The seeds of compassion: Listening and understanding

New religion professor has doctorates in
quantum physics and Islamic and Arab studies

For Yamine Mermer, teaching college students in the heart of the United States is just the latest phase in a multi-faceted career.

Prof. Mermer, who came to Carthage this fall as an associate professor of religion, has lived on four continents, and has earned doctorates in quantum physics and Islamic and Arab studies.

"I prefer to be open to inspiration and guidance, rather than make strict plans. Life is not a deterministic venture."

"I did not foresee my switch from physics to philosophy of science, and then religion," Prof. Mermer says of her varied career. "I simply welcomed the opportunities as they arose. I prefer to be open to inspiration and guidance, rather than make strict plans. Life is not a deterministic venture."

Prof. Mermer grew up in Algeria, where she earned her B.S. in physics at the University of Sciences and Technology of Algiers. She then earned a master's degree and doctorate in theoretical physics from the University of Durham in Britain before teaching mathematics at a private high school in Istanbul, Turkey, where she headed the math and science department.

History and Religion in Turkey and Algeria

Turkey and Algeria are both predominantly Muslim countries, and political parties linked to Islam have drawn support in both countries.

"The history is different, and because of the history, the politics is different," Prof. Mermer says. "Algeria was a post-colonial society, Turkey was never colonized."

For nearly three decades after Algeria gained independence, "people were not happy," Prof. Mermer says. "It was a very corrupt, one-party state."

In 1991 the Islamic Salvation Front won the first round of the country's first multi-party elections. The military then intervened and canceled the second round. Algerians "voted for the people they knew were religious, because they believed they would be more honest," Prof. Mermer contends, "not because they would bring in Sharia," Islamic law.

In Turkey, which has a strong tradition of separating the government from Islam, the current governing party is often described as Islamic. Prof. Mermer believes this is not quite fair.

"It's like calling the conservative party the 'Christian party'," in a U.S. context, because it draws support from strong Christians, she contends.

Instead, Prof. Mermer says Turkey's governing party won because its leader managed the city of Istanbul effectively and won the trust of the people.

"They are acting secular," she says of the government. "I cannot read their minds, I cannot call them Islamic unless they call themselves Islamist."

A Change in Careers

Prof. Mermer began study at an Islamic divinity school in Istanbul in the mid-1990s, and taught seminars on religion and science for five years before coming to the United States to pursue her Ph.D. at Indiana University.

"It's not that suddenly you wake up one day and decide you're going to change career," she says. But she says that during her advanced studies in physics she found herself edging closer to issues of philosophy.

While at Indiana, Prof. Mermer says she became involved in an ecumenical scriptural study group based at Britain's Cambridge University. She began student-faculty study groups at Indiana and at Swarthmore College, where she taught Arabic from 2006 to 2009.

"We helped them read the Koran," she says of non-Muslims, "they helped us read the Bible."

Teaching Compassion

Prof. Mermer enjoyed her experiences at Indiana.

"I was fortunate that when I came to the States, I lived in a very diverse place," she says. "People were very open to learn from each other. I was told Bloomington was an 'island' in Indiana, but I never had a personal bad experience, except in 2005, when the local mosque was vandalized and the local Muslim community was terrified."

"I was fortunate that when I came to the States, I lived in a very diverse place. People were very open to learn from each other"

Prof. Mermer says she hopes to enable students "to try to see a different faith, Hinduism for instance, from the inside. People can experience the divine in different ways, and express it in different ways. I want them to not take their own religious experience as the unit of reference for all other faiths."

Students, she has found, "are compassionate, they just need help in improving their skills in applying the Golden Rule."

If she could summarize her message to students, Prof. Mermer says, it would be to "open up, start listening, and try to understand the other. We want to teach them how to approach the other with compassion."

— Bill Kurtz, Carthage College