"Hello, brother"

On 15 March 2019, in the city of Christchurch in New Zealand, a country that is always among the most peaceful in the world, either first or in the top three, 51 Muslims lost their lives and dozens were wounded in a terrorist attack on mosques; three years have passed since the event. In many respects this event was like an explosion of the hostile feelings that have been accumulated for years against Islam and Muslims in the modern, civilized world.

Whether these feelings are fear, hatred or a matter of sharing is of course not important at all. What was clearly seen in the end was that, in their most innocent form, behind the savage, monstrous attack organized against people who felt safe in a house of worship, there was not a fit of madness or a psychological state of mind but an utterly intellectual-ideological preparation and ground.

This ideological ground itself was the natural outcome of the irresponsible “frightening” discourses that have for years been carried out against Muslims all over the world turning into rancor and hatred. The discourses and phantoms they produce about Muslims make Muslims appear so terrifying as to deserve being killed, and thus they produce, as a feeling, the justification for killing the Muslims they fear, just in case.

Even the withholding from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Myanmar of the tear-inducing empathy and human feelings displayed today in the West for those dying in Ukraine or those who have left their homelands has feelings nourished by these ideologies in its background. Because Muslims are already terrifying enough, because they already have the potential to kill if they are not killed first, their deaths stir no feeling of conscience.

In fact the Christchurch attack is a symbol-laden event, since it was an attack provoked by as much Islam-hatred and Crusader feelings as possible, directed at people performing their worship in a mosque. It is an event that deserves to be examined from many angles, to be kept on the agenda and to have many debates conducted through it. What is most symbolic about the event, and what in two words gives a summary of the whole age we live in, is the word of Hacı Davud, who met the furious killer at the door with an utterly friendly demeanor. A tremendous magnanimity that invites the one who came to kill to be revived in himself. Two words in which the true message of Islam to the world, always unjustly overlooked in Islamophobia debates, is immanent: Hello Brother.

Because of this event 15 March has been declared International Day to Combat Islamophobia. On this occasion a meaningful World Peace Symposium was organized at Hacıbayram University in Ankara in cooperation with the Bilgi ve Algı Derneği and the Ministry of Culture.

In fact, the struggle that the people of a faith with the capacity to welcome everyone who comes to them with “Hello brother” will wage on this occasion should not consist merely of removing the hatred or fear of Islam in people. What Muslims will say to today’s merciless, cruel, hypocritical world is not, of course, an attempt to prove that they are people who harm no one, as pacifist and peaceful as possible. From this discourse there is also a great likelihood of arising a perception that Muslims are merely weak and oppressed, begging for people’s feelings of pity. The language of the struggle against Islamophobia has strong supports that strike the world we live in at its claim. But it is necessary to go beyond this language and also to express Islam’s far stronger, far more comprehensive discourse.

From precisely this angle, proceeding by way of the words “hello brother” is a very good beginning.

Muslims are not seeking to be a subject of interest and exploitation in the name of laying sole claim to the earth’s resources on behalf of a certain race, language or region. They have a claim to truth, but they champion its cause not because it offers them power, interest or wage, but because they believe it is truth in itself. That is, they do not withhold from others something they believe in, a truth that makes them happy, a light, a being; they try to share it with all people.

Their view of people who are distant from this truth does not in essence contain hatred or enmity, but on the contrary contains compassion and mercy.

For about a century Islam has had no say in determining world politics or in the sharing of resources. During this time Islam has remained a civil religion of the people. In this state it has no representation other than the small models it has put forward. Within these models there are good or bad translations of Islam. While during a struggle for existence they can put forward very beautiful models, they can also come under the control of other powers and become victims of very bad stagings.

With Islam withdrawing from the stage in this way, the world has lost a great deal. The answer to the question Nadwi asks in the title of his famous book fills with greater content with every passing day: “What Did the World Lose with the Decline of the Muslims?”

It lost a great deal. Muslims are the only middle (wasat) ummah that can be the heart of a heartless world and the soul of a soulless world. They not only have a vision that will make only themselves happy; they are an ummah in the cause of bringing peace and happiness to all humanity, of bringing human beings to absolute freedom by abolishing human beings’ servitude or divinity over one another. Moreover, in doing so it does not seek to make anyone Muslim by force. While struggling for the removal of the thick veils over consciousness, the lenses before the eyes, the pressures upon consciences, the ultimate aim is people’s freeing in the true sense. A truly liberated person, whether he believes or does not believe.

In today’s world, to people who keep their distance from Islam, who look at Islam and Muslims with strong ideological prejudices, the most authentic feeling of Muslims is not to get angry and furious but to feel compassion:

My Lord, if they knew, they would not do it! My Lord, how much they suffer! My Lord, they are all Your servants; warm our hearts to one another, and by Your blessing let us be brothers with these people to whom we are enemies.

Hacı Davud was within these feelings and thoughts, imposed on him especially by the place he was in, the mosque, where a person learns to bow only before Allah. With these feelings and thoughts he met the enemy of Islam who approached him in rage and who a moment later would massacre 51 people, himself included, and wound dozens, with precisely these words: Hello brother.