One of the suns that set for a crescent: the Libyan Sheikh Abdulazim

I wanted to tell a different story today. I was going to describe the very important contribution that some Yemenis and Syrians living in Turkey are making to introducing, marketing and selling Turkey's products, especially in the Arab world. As is well known, there is tremendous demand for Turkish products in the Arab world.

Whatever the attitude of the rulers, much is said about the great sympathy among the peoples, but I was going to give very good, concrete examples of what benefit this brings to Turkey. Another development occurred, and it affected me so much that I put off writing about this for later.

Yesterday I remained for a long time under the effect of a message sent by Mostafa Sagozly, one of our Libyan friends. The message he sent was news of a death. We all came from God, we belong to Him, and we will all return to Him. There is no escape, there is no other end, and there is no other place to go. But the way we reach Him also reveals the differences among us. We die as we live, and it is quite clear that we will be treated according to how we reach Him.

This time the person who reached God was Abdülazim Milat Elfaravi, one of the much-loved figures of the Libyan revolution and one of the mujahideen of Benghazi. In the evening hours the day before yesterday, while having a picnic with his children at the Arnavutköy Karaburun Beach, Abdülazim, without thinking and without even taking off his clothes, plunged in to rescue 2 of our citizens who were in danger of drowning in the sea. He did save our citizens, but since he became exhausted in the process he was caught by the waves, and after struggling for a long time he succumbed to them; by the time the rescue teams who came brought him ashore, it was too late for him.

The people he saved are in good health, but he himself gave up his soul as a result of internal bleeding, despite all the interventions that were made.

Libyan Abdülazim truly died just as he lived. When you follow his life backward from his death, you see this magnificent harmony in an extremely striking way. What he did last was not the first time he put his life on the line for people. Earlier too he was a well-known name for his struggle against former General Haftar, who was trying to take Libya captive. It was passed from mouth to mouth that he had saved the lives of many people in the course of it.

Recently he had donated a piece of his liver to someone who needed a liver transplant. Because of this donation he fell ill himself and underwent treatment for a while. Whatever kind of liver and heart he carried, having gone through this operation and illness, he should have been the last person to undertake such a thing. He was 49 years old and, having undergone this operation, he should have been sparing himself; words to express the heroic dimension of the effort he showed are hard to find.

The story of Abdülazim, a father of 8 children, for some reason was not much reflected in our media, yet the magnitude of the event is beyond what heaven and earth can hold. Like one of the suns that was willing to set for the sake of a crescent.

Why do bad examples find the chance to occupy more space in our media and on our agenda? Why is evil more fluid in our world? In recent days I mentioned an example of someone "who weeps for others." How it had refreshed our hearts, made us say that humanity has not died, and watered our withering hopes for humanity. There is undoubtedly far more in this event. Do not those who put their own lives on the line for someone else they never knew also tell you what potential humanity carries, when the moment comes, to shine like a sun?

Abdülazim, born in Benghazi, a father of 8 children, was an imam-preacher working under the Libyan Ministry of Endowments. But this was not his main profession. After graduating from the maritime faculty he worked for a long time as a ship captain. He was a figure who played a very great role in the 2011 Libyan revolution. Thousands of people from all over Libya would rush to the mosque where he preached to listen to his sermons. Arrested at one point by Haftar and put in the Pirsis prison, Abdülazim, after 7 months of heavy torture, as his health conditions worsened, was released in May 2015 on condition that he stay away from the land where he was born. Thereupon Abdülazim left Libya for Turkey, also to receive treatment; he settled in Turkey, served as imam-preacher at the Libyans' school and supported some Turkish foundations in matters of Quran memorization.

Because of the hardships he was going through in his country, he was one of the millions of Arabs who have lately taken refuge in Turkey. He had not fled the war in his country, had done there what he had to do, and in the end had come to Turkey. He was perhaps one of the dozens or hundreds of people who witnessed the two young men drowning together with him as he was having a picnic on the shore with his eight children and his wife. But he was the only one who did what none of them did, rushing to save lives without even taking the time to take off his clothes. And in his ill condition at that.

For those who knew him he was Sheikh Abdülazim, because he was a man of knowledge, a teacher, one of the virtuous people who acted upon their knowledge.

If we went on this event alone, who are we, what do we have, what belongs to us, who is of us, what is far from us? If we reached for those ominous questions and looked again and again at what struggle we are waging in this world and for what, would we not witness a great deal?

Sheikh Abdülazim himself has evidently witnessed a great deal; may God grant martyrdom to this witnessing of his.