Life is in essence a trial, and a trial is in essence difficult

Life is at its core a test, and a test is at its core difficult. Who will do good deeds and who will do bad ones is revealed through these tests. And a test is, by its nature, a difficult process. It arrives with surprise questions that strain a person, with surprise trials, at a moment you never expected, from a place you never expected.

We are not tested on the same things every day. The questions do not always come from the places we have memorized so well. Nor does a test always come in the mode we expect. Sometimes, when it comes from a place we thought we had memorized very well, because of our overconfidence and because some simple new input throws our mind off, we get flustered and give different reactions, different attitudes, different answers.

We fail at another time a test we passed before. May God grant that we be given a new chance, that we find the opportunity to question ourselves, see our mistake and turn back from it. For that, of course, we must accept our mistake as a mistake.

Seeing a wrong as wrong and being able to avoid it is a matter of insight, and that in turn is a matter of destiny. But it is something granted to those who approach with sincerity.

In the same way, seeing the right as right and being able to follow it. Falsehood can very often come in the guise of truth.

The seduction of an external evil that presents falsehood as truth can be at work. Propaganda, ideologies, the confusing whisperings of political conflicts can make falsehood look like truth and truth like falsehood. It is important to be alert against it, to be intelligent and discerning. This is possible by keeping our eyes open and never forgetting that the devil's tricks are many.

But sometimes what shows us truth as wrong and wrong as truth can be our own self. Our own arrogance, our envy, our excessive sense of our own importance, the narcissism we cannot suppress, our attachment to the world, our other diseases of the heart, our complexes…

Let no one look to his right and left and say, "There is no trace of these in me." We all have them. God has placed these feelings in all of us as a potential. That is why our greatest test is always with our own self.

Our comparing ourselves with others and, in every comparison, deeming ourselves more deserving of everything. Yet in spite of this, our going out of our minds over why what was given to others was not given to us. Our always deeming ourselves more deserving than everyone else of every kind of office and post, and yet our being consumed with rage because it was given to those who are not qualified…

It was this comparison that led astray the self even of Iblis, whom God created in the world of the jinn and gave more knowledge than all human beings.

Isn't that why the prayer we are expected to make most often is "to seek refuge in God from the evils of my own self and from the wrongs of my deeds"?

Life is at its core a test. Every day we are tested anew in a different way. For some, since they passed the previous ones, there can be tests whose bar of difficulty has been raised still higher; for others, since they did not pass the previous ones, there can be simplified exams so that a new chance may be given to them.

The process concerning the renewal of the Istanbul elections has evidently set before us a difficult test as well. The difficulty of the test is clear from the wavering of a great many people. Yet in the face of even the hardest tests there are always plenty of clues for finding the right stance. However difficult the test, for those who preserve their sincerity there are always the data with which to pass this test successfully.

We can never attempt to commit oppression or injustice against others, but we cannot accept an injustice done to us either. We are not obliged to choose one of the two. We can say both this and that. This is one datum.

Such propaganda is being carried out that people are almost going to be made to apologize for seeking their right. Yet what is at issue in the Istanbul elections is not the non-acceptance of a result, but the result's being tainted. What is at issue is not a rumor of irregularity produced merely out of indigestion, but an irregularity shown by an organized situation set out with clear, plain evidence.

This being so, the whispering power of propaganda strikes down even those who have come successfully through many tests until now. In some it infects the constitution through the confusion the situation produces; in others it strikes through their personal quarrels, discomforts or calculations within the Party. These discomforts and calculations have considerably weakened the body's immunity, and on the occasion of this event the well-known virus shows its full effect.

In this atmosphere where a thousand and one whisperings are ready to throw the mind off, looking at whose arrows are aimed at whom is yet another datum that gives sufficient guidance for coming through this test too.

For example, the PKK, the FETÖ, the Gezi people, the Crusader, the well-known EU and US circles with their support for all of these, all of them, the sworn allies of a hypocritical hostility to Turks and to Islam, why are they so interested in the Istanbul elections?

With what motivation does the Egyptian media of Sisi take up a concern for democracy and justice in the Istanbul elections?

Who is sleeping with whom and getting up with whom?

Is it really that hard to see these things?