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Welcome to the eleventh issue of The Pen Magazine! Recently what we have been enjoying is not just the hot weather of summer season of 2011 especially in some geographies of the world, but I need to exclaim blissfully we have entered into another warm climate; the blessed three months season… It is a season in which we may enjoy limitless mercy and compassion of Almighty Allah… It is a sacred time period that we may and need to find opportunity to make self evaluation and criticism… It is time to turn the direction of telescope into our inner side.
It is time to make du’a for ourselves… to repent and demand forgiveness for what we have done… to supplicate His forgiveness and mercy… We are human beings and we are flawed with weaknesses of being human. We feel weak most of the time but we even do not admit it to ourselves. We are covering our weaknesses by playing games, by putting on masks and by bullying others. This is the time we feel and admit our weakness and submit it to Compassionate Allah as a petition to receive His Compassion…
It is time to make du’a for all Muslims… Muslims live in a quite fragile world. In the Middle East a process with unknown implications and ramifications has started. People are being murdered on live broadcasts. They had raised their voices to stop slow death in their lives. Now they are vulnerable and experiencing a fast and bruta death. As always all in these upheavals and chaos women and children are most defenseless beings. It is time to raise our hands and pray for these people. It is time to halt the quick rhythm of our lives and feel our brothers and sisters’ pain in our hearts.
We believe that as Muslims whatever problems we have they are all related to our fundamentals. We have an identity crisis and our identity crisis reflects into our lives as physical crises. We do not know who we are. We have forgotten what define us, thus we are shapeless and amorphous. So long as we do not define our identity, do not return our roots and insist on denial of what our geography and history dictates us, people who are not from this geography will continue to shape and define us.
Henceforth, we have been covering fundamental issues of Muslims in the pages of our magazine since the beginning. When we solve these issues and question the values and lifestyle that modernity has introduced us we will get rid of the identity confusion and we will have a clear picture of what the life is, who the people and especially the Muslims are and what is going on in the world.
In line with what we have said, in the eleventh issue of our magazine we have covered the pillars of Islam. Indeed, as you will see the articles covered in the special folder are the papers submitted to 4th International Bediuzzaman and Risale-i Nur Symposium which we announced in previous issues. The authors expound the basic pillars of Islam in a detailed way in their articles. In fact, the pillars of Islam are clear and known by all Muslims. What is original in our magazine is to convey and explain why they are so important to us and why we should carry them out, but not how we should do it which has been told in classical Islamic sources for more than a thousand years.
Besides, you will read three articles on family issue in some specific areas of Islamic world and in the next issues we will publish more articles on that issue which has vital importance for Islamic societies.
I hope you will find this issue of The Pen magazine satisfactory in terms of knowledge and analysis regarding the religion of Islam and Islamic world. With your prayers and encouragement we will develop issue by issue by the will of Allah. There is not limit for success. See you in the more successfully prepared issues.