The right of the servant (Kul Hakkı)

The wise old man in Diyarbakır, with whom we had plunged into a deep conversation, was saying in the debate on mother tongue the words that, to my mind, put the full stop. The mother tongue is a right owed to God's servants (kul hakkı), and to ignore this right, let alone to usurp it, is among the gravest sins in the sight of God.

The violation of a servant's right is such a grave sin that God promises to forgive every sin a human being commits if he repents, but when it comes to the rights of servants, He warns explicitly, "Do not come to Me with it!" The only way to be absolved of a servant's right is to obtain mutual release, by consent, from the servant whose right was violated while he is alive. Otherwise you have no place to lie down in the next world.

Religious people know very well what weight the concept of "the right of the servant" carries. From childhood on, the weightiest discourses of religion engrave on minds, with all their weight, the importance of observing the rights of servants.

The rights of the servant, that is, so-called "the right of the 'other,'" is one of the most important cornerstones of Muslim consciousness. But, unfortunately, Muslims need a serious update regarding concrete examples of what falls within the scope of the subject. Especially where the subject extends to national or social matters, some specific warnings are needed as to what falls under the servant's right. Those who can display incredible care and sensitivity about intending harm to another's property, life or freedom as individuals can fall into a social heedlessness in situations where the usurpation of rights has become a social norm.

The usurpation of rights can become a social norm, and in that case, when it is named "the rules of the state," "the unity and integrity of society," "peace and order," the prices that "others" are forced to pay to comply with these rules, to conform to this unity and integrity, and to this peace and order are not regarded as "rights violations."

People's ability to speak their mother tongues is among the most natural of rights, and ignoring or belittling this right, for this or that reason, to this or that extent, falls within the scope of violating the servant's right.

The servant's right is the equivalent of human rights in Islam, and when one notices, its capacity to develop and socialize consciousness about rights is extremely high. Observing the servant's right is a religious duty, and observing this right is a matter of religious ecstasy. In fact, if we looked at many of the problems and disagreements we experience in society with the consciousness of the servant's right, we would know our place much better.

In this case, the question is, in one respect, a demoralizing one concerning how far the consciousness of the servant's right works in our society: Although we receive such heavy admonitions, from family to mosque, from school to religious community, not to violate the servant's right, why can we be so insensitive, even approving, when it comes to violating the rights of some people in the name of the state? How come we can so easily extract ourselves from the state when we try to do in the name of the state the evil we do not do individually? Yet at times we do not neglect to keep a state watch against one another. We take turns being the state against one another and can more easily violate one another's rights.

* * *

There is also an economic dimension to the matter. Job safety, giving labor its due... Leaving others aside, let religious businessmen try to measure their attitude toward labor against the yardstick of the "servant's right" that they hear so often in the sermons and conversations they attend. Where will they find a place for themselves?

In the past week we heard the news about silicosis workers because of a law that is about to be passed. They were trying to make their voices heard. Thanks be to our friend Hakan Albayrak, who devoted his column and published verbatim the letter from them, "addressed to the honorable prime minister."

"We bleached jeans in small, squalid, inhuman workshops. Some people created fashion, other people followed that fashion. And in fact, some people earned millions of dollars. The only losers were us: the jeans got bleached, but our lives turned dark. We were poor, unemployed, desperate, unaware that those workshops were death machines," they were saying.

The gradual wasting away to which they were exposed, helpless and unknowing, is a rights violation that makes all of us responsible as a society. Not only those who earned money at the expense of their health, of course they come first, but we need to know that in such social cases there is a responsibility that falls to all of us, a servant's right that has passed down all our throats.

What they want is, instead of being considered disabled and having their labor wholly disregarded, to be considered retired on grounds of disability, and thus to have insurance rights, after the hard working life that has already killed them, from which their wives and children can also benefit. This is a right that already belongs to them; it only needs to be seen.

It appears that the arrangement in parliament in this direction is on a good track, but it is still an unfinished process, and this is precisely the place to remember and to remind of the servant's right.