Saving Ourselves

Opinion by Prof. Dr. Kutluk Özgüven. In this essay on saving ourselves, he presents his religious and political interpretations. The views below are the author’s.

In verse 93 of Surah an-Nisa, it says:

وَمَنْ يَقْتُلْ مُؤْمِنًا مُتَعَمِّدًا فَجَزَٓاؤُ۬هُ جَهَنَّمُ خَالِدًا ف۪يهَا وَغَضِبَ اللّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَلَعَنَهُ وَاَعَدَّ لَهُ عَذَابًا عَظ۪يمًا

“The punishment of one who deliberately kills a believer is Hell, where he will remain forever. Allah is angry with him, has cursed him, and has prepared a great punishment for him.”

In Allah’s sight, at the Supreme Throne, the concepts of time and place do not apply. Almighty Allah, and those to whom He grants permission, are not bound by time and space.

Since time does not apply at that higher level, our ultimate destination is already known, independently of time. What we perceive is that we will be judged on our actions, thoughts and decisions. Yet, just like time, cause and effect are also a perception.

We do not go there because of what we do, think, or decide. We do, think, and make our own decisions because we are going there. Our feelings as these events unfold, our desire for Allah’s approval and our constant attachment to Him are signs of where we are heading, not what determines it.

People are not punished because of their crimes. They commit crimes in a way that fits that punishment. A Muslim who plans, sets a trap, and kills a believer is already, in his mind, someone who has long since entered Hell. There is no turning back for that murderous heart with its worn-out valves. The verse likewise leaves no way back; prayers and charity on the Night of Beraat do not erase it. For the one who kills a believer, and for the one who causes the killing, it is “game over.” He may still walk among us and even be praised for his lifeless eyes, but he is a living corpse, leafing through old magazines in Hell’s waiting room.

Allah, the First and the Last, is absolute being. Time is a perception in our minds. This holds across reality, for individuals and societies alike.

Communities whose destruction is decreed freely use the Muslim label without deserving it, keep committing one foolish act after another that will obviously lead to their ruin, both socially and individually, and faithfully apply the written protocol of annihilation.

The world’s Muslims, including Turkey’s religious society, offer another example: their numbers are growing, yet their moral and spiritual life is clearly in profound decline. The Kaaba Starbucks ummah, interest-based banks, fake Islamic interest-based banks, pious people kissing in public transport, those accompanying their veiled mother with tattooed skin, mass ecstasy parties in our sacred lands, ostentatious empty mosques, the complete neglect of education, the ignoring of the importance of the Quran’s structure of reason and logic, believers gathering to discuss who they know in which institution rather than to exchange ideas, the mentality of “I am only interested in my own material progress, my friend,” ignoring Allah’s commands to use our reason and learn from examples, bowing to 6284 and the like, the submission of the people and the ummah to arrogance and to uncouth new elites: all of this is a harbinger of a natural and inevitable path toward social extinction. The social analyses in the Quran and the Sunnatullah both make this clear.

This is true on a larger scale too. Countries—and the Islamic ummah as a whole—are heading toward destruction or, worse still, perpetual slavery. We are heading toward becoming the people of the fiery Hell described in the Quran. And all the while, we see this Hell on our screens and in the newspapers. The world is falling apart, yet we say, “It won’t affect me in my lifetime. Let the kids worry about it.” And when it does touch us, we cry out and talk about morality.

We have brought this hellish destruction upon ourselves as it knocks, one by one, at the doors of this ummah of two billion: staying silent out of fear of the phrase “political Islam,” which means obeying the Quran’s social commands, taking refuge in childish excuses so as not to hold fast to Allah’s rope and become one, and failing to intervene when Muslims are being slaughtered in a town with the excuse of “let 10 more years pass, let us grow stronger, then we’ll see.” While in a normal Islamic ummah there should be young people in the squares lining up to go to Gaza, Yemen, and Iran, and while it was like this a century ago, it is we who have manufactured a youth whose willingness even to defend its own homeland is doubtful.

All the signs point to a world divided almost like Paradise and Hell, in which Jews and their disposable allies—whose numbers they will gradually reduce—will rule, while Muslims will be killed, tortured and humiliated for sport and entertainment, as they are already being humiliated. By failing to oppose the systems of control and digital surveillance being established, we are also shutting off our ways out.

The steps leading to this social hell are ours. Not following the Quran, being razor-sharp in your own business but retreating into a childish mind when it comes to Allah’s path, settling for easy, so-called boycotts, or throwing wrenches into the machinery of Islamic unity, and saying, “I’m comfortably off.”

And yet, what a precious life they have! They know nothing of art. Nothing of music. They take no pleasure in beauty. There is no depth. There is no spirituality. The children have already been raised on unlawful food and money they did not earn, they have no connection to the matter, with an attitude of “The old man said, ‘Let’s go to the mosque.’ He’s paying for my trip to America, so I couldn’t say no.” What remains is how many inches the television is, the installment on the new summer house, making the brother-in-law burst with jealousy. Did you sell eternal life for these? Is this why you are suffering so deeply inside?

If this continues, the massacres in Tehran, Sana’a, Beirut and Gaza that we watch while cracking sunflower seeds will come to us too—or we will bow before the enemy. If our cities are bombed tomorrow, let us not cry, “Where is the Islamic world? It has betrayed us.”

There is no time in Allah’s sight. There is no cause and effect, no before and after. Allah destroys the societies He will annihilate through the corruption of those in power. They become blind and lose their reason. They fail to take precautions or follow the sharia—that is, the procedures—and cause accidents, disasters and massacres. Societies collapse this way.

We have a society showing signs of collapse. We must pray, put our prayers into action, and strive to set things right.

If it has been decreed, we cannot avert it. By striving, we can save ourselves.

Prof. Dr. Kutluk Özgüven

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