Those who awaken sedition…

Xenophobia is a serious human problem. It is a form of racism and a typical tradition of jahiliyya. Its emergence is entirely tied to ignorant judgments, ignorant feelings and attitudes that distance a person from his humanity. It has no empathy at all toward other people, especially weak people, needy people, as to why they are here. It forgets that the same thing may one day happen to itself. It does not remember that its own ancestors were surely at some time refugees or muhajirs. It thinks the muhajir eats from its own provision, and is seized by the delusion that he has disturbed its comfort.

Xenophobia feeds on ignorance, because the human being always sees himself somewhere as the absolute native, the absolute owner of a place, which he is not. "The world is an inn; the one who comes, departs." No one has existed from time immemorial in the place where he is, nor will he drive his stake into the place where he is forever.

So, how much can these arguments, which we are easily convinced by when our own people are exposed to xenophobia in Germany and in many countries of Europe, convince us against the attitudes we display toward foreigners in our own country?

This is exactly where our human level is put to the test: how can we do to others what we do not want done to us?

If truth be told, xenophobia is a sleeping fitna in everyone who encounters a foreigner. That is, a potential evil. Whether it is awakened or not awakened can differ in the maturity societies show against its being awakened. Unfortunately, those who scratch at this fitna the most are the politicians who want to turn it into political gain.

For 8 years Turkey has not only opened its doors without hesitation to its Syrian brothers who had to flee death, but has also earned the appreciation and admiration of the whole world through the hospitality shown by its people, its state and its civil society organizations. This has been one of the foremost matters that have made Turkey respected in the world. Turkey earned this respect because it succeeded in "not awakening the fitna" that may exist within every society. However you look at it, the Turkish nation has so far waged a successful struggle against the awakening of this fitna.

Just as ignorant as xenophobia is, to know that the guest comes together with his provision is the deepest level of knowledge. The Turkish people possess this level of knowledge in abundance. But when politicians make these provocations, unfortunately the fitna awakens faster. They play on the jahiliyya in people. Ignorance after knowledge, heedlessness after awareness, what a bitter end.

During the local elections in Istanbul, the political parties registered to social democracy played on this ignorance the most, they attempted to scratch and awaken the fitna. Alas, they succeeded in awakening this fitna quite a lot. Yet this was an area that should have remained entirely outside politics.

We were seeing with great horror that one of the election promises of the CHP candidate who won the Bolu mayoralty was to expel the Syrians from Bolu. Unfortunately, instead of saying stop to this fascism, instead of reacting to the one who openly awakened this fitna of racism and xenophobia, perhaps for this reason, perhaps for other reasons, the people of Bolu elected him mayor. We had said it before. Unfortunately, what we call democracy is a fascism-compatible system. You can make headway also by appealing to people's basest feelings.

Probably not all the people of Bolu voted for the mayor who aimed to collect votes by making all the Syrians enemies of a society only because of this. But in the name of humanity, it would have been expected that the people of Bolu would give the necessary lesson to the one who voiced these racist and merciless words. Because this discourse is a disastrous discourse. A discourse that burns a person's both this world and the hereafter. It has nothing to do with any party; it is a discourse contrary to Islam, to which we belong, and to all sacred values.

Moreover, the same mayor, on taking office, kissed the Holy Qur'an, in which those values of ours are commanded, and put it to his forehead. Yet what is written in that Book already condemns that Mayor, solely because of what he said about the Syrians. "When it is said to them, 'Spend (for the poor) from the provision Allah has given you,' they say, 'Shall we feed the one whom Allah, if He willed, would feed (and therefore Allah has not fed him)? You are in nothing but a great error'" (Yasin, 47).

One who has some share in the knowledge of the Qur'an does not look askance at spending made for the poor, for humanity. If he does see and show it so, what happens, those who know, know.

Yet none of those Syrians has come to Turkey knowingly, to have a good time. All of them are people with at least one or many relatives killed, who were forcibly driven from their homelands by the visitation of the regime's rabble devoid of the slightest share of humanity, or of the PKK-PYD, or of DAEŞ, or of other terrorist organizations. It does not befit our nation to do the most despicable thing to people who knocked on our door to save their lives. Indeed our nation has not done what does not befit it. But for politicians who come to the fore claiming to represent the nation to awaken this fitna in this way is a crime against humanity beyond even ignorance.

That this crime against humanity has come from the candidate of a party claiming to be social democrat is a shame that makes one's hair stand on end. We know that expecting a reaction from his party on this matter is futile, because its own Chairman is repeating this incitement to a crime against humanity against people who had to take refuge in our country in all his election campaigns.

In response to this attitude that awakens the fitna, we also congratulate the virtuous politics that is still trying to put it to sleep. The Mayor of Ağrı, Savcı Sayan, by saying to the Mayor of Bolu, "If the Syrian brothers of ours are a burden to you, send them to us, they have a place above our heads," soothed hearts and prevented the human level from falling any further.