Al-Aqsa Mosque is calling out to us

"Time is running short and something urgent must be done." The danger awaiting the entire Islamic world, announced in yesterday's article by our editor-in-chief İbrahim Karagül, is approaching step by step.

Approaching is hardly the word; the danger has arrived. The insolences Israel has dared in recent days in order to probe whether there is any sign of vitality in the Muslim world also signal this danger. The Islamic world's own disunity, and its failure to move toward any effective alliance or cooperation on any beneficial matter, leave the Muslim lands and the sacred things of Islam extremely unprotected and open to attacks and occupation.

Earlier we had said that the alliance and move formed by the Gulf countries plus Egypt against Qatar was the harbinger of greater developments than supposed, and that if measures were not taken this danger would first knock on the door of this very alliance. Today we have problems large enough in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Egypt and Libya... As long as we do not attend to these problems sufficiently, the developments in each country sooner or later come and strike the whole Islamic world. While Islamic countries in these places try to gain positions against one another and to destroy the positions of others, they are not even aware that what they are destroying wholesale is their own security, their own existence.

While we should look with suspicion on every initiative, discourse and activity that incites Islamic countries against one another, unfortunately Islamic countries are very prone to every kind of incitement. They need to see that none of the parties will come out a winner from the rivalry, conflict and tension among Muslim countries.

The Westerners and Israel are not looking for a world, or anything of the sort, in which everyone will live happily, based on human dignity and rights. All they think about is their own interests and domination. Anyone who wishes can download and watch over the internet how US President Trump humiliated all the Gulf countries and mocked their "right to sovereignty." Watch him as he says that the Gulf countries are eyeing Iraq's oil, and for free at that, and that they already have a right to it. In that discourse and that attitude he does not even see any need to hide how far, by leagues, he is from human and so-called "contemporary" values.

This outlook is a great threat not only to the Islamic world but to the whole world, and in fact the basic mentality and feeling that has directed Middle East policies from the very beginning is nothing other than this. This outlook is a great threat first of all to those who cooperate with it. Especially, within this cooperation, to open a front against another Islamic country with the help or encouragement of this ally...

Unfortunately, the summary of what is happening in our geography is nothing more than this.

From Syria to Iraq, from Yemen to Libya, from Myanmar to Egypt, every corner of the Islamic world makes it necessary for all Muslims to be in a common understanding and cooperation. There is no possibility of getting over our problems in any other way.

Despite the existence of an Islamic world of one and a half billion, Israel, which holds Jerusalem, the most sacred city of Muslims, under occupation and violates the sacred things of Muslims every day, bases its greatest power, of course, not on its own military or human strength, but on these indifferences, disinterests of Muslims and their rivalries with one another...

Among Islamic countries there are some who are at the forefront of a dizzying arms race. These countries, whose wealth, like their populations, multiplies Israel's wealth I don't know how many times over, unfortunately do not raise their voice against these violations by Israel. The magnificent luxurious lives they display with their wealth reveal not their power but only their shame. While Jerusalem is under occupation and is subjected every day to the insolent violations of the Zionists, the magnificent, ostentatious sultanates and luxurious lives on which they are founded only enlarge their shame and their sins.

Jerusalem is the honor of the whole ummah, and those responsible for this honor are, before anyone else, the rulers of the Muslim peoples. Because Muslim peoples are living the agony of this trampled honor and expect their rulers to feel the same agony.

Truly, history really is nothing but repetition. This geography always witnesses the same events, the same betrayals and the same struggles. Those who wish can look at the history of the rivalry among the Muslim principalities when Jerusalem was under occupation, in the era of Imaduddin and his son Mahmud Nureddin Zengi and, after them, Saladin, when this problem was in fact a matter of honor for all Muslim peoples. The subject of the rivalry sometimes emerges even as a question of who would have the honor of liberating Jerusalem and thereby add power to their power. But in the final analysis, the emirs did not shrink even from forming alliances with the Crusaders against those who came to the fore, and from betraying in order to prevent those who came to the fore in this matter from the mission of liberating Jerusalem, so as not to let the prestige and power that liberating Jerusalem would bring be snatched away by their rivals.

Of course, in this process some had no concern at all about Jerusalem. Saladin's challenge to all the principalities at that time was this: "While your Jerusalem, your honor, is under Crusader occupation, the cause of which honor of yours, of which power of yours, do you pursue?" and the conquest was granted to him.

The event that led to the founding of the Organization of the Islamic Conference was the arson attack on the Al-Aqsa Mosque in 1969. That arson proved that, for better or worse, there was still some vitality in the Islamic world in those days.

Today it is also in our hands to make Israel's aggression and threats an occasion for the Islamic world to pull itself together. All it takes is for Islamic countries to set aside their national or individual calculations and see the common fate of the Muslim world as a whole.

To tell the truth, Almighty God, the Owner of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, does not need even our protection of it. But the situation it is in is a warning, an invitation, for the Islamic world. It is we who need to take a stance for the Al-Aqsa Mosque. When the heart beats for the Al-Aqsa Mosque, it becomes a human heart.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque, in its present state, is calling out to us. It invites us to rise above the ambitions that take us out of our humanity and make us enemies of one another. Blessed is whoever responds.