In religion there is often a difficulty between the form and the spirit. And there are those who are very much in the spirit. And there are those who are very much in the form. And the ones who believe very very strongly in the form see those in the spirit as apostates or heretics. They see them as a danger to their well thought out world that they’ve put together and that they’ve described and that they’ve given rules and regulations to.
I was recently in Turkey giving a series of talks. And in talking privately to a number of people, their concern was that they wanted a return to the time of the Prophet. They wanted to be able to do things the way they were done at the time of the Prophet, and they were trying to figure out how to do that. And they were trying to imitate what went on then in the best way that they could. However, it was problematic for them. They saw all the difficulties in Islam right now and they were quick to blame it on the fact that people were no longer following the way of the Prophet, but they didn’t seem to be able to grasp what the way of the Prophet was. They didn’t seem to be able to grasp what it was that was different about that time and this time and how to integrate that time into this time. And most of their efforts to do that involved formulistic sorts of things.
