Satan is in torment indeed

The sensitivities Muslims display toward their beliefs seem to them too much. That they hold their Prophet dearer than their own lives, that they are so devoted that they can sacrifice their own lives and property for him, strikes them as bigotry.

A person may be prepared to the point of sacrificing his own property and life for the one he loves, but his sacrificing another beloved for the sake of the one he loves is the highest level at which love is tested. A person can renounce his own life more easily, but to be tested through his beloved is the hardest of trials.

When Abraham (peace be upon him) was tested with the person he loved most, with the child God had granted him in the latter part of his life, this was far heavier for him than a trial with his own life; yet Abraham was able to put the knife to his child's throat in a way that deserved the station of being God's Khalil, His intimate friend.

Believers, the community of Muhammad, to express that they hold their Prophet dearer than their own lives, say that they sacrifice to him the being they love most, beyond even their own lives,

their parents.

They give up their parents; if their commands and their ways are contrary to the Prophet's way, it is the Prophet's way that is preferred, not the way of the parents or the forefathers. If parents make a request contrary to the will or pleasure of God and His Messenger, the commands of the mother and father are not obeyed; what is to be obeyed is the command of the Prophet, the command of God. The relationship between believers and their Prophet is not like the relationship with a messenger who, like a postman, has delivered God's message. He is toward the believers more compassionate even than parents, a monument of tenderness who has devoted himself with all his heart and being to their worldly and eternal happiness: "O believers! A Messenger has come to you from among yourselves, one to whom it is grievous that you should suffer hardship, who is anxious over you, and toward the believers is gentle and merciful" (Surah At-Tawba: 168).

The attachment, love and sacrifice of Muslims toward the Prophet is not one-sided. The foundation of this affection, this attachment, this love was laid by the Prophet himself. Love, attachment, sacrifice, friendship and loyalty also have a sunnah, a sunnah that is learned, embraced, adhered to and turned into a way of life, a way of being.

THIS ATTACHMENT BREEDS, HAS BRED, ENVY.

That is why one of the matters most targeted by the forces that wage war on Muslims has been this attachment between Muslims and the Prophet. Separating the Qur'an from the Prophet, questioning and shaking his authority among Muslims, trivializing his sunnah, making his person ordinary, and so on. Yet God's greatest blessing upon us is that He has sent a messenger "from among ourselves," who "recites His verses to us," who "educates us," and who "teaches us the Book and wisdom."

The whole of this authority of the Prophet among Muslims lies in the fact that he introduces us to God, our Creator, our Lord who is the true possessor of mercy and compassion, and leads us to Him. At the core and center of the matter is God, is tawhid. Muslims are granted, and live, the blessing that worshiping God and God alone liberates them from every sort of draft of a god, from tyrants, despots, and dealers in religion.

The sensitivity Muslims show toward their own beliefs, their Prophet, their Qur'an seems excessive to them. That is why they have always struck at this sensitivity. With their false gods put forward besides God, with their feeble little deities that have no harm or benefit, not even a benefit to themselves... With their leaders put forward besides the Prophet, leaders who lead to no light, who illuminate nothing, who only bury people deeper in darkness, characterless, personalityless, narcissistic, devoid of love for people, who do not even love those they have made servants to themselves, who harbor not an atom of compassion for them...

They find bigotry in Muslims' attachment to God and His Messenger, but they themselves never hold back from behaving with utmost bigotry in the hostility they show toward Muslims and their prophets.

Today in Turkey, if you were to search the way those who find Muslims' sensitivity toward a cartoon attacking their Prophet excessive take refuge in their own sacred things, would you find a particle of reason, common sense, or balance?

Yesterday in Yeni Şafak, a news item reported a social media post by one of the CHP-leaning journalists who supported Leman magazine, which created public outrage with its cartoon targeting our Prophet Muhammad, in which he had defended the closure of Gırgır magazine over a cartoon that, in the past, mocked Moses (who is our prophet too), shown (in the cartoon) as the Prophet of the Jews.

Truthfully, that cartoon too was impudent, but that is not the point. It is the approach of those who find Muslims' sensitivity excessive when it comes to their own beliefs. They find it too much for Muslims to stand up for their own beliefs, while the fascistic obsessions they impose on the world regarding antisemitism or other beliefs stand in plain sight.

In fact, what did they not do, since 1918, to destroy the sensitivities, the attachment and the loyalty of Muslims, whose political unity and existence they had already destroyed?

This is the spirit of Muslims; they could not take it captive.

This is the handle that will, sooner or later, enable Muslims to unite in a single body, a political body, and call to account their merciless, insatiable colonialism and their bloody occupations.

They could not succeed in tearing off that handle. They are burning over it. May they go on burning. The devil is necessary in torment.