From Debate To Dialogue
For over a year I have removed as many distractions as possible from my life, such as social media. Much earlier - since 2016 - I stopped watching television, listening to the radio and consuming news. Reading books has always been my favourite hobby and in recent years, and this past year in particular, I have never read so many books, with great pleasure.
Working in personal development for 7 years now - as a dialogue trainer for teams of companies and self-dialogue coach for individuals - I know the power of focus and inner peace. Together they lead to clear thinking and the coming to life of your authenticity. For me, authenticity means being real and original. Someone who is authentic is not only themselves, but the most honest and often the best version of who they are.
My personal development has always been about understanding my authenticity and my journey to live more and more authentically. My proposal for PhD research, or rather, my "struggle" with writing my proposal, has contributed to the fact that I started looking for inspiration, and that I have been paying full attention to my personal development for over a year now - read also my other blog posts.
“Science without religion is lame and religion without science is blind.” These words belong to Albert Einstein, widely recognised as one of the greatest physicists of all time *). How I understand these words is that religion cannot show truth, seeing is of the (limited) physical world and we need science to help us see truth. Science without religion is uninspired, and makes moving towards and reaching truth impossible. Einstein's words sum up exactly where I am in my life; discovering the compatibility - indeed, the mutual interdependence - of science and religion.
Through science and religion, I want to understand my passion - (self) dialogue - on a deeper level, in order to arrive at a proposal for PhD research that will make my heart beat faster. My own name Wassila stands for connection, or dialogue, and was a natural starting point for me over a year ago to start my journey in search of inspiration.
My name Wassila comes from Islam - a timeless message of love, mercy, peace, freedom, justice and unity. Islam means surrender in peace. Surrender in peace to Allah - the source of love and the same singular God referred to in the Torah in Hebrew as Elohim, or spoken of by Jesus in Aramaic as the strikingly similar Allaha.
Surrender to Allah is the ultimate act of love, called worship, and it is not that you should seek love (from Allah), but to seek and find within yourself all the barriers that you have built against it. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was the founder of Islam. He was an Arab religious, social, and political leader who, inspired by God, preached and confirmed the monotheistic teachings of Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets - Muslims who lived before him.
Many people do not know much about Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and, even worse, some have a distorted view of him and Islam. As a former Member of the Dutch Parliament, I know how power, politics and media work and the game of perceptions for social control - read the whole story about me leaving politics here. I am also very familiar with the lack of transparency of the agendas behind this game. What is the agenda behind the continuous deliberate creation and feeding of damaging false perceptions of Islam, its messenger and its followers, Muslims?
I don't have answers to my many questions yet, but what I do know is that if there is no transparency of this and other agendas in power, politics and media, not only freedom of thought but also democracy is at risk. In my view, let’s start by acknowledging that it is our own responsibility as individuals to try to look beyond what is presented and to put into practice our freedom of thought, whether it is about Islam and Muslims or other issues that affect our society.
Furthermore, renewal of democracy is more than necessary and the lack thereof is a cause for concern. Democratic renewal improves (control of) power, (the game of) politics and (the role of the) media. My plea is not new. We will have to let go of the outdated rules, the outdated paradigm of fear and serious lack of human connection, starting in politics: From Debate To Dialogue. An in between step is needed to realise this much-needed change: the abolition of political parties and the reintroduction of independent representatives of the people.
In the Netherlands political parties seized power in 1917 - without constitutional legitimacy - and developed into power-hungry systems with perverse incentives and breeding ground for career-politicians. Political parties hinder any chance of progress, change and improvement in our democracy and its politics. It is time to respect our constitution, go back to real representatives of the people and give democracy a real chance.
Earlier, as a democrat (D66), I gave the famous Dutch D'66 Appèl a contemporary twist. It's time for D66 to go back to its roots and make renewal of democracy its only mission. The political party must be dissolved, like all the other political parties, as soon as it has brought about the reintroduction of independent representatives of the people. As one of the founding fathers of D66 Hans van Mierlo has said literally in 1966: "D66 will disappear when we have helped to blow up the current political system." I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's time to move From Debate To Dialogue.
January 17, 2023
*) Science and Religion by Prof. Albert Einstein, 1940 Nature Publishing Group