Isn't there something odd about this?

How many has it been now, I haven't counted. Let us line up side by side as many as I can remember.

A few years ago, the audio recording of a talk given by a university teacher in a classroom setting has lately landed in the media or on social media. The content is dreadful, of course; there is no side of it that can be defended even from the standpoint of a Muslim, even of a Christian. It consists of remarks about the Virgin Mary resting wholly on gossip, historically neither verifiable nor falsifiable, at most to be counted as idle chatter. But it is chatter that circulates both in the literature and in certain media. What academically is required is to establish the truth value of such chatter. It is understood from the audio recording that when it was said in that academic setting it already met with the necessary reasonable objection. A subject that should have stayed there, when brought to the "public's" agenda, created the desired outrage.

Then the lyrics of a song made five years ago were likewise discovered by someone, somehow, today and brought onto our agenda. Of course one looks at whether a word is a word, and also at the one who says it. A word has many aspects. It can also be understood otherwise. As for the speaker, if one does not expect those bad meanings, it is also possible to interpret it for the good. Why, if there is even a small possibility, is it not the more excellent option of interpreting for the good but the worst option that is chosen? Was an arrow shot five years ago so that it might reach its target today? If there is an attack, an insult, an enmity, why was it waited five years? Whereas at first glance there is not an insult but a revolt, a literature of complaint; how can a word be condemned straight to being perceived as an insult without even distinguishing this?

In music and poetry, the literature of "revolt against fate," "complaint to God," "reproach" can correspond to a state of soul of people in gloomy social climates. There is no sense in immediately perceiving insult in this literature in the name of faith values and clinging to a self-appointed right of compensation against being hurt. Other people are not proxies for people's relations with Allah. Allah the Exalted says this many times in His book. People may have had experiences that cooled them toward Allah, they may not believe as you do, indeed may not believe at all. Those who bring such things to our agenda so that we may suddenly attack, I think, first make us imagine in ourselves an unlimited and immoderate power of rule. People may be of different faiths, their beliefs and experiences about Allah may be different, their faith in their Prophets and their protocols of respect for them may be different. A Muslim shows his difference by his own good word, by his compassion toward people above all, by his vast generosity of heart, by the way faith in Allah is reflected in his practice, his life, his relations. Whoever believes believes, whoever does not believe does not. Nothing beyond.

With the momentum these campaigns have given, in recent days this time statements in a book published 14 years ago were put before us, again with an order to attack. In the book in question, in which, in my view, the narrations about Abdullah, the father of the Prophet (peace be upon him), are evaluated quite wrongly, is it our faith that is being tested by bringing it to our agenda 14 years later, or is the attempt to draw up a map of our uncontrolled reactions? Doesn't this deserve more thought?

We can think that such incidents will multiply further. If today we cannot find anyone attacking our Prophet or any of our sacred values, the needed target will, it seems, be dug up from 5, 10, 12 years ago, from even earlier. Moreover, Mehmet Azimli, the author of the book in question, had discussed in an academic setting his evaluations of certain narrations that appear in it and in fact have a place somehow in the sira literature, and, taking the criticisms received into account, changed them in later editions of the book.

This detail is of course important, but when Azimli takes back his word on this, these narrations that appear in ancient history books such as Ibn Ishaq, Ibn Hisham and al-Tabari, narrations that are of course weak, even coded as gossip, are not thereby erased. Of course the ways Azimli or others evaluate these narrations are important and problematic. They can be criticized, should be criticized, and are criticized. But these are narrations that in Islamic history must somehow be confronted, and this needs to be done at the academic level by academics who are experts in the field.

Personally I have criticized the thoughts or claims represented by Mustafa Öztürk throughout my life, but always at the academic level. It is needless to say, I hope, that in my view he had an extremely weak and wrong stance; I am not even mentioning his style. Yet because of the uncontrolled force that sprang into action over a talk of his made in an environment private to him and leaked, in the well-known way, years later, I have become unable to put pen to paper on his claims. For as a Muslim, in expressing my own claims, my own thoughts or criticisms, I consider it a disgrace to my own Islamic faith to rely on the security of power or the ideological establishment rather than trusting the strength of my evidence and arguments.

Do those who have disposed of Öztürk in this cheapest way manage to produce reasonable answers or thoughts to the questions he raised? Of course they cannot. What remains is that the most demonic questions, which could well deepen and give dimension to Islamic thought, gain the freest circulation without meeting any precaution.

It is evident that we do not see how all these examples, in total, have an effect that renders Islamic thought, the academy, even politics decrepit, and makes academics thoroughly lazy. What is targeted with all these files dug out of the past and put before us is that Muslims show a sharp reaction. What do you think is the Muslim image that emerges from the sum of these reactions? An example extremely tolerant and open to thought while in opposition, but tolerating nothing once in power, using the power of rule in a spoiled way, no different from the others, even worse.

A man, an academic, picks up a stone and joins the lynching. Why? If you as an academic have a counter-thesis, what prevents you from putting it forward in the strongest way? Why do you lean on the lynching culture of the mob?

Another, a preacher, carries a word of sedition that no one has heard to his pulpit, first puts the word in the wrapping he wants, then advertises it nicely, then incites the crowd against someone. Why? Wouldn't they first ask: why are you waking the sleeping sedition? Why do you broadcast from the preaching pulpit what no one has heard and extract a destructive force from people's sensitivities?

Yet Islam, which accepts no compulsion in religion, is strong enough with its claims, it is truth itself, but at the same time it is mercy, blessing, compassion, tenderness, reason, and therefore self-confidence for people.

And in the end, whoever wishes believes, whoever wishes does not; is there anything beyond?