If you are among those who say "where is our youth"

To do a good deed and throw it into the sea, to deem it enough that the Creator knows even if the sea does not, not to let one hand feel what the other gives: this belongs to the etiquette of goodness done purely (mukhlis) for the sake of goodness in the true sense. That is why those who do good refraining from advertising it is the very vessel of that goodness. When ostentation (riya) enters the matter, deeds come to nothing; and when this ostentation turns into reproach directed at those to whom the good was done, it becomes something that would have been better never done. It becomes inevitable that the good you do turns into torment.

The paradox produced by such reservations about speaking of good deeds is that nothing is left to talk about but evils. When we talk about evil, we too become soiled, we too are affected by the air of that evil, we too turn bad.

Yet perhaps, if not the good deeds we have done ourselves, then by speaking of the good deeds we have witnessed, we can announce the existence of another kind of world, another kind of conduct, and turn these behaviors into a recommendation in practice.

There is an analysis, for example. The children of the Islamists of the eighties and nineties are today dissatisfied with their fathers, who have seen power, drifted away from the ideals of youth and merged with the state. They show their reaction by distancing themselves from whatever their parents represented.

During the Gezi events we came across many examples confirming this analysis. Young people whose parents were famous Islamists made their appearance in the Gezi events.

Dwelling at length on this difference between generations makes one think that it has become a general rule, of course, and as it is talked about there is also a risk of it turning into a reality. Yet even if there are such examples, they are not the rule. Had it been the rule, on July 15 those same young people would not have taken their place in the front lines of that magnificent struggle, as though vying with their fathers.

Since the occasion is right, I need to relate a few incidents I witnessed during the last Eid al-Adha. As usual, we pay our holiday visits as a family. I visited Ayaz Akkoyun, a friend from childhood, formerly a good tradesman of our city and now a good businessman minding his own affairs. After some conversation, I ask about his eldest son Huzeyfe, who studied sociology and is now doing a master's degree. "He is in Niger," he says. "Good heavens, what is he doing in Niger?" I ask. "He went to distribute sacrificial meat as part of the Diyanet's volunteer team," he says.

I won't lie, this was news that moved me greatly. A young brother in the springtime of his life who, with the pleasure of vacationing however and wherever he wanted at hand during the holiday, chose these arduous roads.

Is this an exception? No. A little later I receive a phone call: our Dr. Talha Karadoğan from Erzincan is calling to exchange holiday greetings.

I have been friends with his father Birol since the early nineties; at that time he was a small child. He grew up, studied, became a medical doctor, is practicing his specialty, and now, independently of his father, we have a separate friendship. "Where are you?" I ask; "I am in Chad, at the Gaoui Refugee Camp," he says. "Good heavens, what are you doing there?" I say. He explains: Muslims who fled the civil war that broke out in the Central African Republic and took refuge in neighboring Chad, one of the poorest countries in the world, live under very difficult conditions in the Gaou Refugee Camp. "With the support of TİKA, we came as a volunteer of the İyilik Sağlık Association to provide primary health care in the camp area and, with the aim of easing, even slightly, the troubles of our brothers and sisters. Besides the health service, a classroom will also be built at the orphanage located in the same region, where the orphans can use and study."

"Subhanallah," was my first reaction. As I wondered whether to congratulate our Talha, or TİKA, or the İyilik Sağlık Association, I of course also remembered that this is an ordinary scene of the new Turkey that we have in fact been living for a long time, and whose greatness has disappeared from our eyes because we have grown used to it. Still, I could not help asking Talha: "You are a doctor working for the state; did you go on assignment from your institution?" "No, I am using my annual leave here," he says, and what do you know! How could one not be ashamed, moved, thrilled, delighted? What a beautiful person you are, Talha!

I know there are many like you, and that your existence is a cure, like medicine, for us amid this air of pessimism, gloom and evil that daily politics spreads. I know that together with Talha and Huzeyfe, dozens of young people served as volunteers in the same places, and hundreds or thousands of others in other places, with similar stories of their own, and are still doing so.

Here are fine examples for those who say "where is our youth?" These young people are of course an inheritance from the past, but they are beautiful, open and courageous hearts who will build the future.

Under the roofs of TÜRGEV, TÜGVA, Ensar, İlim Yayma, IHH and many institutions whose names I cannot list, there are young people working with gritted teeth, without any career anxiety, only for the sake of goodness, on the path of humanitarian aid. Young people whose hearts beat for others, for the oppressed, for the ummah...

A new generation of Asım is coming, let no one worry. Perhaps even more beautiful, more visionary, more sincere than in our time.

Let us now drop the literature of "when we were young" or "in our time." Perhaps this is a fruit of the pioneers of goodness who in their time hid even from the sea, God knows, but to spread the influence of that good further, it must also be talked about; this I know.

A MUALLIME-I EVVEL: ŞULE YÜKSEL ŞENLER

Speaking of "the fruit of the pioneers of goodness," Mrs. Şule Yüksel Şenler, one of the undisputed Islamic heroines of our age, who through her exceptional struggle in the hardest of times contributed greatly to the raising of these beautiful generations that gladden our eyes today, has met her Lord.

If, after Mehmet Akif, Necip Fazıl can be described as the muallime-i evvel (first teacher) of the Islamic awakening of the Republican era, the same description can certainly be applied to Şule Yüksel for Muslim women. She was the muallime-i evvel of the Muslim women of the Republican era.

She displayed in the most beautiful way the struggle of Muslim women to become individuals, to claim their will and freedoms, and to be servants of God alone. She ended her life with this beauty and met her Lord. May God have mercy on her, may her abode be paradise.