Carrying the Sira into the future: more than a complex

For centuries Muslims have described the Prophet as "the walking Qur'an." The answer given by Aisha, may God be pleased with her, when she was asked about his character is extremely striking: "His character was the Qur'an." This statement is not merely a sentence praising the Prophet's fine character. It is also one of the strongest expressions summarizing Islam's understanding of knowledge. The Qur'an is revelation; the Prophet is the living interpretation, the concrete application and the translation into life of that revelation. That is why the point missed by those who set the Prophet against the Qur'an is that understanding the Prophet is the shortest and most sound way of understanding the Qur'an. The Qur'an itself repeatedly relates that God sent to people a messenger "from among themselves," who recites God's verses to them, purifies them, and teaches them the Book and wisdom. That is, the Qur'an was conveyed to people within a life, within the Prophet's sira, by the Prophet himself, through a program of education shown to them. For this reason, the sira is not a narrative that merely exalts the Prophet and detaches him from life by attributing superhuman qualities to him; it is a way, a science, of understanding the Qur'an.

Although it is very important that the subject of the sira in the Islamic world be placed on a sound epistemological foundation and studied accordingly, we must admit that it is a neglected subject. Precisely for this reason, the Siyer-i Nebi Complex (Sira of the Prophet Complex), whose foundation was laid in Sivas in recent days with the participation of Interior Minister Mustafa Çiftçi, İlim Yayma Foundation (Foundation for Spreading Knowledge) President N. Bilal Erdoğan and many men of knowledge and thought from the Turkish and Islamic worlds, appears a candidate to become, far beyond being a new educational complex or a külliye project in the classical sense, one of the important links in the conception of civilization that Türkiye has developed in recent years.

This great dream, to which Siyer Foundation President Ömer Faruk Müderrisoğlu has devoted his life, was shared with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan about 14 years ago. The project, which set out with the President's support of that day, has now entered the process of being realized with the laying of its foundation. The complex, which will consist of thirty separate structures, covers a broad spectrum ranging from the Siyer-i Nebi Digital Presentation and Education Center to international specialization institutes, from research on hadith, kalam, Sufism and the history of medicine to international congress centers, from a library to youth camps. The specialization institutes to be established in the names of Imam al-Azam, Imam al-Maturidi, Imam al-Bukhari and Imam al-Ghazali are alone enough to show how ambitious the project is. When to this are added units aiming to answer contemporary needs, such as the Center for Combating Islamophobia, the International Center for Research on Islamic Scholars and the Workshops of the Prophets' Professions, what emerges is a civilizational project that aims not merely to narrate the past but to build the future.

In this respect Bilal Erdoğan's phrase in his speech, "the realization of a great dream that could even be considered a utopia," does not seem exaggerated. Because what is to be built here is not a few buildings; it is a new educational model that makes it possible to learn the life of the Prophet not merely by reading it but by, as it were, living it. The aim is to take the sira out of being historical material exhibited in museums and to turn it into a living civilizational experience.

We love our Prophet; but how well do we really know him? More importantly, how much of the Qur'an can we understand without knowing him? For the Qur'an conveys the principle to us; the Prophet shows how that principle is to be lived in life. The Qur'an commands justice; we see in the sira how justice is established. The Qur'an commands mercy; we learn in the life of the Messenger of God how mercy takes flesh and bone. The Qur'an commands consultation; we read its counterpart in the order of state and society in the Medina experience. The Qur'an teaches patience, forgiveness, trust, jihad, brotherhood and law; and we witness the living example of all of these in the life of the Prophet. For this reason the sira should be understood not as a second source independent of the Qur'an but as the living interpretation of the Qur'an.

Yet for many years the sira was either squeezed into the narrow field of expertise of academic circles or conveyed in popular narratives on a ground where legends and facts were mixed together. But the sira is not merely a chronology of events that took place in the past. It is the science of how the Qur'an was lived in history. For this reason the science of sira is not merely one of the historical disciplines but also one of the ways of rightly understanding the Qur'an. Because without knowing how the Messenger of God, the first addressee of the Qur'an, understood the revelation, how he applied it under which conditions, and how the first Muslim society was built with this revelation, it is inevitable that we would understand many of the Qur'an's rulings, purposes and spirit incompletely.

Retelling such a source with the means of the age does not in fact mean only developing a new language for new generations; it also means teaching how the Qur'an is to be carried into life anew.

The most striking aspect of Bilal Erdoğan's speech, however, was the accounting he made through Gaza. He said that explaining the human tragedy being lived in Gaza today solely by the oppression of outside powers would be incomplete, and that Muslims must also courageously question their own fragmentation. "If a genocide is taking place in Gaza today, if the Islamic world has become the address of great oppressions, one reason for this is our own disunity." This sentence is in fact not only a political assessment but also a civilizational accounting.

Because unity is not built by slogans alone. Before a common belief, unity produces a common way of understanding, a common ground of knowledge, a common memory and a common morality. And the sira is one of the most important sources that build precisely this common ground. For what first made the ummah an ummah was that the Qur'an had taken flesh and bone in the life of the Prophet.

But here there is another matter that must be emphasized, one that Bilal Erdoğan also pointed out in his speech.

In recent years, with the development of digital media, access to religious knowledge has become easier; but access to correct knowledge has not become easier to the same degree. Today, anyone who prepares a few short videos on social media platforms can present himself as an authority able to speak in the name of religion. Worse still, highly complex matters that were debated for centuries within scholarly methods are turned into polemical material in videos a few minutes long.

In the history of Islamic thought, there have of course been differences of opinion among scholars. In fiqh, kalam, tafsir and hadith, different ijtihads and different methods were developed. But these disagreements were conducted within certain methods that preserved the dignity of knowledge. The aim was not to discredit the other side but to come a little closer to the truth. For the truth was never seen as the monopoly of a single person; it was sought as the product of common reason, common consultation and scholarly deliberation.

Today, the same matters are made into a means of gaining followers on social media, of making the agenda, and of achieving digital visibility.

Unfortunately, some men of knowledge too fall for the allure of this atmosphere. Matters that were once treated with great seriousness in madrasas, in assemblies of learning and on academic platforms are today debated, turned into tabloid fare, on YouTube channels, in social media broadcasts and in short videos. The disagreements of scholars among themselves, from being a scholarly richness . People are steered toward taking sides instead of acquiring knowledge, and toward watching who silences whom instead of seeking the truth.

Yet knowledge is not a field that can be carried by the logic of ratings. Least of all can the life of our Prophet, the legacy of the Companions, and the sira, the first tafsir of the Qur'an reflected in life, be surrendered to the speed and superficiality of social media algorithms. Young people's minds should be brought together not with debates in which people declare one another unbelievers, belittle or discredit one another, but with a reliable, profound and comprehensive understanding of knowledge.

What the Muslim world needs today is not new polemicists who condemn one another over social media, but institutions of knowledge capable of reproducing under one roof the sagacity of Imam al-Azam, the rational depth of al-Maturidi, the meticulousness of al-Bukhari and the wisdom of al-Ghazali. The specialization institutes planned in the complex are extremely meaningful in this respect. For civilizations stand not on slogans but on institutions; and institutions are built on a correct understanding of knowledge.