Truly, it is not the time for nothing

Right after the unjust, oppressive, tyrannical and brigand-like attacks by the US and Israel on Iran began, criticism of Shiism more intense than anything seen before, and criticism concerning Iran's record on its Shiitization policies, also began to come onto the agenda. Looking at the timing alone, you immediately understand that this is not a very auspicious agenda.

What is interesting is that when you look at the details of the criticisms, none of them is of a kind that you could not concede is right. Who can forget the Muslim blood shed for the sake of Iran's Shiitization policies in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and Afghanistan? Which Muslim could accept speaking ill of the Companions, let alone of Aisha?

The agenda has intensified so much that one of the questions I encounter most these days is why I have remained silent on this matter.

Yet silence is also a form of speech. I deliberately preferred to remain silent on this, just as Hayrettin Karaman hoca said in his latest article: It is not the time at all.

As we said, timing and context change the meaning of many things. The debate over Shiism, the issues the Shia raise, have always been on the agenda of Islamic scholars throughout history, and have been answered, but they have not ended as a debate among them and probably never will. On this matter Ahl al-Sunna, from the standpoint of common sense, from a standpoint bearing responsibility for the overall internal peace of the ummah, while giving the Shia its answer, has not displayed a takfiri attitude. Under Ahl al-Sunna governments, the Shia continued to live in security, believing as they wished. Even though the Shia declared the Sunnis unbelievers, the attitude of Ahl al-Sunna on this has not changed. It did not take the path of retaliatory takfir, saying "who are you to declare me an unbeliever?"

Hayrettin Karaman Hoca has framed the juristic framework regarding takfir very well. Perhaps there is a point he skipped because he did not see the need, and if it will not be considered impertinent, let me add it too: Takfir is a path with legal consequences, and therefore one whose decision is not left to individuals, one that can only be carried out through certain legal-judicial procedures. It is a decision that can only be given by legal authorities who are experts in the matter, after hearing the accused as well and taking their statements about what they thought and said or did, and why.

That is, the right of defense of the one being declared an unbeliever cannot be denied either. It is not a decision that individuals can make unilaterally on their own.

It is very hard to reconcile those who irresponsibly resort to this path where there is no Islamic judicial institution with that prudent, wise attitude of Ahl al-Sunna. There is a lust for takfir in people. Perhaps it is a universal form of deviation. People guard a power they cling to from others. As if saying "This path is mine and mine alone." Yet Islam is a path, a blessing, wide enough to include everyone. The entry of many people onto that path does not diminish anyone's share or portion.

Pouncing on what people say in slips of the tongue and judging them in the name of religion has nothing to do with Ahl al-Sunna or with humanity. Using their statements, torn from their contexts, against people, and ruling unilaterally on their unbelief without listening to them has nothing to do with a sensitivity to protecting religion; it has to do only with not liking Muslims. Unfortunately, those who do this most also say they do it in the name of Ahl al-Sunna.

As for Iran and its Shiism. Of course we do not forget what they have done in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and Afghanistan. But that is our own family matter. This family knows how, and must know how, to suspend the disputes among them in the face of an external threat. When it cannot, it becomes a toy in the hands of the world's rulers anyway.

Iran did not invent the Shia views about the noble Companions. These have been the habitual discourse of Shiism from the beginning. Of course they are repeated today too in Iran's Shiitization policies in Islamic countries. We reject them. But this is an issue at least 1200 years old. Centuries have passed, it has not been settled, and it is not a matter we can settle today. Despite this, Sunnis and Shia lived together again for centuries and, when the occasion arose, especially during the First World War, Iraqi Shia and Sunnis stood together in the same Ottoman ranks against the British, fought together and mingled their blood.

Muslim common sense has never lost hope in this rapprochement, this union, in the possibility of an overall Shia-Sunni Islamic Unity. For this it is very important to be able to take hard decisions in hard times, in hard trials. A trial is not the work of easy times but of hard times, and is itself, by its very nature, hard. That is why Imam al-Ghazali, one of the greatest names in the history of Sunni jurisprudence, delivered a sword stroke to a very complicated and difficult knot by saying "the people of the qibla cannot be declared unbelievers." From the moment this was said, those who turn back and say again "but they say this on this matter, they say that on that matter" are only those who have still not awakened from the sword stroke that was delivered.

Even Ibn Taymiyya (why do we say "even"? Because he is the Ahl al-Sunna scholar who made the harshest criticisms of Shiism and is the person the Shia do not like at all and of course declare an unbeliever) formulated, after all his criticisms of Shiism (al-Muntaqa), after answering all their heavy claims, a stance that also made takfir forbidden.

Perhaps it is harder to explain this to our Syrian brothers today, because they suffered enormous pains from the support Iran gave to Assad and their pains are very fresh, and so are their feelings toward Iran, and no one can blame them for this, they are quite right. Likewise it is very hard to explain this to our Iraqi brothers at this stage. But although Afghanistan suffered the same pains, the Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, though he holds the strictest stance regarding the Shia, declared that he stands with Iran in the face of the attacks by Israel and the US.

Today Israel and the US are not attacking Iran because it is Shia, or because it caused Sunnis pain in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen, or because it applied Shiitization policies there; on the contrary they are attacking it because it is Muslim, because it has oil, and because it poses a threat to Israel. In the face of these attacks, as Muslims, today it is not the time either to recall the sectarian errors of the Shia or to put forward the errors Iran has fallen into in the same trial when the occasion arose. Those who do this, I think, are not even aware that they are making Iran their guide not in its rights but in all its wrongs.