Cemalnur Sargut, a living saint from Turkey who was in Bhopal from November 18 to 20 to participate in the International Conference on Sufism held at Bharat Bhawan spoke to Team Viva about the different aspects of Sufism, reports Zafar Alam Khan
Cemalnur Sargut, a living saint from Turkey with worldwide following was in the Madhya Pradesh capital Bhopal for three days from November 18 to 20 to participate in the International Conference on Sufism held at Bharat Bhawan.
Cemalnur Sargut is the president of the Turkish Women's Cultural Association, Istanbul (TURKKAD), founded by her teacher, Samiha Ayverdi in 1966. Under her leadership TURKKAD works to organise international symposiums and address a wide range of people who would like to apply solutions to today's problems in the Sufi view that knowledge is a state to be practiced and worship is a journey toward love.
'Viva City' talked in detail with Cemalnur, a former chemistry teacher who is widely popular among the young in Turkey and other parts of the world. Her teachings focus on the application of Sufi principles and ethics in daily life. She has her disciples in all parts of the globe and the number is continuously increasing.
She spoke in length on different aspects of Sufism.
Viva City: How did you reconcile your study of modern science and philosophy with the Sufi way?
Cemalnur: I was born into a Sufi family. In order to find things out for myself, I rejected my family's ideas and studied philosophy and chemical engineering. I examined philosophers' lives to see what I could learn from them, but saw that none of them was happy. Nietzsche became mad; Schopenhauer predicted the end of the world. I turned to Samiha Ayverdi, my Sufi teacher, and asked her to show me somebody who was actually living what he or she was saying. She showed me Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273 A.D.). Some years later, she asked me to teach the young. I said I knew nothing. She said, it is then you can teach. You cannot teach when you claim to know something. You are actually learning when you are teaching.
Viva City: There are many schools of Sufism. How would you characterise yours?
Cemalnur: There are different paths to the Kaabah, one chooses this and another chooses that. My teacher's teacher, Kenan Rifai, combined the four main Sufi paths, which stand for humbleness, knowledge, love and praying while living in the world fully. We are trying to bring these together.
Viva City: Was this a new Sufi path?
Cemalnur: Yes. Kenan Rifai was a revolutionary, as was Prophet Mohammed who broke the idols which are actually the ideas that bar our intellect, our mind. I try to do the same thing. I am lucky because many people accept me. Perhaps it is because I don't want to show myself, but the beautiful face of religion. The Sufi way is of love. Love is so precious, it is our weapon. Our jihad weapon is love.
Viva City: Have you ever had to face controversy because of your beliefs?
Cemalnur: It happens all the time. My teacher said that if everybody loves you, you are not a real murshid (Sufi teacher). Some people must not understand you, because wholeness is very difficult to understand.
People like to make war, to take one side. If you belong to all sides, then they don't want to accept you.
There is increasing tension between secularists and fundamentalists in Turkey.
Problems are created by a handful of people, and they seem huge because they have big voices. In terms of the headscarf controversy, covering actually means to cover our bad habits.
Viva City: What is your way of teaching?
Cemalnur: We try to live what we learn. When i went to the US 10 years ago, one man said: If I just listen to you, I will think of you for a few days. But because I saw all of you (Cemalnur and her students), I saw how to behave, how to be what you say. That is very important.
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About Cemalnur Sargut
In 2009, Cemalnur initiated a chair of Islamic Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she has been giving lectures since 2000. A similar initiative is to be launched at Peking University, China.
The desired outcome of these academic efforts is to build a spiritual bridge between the east and the west and to teach Sufism, through daily practice in addition to scholarly study.
Cemalnur was born in Istanbul in 1952. After receiving her BSc in Chemical Engineering, she taught Chemistry for 20 years.
Born into a Sufi family, she was interested in philosophy and examined the lives of great philosophers when she was young. Upon her teacher, Samiha Ayverdi's request, she started to work on the Quran, conducted a comparative study on Rumi's Masnavi and started giving Masnavi lessons to young people when she was 24. Since then she has reached millions of people.
Apart from her studies on Sufism, Cemalnur publishes books of commentaries on the Quran chapters compiled through the commentaries of such great Sufi masters as Kenan Rifai, Rumi, Ahmed-er Rifai, Abdulkadir Jilani, Ibn-i Arabi, Misri Niyazi, Jili, Shams and Sultan Veled.
She continuously serves people by giving spiritual discourses and teachings on Rumi's Masnavi and Ibn Arabi's Fususu'l Hikem.
[Picture: Cemal-Nur Sargut. Photo: Baraka Institute.]
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