The word Islam means surrender to God. In our secular Western culture, it is difficult to imagine what that means. Among other things, it indicates dependence and predestination. But is this really the case? Isn't this a superficial presumption? Allah calls on human beings to surrender in freedom to their God (Sura 96). Allah is merciful and forgiving. At the same time, however, Allah is the all-seeing one and the one who humbles. In Islam, free will and predestination have an uneasy relationship with each other--but isn't this true for every religion?

In this collection of...

"The profound thought that lies in this is that the kingdom of darkness has to be overcome by the kingdom of light, not by means of punishment, but through mildness; not by resisting evil, but by uniting with it in order to redeem evil as such. Because a part of the light enters into evil, the evil itself is overcome." --Rudolf Steiner (The Temple Legend, Nov. 11, 1904)

For many centuries, the teaching of Mani was hidden behind the distorted picture that had been created by the adversaries of Manichaeism in East and West. In the course of the twentieth century, new...