Feeling alien has always been an important part of prophethood: all of the messengers, patriarchs, prophets of old felt alienated, felt like strangers in their own land, among their own families.
All of the prophets had problems with the people around them, and to whom they had been commanded to take the message. They didn’t ‘fit’ in.
They exhibited distinct signs of sanity in a world that was clearly insane. They had common sense in times where sense was not at all common.
They were square pegs in round holes, they stuck out like sore thumbs, they were conspicuous by their dislike of the status quo and their constant need for answers to their endless existential and social questions.
True believers have the DNA of prophethood in them, since they are children of the archetypal ‘stranger in a strange land’, Adam (a.s.), whose exile to this alien place – the world – is in our blood still, even though people try to forget this, they try to integrate, to fit in.
– Dr. Colin Turner ( influenced by Said Nursi (1876 –1960), one of the most influential Islamic scholar)
Universal Spirituality 