The difference made by the Turks' love for the Prophet

Human beings have been created different from one another. Societies make a difference; within societies, clans, tribes and ethnic groups, and within these, families and individual personalities, all make a difference of their own.

Not only societies, but every person is different from the other. Among the billions of people who have come and gone, there is no one who is the same as another. Everyone has a distinguishing face, bodily features, fingerprint, retina and DNA. In forensic medicine, establishing identity is possible through differences.

The One who created all individuals of the human kind different from one another has also shown and explained one of His great miracles to whoever sees and understands.

Our Lord, who created societies different from one another, says on the one hand that He created all these differences so that people might know one another, but on the other hand He strictly forbids acting superior to one another on the basis of these differences.

To act superior to one another on the basis of differences, especially differences that were given to us and to whose acquisition we contributed not in the slightest, means jahiliyya partisanship, that is, racism. Racism is the superiority attributed to certain groups on the basis of the minimal similarities, closeness or bonds that exist among some communities, although every individual is different.

Yet the father of Abraham, the peak name of the religion of Tawhid, was Azar, an idol-maker, and God even forbade him to pray for his forgiveness. When the same Abraham prayed that his own descendants too might lead people, he would receive from his Lord the answer "God's promise does not reach the community of wrongdoers," because being on the right is not something secured by belonging to a lineage; one needs effort in uprightness, one needs labor, one needs will and stance.

The son of Noah, for instance, chose not to believe his own father and to mock him like his people, and took his place among the community of wrongdoers. His lineage did not save him.

Let us go further back: one of the two sons of Adam is Cain, who committed the first murder and the first act of arrogance. Again, the Prophet had an uncle like Hamza, but he also had another uncle like Abu Lahab, whose name is mentioned in the Qur'an almost as a symbol of polytheism, injustice and evil.

To grant sanctity to lineage and kin is something that contradicts the basic philosophy of Islam. Of course, this philosophy does not contradict the maxim that commands responsibility toward relatives and doing good to them.

The commonalities attributed to lineage and people, that is, to features that connect us with traits to whose acquisition we contributed nothing and that were given to us, do not destroy the responsibility arising from our difference as individuals. On the contrary, by dwelling too much on these different commonalities we only increase our arrogance, our self-sufficiency, and therefore our ignorance, nothing else.

Even so, without emphasizing and without attributing superiority or inferiority, it is also necessary to know the differences in order to know and recognize ourselves and to trace our genealogy.

The Islam lived in Türkiye of course has a difference compared with that in other countries or societies. I have written quite a lot before against those who looked for this difference in this or that feature. "The Sociological Possibility of Turkish Religion" was written precisely to confront these claims of difference. Of course also stressing the difference between being different and pursuing policies of difference.

Against those who want to build the difference of the Islam understood and lived in Türkiye from that in other countries on Hanafism-Maturidism, we showed that the understanding of Islam of Afghans, Indians, Pakistanis and especially the Taliban rests on the same sources. We also said that, since the Maturidi understanding in Anatolia is largely intertwined with an Ash'ari teaching and instruction, there is no possibility that it produces a notable difference.

Truly, if a difference is to be sought, it can be seen in the way the Turks express their love of the Prophet, compared with the Arabs, for example. Years ago, in the days when the Arab Spring process was beginning, some reflections of a lady belonging to the Royal family, with whom we chatted after a conference I gave in Saudi Arabia, expressed this very well. At one point in our conversation, which ranged from sociology to political science, from hermeneutics to history and religious sciences, this lady, who had also received a good education in sociology, offered an interesting and "empathetic" explanation of the Turks' excessive love of the Prophet, which the Salafi understanding criticizes a great deal. According to her, "For the Arabs, since the Prophet was one of them and since they know Arabic, the Qur'an, with all its miracle, enchanted them. That is why for the Arabs Islam is a Qur'an-centered religion. Yet Islam reached the Turks through concrete persons and their practices, and because they did not at first understand the Qur'an, they felt, in his absence, a great affection for the Prophet who had raised those persons they encountered, in place of the Qur'an. This affection made Islam, for the Turks, a Prophet-centered rather than Qur'an-centered religion. And this is a blessing of God for the Islamic world. That the Turks, out of reverence for the Prophet, prefer the name 'Mehmet' instead of Muhammad and use it very widely has always aroused in me a distinct respect for the Turks."

It is an observation that makes no claim of superiority or inferiority and describes the situation entirely in its own terms. Of course it can also trigger many studies to explain why this is so. But what reminded me today of this anecdote of mine, which I had related here years ago as well, was the "Symposium on Süleyman Çelebi and the Mevlit Tradition" that has been held for two days in cooperation with the Bursa Metropolitan Municipality, TÜBA and the Turkish Language Association.

In Türkiye, in fact in most places of the Ottoman geography, especially the non-Arabic-speaking ones, what formed an understanding, emotionality and practice of Islam focused on love of the Prophet was that Süleyman Çelebi's poem Vesiletu-n-Necat (The Means of Salvation) turned into a ritual as the Mevlid-i Şerif and became a tradition of being recited collectively in society both on the Prophet's birthday and on every occasion of sorrow and joy, in mourning and at weddings, or on any occasion.

Because the Mevlid expresses in a magnificent verse literature not only the Prophet's birth but also his Sunnah, his morals and his creed, it has also functioned as a serious mentality-forming source.

Let us continue to examine how it functioned and its sociological effects.