The Pope dies, a Pope is elected, what do 2 billion Muslims do?

The death last Monday morning, at the age of 88, of Pope Francis, the spiritual leader of the Catholic world with a population of over one billion, has inevitably turned eyes to the functionality of the office of "spiritual leadership," or of a world-scale "religious leadership." The Vatican, which occupies the space of a small neighborhood within Rome, the capital of Italy, is recognized as an independent state, and thanks to the Papacy it holds very deep influence over a world population of over 1 billion. Of course, you may also think separately about what share of this influence falls to Italy. With the Pope's death, a vacant-seat period (sede vacante) arises for this world, and this is a temporary period for the Catholic realm.

Until an election is held and a new Pope is chosen, an abnormal situation prevails; life is, as it were, considered to have stopped for this realm; although there is a body that will react to what is happening in the world, perceive it, and manage it, many things are suspended because this body has no head. But suspension is nevertheless a temporary state, from which one is to be taken down again. Yet even if the state of suspension is one that has come upon the head, it is an interruption, a state of paralysis. That is why breaths are held until the election is completed through an extremely serious procedure, and in everyone the expectation of who the new leader will be, and of a leader being chosen at all, grows stronger. Cardinals responsible for the election are summoned to Rome from every part of the Catholic world to hold the election, and they make their choice through a process called the Conclave. Conclave is a term meaning locked with a key, and it refers to the elector cardinals who will take part in the election being locked with a key in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. This locking is a measure requiring closure to outside influence and not leaving here without having made the election. The election may last days, weeks, and, though historically very exceptionally, even months. But the principle is that the key is not opened until the election is made.

(While we are on the subject, let us recall that each of the Rightly Guided Caliphs was chosen in a different way, but it is well known that for the election of the third Caliph, Umar appointed a council of seven persons to choose in a similar way.)

Let us not say "what is it to us?"; after all, Catholicism is a religion-sect to which one in every eight people in the world belongs, and because it has been represented for centuries by an uninterrupted head, it has a central role in shaping today's world. That they are represented is in fact the natural result of the matter; having a head means this world is organized and able to form a political body. If you are to have any effectiveness in the world, it will only be through this organizational performance; there is no other way. Like the departing Pope, the coming Pope will have very important political agendas for the Catholic world. For the realization of Catholic ideals, he will continue to produce policy from this center for all the states, churches, communities, and organs subordinate to it.

How important this is for us Muslims we learn by recalling, with great lamentation and pain, in every event we have lived through for a hundred years. Most recently, what is the genocide that Zionist Israel has carried out in Gaza so shamelessly, despite the two billion Muslim population, if not an insult to the very existence of all those two billion? There is no point in shouting and screaming "where are the two billion Muslims?" in the face of Israeli attacks, as though one were quite foreign to the heart of the matter. All Muslims who perceive this insult grow within themselves a great anger, a rancor, in the world, but lacking a political body prevents them from turning this anger into an effective response, a struggle. We are in no position to boast of numbers; in this state of headlessness, even if the number of Muslims were not 2 billion but 10 billion, the situation would be no different.

Today not only the Catholic World but also the Protestant World, the Orthodox World, the Hindu and Buddhist World, the Jewish World, even the Mormons in America with a community of 13-14 million, have a political body. On a world scale, they follow a policy that will enlarge these bodies, make them a world religion, and protect and represent their presence in the world. In this scene, only the Muslims have no representation. There is no one who does not in fact know that all this oppression, all this pain, is a result of Muslims not having a representation.

In recent days the murderer Netanyahu let slip the remark, "We will not allow an Islamic caliphate to be established, neither in the north nor in the south." We actually know this. That Muslims have no leadership, that they are deprived of leadership, is the most important part of the policy of keeping Muslims under control, especially in the name of the Zionist project. Leaving Muslims headless, caliph-less, is a result of the policy of keeping Muslims under imperialist exploitation and domination.

No one knows better than Netanyahu these days that if Muslims had a head, they could not do what they have done, could not occupy their homelands so shamelessly. In fact, with this remark he means that Syrian and Turkish politics have recently been moving into action on the point of representing Muslims. He sees very well that the administration in Syria is not friendly to him, that it is an administration with its own will, and he speaks of taking measures against it. Just as he sees no one and no country that truly represents Islam as anything other than an enemy, it is inevitable that he perceive any positive development in the Islamic world as a danger to himself.

2 billion people, from whatever angle you look, is a great power potential in the world. A potential that can bring benefit, protection, and power to anyone who somehow attaches to it. No one has yet been able to question an outlook that liquidated this potential in one go and then celebrated it as though it were a great revolution. Would a person celebrate a harm done to himself by himself? Would anyone rejoice at bidding farewell, with his own hand, to his own strength, his head, his eyes, his ears, his arms and legs?

This is exactly that kind of thing! Is there any possibility that someone from among us would rejoice at our head being cut off?

We are clever, but are the vast Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Buddhist, Hindu, and Jewish worlds not as clever as we are? Why did they not think of liquidating their own spiritual existence? Have we ever thought about it? Are we ready to think about it?