Before the tanks reach the Kaaba…

We said that the Qatar operation was the first step of a larger move that would deeply affect the entire Islamic world, and that its greatest target was Saudi Arabia... Our editor-in-chief İbrahim Karagül wrote much more plainly. He named it the implementation of an "Islamic civil war project" that has in fact been under way in the region for two years and is advancing step by step. I recommend that everyone read the warnings in Karagül's article carefully.

"For the last few years, preparations have always been made for this big reckoning... We see a catastrophe arriving step by step... I think that if an urgent intervention cannot be made, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries will also become Syria-like, all that is sacred will be trampled underfoot, and Turkey too will suffer heavy wounds from this great catastrophe. There is much we can do before the tanks reach the Kaaba. If only we grasp the gravity of the matter..." says Karagül.

The civil wars continuing in Syria, Iraq and Yemen are increasingly bringing the opposition between Saudi Arabia and Iran to the threshold of a sectarian war, yet no prudent movement of common reason and responsibility able to grasp the gravity of the matter is emerging against it. In contrast, the policy put forward, or not put forward, in Egypt and Libya has brought the Muslim world's immunity to such an attack close to being almost entirely exhausted.

That the so-called important actors of the Islamic world, whose reflexes against the Zionist occupation and its attacks that negate the Islamic world with each passing day have become thoroughly dulled, were able to unite so quickly against Qatar creates great disappointments about the existence or nature of the Islamic world. This disappointment further emboldens the enemies of Islam to believe that every kind of plan against Islam can be implemented with ease.

A Saudi Arabia that labels Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist and sets out to punish Qatar for supporting them perhaps does not realize it, but it is pressing, with its own hand, the button of this great operation targeting itself. Saudi Arabia perhaps cannot see the danger at the end of the road, but it is visible from Turkey. Because Turkey, by its historical and existential position, is the outermost point of the defense of Mecca and Medina.

Threats directed at Mecca and Medina are visible from Turkey far better, and when it sees them it is impossible for Turkey to remain indifferent. For that reason, defending Qatar also means defending the entire Islamic world, and especially defending Saudi Arabia. Defending Qatar does not mean being against Saudi Arabia or simply taking a side in an intra-Gulf dispute, because clearly there is a trap in this affair whose end will do greater harm to everyone, Saudi Arabia first of all. Our Saudi and other brothers need to understand Turkey's initiatives and concerns in this way, to join the defense of the Islamic world, and not to shy away from answering an invitation that will revive them.

In the US there is an increasingly dominant trend of establishing a link between terrorism and every variety of Islam, from the moderate to the immoderate, a trend that says the real source of terror is Islam itself, even the Holy Qur'an itself... Those who have been dragging the Islamic world step by step into instability, violence and war through their occupations and the activities of the terrorist organizations they support shamelessly thus conceal their own crimes from view. Without shame they may even say that Islam is the excuse for their own violence.

Let us say it plainly: this is the US's and the West's open war against Islam. In the face of this war, it is not possible for any Islamic country to secure itself by shifting the real responsibility onto another country. What needs to be done, as God also commands, is to close ranks in unity and to look for ways of repelling together the threats directed at them.

Saudi Arabia, by virtue of being the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques (Hadimu'l Haremeyn), is the heart of the Islamic world. It needs to act far more responsibly in such strife-ridden environments and to be more embracing of all Muslims, disregarding the sectarian, tendency or ethnic differences among them.

Publishing a terror list that includes the 91-year-old Yusuf al-Qaradawi, President of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, is, let me say plainly, the most important sign of the trap set against Saudi Arabia. By placing on a terror list al-Qaradawi, who had been deemed worthy of the King Faisal Prize, Saudi Arabia's most prestigious award, only two months ago, one must begin by asking who set this trap for Saudi Arabia. Whoever declares war on al-Qaradawi, who is the head and symbolic name of the Islamic scholars, is left with no legitimacy whatsoever in the Islamic world. We say it this plainly and clearly.

WHAT KIND OF PANIC IS THE TERROR LIST THE PRODUCT OF?

In fact, when one looks closely at the terrorist list published jointly by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt, it is better seen whose panic is at work and of what kind. The list in fact consists of the legitimate opponents of each of the three countries other than Saudi Arabia. There is an approach here of calling one's own opponent a terrorist. With Qatar already practically declared responsible for terrorism, everyone appears to have tried to deal with their own opponents too by sending them off to Doha. The very rush to declare the side one is in dispute with illegitimate by fait accompli is in itself a perfect panic of guilt.

Otherwise, as the Qatari Foreign Minister also stated, some of those on the list have nothing whatsoever to do with Qatar, and some perhaps have never even set foot in Qatar in their lives. Names who hold the position of political party leaders, who found a way to escape the extrajudicial executions of Egypt's coup-maker Sisi and being thrown without question into his torture-filled dungeons, who have not been involved in any violent incident, are on this list.

Likewise, in Libya, there are representatives of the legitimate national coalition government recognized by the UN, against the Tobruk administration, which itself is not recognized by the international community and which drags Libya into civil war with the military support of the coup-maker Sisi and the financial support of the UAE. Those who do not pledge allegiance to Haftar, who is regarded as the real cause of terror and instability there and is not recognized by the UN, have been listed as terrorists.

Likewise, the UAE, where no democratic opposition is allowed, has put on this list its evident opponents, who have not been involved in any act of violence and whose discourse is against terror. So we have a situation in which, quite literally, the brazen thief does not leave the householder alone.

How else can it be said that whoever follows this cheap mind, which is trying to settle its own cheap scores on this occasion, will meet with nothing but disappointment?