Is it possible to own rightfulness and truth?

It is a historical rule, a divine practice (sunnah), that those who regard a position of rightfulness, once obtained, as an acquired right for all time quickly and tragically reach excessive levels of wrongdoing, that is, of oppression.

The Children of Israel

were, rightfully, "chosen" by virtue of having been crushed, oppressed and left weak.

But they came to see this chosenness as a privilege granted to them by God, unchanging, and never lost no matter what sins they committed, and they displayed the greatest examples of oppression history has recorded.

We said that the left has also walked down the same path without ever deviating.

In regarding eternal rightfulness and absolute truth as property within its own domain, it fell no short of the Children of Israel. The more it did so, the more it both lost its truth and became alienated from the sorrows of the truly wronged and oppressed people, and was left leagues away from the position it had assumed by its own essential definition.

Let us know that when the Qur'an speaks of the Jews, the Christians, or the mistakes of peoples who did wrong, it never does so merely to create a feeling of enmity against them, or to gossip about them, or to construct them as an absolute other. On the contrary, all the examples given about them are mentioned as mistakes that Muslims, too, may possibly make, as a warning not to fall into the same situation. If Muslims are not careful, they too may fall into the very state they fell into, and may stray onto the path that led them away from the straight path.

Therefore, for Muslims there is no such thing, and there can be no such thing, as being eternally chosen. Being on the right path is not an acquired right obtained forever simply by belonging to a community, and cannot be.

Faith must be renewed every day, one must know that one is undergoing a test every day, and one must be wholeheartedly open to every possibility of a test.

Leave aside left or right labels; even having put Islam on top of one's identity is not enough for a person's eternal salvation. Every day, with great vigilance, we must watch every event that comes before us and ask: are we understanding that Islam correctly, are we living it, do we deserve the honor of being upon Islam?

Once one has merely been counted in the Muslim population, one cannot be a true believer unless one lives with the vigilance of being tested every day and approaches earning faith every day with sincerity. The Companions, even though they had no doubt whatsoever about Islam, spent their lives with doubt about their own sincerity.

So much so that the Commander of the Believers, one of the best of people,

Hz. Omar

closely monitored the deeds of his own heart and could not be sure of himself. Out of fear of hypocrisy he was in a constant tense vigilance against himself. For this reason he kept wearing out the threshold of Abu Huzayfa, who had received the list of the hypocrites from the Prophet as a secret.

Of course this vigilance had little to do with critical thinking as a purely mental effort. It was a wisdom that deepened by knowing one's place before God. An exemplary journey between fear and hope...

In the historical event of Karbala, it is easy to side with Hz. Hussein.

It is even easy today to count oneself on Hussein's path in one's own fight without ever questioning one's own position, and to deem one's opponents fit for the label of Yazid. This much is even a cheap exploitation of Hussein.

What is difficult, and good and necessary, is to understand Hussein and to know where he would really be today, and to be able to take one's side where he would be.

Listening to Hussein's stance means unconditionally following his advice on where we should stand today.

Otherwise, without making the slightest effort to change oneself,

to legitimize the place where one stands with Hussein

is nothing but exploitation of Hussein. No value or critical consciousness that left or right stances can produce can possibly overcome this problem.

Our Prophet, returning from a battle one day, said

"We have returned from the lesser jihad; now it is the turn of the greater jihad."

To his Companions, who asked in astonishment, "Could there be a jihad greater than what we have just lived through, O Messenger of God?", he replied: "The greater jihad is your jihad against your own self."

Without doubt this Jihad is far harder, far more difficult than jihad against the ordinary enemy, the open unbelievers. It requires great attention and endless vigilance.

It is a hard struggle you will wage against yourself, against your own pride, your envy, your complexes of grandeur or smallness, the thousand and one different feelings that swell up against your brothers.

There is no enemy greater than you yourself. There is no enemy who will wound you more than yourself. That is why we are commanded to make this prayer often:

"We seek refuge in God from the evils of ourselves, from the evils of our own souls and the wrongs of our own deeds."

To see one's own self as one's greatest rival and greatest enemy, to seek refuge in God from oneself, to fear that harm might come to people from one's own evil... Could there be a revolutionism greater, nobler, deeper than this?

Only good comes to people from this revolutionism.

Does anyone know of a nobler way of existing than being in an epic jihad against one's own self so that one's anger at a people does not turn into hatred or injustice toward that people?

Do you suppose it is so easy for a person to know whether the act he performs is purely for the sake of God's pleasure?

Do you think it is a simple matter to take care not to fall into showing off or reproaching others, on account of the good one has done to them?

What kind of tenderness, what kind of attentiveness that requires, only the discerning know.