The last hearth smoking over my homeland, before it goes out!

December 27 is one of the days of God, but for us it is the day our National Anthem poet Mehmet Akif died. In the last interval of the relentless illness that seized him after an 11-year life of hijra, Mehmet Akif died in Istanbul a short time after coming there, almost as if to be buried in his homeland. When he came back after 11 years, he found his homeland in harsher conditions than he had left it, but even in this state he did not lose his hope for this homeland. After all, a place that has once become a homeland of Islam can never again fall to unbelief. He had in any case expressed this, in the National Anthem, in the country's hardest days, perhaps in a different context: "That crimson banner, swimming in these dawns, will never fade; before the last hearth above my homeland goes out!"

Whatever politics may have prevailed in the country, whoever may have been in power, those last hearths will never come to an end, and from those hearths there will always rise people who will claim and champion this homeland's being Islamic. And so it was. During the few months he spent in the country he came to, the poet of the National Anthem was seen like a "foreigner," as an enemy of the regime; every step he took was followed, everyone he met and had contact with was watched, and intelligence reports were constantly kept on him.

He was seen as a threat, evidently. Yet he is the very person who wrote the manifesto of the last national struggle that made this country a homeland. Were everyone a traitor, he would be exempt from this betrayal. The mindset that attributes to him foreignness, a threat or an enmity could only be a mindset and a party foreign to this nation and a threat to this nation. The National Struggle was possible on the ground of a consciousness of a cause that he represented.

Although he was an Albanian, he vehemently opposed the nationalism of his own people that brought with it breaking away from the Ottomans. For him the state, the country, the homeland was the Ottoman. Those who thought of separating from this homeland, even in the name of his own people, were his enemies. That is why, against those who, saying "I am Albanian!", turned against the nation he represented, he wrote the following:

"Without division entering a nation, the enemy cannot enter;

Where hearts strike together, no cannon can subdue it.

Is there such a thing as 'races' in Islam? Not at all!

The Prophet condemns the idea of nationalism by ethnicity.

The spirit of the Prophet is division's greatest enemy;

Cursed be the scoundrel who brought it into Islam!"

Even these words alone suffice to tell what had been going on in the country. And, of course, to point to all the reference we need to rely on today for "national unity and brotherhood."

When he came to his own homeland, whatever intention those who followed him had as they followed, not all the hearths above his homeland had gone out, nor had they been extinguished. Those who kept watch over those hearths, or those raised in those hearths, claimed Akif despite all the pressure directed at him. When it was realized, only by chance, that the body brought to the mosque as if belonging to no one was his, the news spread by word of mouth within a very short time, and his funeral was carried out with an unexpected crowd, with the participation of students in particular. Afterward even the fervor with which this funeral was attended was recorded as a reactionary response. Investigations were even carried out about those who had taken the lead in it.

Akif was claimed by Âsım's generation. Just as it did not let this homeland be trampled at Çanakkale, it did not leave Akif's funeral or his cause without an owner. But since that day Âsım's generation has been exactly as Akif depicted it in his Safahat, in Âsım'ın Nesli. Although Akif attributes great value to it, Âsım's generation is in fact not at the consistency that Akif wanted. Although the emotionality, impulsiveness, zeal, the fearless valor that does not spare itself, the heedlessness of calculation that generally come to the fore are positive values, Akif also thinks that this personality does not sufficiently bear the requirements of the founding generation that we need today.

This trait of his may suffice to distinguish him on the battlefield, in one-to-one combat with the enemy, by his indisputable heroism. But Âsım's generation also has to be equipped with serious education, with reason, with knowledge, with strategy. The impulsive reactions he showed against the degenerates who held drinking parties while Bursa was occupied, the momentary patriotic flare-ups, in one way inspire confidence in a person. But this emotionality, this reactivity is not enough. That is why, when necessary, Âsım's generation will go abroad and acquire the knowledge and technique of the West, and also acquire the Islamic sciences in all their branches and in the most thorough way. Meanwhile it will also master itself, will not make impulsive outbursts, will not act on half-baked knowledge or conjecture, and will not act without learning the root and substance of everything.

That is why, in Akif's eyes, Âsım's generation is a generation not yet complete. Moreover, when he came to Türkiye, conditions had been created in which that generation, let alone being incomplete, was sought to be dried up at its roots. Even so, Akif's coming and choosing to retire to his eternal rest in Istanbul was an expression of his deep belief that the present situation would not go on like this forever.

His siding with Abduh in the methodological debate between Abduh and Afghani also carries the awareness that this hope requires great patience. When he says "I too want revolution, but like Abduh," what he means is of course not Abduh's ideas on every subject. It concerns the method of revolution, Abduh's attitude of valuing individual and social education. It is further saddening to have to explain that on this matter Akif was not someone to imitate anyone blindly, and was of a quality that could not be a muqallid of either Abduh or Afghani. Without doubt Akif too made mistakes, but even dwelling on these mistakes has features worth holding up as a mirror to ourselves.

May his soul be at peace. May his abode be paradise.