keep doing it!"

I was surprised to hear this and felt honored, but I knew in my heart that I wasn't doing anything for Vera. She was doing it, and a Higher Power was at work. Her faith, prayers, and commitment to see the positive whenever possible was her medicine. I was just the lucky person who got to be a part of it.

Love All, Serve All

Vera helped me see that every person—no matter how sick, broken, sad, or angry—has a story and a precious heart within. We all have a tender soul and a life of memories. Each of us lives with the longing to be in the presence of love. As that love in me grew for Vera, I found it easier to "turn it on" for others in need. I found that when I left the hospital, all the love and attention I thought I'd "given away" was somehow still within me. Even after some of the hardest days, I felt tremendous love and gratitude. As I gave, I received.

After I met Vera, I never left depleted or depressed about the suffering I encountered. I walked to my car and made the drive home with a sense of awe and gratitude. I felt filled with love and privileged to be part of the healing journey of so many. Instead of despair, I found myself awakening to the spirit of God and the goodness in all things. The sacred isn't just in nature, beauty, and good fortune. It also resides in hard times, sad occasions, and tragedies—maybe more so. I found light in the darkest moments, hope in the broken, and lessons from the lost. The miracle of love and service is like a lit candle. It can light the flame of other candles. The flame burns without going out or being diminished, no matter how many new candles it lights. This is the path of service.

My practice of service allowed me to realize that the presence of the sacred can be in all things, in all people, and at all times. Good or bad, happy or sad, healthy or sick, we can feel the presence and power of a higher love and wisdom that is there for everyone who reaches for it, regardless of culture or religious beliefs. Giving of myself to others gave me more than I could have ever imagined.

The essence of the path of service is the desire to honor the sacred in the created world through a commitment to help and heal. Rather than turning our attention and energy to an intangible force or experience, we seek to know the sacred in the everyday moments of our lives. We choose an act, a career, or a type of volunteer work through which we can show our devotion and express our gratitude. The writings and recorded lectures of the celebrated American spiritual teacher and healer Ram Dass were profoundly helpful and instructive in my exploration of the path of service. To this day, I recommend his book How Can I Help? to anyone interested in this practice.

Get Involved

The path of service isn't about writing checks to charities or recycling waste at home (although both are important actions). The path of service involves openhearted action—that is, rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty. It's about caring for and working with others without a desire for reward or compensation. It's about being a part of the healing of this world with the awareness that in true healing there's no hierarchy—there's no line to be drawn between the helper and the helped. All people can be healers, and everyone is in need at times.

Your path of service could involve working with children or animals or even healing the environment. You may also wish to help those who are battling poverty, illness, or loneliness. There's no limit to the myriad situations and causes that require support. The key is to give yourself freely, without any self-serving intentions. Honor the sacred in yourself and what you serve. You might volunteer your time, talent, labor, or experience. The path of service simply asks that you make your service an intentional and regular commitment.

Don't let the simplicity of the practice deceive you. To serve without judgment or attachment will test you in many ways. The harshness and injustice of life can defy logic; true service may make you uncomfortable at times. It's always easier to do nothing or claim that the practice isn't right for you. Despite the reasons for resistance, the path of service promises a personal experience of the transformative power of the human spirit. When you seek to love and serve all, you'll find miracles in every step you take.

Much the way Vera taught me years ago, the path of service is about learning to live from the heart. I didn't have to do much to help her. I just had to be honest with myself and fully present with her. I had to trust that I'd never have all the answers, and that would be good enough. To be able to walk with others in the face of life's tragedy and mystery with our hearts vulnerable and eyes open is the cultivation of spiritual awakening.

You Are the Gift

The greatest gift we have to offer is our presence: unconditional, loving, and affirming what is. In service, we come face to face with the Spirit of life and know its astounding capacity to triumph, as well as its delicateness in the midst of uncertainty. If we look at what we resist when we serve, in time it will set us free.

The way we help heal ourselves is a precious dance. Reflecting on his life and the relationship between service and spirituality, Ram Dass commented, "I am arriving at that circle where one works on oneself as a gift to other people so that one doesn't create more suffering. I help people as I work on myself and I work on myself to help people."

Jonathan Ellerby holds a doctorate in comparative religion and is spiritual program director for the Canyon Ranch Resorts. This article is excerpted from his book Return to the Sacred: Ancient Pathways to Spiritual Awakening, published in January 2009. Reprinted with permission of Hay House.

Theosophy in Times of War

By Janet Kerschner

Originally printed in the Summer 2009 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Kerschner, Janet. "Theosophy in Times of War." Quest  97. 3 (Summer 2009): 110-112.

