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March/April 2004 Living Now
Wise Men in Black Dresses

by Dr. Yvonne Seng talks to Miriam Knight

I hadn’t anticipated that Men in Black Dresses – A Quest for the Future Among Wisdom Makers of the Middle East would be so totally riveting. Its author, Yvonne Seng, Ph.D., formerly a professor of peace and Middle Eastern studies at Georgetown University and now at Wesley Theological Seminary, is a natural born storyteller. Not surprising, since she is Australian. Her fearless and witty style probably had its roots in her childhood in the Outback where she played "Aussie Roulette" with her brothers, using venomous spiders instead of bullets. Charging ahead solo where most of us would fear to tread, Yvonne interviewed a fascinating array of spiritual leaders, mystics and holy men and women to seek spiritual guidance for our time. Their answers were surprising and profoundly important.

Yvonne Seng was captivated by Islamic art and architecture as a young traveler on a break between school and university. Following her passion as a research fellow at the Smithsonian Institution, Yvonne came across a book about certain threatened cultural artifacts of Egypt written in the 1920s. She set out to visit them, and on the train to the oasis, she fell into conversation with an old man sitting next to her. It turned out that he was the Catholic Coptic Bishop of Asyout and Upper Egypt. They spoke for hours about the meaning of life and death. He confided to her a secret… that he was going back to die. The holy man asked her if she wanted to see the future, and if she did, to promise to return to Egypt. How could she refuse a dying man?

Yvonne completed work on her PhD at the University of Chicago, and worked on her doctoral thesis in Istanbul, overseen by the Muftis in their long black dresses. For two years she studied Islamic law records in the mosque of Suleiman the Magnificent, and her thesis launched a reputation as a serious Islamic scholar.

It took Yvonne 14 years and a life threatening trauma in Turkey before she returned to Egypt. At the height of this trauma (which is the subject of her latest book, not yet published) Bishop Nuweiba’s face popped up in front of her, and she said to herself, "I can’t die yet! I haven’t fulfilled my promise."

She didn’t act on it until the millennium. Spurred by all the talk about technology and the future of this global age, she decided to go back and find some of these wise old men and women and ask them from their very unique perspectives how to weather the coming crisis and move into the future.

When she set off she had three weeks and only two names to get her started – a Sufi Master from Egypt and a Syrian poet and mystic. Through a combination of tenacity, ingenuity and pure providence the right people appeared, connected her to others and doors opened before her. But once through those doors, she was on her own.

Within 24 hours of her arrival in Egypt she was seated before the Grand Sheikh of Islam of Egypt. How did she manage it? It helped greatly that she was a scholar and that rather than representing any institution or state, she sought an audience as a private person. In Islam, as well as in the old Christian faith communities, the leader is very much a part of the community, and its members have the right of direct access to him for petitions, advice and the like.

In considering whether to grant the audience, the holy men looked straight into her – into her heart, and that’s when they decided to give these very personal interviews. Yvonne felt that each one was special – very simple, very open and down to earth. She also found them very pragmatic; not surprising as they oversee the day to day lives of their communities. They all projected a very strong inner peace, while assessing the world scene with great clarity of vision. Interestingly, she felt that the spiritual views of the Moslem and Orthodox Christian clerics were much more closely aligned than between the Orthodox and Western Christian churches, especially on things like social policy and dealing with the community and respect for each other.

When she asked each of them what they would tell the leaders of other churches and faiths, they all said "We must talk. We must talk about what is common between us for our survival." Tantawi, The Grand Sheikh of Islam said "We can learn from each other; from our differences as well as what we have in common." And he said that "all people and all religions and all faiths have common beliefs, and that is to bring humanity from darkness to light, and from this we can all benefit." Sheikh Tantawi is adamant about personal responsibility for our actions and that humanity must be the caretaker of the planet for future generations.

I asked Yvonne how large a following the holy men she interviewed, and others like them, had compared with the extremists like the ayatollahs. She said that the extremist leaders are going to attract people looking for an extreme vision, but the majority of ordinary people she met in the streets are moderate and would follow the center represented by the Grand Sheikh. He is also a scholar and the director of Al Azhar University in Cairo, which is over 1,000 years old. He is also a progressive who came out on the side of science and technology, going so far as supporting organ transplants and saying that we must learn from these things before we condemn them; that we should not believe in fate, but move forward. His stunning announcement that he wishes to donate his body parts to science upon his death preempted Baywatch on Egyptian TV!

The Copts are Christians with an ancient lineage, seeing themselves as sons and daughters of the pharaohs. Yvonne spoke with the Coptic Minister of Youth, a great supporter of the Internet, who insists that knowledge of the world and of each other is the key to the future. He and the others impressed upon her that information does not equal wisdom. In this incredible information age there is a wisdom gap between information and wisdom, and we need knowledge to bridge it.

From the Islamic Sheikhs, the Sufis, the Greek and Coptic Orthodox to the Bishop of Antioch, they all said the same things: We need knowledge of others and we need to have respect for others who are different. We must maintain open communication. We must look after other people so that they can live in safety. Another common thread was the vital importance of the family and the community in raising children and eventually creating good leaders.

The Sufi poet, Assad Ali, summed it up by saying, "we must all remember the source from which we came. The wellspring."

Yvonne trekked to the summit of Jebel Mussa, the mountain of Moses in the Sinai desert where Moses received the 10 Commandments. There in the monastery of Santa Katarina she sought out Archbishop Damianos, a much-revered mystic of the Greek Orthodox Church who is called "grandfather" by the local Bedouin. Despite being so isolated, the archbishop is incredibly in touch with the world scene, noting that now, more than at any other time in history, we have the ability to destroy the earth. He believes that the apocalypse will be a result of mistakes involving technology divorced from spirituality.

Dogma has replaced spirituality. The 10 Commandments, he said, were good outlines to begin with, but they have become lost in dogma.

Yvonne asked him if he had any message for other spiritual leaders.

"Egoism. Spiritual leaders today suffer from egoism," was his blunt reply. "We act from our heads, but not our hearts. Our hearts are the chairs for our spirit. Our heads are the chairs for the ego."

"And history?" she asked. "What does it teach us?"

"If we are looking to the past to find truth," he says, "we are not going to find it."

"Truth, like faith has been changed over the centuries by the minds of men. Truth has become buried in dogma," Yvonne summarizes. "The head not the heart now rules society and religion. The chair now sits on the sitter."

Men in Black Dresses – A Quest for the Future Among Wisdom Makers of the Middle East by Yvonne Seng, Ph.D. was published by Paraview Pocket Books. $14.00 paperback. Yvonne Seng lives in Washington, DC. Her website is reachthenextlevel.com/seng/