A friend is not found by imagination or dream

The utter loneliness within crowds, the insecurity, the growing hatred and distances among people, which have become the defining character of the world we live in, are a state of crisis that requires all political and sociological analyses to be taken up anew.

Reducing politics to a friend-enemy relationship can lead to a course in which political rivalry even among friends stoops to the individual level and consumes friendship entirely. After that dual (friend-enemy) definition, this course in any case becomes inevitable. The resentment, hatred, and desire for power and slaughter, excessively encouraged against enemies, cannot hold back and continue even among those who position themselves as friends in that struggle. Expecting those who are willing to suspend ethics and virtues against enemies for the sake of power to take them down from suspension for friends can become futile. The ethics once suspended never being taken down from there again is the loss of the human being, and at the same time the loss of the friend.

Facing this picture, we must say that the literature poured out and the philosophies made about how few friends there are and how much friendship there is are not in pursuit of a diagnosis, but are the simple expression of normalizing the situation lived or, in the mildest terms, of submission to this tragic situation. Yet perhaps we can begin to make up for all our losses by changing our view of friendship.

The literature of friend scarcity, which began with Aristotle's sentence "My friends, there is no friend!", has influenced all philosophies of friendship since. The tried and proven path of our Prophet, under the guidance of the Qur'an, concerning "making friends of one's enemies, reconciling his enemies among themselves and turning them into friends (brothers, companions)," completely reversed this paradigm of friendship.

From people who were enemies of one another, who hated one another, who swung swords at one another, who tried to undermine one another with fierce rivalry, the Prophet built a sizable community in pursuit of certain virtues, who loved one another, who were soul-companions to one another in a common goal.

What a significant part of the later Islamic philosophers said about friendship remained far below and behind the horizon opened and the level shown by this proven path of the Prophet.

Early Islamic moralists such as Ibn al-Muqaffa', who produced important texts on friendship, synthesized elements of Persian, Greek, Indian and Arab aphorism into an enduring and syncretic ethical wisdom developing toward a very rich tradition across the wide geography of Islamic civilization. In addition, the criteria that Islamic philosophers such as Ibn Miskawayh, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi (author of perhaps the only book directly about friendship, titled Friendship and the Friend: Etiquette and Literature), al-Mawardi and Ibn Hazm developed regarding friendship were all influenced to a great extent far more by non-Islamic sources (especially Aristotle). With the admission that the criteria they developed under this influence are very hard to bring together, they present the friend as a rare value that is very hard to find. For Ibn Hazm, for example, the description of the ideal components of friendship is typical on this subject:

"One of the things sincerely desired in love is that the Most High God grant a person a sincere friend: pleasant in conversation, abundant in means, skilled in grasping a matter, shrewd in carrying it through, masterful in putting forward an idea, sharp-tongued, noble-hearted, broadly learned, not at all prone to contradiction, strong in helping, steadfast, patient in the face of insolence, broadly tolerant, a great ally, harmonious, possessed of a praiseworthy personality, innocent of all injustices, determined to help, hating estrangement, noble in all his undertakings, disliking hidden evils, profound in his ideas, understanding his friend's desires, possessing virtuous habits, well-born, necessarily sensible, abundant in good deeds, truly trustworthy, incapable of betrayal, of a generous soul, of deep sensitivity, correct in intuition, entirely reliable, a perfect shield, famed for his loyalty, possessed of a distinct constancy, steady in temperament, ready to give good counsel, sure of his feelings, easy to lean upon, possessed of a lively faith, truthful in everything he says, of a cheerful heart, absolutely chaste, wide in valor, endowed with fortitude, accustomed to sincerity, a stranger to disgust, a refuge in times of distress, a friend ready to share the privacy of his friend's poverty and to share his most private secrets. A lover can truly find his greatest peace with such a friend. But where is such a man found?"

Truly, when you describe the true friend this way, you are forced to admit that finding him would be impossible. But it stands out in this description that all the qualities are loaded onto the sought-for friend. There is no advice, no desire or will about what I must do to build this friend or this friendship. The friend I seek must be like this, but what must I be, what must we be? In all our descriptions of the friend, where we act as if to say, whatever we may be, the friend opposite must be of this perfection, do we not kill the friend in our own self?

Still, we cannot pass over, as an exception to all this discourse that became part of the Islamic philosophical tradition under the influence of elements of Persian, Greek, Indian and Arab aphorism, without mentioning al-Ghazali. Al-Ghazali is the person who, without being influenced by any of these, wrote the most comprehensive and equally ambitious text on friendship, entirely inspired by the Qur'an and the sunnah of the Messenger of God, his hadiths, the conversation of the honored companions. Moreover, although he had read Aristotle and had even translated some of his texts into Arabic, al-Ghazali is the one who, without being influenced by him, saw and showed friendship within Islamic limits as a value as possible and abundant as can be.

This discovery makes one say, as Agâhî said, "A friend is not found by fancy and dream." The friend is not someone we can find in our own self, by imagining, by dreaming, as with Ibn Hazm or the others. To be able to find him there is an effort we too must show, a concern we must have to prove. If there is no such concern, no such effort, the only thing we can find by fancy and dream will again be the friend slain in our own self.

The abode of that friend is not reached by this way of going. To reach him one must mount the steed of love and ride, like the Prophet, like al-Ghazali, who understood him so well.