Members of the Theosophical Society have faced war on many levels, as combatants and peacemakers, refugees and healers, workers and visionaries. Theosophists have been keenly aware of the opportunity warfare has afforded to break down social barriers and creatively reconstruct the world according to a new framework of brotherhood.

Leaders of the Society in India and the United States were vocal in their opposition to American neutrality during both world wars. Loving peace, but viewing the world with the perspective of the ancient wisdom, they knew that just wars must at times be waged to transform society. Few members dissented from that vision. During those great wars, American Theosophists engaged in a wide range of patriotic activities. Lodges bought Liberty Bonds and proudly displayed service flags with a star for each member in the armed forces. During World War I, Theosophical club rooms for servicemen were opened near military bases in Houston, New Orleans, Washington, New Haven, Louisville, Rockford, Atlanta, Waco, Columbus, and Little Rock. A typical club provided a library, reading room, Victrola, piano, lectures, and entertainment. Houston hosted a ball in the city auditorium so that 350 heavily chaperoned girls could dance with soldiers from Camp Logan. At least 334 American members served in World War I.

In World War II, Theosophists joined every branch of the armed forces, including WAC, WAVE, WAAC, Army Nurse Corps, and even the Aleutian Air Force. Meeting times changed to comply with blackout requirements. Lodges held concerts and sales to raise money for war relief, collected clothing and food for refugees, and corresponded with servicemen. Many lodges hosted Red Cross auxiliaries, which gathered to knit and sew while a member read aloud from inspiring texts. In 1940 alone, the small Oak Park, Illinois, Lodge supported the war effort with 200 garments and 6490 surgical dressings. Hundreds of thousands of reassuring leaflets were handed out at service clubs, mailed to families, and tucked into the pockets of handmade hospital pajamas.

In 1942, a national convention was held at the Olcott campus, although attendees had to bring along their ration cards. Travel restrictions in 1944 and 1945 changed the focus of the summer gathering to "Convention Everywhere," with identical programs conducted simultaneously nationwide by local groups. Thoughts of American members were constantly with their fellows abroad. Extra Adyar Day contributions from the American Section covered dues for all the members of ten occupied European sections in order to keep them in good standing.

Theosophical periodicals vividly reflect the realities of the world wars. Issues were printed on thinner paper with fewer staples. Adyar's Theosophist could not be mailed directly during the Second World War, but had to be shipped in bulk to Wheaton for redistribution, and one complete consignment was lost when the ship carrying it sank. Articles ranged from theoretical treatises on the nature of war to political commentary, and practical advice for coping with wartime was not neglected. Evolution, the karma of nations, and world transformation all figured prominently in the Society's journals. Writers explored how the Society could provide leadership in the postwar era, a concept that became the main topic for the 1943 International Conference in Adyar. Charles Luntz of St. Louis wrote amusing poems like "The Rommel and the Schickelgrub" (it was a common belief that Hitler's original name had been Schicklgruber) and his son, an Army Air Force sergeant, wrote of "The Soldier's Philosophy."

Members used the turbulence of wartime to heighten awareness of racism and cruelty to animals. Civilian hardships in rationing inspired a Tacoma, Washington, member to introduce vegetarian cooking to the public. To combat racism, Carl Carmer recounted a true story titled "Three Engineers," which told of an incident in which an American fighter-pilot crashed in a river. Three African-American privates from an engineering unit dove through the flames on the water to pull out the unconscious white flier, who survived. "All three were badly burned. All three were happy," he wrote. The Society found new ways to encourage brotherhood and spiritual growth, and opportunities to introduce Theosophical principles in a world that was grasping for meaning.

On the international scene during World War II, members in Holland, Greece, Java, and elsewhere were interned in concentration camps. Australian members in the Manor witnessed a submarine attack in Sydney harbor. Adyar residents trained as air raid wardens. The Italian Maria Montessori, as an enemy alien in British India, took refuge at Theosophical Society headquarters. The American Theosophist serialized the "thrilling" adventures of C. Jinarajadasa (later international president) as he traveled the globe. In 1941 he left England for Capetown, Tanganyika, Bombay, Australia, Java, Singapore, and other ports, to Adyar for Convention, and then on to the United States for an extensive tour before he made it safely back to London. At the age of sixty-seven, he served as a Fire Guard in a helmet and armband, helping to extinguish blazes from German bombing.

