Kemal Kelleci against his own windmills: a stranger at his own door, familiar to thousands

Kemal Kelleci's was a story of tremendous devotion. In its own singular form, of course, it is a story that will never be repeated. But it is a story that faith, love and friendship can always produce. He himself did not live what he lived to keep it to himself. He tried to carry his faith, his anguish and his love to others, to make them catch it.

Perhaps for exactly this reason, his encounter with another hero of devotion, Sayyid Qutb, and with In the Shade of the Qur'an (Fî Zılâli'l-Kur'an), became in his life a perfect example of "selective affinity," two things that found each other. It was as if he had found in it what he had sought for years. For Fî Zılâl too was not merely a commentary explaining verses, and its author was not an exegete conducting semantic studies with the dryness of an academic; it was a work set down in lines from within struggle, one that read the Qur'an as an address intervening in living life. It took the Qur'an out of being a text belonging to the past, called the person of today to take responsibility, to acquire character and to intervene in the world, and built believers up as subjects. Life was faith and jihad, it was devotion, it was running about with love and without expecting any worldly reward such as rank, position, property or wealth. Qutb and his work were exactly the kind of friend Kelleci needed.

Kelleci did not merely read this work or recommend it; he carried it on his back in the true sense of the word. He took the sixteen-volume sets of Fî Zılâl in boxes to the cities of Anatolia. It is said that in 1979 alone he played a part in distributing five thousand sets of the commentary and at least as many Qur'an translations. He made no profit from the sale of the books and asked for no fee, just as none of the messengers of the past who carried God's message ever asked for or obtained any fee or benefit in return for their mission. Most of the time he covered the travel costs himself too. An activity that others could have turned into commercial gain, that man made a means of earning merit.

But what he did was not simple book distribution. In the places he went, he formed reading circles, organized conferences and brought young people together. He carried Sezai Karakoç, Necip Fazıl, Nurettin Topçu, Mehmet Âkif İnan and Nuri Pakdil onto their agenda. For he did not understand the return to the Qur'an as a dry textualism. He wanted a world of character, literature, thought and action to be built around the Qur'an. He saw the student houses he visited not merely as places of lodging but as small seeds of a new society.

The most authentic manifestation of his understanding of the Qur'an was social justice and an ethic of trust (emanet). He looked after the dormitory, scholarship, book, job, transport and even marriage problems of students who came to Ankara. I never had such a relationship with him personally. But according to what is told of him in almost legendary terms, he would stand surety for student loans for young people he had never even met. It is said that although some of the students he stood surety for did not pay their debts and his salary was garnished, he did not give up standing surety for new applicants. He took no commission from money handed to him for aid and did not turn his mediation into personal gain. He was a trustworthy man who betrayed no one's property, honor or trust.

In his life, faith appeared less as an abstract claim than as a relationship of trust. For a person to pay his debt on time, to deliver the aid given to him to its owner, and not to turn public resources into personal wealth were the most concrete measures of loyalty to the Qur'an. In an age when pious-looking people multiply who keep their creditors waiting although they have money in their coffers, who delay their subcontractor's payment, and who consider the opportunities they gained through the public their own right and cleverness, Kelleci's life sets a heavy standard before us.

The generations of Islamism raised in times of poverty, pressure and exclusion were not always able to keep the same moral clarity when they were tested by power and wealth. Yet Islamism lives only to the extent that it can touch people and society, and turn social justice from a discourse into an everyday ethic. Kemal Kelleci's standing surety for students and his carrying commentaries on his back were not two separate activities. Both were manifestations of the same understanding of the Qur'an: to change both a person's mind and the conditions of his life.

Of course, this immoderate devotion also carried a heavy price. Cervantes' genius lies in not merely exalting Don Quixote. It shows the fractures he caused as much as his devotion. In this respect the comparison has a bitter side as far as Kemal Kelleci is concerned. Beside Don Quixote there is Sancho Panza, who constantly calls him back to the realities of life. In Kelleci's life, however, this worldly balance was often weak. It is said that while rushing to the aid of other people's children, he neglected his own children and family. The bittersweet joke that years later would give his memoir its name was born from this. One day when he came home relatively early, the child who opened the door did not recognize him and called out to his mother, "There's a stranger at the door!" Kemal Kelleci had been willing to be a stranger at his own door in order to remain familiar to those outside.

This must be recorded without romanticizing it. Devotion too has its due, a debt owed to family and loved ones. Kelleci's life should be read not only through its exemplary aspects but also through the costs of wholly consuming oneself for a cause. But this shortcoming does not cast a shadow on his sincerity; on the contrary, it shows how he acted with an unbridled devotion, as a madly loving devotee.

At the end of the novel Don Quixote turns back into Alonso Quijano, gives up his knightly adventure, and dies that way. Here Kemal Kelleci's story parts ways with Cervantes' hero. Even in the days when he had grown old and lost his strength, he was thinking of the books he would distribute, telling young people never to let go of the Qur'an. He refused to accept the world's telling him, "This adventure is over now." Until his last breath he asked for a new round.

The mind of our time may easily find such people unproductive, scattered, immoderate and even mad. But history does not advance only with flawless programs, professional institutions and well-calculated strategies. Sometimes a civil servant, with the books he carries on his back, can open a new door in the minds of thousands of people. Sometimes standing surety for a young man one does not know can become a more powerful Islamic witness than years of theoretical talk.

What has diminished with the passing of Kemal Kelleci is not merely a good man. A part of Islamism's claim to sincerity, self-sacrifice, social justice and return to the Qur'an has also withdrawn from among us with him. What needs to be done now is not to turn his life into an untouchable legend, but to remember anew the moral standard he represented. For Islamism touches people to the extent that people like Kemal Kelleci multiply; to the extent that they decrease, it turns into institution, office, wealth and dry rhetoric.

Another star has fallen, like the star Keje saw in the sky. One of the last dervishes of the generation of the men who grew roses has completed his long marathon. Behind him he left not offices, fortunes and showy buildings, but the young people whose hands he took, the people for whom he stood surety, the books he carried, and the lives he directed toward the Qur'an.

May God have mercy on you, Kemal Ağabey. We knew you well. May your abode be paradise and your station be exalted.