The road is the destination itself

Is everything permissible on the road to the goal? This simple question, attributed to the famous political philosopher Machiavelli, is a thorny one that has occupied the minds of everyone with certain ideological goals for a long time.

Although Marxists believed that historical necessities would lead to revolution whether we wanted it or not, their political practice has consisted continuously of lending a hand to the flow of history for that revolution, of "forcing history toward revolution," so to speak.

This forcing itself was in fact a good indicator that they did not trust historical determinism enough, or did not believe that this determinism would actually bring anything good our way. No one had the strength to wait for the great route attributed to history. In order to reach the destination that would ultimately be reached as soon as possible, "revolutionary forces that could hardly be called proletarian" step in to speed things up.

This stepping in can suddenly include tactics that are not at all compatible with the morality of any goal. Each of these tactics is, after all, temporary and can be tolerated only temporarily for the sublime aims of the revolution. Since the existing system is generally built on immorality, being moral within this system is neither required nor, for that matter, possible.

Thus the tactics applied temporarily for the sake of the Revolution as a supreme value can quickly begin to become habit. The result is that there has always been a chasm between the Marxists' utopias and their political practices and daily lives.

In the eighties very similar debates took place, around the concepts of goal, means and method, among the Islamists who had adopted the concept of socialist revolution. It was debated whether, within a non-Islamic system, politics could be conducted wholly in submission to an Islamic ethic or maxim. This debate contained the danger of legitimizing the creation of a distance between the destination to be reached and the present state.

The most meaningful stance raised that day by Islamist common sense in this debate explained that the concept or ideal of the destination cannot be thought apart from the present state. The idea of the destination itself, together with the concepts that have attached to it such as tactics, method and strategy, is excessively worldly. When you conceive the destination as an ideal utopia where Islam or morality will be applied, you also conceive the road that reaches it as a constantly changing, temporary state. A temporary state, that is, a state that makes it possible to suspend the ethical rules, the basic morality of Islam. Is there such a state?

When you separate Islam's conception of life into a goal and the road traveled to reach that goal, you fall into the grave error into which all other worldly ideologies, and even the People of the Book, in particular Judaism, have fallen. You conceive all of life as a diaspora condition in which every ethical violation is permissible in order to reach a designed Zion.

To those who have not partaken of your book you deem every kind of immorality and injustice permissible. They are, after all, ummi, they have no share in your book, they have not been schooled in your homes, and are therefore ignorant, and the only meaning of their existence is to serve you. If they do not serve, you owe them no debt of justice either; they do not deserve compassion, mercy or justice. In order to reach your goals you may exploit them, lie to them, charge them interest, make them rot in prisons with false and baseless cases, violate their private life information, listen to their intimate conversations. All of these are negligible, insignificant things for that sublime goal, for the destination to be reached, for Zion.

If you act for Islam, deem these permissible, and at the end of the day have become unable even to feel the need to turn and ask the question, "What was Islam, really? What did it want from us?", then congratulations, the religion you follow is not Islam at all anymore.

A movement so obsessed with goals and strategy no longer has a religious side at all. It has turned into a professional alliance-making secular political movement drowned in the world to the very end. The movement's outwardly religious language means nothing. Just as it instrumentalizes everything, it has also badly instrumentalized people's pure relationship with God, and taqwa, and ikhlas, and sincerity.

In the Holy Qur'an, a group of the Jews is mentioned with appreciation as "extremely trustworthy in their word." Yet another group is mentioned in exactly the opposite way, that is, with the attribute of not being at all observant of their trusts. This attitude of theirs stems from their thinking that they have no responsibility toward non-Jews, that is, the ummis. That is why, while they regard interest as forbidden among themselves, they take interest from non-Jews, and even pioneer exploitation based on interest in the world.

If the Qur'an speaks of the Jews in this way, it does so not merely to disparage them but to explain that Muslims too may fall into the same error. Indeed, Muslims are held responsible not only toward Muslims but toward everyone. They are forbidden to take interest not only from Muslims but from everyone.

Let the ethical codes produced to set goals, destinations and targets and to reach them not bring us to the state into which those Jews fell.

Let us not forget, the road is the destination itself.

Whatever you promise people at the destination, you must demonstrate it on the road. If you cannot demonstrate it, your destination is not a destination and your road is not a road.