East and West

For Westerners intelligence is the stuff of life, for Easterners love is the mystery of all being;

Only through love intelligence gets to know God, love’s labours find firm grounding in intelligence;

When love is companioned by intelligence it has the power to design another world.

Then rise and draw the design of a new world, mingle together love with intelligence.

The flame of the Europeans is damped down, their eyes are perceptive, but their hearts are dead;

They have been sore smitten by their own swords, hunted down and slaughtered, themselves the hunters.

Look not for fire and intoxication in their vine; not into their heavens shall rise a new age.

It is from your fire that the glow of life comes, and it is your task to create the new world.

Mustafa Kemal, who sang of a great renewal, said the old image must be cleansed and polished;

Yet the vitality of the Kaaba cannot be made new if a new Lat and Manat from Europe enter its shrine.

No, the Turks have no new melody in their lute, what they call new is only the old tune of Europe;

No fresh breath has entered into their breast, no design of a new world is in their mind.

Turkey perforce goes along with the existing world, melted like wax in the flame of the world we know.

Originality is at the roots of all creation, never by imitation shall life be reformed;

The living heart, creator of ages and epochs, that soul is little enamoured of imitation:

If you possess the spirit of a true Mussulman examine your own conscience, and the Koran;

A hundred new worlds he within its verses, whole centuries are involved in its moments;

One world of it suffices for the present age – seize it, if the heart in your breast grasps truth.

A believing servant himself is a sign of God, every world to his breast is as a garment;

And when one world grows old upon his bosom, The Koran gives him another world!

The barque of us terrestrials has no helmsman, no one knows where the Koran’s world lies.

Afghani It is a world lost now in our breast, a world awaiting yet the command ‘Arise!’

A world without distinction of race and colour, its evening is brighter than Europe’s dawn;

A world cleansed of monarchs and of slaves, a world unbounded, like the believer’s heart,

A world so fair, that the effluence of one glance planted the seed of it in Omar’s soul.

Eternal it is, the impact of it ever new, ever new the leaf and fruit of its sure foundations;

Inwardly it is anxious not of change, outwardly, every moment is revolution.

Behold, that world lies within your own heart; now I will tell you of its firm foundations.