Following World War II, American Theosophists worked closely with their counterparts in London to ship over fifteen tons of clothing and food to members of ruined sections. Donations were channeled to specific members of European sections to provide vegetarian products that were not available through other aid programs. Hundreds of letters in our archives document those efforts and the gratitude of recipients. Olcott staff members orchestrated some complex transactions. A man from Omaha donated an overcoat in October 1948, and it was reshipped to New York for the use of international president N. Sri Ram during his visit to the United States and France. Our staff wrote to Omaha, "When he boards the plane for India in France, he will leave the coat behind for the use of a needy European member."

Since the 1940s, war has seldom been mentioned in Theosophical publications, although the Cold War years triggered articles and lectures about atomic weapons and the role of Russia in world evolution. The Society has also participated in United Nations conferences and other endeavors in support of peace. The Theosophical Order of Service shipped parcels during the Berlin airlift and the Korean War, and operated an orphanage in Saigon. In 1975, the American Section helped twenty-five Vietnamese Theosophists to resettle in this country, and two refugee brothers joined the Olcott staff for a while. In recent years, the Theosophical Society in America has sponsored workshops on posttraumatic stress disorder to heal the spirits of wounded warriors, using War and the Soul: Healing Our Nation's Veterans from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder by psychotherapist Edward Tick, a work published by Quest Books in 2005.

Since the 1940s, no conflict has overwhelmed the daily life of our nation to the degree of the world wars, and for that we must be grateful. Looking back at our responses to wartime shows how conflict can energize and transform society. First-hand experience with wars helped the Theosophical Society to exert leadership in the world reconstruction, and our members learned to think in fresh ways about outward manifestation of inner realities.

 

Losing My Religion

By Jay Kinney

Originally printed in the Summer 2009 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Kinney, Jay. "Losing My Religion." Quest  97. 3 (Summer 2009): 86-89.

Theosophical Society - Jay Kinney was the founder and publisher of Gnosis: A Journal of the Western Inner Traditions. His book The Masonic Myth has been translated into five languages. He is a frequent contributor to Quest.Before 9/11, I liked to consider myself a defender of Islam. I never formally converted to Islam and my adherence to sharia (the Muslim code of behavior) was lax at best, but I spent twenty years as a publisher and writer on spiritual affairs visiting Turkey and attending interfaith events, trying to encourage a deeper understanding of Islam in the West. I grew to view the Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—as one in essence, and ultimately reconcilable and complementary. While I was certainly aware of the fundamentalist camps within these three religions, I enjoyed the luxury of keeping their proponents at a safe distance from my little oasis of tolerance.

And then the World Trade Center buildings came tumbling down, obliterating my oasis.

While I disagree with those who immediately declared that "nothing will ever be the same again," the hijackings and attacks did thrust Islamist terrorism into the limelight and seemed to bolster claims that a "clash of civilizations"—of Islam versus the West—was under way.

However, such notions differed so profoundly from what I had experienced at street level in Turkey and Morocco that I had to call my own perceptions into question. Had I been living in a protected fantasy world where ordinary Muslims' enthusiasm for soccer and pop music had masked their covert "hatred of our freedoms"? Was their eagerness to point out their respect for all "people of the book" mere camouflage for dreams of conquest? I certainly didn't think so, but what I thought was increasingly beside the point. My arena of acquaintance had failed to encompass the more severe terrain of the Gaza strip or the sectarian enclaves in Baghdad, where a mix of Islamic fervor, nationalist resistance, and personal humiliation seemed to result in a steady stream of willing "martyrs."

As the scholar Edward Said was at pains to point out, the notion of a single Islam or Islamic civilization is a misconception. There are many Islams and Islamic cultures, and assuming they share one opinion is misguided.

Still, the Islamists—however few there actually were—and their ready opponents, the anti-Islamists, had hijacked the public discourse about Islam and the West and turned it into a deadly Punch and Judy show. Now, two wars later and counting, it appears that both camps have done their utmost to sell the "clash" to their respective audiences.

As often happens when one is forced to choose sides, the multitude of things in common and the shared humanity of all concerned are replaced by hostile caricatures that feed each other's fears. The battle against the "evildoers" of the other side serves to justify the evildoing of one's own.

Unfortunately, in my own case, despite my conscious refusal to accept the Islamists' version of Islam, which I took to be a set of largely political and sociological grievances overlaid with a few Qur'anic quotes and fatwas, I discovered that my unconscious psyche had its own say in the matter.

I found it increasingly hard to call God "Allah" when suicide bombers were running at their victims while yelling "Allahu akbar [Allah is great!]!" Worse still, I found my appreciation for Islam's greatest mystics and poets—surely a peaceable bunch if there ever was one—eroded by their shared religious affiliation with hysterical bands of fanatics willing to demolish each other's mosques in the name of some sectarian point that eluded me.

