What kind of level test is a mass execution in Ramadan?

I received the following message from one of the regular followers of my articles published in Arabic in the Gulf:

"We are following the developments under the name of rapprochement between Turkey and Egypt with great pleasure and excitement. We hope these developments will be beneficial for the Islamic world. We thought that at the very least they would contribute to the development of common values toward reducing human rights violations in the Islamic world. But on this day of Ramadan, the execution in Egypt of 17 people held responsible for the events that took place during the coup has grieved us greatly. Moreover, among them are Qur'an memorizers aged over 70, even over 80. In such a period, when rapprochement with Turkey is on the agenda, and on a day of Ramadan at that, the mass execution of so many people does not happen even in the least developed countries of the world. Knowing Turkey's sensitivity on this subject, is Egypt doing this in order to test Turkey in this rapprochement?

The executions are both unjust already because of the extraordinary conditions of the coup, and contrary even to Egypt's own customs of execution. Because there are no executions in Ramadan, and those over 70 are not executed. These customs have been disregarded. It is as if the regime has thereby tested one more level in rights violations.

In return, has Turkey, which is now left as the only hope of all Muslims against the tons of human rights violations in the Islamic world, come to the point of approving unjust executions like this massacre in Egypt for the sake of this rapprochement? Is there something forcing Turkey to remain silent against these injustices?"

In fact many such messages, questions, even comments came. It is worth repeating here what I told them as well.

What we always say is that the Islamic world, unfortunately, is today the world that suffers the most from human rights violations. Today it is not Jews, Christians or non-Muslims who oppress Muslims in their own countries, who commit injustice against them. The real great oppression is what is done by rulers who appear to be Muslim against their own peoples.

Today in the Muslim world Muslim blood is cheaper than water. The life of a Muslim has no value at all. Muslims' property can be confiscated very easily on entirely political considerations. A Muslim's freedom of expression, travel, religion and conscience can be restricted very easily and in the most arbitrary ways. Human dignity has no value at all. The dungeons of Muslim countries are full of Islamic scholars and thinkers. The most beneficial people of society are arbitrarily kept imprisoned in the dungeons of their own countries to be subjected to the worst treatment. Of the principles and spirit of Islam, which put forward the most progressive, most magnificent model in history on the rights of servants (kul hakkı) and human rights, there is no trace in the Islamic world. Without doubt this is the most important problem of all of us.

Turkey has always made an effort to create, together with all Islamic countries, an awareness and cooperation in diagnosing and treating this problem. Unfortunately, Islamic countries see its efforts on this subject, which we need sorely, as interference in their internal affairs. The real problem begins here.

Yet Turkey does not regard any sincere claim concerning human rights violations taking place in its own country as interference. It has even voluntarily opened itself to inspection in order to investigate the claims of human rights organizations inside Turkey. Of course being aware of some malicious uses of human rights discourse, and of course putting forward its own claims against them. But sensitivities regarding human rights must be a universal subject. No one can say "in my country I kill whom I wish, imprison whom I wish, do to whomever I wish whatever I wish."

Unfortunately, at this point the sensitivities of Western countries that claim to be assertive can be very selective and insincere. With this selectivity, some countries can use human rights discourse as a means of pressure and blackmail on some countries. But even these abuses do not show that this claim is wrong.

As for the relation of the executions in Egypt to Turkey-Egypt relations. First of all it must be repeated that the rapprochement that has recently taken place between the two countries is not a rapprochement that requires agreement on everything. It is a matter whose scope is for now limited. In the future one may perhaps hope that it will be expanded to an area that also includes sensitivities on human rights. But for now the scope is limited.

Within this scope there is never any giving up by Turkey of its own principles and its sensitivities and stance regarding human rights. The policies it applies in accordance with the principles to which it is bound on this subject are not against the Egyptian state anyway. In the long run, Turkey will have a desire, a search and an effort toward developing a human rights standard across the entire Islamic world. This is essential for a stronger Islamic world, a stronger Egypt and a stronger Turkey.

The image of a country in which mass death sentences can be handed down and carried out through half-baked and show trials, without granting the defendants any right of defense, is not the image of a strong country. Least of all is it the image of an "Islamic country." These practices disturb a country's internal peace and tranquility, exhaust its strength, and consume its body. We of course always want what is best for Egypt. We want its state to make peace with its nation, and thus for it to become a stronger, more tranquil, more developed country.

But the execution on a day of Ramadan of 17 people, among them a Qur'an memorizer over eighty years of age, has been very saddening. One who kills a human being is as if he had killed all of humanity. Egypt has need today of serious social peace. It is the government, the state, that must take steps to provide this.

Mass execution is, in this age, the most primitive image for a government. I personally do not find this befitting of a country like Egypt, which displayed to the whole world with extraordinary splendor the transfer ceremony of 22 pharaoh tombs, and I do not at all regard it as beneficial for Egypt. May God make its end good.