When conversation withdraws from among us…

Yeni Şafak · Yasin Aktay - When sohbet (fellowship of conversation) is withdrawn from among us...

What we have read and heard about it so far is that friendship is for the most part not very compatible with multiplicity. After all, Aristotle had said, "He who has many friends has no friend." Yet the same philosopher does not neglect to distinguish the kinds of friendship based on pleasure, on interest and on virtue. We had asked: what prevents friendship based on virtue from being shared with the greatest possible number of people? Being friends with everyone is often a betrayal of one's own friends too, because there are also those who are not virtuous, who are enemies of the virtues, and accepting friendship with them in the name of those virtues destroys, above all, the meaning of friendship.

Here friendship is in fact with friends, for virtue and thanks to virtue, and as virtues are shared with others friendship also increases, while virtues do not diminish or weaken but grow stronger. Yet in the philosopher's idea of perfect friendship, the virtuous person, the only one capable of the highest friendship, is the one who needs friendship least and who also has the horizon, or the self-sufficiency, of being most restrictive about the friendships he forms.

Perhaps the virtuous person described prefers a cynical passivity about sharing his virtue with others. In this way he occupies the autonomy he has acquired in the realm of virtues, the summit of freedom, has no need of a friend at all, and, by excluding other simple people, those unworthy of friendship, demands a kind of scarcity of friendship. That is why, as Pierre Aubenque says, "Perfect friendship destroys itself."

Precisely against this idea of scarcity or singularity of friendship, in Muhammad's experience of friendship, let alone the tragic scarcity, deficiency or absence in the world, a fully proven abundance catches the eye. So much so that he does not have only one friend. Of course, he has a Siddiq friend, his peer, matching him in age and in character, who understands his state best, his fellow traveler, his confidant, with whom he lived and shared his joy, his sorrow, every kind of feeling and thought, and who stood behind him like a mountain in every trouble. Although he had a very special friendship with him, his experience of friendship was not limited to him. That friendship perhaps formed for him a door, a way of opening, to other friendships. He had a true friend, but alongside him he also had the greatest possible number of friends, friends of every sort, of every age, every social status and stratum, men and women, kin or stranger, from the Quraysh or from outside the Quraysh, Arab or non-Arab, Abyssinian, Yemeni, townsman or Bedouin. Muhammad (pbuh) is an example who proved, in fact, through his magnificent friendship with his companions, the exact opposite of the saying that one who has so many friends cannot have a friend.

Ashab is the plural of sahib. And although sahib in one sense includes owning something as in Turkish, this is an ownership that does not mean being a proprietor. Here there is a reciprocal relationship of companionship with the one of whom one is sahib. We are not the owner of a friend, we are his sahib, that is, we accompany him, bear responsibility toward him, are his comrade, and keep company (musahaba) and converse (sohbet) with him.

Sohbet, for its part, is in fact the most fundamental level of human existence in this world. "Since we have been a conversation," says Hölderlin in one of his poems, at the point where he touches the essence of the human being's existence on earth. In interpreting this poem, Heidegger also explains the nature of language, in which people take up residence by hearing something from one another, by saying something to one another, by conversing with one another. Our conversation builds our world. With our conversations, with what we hear from one another and what we say to one another, we build our view, our perceptions and our reality.

Sohbet is the essence of friendship. Those who complain today about the lack of a good friendship based on virtues should first look at how much sohbet has diminished. A sohbet that spreads virtues has diminished immeasurably. We satisfy all our desire for sohbet with those who call out to us from afar from screens. Sometimes, moreover, the voice of those who call out was recorded at other times or places. There we are not part of a sohbet but merely the target of a calling out. Can there be such a form of communication, such a form of calling out and hearing? Of course there can, and there is. But this is not sohbet, clearly. The sohbet in which the listener also takes part, in which he is a part of the truth that finds expression, is also different from a one-sided sermon.

If we can think to ask what we have lost today, perhaps the most important place to look is this sohbet, this companionship (sahaba).

Those who took part in the sohbet of Muhammad (pbuh) of course also listened to sermons from him, but they mostly conversed, asked questions, were aware of what they did not know, and because before them was someone in revelatory contact with the Creator, they listened with all ears. They were of course in a submission in which they said "We hear and we obey" to everything that would come from him, yet they were still companions, not disciples, of that blessed messenger. The Messenger too never thought of acquiring disciples, pupils, blind followers for himself; he acquired companions, he acquired friends.

His friends, his companions, were well aware of what they did not know. The one who brought them the revelation had already told them outright that he did not hold the keys of the unseen in his hands, and therefore had no knowledge beyond what God had given him. Nor was he a representative over them, nor a musaytir (authority) or muhaymin (hegemon). What he offered was a tremendous road that did not destroy their personality and made them conversation companions of God's most beloved servant.

That is why, on the road they set out on with the Prophet, the companions were at a station of affection in which they would love him more than their own lives, even more than their parents and children, yet they did not dissolve in him in the stage of sohbet. When the Prophet told them something, they could ask openly, courageously and, most importantly, in a friendly way, "whether it was from revelation or from himself." When they learned that, as one side of the conversation, he had a view of his own, they proposed, in their most friendly manner, the view they found more correct and more suitable. And their blessed companion often found their view more suitable, adopted their view as his own, and acted upon it.

He was not one of those leaders who, in order to reach political goals, make propaganda for a view among people to gather people around themselves, and who load beliefs, views and criticism with an instrumental meaning. What he told people was a message that he too believed in to the end, valued, and for the sake of which he put his own existence on the line. That message had a responsibility toward him, and he had a responsibility toward the people to whom he conveyed that message, whether they accepted it or not. This responsibility was passed on to the people who received and adopted this message. The nature of this shared responsibility made people companions to one another.