The damage was gradual, like dry rot, but damage it was. Like a bystander to the Spanish Inquisition with my own sins to hide, I felt an enormous compulsion to run in the opposite direction, horrified by the bloody spectacle of a religion gone awry.

Were these the ironic fruits of the Islamists' cause? To drive away anyone sympathetic to Islam, and to bully into mute acquiescence those of their own faith, the everyday believers with no axes to grind?

I don't normally pay much attention to the unseen, but I found myself wondering whether a whole swath of radical Islamists hadn't been possessed by a particularly mischievous and virulent herd of jinns intent on wreaking as much havoc as possible. It seemed as good an explanation as any for the moral devastation of sending car bombs into funerals and wedding parties or encouraging fervent "human bombs" to explode themselves in markets.

Yet a still small voice inside me—presumably not that of a jinn—continued to remind me that as tempting as it is to blame a whole religion for the misdeeds of its most extreme exponents, to do so is an injustice—as is blaming all Americans for the misdeeds of those few who act in their name.

Indeed, the question of justice and injustice may lie at the heart of this conundrum. For it is the perception of injustice visited upon the Islamic world by the West that fuels the rage of Islamism. In presuming to fight injustice, the holy warriors and martyrs place themselves in the cause of justice. They assume, as do most religious fighters, that they are on the side of God, who will reward them in the hereafter. As one young volunteer for martyrdom was quoted as saying, "By pressing the detonator, you can immediately open the door to Paradise—it is the shortest path to Heaven."

However, it is a fool's justice that presumes to right one wrong by committing further wrongs. Solomon may have threatened to cut the disputed baby in two as a just resolution for competing claims, but it was only a tactic to discover the baby's true mother. Had the threat not succeeded, the wise ruler would have lowered his scimitar, left the baby unharmed, and sought another way to see justice done.

According to Islam, justice ultimately resides with Allah, and any human attempt at justice is but a poor facsimile and one that should err on the side of mercy. Unfortunately, we see time and again that fundamentalist versions of religions—and not just Islam—serve as magnets for people whose personalities seem to demand the security of a black-and-white worldview.

The satisfaction of moral certainty that comes from unwavering definitions of right and wrong too often translates into a preoccupation with punishing those who fail to measure up. By contrast, the practice of mercy and compassion requires one to not only see things through the eyes of others, but to entertain the possibility that one's own judgment might be flawed. This needn't entail moral abdication or turning a blind eye to outrages, but simply the recognition that absolute certainty is best left to the Absolute.

The Qur'an itself contains a remarkable passage (18:60-82) that teaches caution in judging others. Tellingly, it involves Moses, the great lawgiver.

Moses sets out on a journey with a mysterious figure commonly identified as Khidr, a kind of trickster and emissary of God. Khidr tells him he can accompany him only if Moses maintains silence as he observes what Khidr does. Three times Khidr undertakes baffling actions that seem to violate either common sense or morality. Each time Moses can't keep quiet and protests at Khidr's outrageousness.

Finally, after the third time, Khidr draws the journey to a halt and explains the reasons for his actions. These reveal a higher morality at work—one that only makes sense from a more omniscient perspective than is available to Moses.

One can interpret this in many ways—the most obvious being that Allah best knows why certain things happen. I take from it the additional lesson that if even the great prophet Moses was a fallible and occluded judge of others, who are the rest of us to presume we know better?

From the perspective of the Abrahamic faiths, God may call us to strive for justice, but the devil's in the details, as they say, and one man's justice is too often another's injustice. Justice sought at the expense of innocents is the justice of fools. When this occurs in the name of God, the ultimate effect is to discredit God and religion itself—an ironic side-effect of an overactive piety.

As for my disturbed relations with Islam, I mourn the loss of my idealized image of that great faith. But even without 9/11, it was probably bound to happen sooner or later. Religions, complex phenomena that they are, serve as channels for humanity's best and worst impulses, and Islam hardly has a monopoly on that.

Do we still need a better understanding of Islam? Undoubtedly. But I suspect that those most in the need of a better understanding are precisely those who kill in its name. May they come to their senses, insha'Allah.

Jay Kinney was the publisher and editor-in-chief of Gnosis magazine (published from 1985 to 1999) and is coauthor of Hidden Wisdom: A Guide to the Western Inner Traditions (Quest, 2006). His forthcoming book, The Masonic Enigma, will be published by Harper One.

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