Did you never love at all?

Phrases such as love of humanity, humanism, peace and brotherhood become the subject of so much peddler-style tolerance rhetoric that, after a while, these phrases turn into hollow signs that mean nothing, even into signs that give away the other intentions the speaker carries behind them. We witness not a few cases of those who practice the rhetoric of tolerance turning, when the occasion arises, into the most bigoted, most exclusionary, most merciless executioners of dignity in the world. It is met with no surprise that fountains of arrogance emerge from among our Sufis who call for humility and speak of killing the ego. It is, that is to say, so familiar a situation. And there are those who, while speaking of the moderate, centrist, level-headed line of Ahl al-Sunnah, brand whoever comes before them a deviant, a Wahhabi, a Salafi Abduhist, an Afghaniist, an Ibn Taymiyyaist, a radical, a reformist, and count them as worse than an unbeliever; we have had to touch on them a few times before.

I say "had to," because there is really nothing to debate with that mindset, nothing to explain to that mindset. What they are arguing about is not ideas, but their own religious markets that they defend. The field of religion has turned thoroughly into a market, and they do not allow anyone into that market without their license, their permission or their commission. In laying claim to the Ahl al-Sunnah brand, through the religious corruption they display, they have also worn down and discredited the very concept of Ahl al-Sunnah considerably in the eyes of the new generations.

The language they use is an absolutist language, as if revelation were coming to them from heaven. Their hodjaefendis, their efendi baba hazrats, and then, with the authorized dealerships they have received from them, whatever they themselves say is that. Since they are God's saintly servants, when they say something they are God's speaking tongue, when they see, God's seeing eye, when they hear, God's hearing ear. How could they possibly be mistaken? Having placed themselves in such a position, they then issue takfir. But of course without ever uttering the concept of "takfir." Without ever taking on the label of takfirist, they practice the most radical form of takfirism. They do not call anyone an unbeliever, but they do worse than calling.

Their takfirism is not based on a creed; it is based on their inability to love people in general and Muslims in particular. Like Zaza Dayı in Kurtlar Vadisi, in essence they "do not love people"; they love people's money, or their power, or their servility to themselves. If people pay them tribute, pledge allegiance, obey unconditionally and without question, they are acceptable, they are Ahl al-Sunnah; if not, they are potential victims of all the deviant currents outside Ahl al-Sunnah.

We never see this sensitivity of theirs toward reformism, for example, toward the religious reform efforts that were attempted in the single-party period. About that, complete silence.

Yet Ahl al-Sunnah is, above all, common sense; it is a mind that, proceeding from the consciousness that Muslims are a single ummah, contemplates the soundest measures aimed at preserving the bodily integrity of this ummah. The decision reached in the Ahl al-Sunnah line that the people of the qibla are not to be declared unbelievers is a manifestation of that mind. Ahl al-Sunnah always acts with the goal of conveying Islam to all the nations of the world, while keeping the house itself sound and with the sensitivity of extinguishing the strife within the house before it even breaks out. Trying to ensure that Muslims do not fall upon one another while setting out on a campaign against the real enemy is an Ahl al-Sunnah reflex. Those with a passion for civil war who leave the unbelievers aside and target Muslims are the greatest enemies of Ahl al-Sunnah. Today those religious hucksters, lustful for civil war, have blown the matter up and are keen to turn Ahl al-Sunnah, which itself developed as a safeguard against this very thing, into a tool for declaring their Muslim brothers unbelievers.

On the other side there is another attitude, another mindset growing up precisely on the basis of the discourse of such frauds about Ahl al-Sunnah. The words of a theologian, whom I learned of through Ergun Yıldırım's column in the daily Star, who characterized such people as "fugitive minds," show how absurd the dimensions are to which polarization on this matter has reached. "Fugitive minds": exactly right. With their psychology, their haste, their calculations, their way of thinking.

The lumpen point reached by the theologian in question, who for years took his thesis that the Qur'an is a historical text out of the realm of a scholarly thesis and turned it into as political and reactive a thesis as possible, is instructive. The theologian in question says:

"I think the very root of the Sunni Islam blended by the sects and communities that are the bane of our existence should be doused with matchwater. A theology needs to be developed anew from head to toe. Within Islam a Protestantism is needed. What I propose is a protest Islam. I am proposing a counter-revolution."

What kind of language is this? What kind of academic level? What studies of Sunni Islam, what analyses, have brought you to this point, and in whose name? Is there a world, a society, an ummah waiting for you like a Mahdi?

So "a theology anew from head to toe" can be developed at a desk, can it? Where did history, historicity go? Where in life does historicity take place? Of those who are Muslims, how many will take your protest Islam seriously, lend an ear, listen to and follow it? Why would they follow? What will you be able to promise them? Paradise? Worldly happiness? Prosperity? Whatever you are proposing, why should people believe it?

Such absurd statements, from each sentence of which fifty foolish problems would arise, have understood neither sociology, nor psychology, nor history, nor the nature of religion. The claim of historicism was never my claim, but I know that a person who makes a claim of historicism should at the very least not miss the most basic nature of history, of human beings, of sociology. Here, far from missing it, it is passed by from leagues away. But he misses one thing alone: the lustful desire the enemies of this religion feel at the prospect of a war within, at the prospect of Muslims devouring one another. As you revile the neighborhood you "fled," in Yıldırım's words, you turn into a great philosopher on the other side. With the lust for this, you gain a complete addiction to selling everything you can sell belonging to this side.

In fact, what is clearly missing on both sides is love of people, love of Muslims. In the words of our Prophet, sincerity toward God, His Messenger and the believers.

Do you not love the believers at all, have you never loved them? No search for truth leads anyone to this lovelessness, this disloyalty. No truth you think you have discovered distances you this much from those you once loved. If you looked at what is distancing you, perhaps you would benefit yourself too.

One who takes this saying of the Messenger of God to heart would not distance himself so far: "By the One in whose hand is my soul, you will not enter Paradise until you believe; and you will not have believed until you love one another."