Who is testing whom? Who is being patient with what?

We said that life is in essence a test, and that a test is by its very nature difficult, that if it were not difficult it would not be called a test. But by whom and to whom these words are said also matters. That is, who is testing whom? Who is saying who is testing whom?

You listen to a sermon; the sermon is in fact addressed to you, and it is speaking of people's evils. You suddenly set yourself apart from people, you draw the conclusion "people are very bad," and that sermon passes by without ever stopping at you. Or, on the contrary, it comes and scratches your Ego, increases your self-regard even more, and you gain a religious reference power regarding other people's evils, and therefore regarding your own perfection, innocence and rightness.

Here is another trick our self often plays on us. That sermon is in fact telling you about yourself; it invites you to look at yourself before looking at another. It creates, to use the fashionable term, "awareness." It gives you the opportunity to know your self. It aims to make you notice how you could be lost if God's help were absent and the light that illuminates your path did not burn. It does not aim to confirm your condition, your way, your attitude, your deeds in every case.

Imam Ghazali, especially when reading the Qur'an, recommends, as one of the ways of taking sound counsel, to take the warning expressions upon oneself rather than the glad-tidings expressions, precisely for this reason. Otherwise, God forbid, even reading the Book that was sent down as a guide can have an effect that increases going astray rather than increasing guidance. Of course this effect is not from the Book itself but from the manner of reading it.

My greatest enemy is none other than myself. Now, when speaking of the test, which test am I speaking of? My own test or the test of others? In a way, what do I have to do with the test of others? Am I the guardian of others? Are you the guardian of others?

The one who creates all of us makes the test, testing each of us one by one. By asking each of us different questions. The test comes in ways different from those we have met before. It may also differ from what others encounter, or may be very similar. But the principles by which we will certainly find our way are given clearly. And of course a part of this test is precisely the stances we display toward one another as human beings around these common principles given to all of us and the guidance of the Book. By these stances we either lend each other a shoulder, help one another, love one another and become companions, or we come face to face against one another.

However, in the dimension of the test, it is very important to know who is testing whom. In particular, who has the right and the authority to test with regard to the self? For the purpose of companionship on the road, it is quite normal for people to test one another for their own special purposes in order to get to know one another. Sociological processes show that all groupings, factions, partisanships are formed through these trust-building trials. All companionships seek this loyalty in one way or another, at one level or another, and the occurrence of tests that provide it becomes inevitable.

Yet when we speak of the test dimension of life, we mean a test on a somewhat more divine plane. True, for a Muslim there is no secular level at which a test on the divine plane can be separated from a test on the political plane. A person identifies with those he loves, is with them and is their companion, even if he is not at the same speed as everyone on that road..

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In addition to the test piece I wrote earlier, what prompted me to write this piece was that an expression I used there was misreported on many websites and that my statements were inflamed in a way I never wanted.

"Inflaming" is an expression precisely suited to the nature of the matter. If there is a fire of fitna, I have, God willing, no inclination to pour a bit of gasoline on it myself and "inflame" it further. The reflection, on many websites, of my statements to the effect that "Not even the words of the honorable Abdullah Gül would turn into a full drama the half-baked drama Ekrem İmamoğlu has entered with the renewal of the elections, so let him not hope in vain" as "Harsh words to Abdullah Gül from Aktay: Let him not hope in vain" is somewhat like this, that is, it has been like a contribution to inflaming a bit further the fitna that already exists.

Yet the one I said should not hope in vain there is not Gül but İmamoğlu. What I wanted to say plainly to Abdullah Gül I had already said, with the right and duty arising from having set one's head to the same cause for years:

"To put the YSK's annulment of the election and the 367 injustice in the same scale is a very great injustice. No one is being wronged in the Istanbul elections. No one is even preventing İmamoğlu from the race for the mayoralty. Only an incomplete election is being tried to be completed. The closeness of the votes to one another already gives such an objection and such a YSK decision a very normal legitimacy. Yet the great injustice to which the honorable Gül, and in his person the whole AK Parti community, was subjected was that this community was deprived of the right to elect and be elected by a genocidal exclusion."

I may invite the honorable Gül to consult his conscience to reflect on the wrongness of this comparison he has made. But the words "Let Gül not hope in vain" there are outside my words, my intent and my style. There is a fitna, and in order not to be among those who contribute to enlarging this fitna further, I regard making this correction as a responsibility of conscience. The rest is of course again up to the honorable Gül or those who share this path.

That our greatest test is with our self does not, of course, give rise to a right for us to push one another with our selves into tests that we could not bear roughly. Unfortunately, a lack of manners, a lack of standards forces and pushes people into such presumptuous tests. Those more royalist than the king, executioners who have never in their lives won a person's heart for the cause, never placed stone upon stone, head upon head, who are always busier with dispersing than gathering, with making people hate than making them love, keep pouring gasoline on the fire of fitna and bring matters to a point where no one has the power to put out the blazing fitna.

Seeing this too, he says may God set it right, and yet, looking at the Asr by which God swore, "we recommend patience."

On the other hand, of course, that some are forcing them does not excuse all the actions of those pushed into that test. The test is truly hard. May God keep us on the straight path.