Being a contemporary of Prophet Abraham

These days in which we are experiencing the Feast of Sacrifice (Kurban Bayramı) are days that, beyond what is fleeting and passing, draw us back into a time that is not fleeting at all and reconnect us with our true source. Days that make us contemporaries of Abraham, of Ishmael, of Hagar, that draw us into the same cycle of life and make us actors in it. Days that also tell us that, however new what we experience today may be, this newness is of a transience that cannot sever us from the first human being.

The days of Sacrifice and Hajj, however differentiated, however changed, however diverse we may have become in our lives, whatever speed and in whatever direction the tempo of our lives is advancing, restore a time that connects us once more to a history of 5,000 years, perhaps, because of the sacrifice experience of Adam, to the first human being, and so enable us to look at what we live with an entirely different depth and an entirely different state of mind.

Abraham's experience is a tremendous experience, but from all the details of this experience universal messages have emerged for all of humanity, and the signposts that human beings will follow on their entire journey on earth have been laid in the details of this experience. Let whoever wishes engage in historicism as much as they like, and, diving into its historical or cultural origins, try to reduce the event to a mythological tale of a past that does not concern us. The ritual of Hajj, which has been repeated ceaselessly since Abraham, with all its rites (menasik), makes this event the common experience of all humanity and stages it once again.

There, at Arafat, all people first know their Lord, thereby know themselves, thereby know one another. The highest level of that knowledge is embodied in the form of the ihram, in which differentiating clothing, titles and ranks, races and peoples, age, all worldly acquisitions, even gender, are removed. All of us have come from God, all of us belong to Him, and to Him we shall return. The Arab has no superiority over the non-Arab. And the non-Arab is subject to the Arab.

This is the final end that all the acquisitions we gain in this world will reach. The ultimate point at which no identity retains any value whatsoever. God created all people from a male and a female, then created them as peoples and societies so that they might get to know one another, so that they might be acquainted with one another.

But some ignorant people forgot the reason and wisdom of these differences and made them grounds for boasting, for claiming superiority for themselves, for wronging others, or for falling into an inferiority complex in front of others.

Now you are at Arafat. At the point of the first meeting and mutual recognition on earth of your father Adam and Eve after being expelled from paradise. At the point where they knew the form the relationship between themselves and God should take, and where this was made the point of reference for their just, Muslim conduct.

One of the first things people who reach this awareness at Arafat do is to try to overcome these differentiating, distancing, alienating obstacles that bind them to the world. With the stones they gather from Muzdalifah they run to stone the devils that keep them from drawing close to this unity, this non-differentiation, this universality. The road that leads a human being to the idea of unity, equality and justice is filled with the temptations of Satan, with his ideologies, with the khannas of those tempting ideologies and whisperings.

They approach from all four sides, without letting you notice from where they approach, with their most convincing, most rational, most scientific, most historical arguments. If you cannot be persuaded that this race is superior to that race, they catch you by trying to persuade you that a Muslim from this race is better, more superior than a Muslim from that race.

The gathering at Arafat or the worship of sacrifice performed all over the world every year ought in fact also to have a warning effect on us against Satan's temptations. If it does not, then something is missing. Sacrifice has been reduced only to the meat of the slaughtered animals and the delicious dishes to be made from them. Instead of bringing us closer, it ends up distancing us more, alienating us more, from the truth, from the Real, from our brothers and sisters, from ourselves.

However one looks at it, let us give thanks that Türkiye, with its people and its state, has today come to know its brothers more, to recognize them, and has drawn closer to them. The worship of sacrifice that is performed is introducing the people to one another more and drawing them closer to one another.

The blessing in this drawing close, in this recognition and knowing, undoubtedly makes the people of Türkiye far stronger. However, however deeply rooted this worship is, there are also the unfortunate who can remain deprived of its blessing, who can close themselves to this awareness, this gnosis (marifet).

There are still those who, in ignorance, try only to create a difference from others with their heads and to draw from that difference a merit, an honor, a rank of superiority for themselves. They still cannot comprehend even the fact that death, close enough to knock at their doors at any moment, will bring them before God stripped of all their worldly acquisitions, as at Arafat.

Is this not a clear truth for someone who has lived Arafat, who has lived the sacrifice?

What could open the eyes of one who is blind even to this?