Friendship, enmity and brotherhood

In fact everyone has his own experiences of friendship. That is why whether talking about friendship develops friendship further is debatable; it can be said that it is something lived, learned by living, rather than talked about. But as discourses on friendship multiply, the matter extends to all subjects concerning people's existence in this world. All of us have a life that begins with the love of others, but life does not always go on with love. There is enmity as much as friendship. To be friends with everyone means to lose the meaning of friendship as well. That is why, beyond a certain point, in the most radical sense, both "friend" and "friendship" deserve to be questioned as to their very possibility.

He who has many friends is merely surrounded by a crowd and has no real friend; at most around him are those who benefit from his status, power or wealth: a typical depiction of a person with a "wide entourage." A situation frequently seen in the story of someone rich, powerful, a politician or an elite of his profession. These are also the ones who can complain most of the lack of a real friend. Never mind that so-and-so has a crowd around him; in fact he is utterly alone.

Of course these are stories of very particular, perhaps aimless, experiences of friendship. Yet for people who have seen virtues, grasped them, understood their importance, the value of these crowds is clear, and you also know what you can and cannot expect from them. You also know that there is no point in killing people by building needless dreams, without ever knowing them at all, without ever trying to be friends.

Nothing could be more natural than that the circles of friendship of those whose horizon of friendship is reserved for only one or a very limited number of people are very intimate. Nor can any serious good come from any form of friendship other than the kind Aristotle classified as based only on interest or pleasure. This circle can also be shared with more people out of political motives, and can be consecrated with a reference that comes merely from birth or from a political affiliation, with people you do not know at all.

Who could expect any good for humanity to issue from an inborn bond forming the ground for friendship?

Derrida, a Jew, precisely for this reason took upon himself as a concern "the problems of friendship being under the pressure of brotherhood." And he did so, moreover, aware that it is his own people who do this most.

What kind of bond of friendship does being Jewish form between two people who probably do not know each other at all? Is it possible to attribute a virtue to glorifying this bond, formed by blood, in which a person has no choice, determined entirely outside of us? Derrida is thinking through Judaism; you can of course adapt it to any kind of people, race, clan, tribe, tie of land. When your kin, your fellow tribesmen, your fellow racemen, your relatives of tribe and clan, and your compatriots commit a wrong, an injustice, how far can you regard them as friends?

To reduce friendship to brotherhood means to lower it to certain ties outside a person's choices.

A person cannot choose his brother after all, but he can choose his friend, and it is not with what we cannot choose, but with what we as human beings can choose and have chosen, that we make a place for ourselves in the world of the virtuous.

This approach of Derrida's, which ranks friendship above brotherhood, is certainly a very valuable approach, and moreover it contains a very strong critical line that could be raised from within against Israel's racist practices today. But there is of course no obstacle in this to responsibility toward the brother, the sibling, that is, the fellow tribesman, the fellow racemen, or to cherishing brotherly feelings. On the contrary, all human feelings toward the brother have a separate right and place. But on condition that these feelings do not lead to a departure from justice, from what is right, in favor of the brother.

An extraordinary opening toward precisely this understanding makes itself felt everywhere in the address of the Qur'an. "Remember God's favor upon you, how you were enemies to one another, and He united your hearts, and by His favor you became brothers. And you were on the brink of a pit of fire" (in this your distance and enmity from one another).

That friendship and enmity among people are not attitudes based on blood ties is not something Western political philosophers can easily understand. The brotherhood in question here is not a brotherhood based on blood but a circle that excludes no one, which everyone can easily enter by a choice, by a decision. In this circle, whose boundary is open to all humanity, everyone is a friend, everyone is a brother, without any condition of being a kinsman, a fellow citizen, a compatriot, a fellow of lineage.

Muhammad al-Amin (peace be upon him) knew very well the relationship of infinite trust that existed between him and his lineage, tribe and fellow citizens in Mecca. His people had boundless trust that he would never lie to them. Relying on this trust, he gathered the Quraysh and called out to them from the hill of Abu Qubays: "If I told you that a great enemy army was coming toward you from behind this mountain, would you believe me?" All of them said together, "We would believe you."

But this trust would be met with immediate reaction when he said that he carried precisely the message they expected, needed, the message that would save and revive them. This is how near the line between believing and not believing, accepting and rejecting, was. In this way they showed the limit of their friendship toward someone they believed and trusted so much. What was it that drove them to reject certain news, although they were ready to accept some harder news?

They did not merely reject; for 13 years, and later in Medina, they inflicted the greatest reaction, oppression, on him and on his friends who believed in him. There was war between them, and in this war their closest ones were killed. But in the end everyone, including those who had shown him the most ferocious enmity, believed in him, and from enemies became friends. This circle later widened and spread so as to include all humanity.

After Carl Schmitt it has become customary to characterize all political action as the "friend-enemy" relationship, which cannot be overcome and whose limits are naturally set. Everyone's enemy is clear, and the ultimate feeling toward the enemy is his elimination.

Yet the enemy of the Muslim is not certain people who never change, but only their actions and their jahiliyya.

Perhaps, in the Muslim expression of ancient Socratic wisdom, "if they knew, they would not do it," then it is jahiliyya that must be removed. What is the enemy is not people but jahiliyya as an attitude, an action, an obliviousness.