In memory of Orhan Kenasarı: a testimony article

I had seen for the first time, and in such a striking way, in his stance that faith meant something more than an inheritance received from one's ancestors, from society, from one's father, to be squandered carelessly.

Faith had to show an effect on a person; it had to be reflected in his behavior, his way of life, his ideals, his cause, his struggles, his stance. It had to change the person and move him to do things outside the routine of life. The believer should not be like a leaf carried away by the winds of events in the flux of time. There was a meaning to a person's coming into life. That meaning was the cultivation of the world. And the cultivation of the world meant standing against the tyrants who tried to plunge it into corruption, who forgot the purpose of their coming to the earth and played god over other people, who tried to make people their own servants and slaves, and against what they did. Those tyrants were everywhere in our lives, at every stage...

The September 12 coup had just oc

curred. Even Kenan Evren's shallow and crude dictatorship and his attitude of belittling people was, for him, only the simplest form of this tyranny. Yet there were other confusions, tyrannies, heedlessness and misguidance, large and small, that had seeped into our lives. One had to be alert against these and raise one's life to the honorable, dignified level of existence that the Creator had granted us.

Orhan Hoca was a teacher. He had a tremendous power of persuasion, an eloquence that penetrated students' hearts and minds at once. He made clever jokes, at times did impressions, drew delightful character sketches of the people he wanted to describe, did not let even a second pass idly, explained and explained. He was a Socrates-like man; he believed that everyone, of every age, every sex, every walk of life, could understand and embrace the truth, and acted accordingly. The greatest truth was Tawhid.

With a tremendous performance of reason and logic, it was possible to bring out that truth which everyone carries within. This had to be done, and he was doing it. He called it tabligh (conveying the message). Not only to students but to civil servants, workers, villagers, tradesmen, to everyone he knew and met, he had, as it were, an offer.

Truth was a concern for him, of course, and I came to love his concern. His striving with passion to find a remedy for that concern, his exerting himself with burning effort for it, his struggling with great humility had awakened in me great respect and affection.

His concern was great and just as beautiful. That concern was the remedy for all of us.

Why do we turn such a deaf ear to a message that Allah has sent specially to each one of us? This Book has been sent to us specially; why does it not excite us at all? Why do we not wonder, open it up and look inside?

When you put the Qur'an before people by asking the questions this way, there was no possibility of anyone remaining indifferent.

And had our hodja effendis not told us that we could not understand the Qur'an? Were there not very secret meanings in it beyond the apparent, and how would we, poor servants, know these? When Orhan Hoca voiced the possibility that those hodja effendis might be making up this story for us in order to render their own authority unshakable and beyond objection, I think he was driven out of quite a few villages.

Allah has given us both reason and will. To tie our minds to others, to rent them out, is itself servitude to others. No matter how much they are hodja effendis, no matter how much they are masters, no matter how much they are sheikh effendis. This could be no different from Christians and Jews taking their rabbis and priests as lords besides Allah. Servitude to a servant degrades a person, whereas servitude to Allah alone liberates a person and makes him honorable and dignified. We had to aspire to this, for only then would we make the best use of our human potential.

What Allah wants from us is not "to be victorious no matter what," but only to act as He wants. That is why an understanding that deems every means permissible in order to be victorious is contrary to us. We had to stand as we were commanded, and the rest was up to the Generous Allah. If He wills, He makes us victorious, grants us fulfillment in this world; if He wills, He leaves the whole reward to the Hereafter. There was nothing to do but submit to Him. The path to the goal must also be in keeping with the goal. Resorting to ways contrary to the goal in order to reach it was Satan's greatest seduction. That is why his relations with people like the "Fetullahists" were not at all good. Recounting his fundamental conflicts with them during his years at the İzmir Higher Islamic Institute, he was saying even back then that their way was not the way of Muslims.

In the days of September 12, he found the oath that the coup made compulsory for all civil servants very humiliating and could not stomach it. So much so that he had made up his mind to resign in order to be rid of this humiliating situation. I objected, saying, seeing the services he was rendering as a teacher in Siirt, that this decision was not quite right. In fact, my own concern was that this decision would separate him from me. When my Orhan Hoca, with whom I had grown in a short time to the distance of a "bosom friend," left, to whom would I read the small articles I wrote, and who would appraise my poems at this level?

Under the conditions of that day, Orhan Hoca resigned, risking unemployment. His later life was spent in unending material hardships, but he never spoiled his manly stance and his devoted commitment to his faith, and never held back from working as long as he had the strength to serve the values he believed in. Our separation always kept alive in me a feeling of exile, but, to tell the truth, his willingness to bear these hardships for his faith further reinforced both the esteem I had for him and my notion of a principled life.

I was granted the fortune of making my first pilgrimage in 1997, in the days of 28 February, together with him. That journey was a very special, horizon-opening, instructive journey for me and for our other traveling companions.

In the following years, he was one of my first target readers in the preparation of every piece I wrote and every book I put out. I wrote many things thinking that he would read them. I never lost my belief that he would understand me best.

My Orhan Hoca had reached the age of 64, and at this age he had returned to teaching and was teaching at a private school with the excitement he had had 35 years earlier.

He had an ailment of the gallbladder. When he went for a final checkup, they took him into emergency surgery and cleared a mass that had covered several organs, but after several days of intensive care and rest, my Orhan Hoca passed away to the eternal realm in recent days.

I wrote this to stand as a testimony about my bosom friend, my teacher, my elder brother.

He was one of the many nameless heroes of our recent history, of the cause of Islam. He was good, beautiful, honest, righteous, a friend to Muslims and an enemy to tyrants.

We bear witness. May Allah have mercy on him and make his abode paradise.