Istanbul Foundation for Science and Culture
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answered with the tongue of reality and wisdom and through the eloquence of its order:

"If you possess the power and knowledge to have actual control over the bodies of all human beings, who are the same as me and on whose faces are the stamp of power and seal of creation which are the same, and if you have the wealth and jurisdiction to own, from water and air to plants and animals, the treasuries of my sustenance, and if you have infinite power and boundless wisdom with which to employ me with perfect wisdom and cause me to perform my worship, and the power and wisdom to lodge in a narrow, lowly vessel like me immaterial and subtle faculties like the spirit, heart, and intellect, which are extremely vast and exalted and for which I am merely the sheath, then demonstrate all these and afterwards say that you made me. Otherwise, be silent!

"Moreover, according to the testimony of the perfect order in my body and the indication of the stamp of unity on my face, my Maker is One who is powerful over all things, knows all things, and sees and hears all things. Someone aimless and impotent like you cannot meddle in His art. You cannot interfere in so much as an atom."

The representative of the things imagined to be God's partners could find no way in which to interfere in the body so he went off. Next, he encountered the human race and said to himself "This is a disorganized and unruly group. Perhaps, like Satan interferes in their individual and social actions which they perform through the exercise of their wills, I'll be able to find some way to interfere in the functioning of their bodies and natures. And then, finding some way, I'll be able to exercise control over the body and the body's cell which sent me packing."

So, he said to the human race, once again in the language of deaf nature and aimless philosophy: "You seem to be to be in great confusion. I am your master and owner, or at least I partly own you." To which the human race answered through the tongue of truth and reality, wisdom and order:

"If you possess the power and wisdom to make the shirt that clothes the whole globe of the earth and is woven and sewn with perfect wisdom from the multicoloured threads of all the hundreds of thousands of animal and plant species, of which we are one, and to make the carpet which is spread over the face of the earth and is woven from the hundreds of thousands of species of animate beings and is created in an extremely fine and ornamented fashion, and to continuously renew and refurbish it, and if you possess comprehensive power and all-embracing wisdom with which to have free disposal over the globe of the earth of which we are the fruit, and over the universe of which we are the seed, and to send us our vital necessities

4–6 October 2026 · Istanbul

13th International Bediuzzaman Symposium

Visit the symposium website for the programme, papers and registration.