The migrant boat in the Mediterranean: victim of whom, of whose and of what?

The number of bodies recovered from the migrant boat that sank on June 14 near Greece's Peloponnese (Mora) region and which is known to have carried 750 people is 82. As a result of the efforts of the rescue teams, around a hundred people could be reached alive, but the fate of the rest is still unknown. Unfortunately, the meaning of this unknown is that their bodies will probably never be recovered either, and that they will be lost in the cold, deep waters of the Mediterranean. Perhaps after staying on the agenda a few more days, there will be no one looking for them either. Their relatives will always remember them with a hopeless and helpless longing, will perhaps feel their pain most deeply, but for the world they had never been anyway, and never will be.

As the Islamic world prepares to observe the worship of sacrifice, we can ask, precisely as it approaches the Sacrifice, what sacrifice they are offering with these deaths. Toward what is the Islamic world drawing near, and the price of what is it paying? More importantly, who is paying this price, to whom is it paying it, and in paying, to whom or to what is it drawing near, achieving nearness (kurbiyet)?

The world that the people who crowd onto migrant boats, knowingly taking this risk of a very high probability of death, leave behind, the world they want to get away from, is unfortunately the Islamic world. Of course we must say an Islamic world from which no trace of Islam is left. A world in which no trace is found of Islam's justice, nor its mercy, nor its order, yet whose name, unfortunately, is the Islamic world. Kings, emirs or leaders who do not let a word touch their Muslimness, who have şeyhülislams or muftis. These people flee the countries these men govern and set out on a journey of death for the sake of living a better life. Rather than being subjected to torture in the dungeons of these countries and wasting their lives, rather than leading a miserable life within the corrupt, corruption-ridden economies of these countries, they put out to sea, risking a high likelihood of death, toward a place where they might be treated better.

The world in which they hope to find a better life, more humane treatment and an environment more fitting to human dignity meets them, right at the start of the road, with the most disgusting, most inhumane attitude, humiliation and treatment possible.

In fact this is the situation that these travelers of hope habitually face. The waters of the Mediterranean are regularly fed with the bodies of illegal migrants. What Usama Dabbebi, who fishes off the coast of Sfax in Tunisia and constantly witnesses the deaths these travelers suffer, recounts is horrifying. "Every time I haul in the net, I look with eyes full of hope and anxiety at what has been caught in it. Because what gets caught in the net is not always fish," says Dabbebi. "Sometimes, instead of fish, a body washes up. The first time it happened I was very frightened, but then I started to get used to it. After a while, pulling a person out of the net became no different from pulling out a fish."

Dabbebi says that recently he pulled 15 migrant bodies out of the water in 3 days. This has become so habitual for him that he says he feels a strange relief only on days when the weather is bad: "Because on days when the weather is bad migrant boats do not put out to sea, and I feel happy because I will not be collecting bodies that day."

One day everyone can become a refugee, can become an asylum seeker, for one reason or another. Conditions that have become unlivable in some place can force people to change their places. That is why seeking asylum is a human right. This human right is now a universal acceptance, and that is why June 20 has been recognized as World Refugee Day.

Of course, if there is a possibility of fixing the conditions that force people to seek asylum, trying together to fix those conditions is a higher priority. But if these conditions cannot be fixed, displaying a more humane approach toward asylum seeking is also a fundamental human responsibility.

Unfortunately, the address where refugees hopefully seek a more humane and prosperous life takes a stance very far from this sense of responsibility, by inflicting on asylum seekers, in the very first minute, treatment worse than that of the place they have come from.

In the latest asylum incident as well, it has come out that the boat carrying the illegal migrants had barely moved at all for seven hours before the accident. The Greek coast guard generally applies the tactic of deliberately disabling boats carrying migrants in such situations. This makes such disasters inevitable. That is, what is in question is not the boats sinking by themselves but their being sunk. It is in fact a clear crime against humanity, and it takes place at Europe's entry gate. That the investigations opened by the Greek prosecutor's office in similar cases before have all ended in favor of the Greek coast guard shows, of course, not that Greece is innocent in this matter, but only that they have bound the law in this matter as well.

From the remains of the sunken migrant boats, the wreckage of Europe's real face in fact rises to the surface. With every migrant boat that sinks, the European dream and claim sinks too. The contradiction between the world's indifferent attitude toward the hundreds of believers who died on the sunken migrant boat and the excessive interest directed at the 5 people lost in the Titan submersible is another face of this sinking. This comparison is in fact like an eye-opening warning.

But without ever acquitting Europe's attitude, it is also necessary to question the source worlds that force these migrants into these arduous, risky journeys. The conditions that force these migrants, the great majority of whom are from Islamic countries, to flee their countries. Why do Islamic countries sustain conditions that drive their own citizens to seek peace, bread, freedom and dignity in other countries?

This should in fact be the most urgent item on the agenda of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. The migrant problem is not solely a problem of Europe. Undoubtedly the rulers in the countries that push migrants out, largely in cooperation with one or several European countries and the USA, make their countries unlivable, unbearable, intolerable for their own citizens. But still, a new initiative must be taken to solve this problem.

On the Eid al-Adha (Kurban Bayramı) that we are preparing to observe, in the hope of turning toward sacrifices that will truly bring people closer to one another, to God, to life. With the wish that they not become sacrifices on roads that would bring them closer to a futile goal and take them away from their homelands. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation needs to make this issue its first agenda item.