What was Ismail the price of, and what will be Haniyeh's ransom?

DOHA

Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un. We are at the lodge of the Ismail of our age, who gave magnificent lessons about what life should mean for us through his life, his struggle, his philosophy, the stance he showed toward the deaths of nearly all his relatives, his steadfastness and patience, and finally through his own death as a martyr.

When the Prophet Ismail received the command that he was to be sacrificed, he wrote the epic of submission by saying to his father Ibrahim, "Do what you are commanded; you will find me only among the patient." He believed with certainty that when God, who gives life, took it, He would give something far more valuable than it. For those who understand the nature of creation and are familiar with God's sunnah in creation, this is not such a great secret after all. Otherwise, for those who see life as nothing but this world, death is the end of all the blessings that make up this life that a person has somehow gained. That is why those who do not grasp that victory draws nearer with martyrdoms, and that the soil becomes a homeland by being watered with the blood of martyrs, see deaths as casualties.

In one and the same person, Ismail Haniyeh was tested both with the trial of Ibrahim and with the trial of Ismail, and with a magnificent stance he showed the people of our age that both attitudes do not belong only to the past. When his children, grandchildren, nephews and daughters-in-law were all taken from him, he believed that God would give something better in return for all of them and to all of them. In the end his own life was asked of him; he had said he would give it without any hesitation, and he gave it.

Ismail is always the target of the Children of Israel, together with everything he represents. According to them, Ismail is his father's stepson. He laughed out of place and out of time. The incident is related in the Book of Genesis of the Holy Book as follows: "And the child grew, and was weaned [...] And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne unto Abraham, Ishmael, laughing, and she said unto Abraham: Cast out this bondwoman and her son; for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son Isaac" (Genesis, 21: 9-10).

I have written before that, as far as we know, there are no clear accounts in Islamic sources of exactly how the incident took place. But this account in the Holy Book has created a categorical division for the Children of Israel. The dimension of (in)justice in deeming a newborn child deserving of so great a punishment merely because he laughed has never been put on the agenda. Yet what debates would have arisen from this within the Judeo-Christian tradition, had there been a little ethical and justice concern.

Meanwhile, Isaac took his name from his mother's laughing, having been given the glad tidings that she would give birth at the age of a hundred, and taking this glad tiding for a joke. The story of the sons of Ibrahim is a story in which only Isaac laughs. Yet Ismail's laughter is a transgression of a boundary in this story. Ismail need not laugh, indeed he must never laugh. The laughter of him or of those descended from him is an act that angers Israel and crosses the line.

And not only this, of course. Ismail is a stepchild, he is Palestine; he has neither the right to laugh nor the right to be an heir to this land. His land, his children, his life and his property do not belong to him. They can be seized, killed, ignored.

Yet Ismail is a beloved servant of God, together with his brother Isaac. But in this trial a special role, a high duty, was given to him. The price he paid is, in effect, the entrusting, in complete submission, to God as a trust, of the life that for him belongs to God. It is this consciousness that makes Ismail Ismail. How would the ignorant, who consider what is given to them to be from themselves, know this? Ismail's ransom was paid to Ibrahim and to all humanity by God Himself, who put him through that harsh trial, with the ram He sent. For everything belongs to God, the life is His, and so are the price and the ransom. Even if Ismail had been sacrificed, the life he would have given belonged not to him but to God.

Believers who believe that the price Ismail Haniyeh paid, the trust he delivered, will not go without recompense before God, took his call before he died on 3 August as a testament, and ran to the squares in many parts of the world, in every city of Turkey, and cried out: One Ismail Haniyeh dies, thousands are resurrected, we are all Ismail Haniyeh! Whatever genocidal Israel does, there is no land promised to it by God, only a land in which it commits transgression and with which transgression it runs toward its own end. You, the USA, the unlimited supporter of the genocide, and you, the Arab leaders who support it with unlimited silence, are all partners in these crimes!

The funeral prayer and burial in Doha also contained great lessons and great admonitions for those who wished to see them. Participants from every part of the Islamic world, from Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt, Bosnia, Albania, Morocco, Algeria, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, represented in the person of Ismail Haniyeh a complete Islamic Unity. Of course, a union of Islamic peoples independent of their leaders. Our condition, officially. Had it not been for Qatar, which from the beginning has hosted the resistance giving it the most sincere and strongest support, there would have been no Arabs at the state level. That is why the fact that the Palestinian cause is an Islamic cause rather than an Arab cause was manifested once again, plain and clear.

That the Emir of Qatar, who was personally present at the funeral prayer, did not wear the black agal over his keffiyeh has probably escaped most people's notice. At funerals or condolences, the nearest relatives of the deceased do not wear the agal; with this the Emir of Qatar was elegantly saying that he was the one to whom condolences are due.

It did not escape notice that Turkey showed very high-level participation at the funeral ceremony. In addition to the Speaker of the Grand National Assembly, the Vice President, the Foreign Minister and his Deputies, the Chairmen of Political Parties and a large number of members of parliament, a large number of civil society volunteers also took part. Thus every shade of the Turkish people declared their position in the Palestinian struggle as an Islamic cause.

When I landed in Doha for Ismail Haniyeh's funeral, one more death notice fell onto my phone. A notice saying that the esteemed historian of the Seljuks, Prof. Dr. Mikail Bayram Hoca, who had been under treatment for a long time, had gone to the mercy of the Truth. Inna lillah. Returning from Doha the same day, with the dust of the martyrs' cemetery on our feet, we headed to Konya to see Mikail Hoca off on his last journey. Let us continue on Wednesday, God willing.