Earthquake-resistant prejudices and emotions

As we said, the earthquake does not merely shake the ground and bring down buildings built on rotten foundations and with deficient materials. It shakes everything, jolts everything, brings down everything, and offers people an opportunity to rebuild better. It shakes emotions, it shakes lives and perceptions, it shakes human relations, it shakes the stance of the state. After this shaking, it corrects some, but it can also make some worse.

This is in fact a plain wisdom and truth that anyone discerning can recall immediately after every earthquake.

But there are those whose prejudices, ideologies, hatreds, and ambitions are resistant to earthquakes of magnitude 20. Although they have witnessed so many truths, although they have seen before their eyes thousands of deaths, the most indisputable commonality among all human beings, although the world has been shaken so much under their feet, there is not a millimeter of shift in this outlook of theirs. They can turn even this unifying truth into a means of separating themselves from others, of howling at others, of feeding their arrogance and hatred toward others.

We see what is being done to the Syrians who were trapped under the same rubble and who were perhaps five times more victimized than Turkish citizens. Even their keeping their own mourning is deemed too much for them.

The despicable acts of looting that can occur and have occurred during every earthquake are in fact occurring now too. Among those who did this in this earthquake there may perhaps be Syrians as well. But in proportion, the majority of those who did these things are among our own citizens. But the cunning of laundering all the filth that could stick to one's own tribe by loading all the sins committed during this great disaster onto a few Syrians is an expression of a wickedness that this earthquake, despite all its violence, has not been able to shake at all. This great sign, which opens the eyes of everyone who is human, can make the eyes of some even more blind.

The feelings motivating the aid mobilized from every part of the country and every corner of the Islamic world are of a kind that makes us say we could never thank God enough. Thousands of thanks be to God. Let us remember that one of the blessings of Almighty God upon us is that He made us brothers when we were enemies, or when we had grown so cold toward one another as to hate one another, had grown distant from one another, when countless kinds of separation, estrangement and distance had been placed between us... While earthquakes shake our lives with all their pains, they are in fact also operating one aspect of the divine sunna. They bring the people they shake closer again to their essence, from which they had become alienated. This is also a scene we see today, with the earthquake, in Turkey and in the Islamic world in general.

But as we said, there are those whose prejudices, grudges and hatreds this violent double earthquake, with all its destruction and deaths, has not been able to shake by a millimeter. Was it Einstein who said, "It is harder to break prejudices than to split the atom"? Here you have eyes that an earthquake the size of 500 atomic bombs could not shake from their prejudices, that enlightenment of whatever carat could not open.

The statements of Murat Yetkin in a television program held in Istanbul, in a studio, in which, without even needing to see the field, he gave voice to those unshakable prejudices about the field. As if he himself had been working in the field nonstop since the moment of the event, he conveys not what he has seen from the field but what he has not seen:

"There are no people in robes and turbans parading like an army when they finish their hafiz course. Where are they, can't they lend a hand to something? I ask, where are they? Will they appear in public only when reciting the sala? Will they appear only after death instead of saving lives? We have to talk about this now, don't talk about that, don't talk about this, enough is enough."

Of course, one who does not look does not see, but the problem is, even if he looked, not seeing, not wanting to see. In fact, he does not even need to look much to see that almost all of the conservatives or Islamists, with and without robes, bearded and beardless, are in the field. They are at the head of every rubble, at the head of every aid distribution activity.

What Yetkin perhaps could not see because he did not look had already pricked the eyes of Merdan Yanardağ, one of his own friends. He had not refrained from complaining: "What is this, people saying Allahu Akbar at the end of every rescue? Reciting the takbir?" To be disturbed at hearing that Allah, who is the cause of both life and death, and of one's own existence, is great, and to be able to express this discomfort on such a day, when we see with certainty that it is only by His decree that we live and breathe...

If you ask, they say there is no freedom of expression either. Murat Yetkin says this too, after all: "We have to talk about this now, don't talk about that, don't talk about this, enough is enough," he says. How much more nonsense, beyond this nonsense, do you think freedom of expression is wanted for?

If you ask, pearls and corals would fall from their mouths when they speak, but the government restricts them. My dear fellow, when you speak you only disgrace yourselves. Your not speaking is for your own good, and in any case no one is preventing you from speaking. Who can stop, who is able to stop, someone who can spout this much nonsense, so insolent, with such ignorant boldness pour out hateful and hate-filled discourse?

In fact, since the occasion has come up, let us also say that the more effective and stronger form of government is not the one that silences its opponents but the one that encourages them to speak more. After all, what government could be disturbed by the speech of those who disgrace themselves the more they speak?

But there is also a tragicomic side to the matter: the more the government does not address them, the more they go mad and raise an uproar of "we cannot speak."

It is not a desire for power or anything like that, but a rather common desire for victimhood. But perhaps some plunder might come out of it, with the opportunism, the officiousness and the aggression.