The Deputy Prime Minister who says he won't think
“Of course we read the beginning of it, but we didn't go into the detail. Do I have to ponder for 10 hours? Do I have to think of Kimse Yok Mu? Why don’t you instead?” The nonsensical talk above belongs to Arınç, who is a deputy prime minister.
In other words, to a higher official who is supposed to concern himself with people’s needs, rights and freedoms; who is supposed to take care of and solve problems.
They belong to a ruling party that chants that it “will observe the poor, the needy,” or in their own words, “the waifs and strays.”
This is the hapless voice of a repeatedly obliterated version of an exceptional and frustrated deafness. The hysteria of assuming only the obeying and the power-adoring can reach a helping hand to the poor and needy. It's human, after all; a pot of contradictions. Occasionally wondrous, but most of the time wretched. “I cannot be bothered thinking what happens, why it happens,” he says. But who will think of it, if not the statesman to whom citizens entrust their rights?
It should concern every normal person that the Kimse Yok Mu charity’s status as an “institution that works for the public good” is revoked, despite the fact that there is no violation of law. It should concern anyone who calls themselves a “Muslim” twice: both from a legal and the religious point of view, because it has to do with rights of human beings and Allah. As for the statesmen, Omar b. Abdulaziz, Nizam ul-Mulk, Ibn Khaldun, Mawardi, Ghazali and many more agree that they should be even more concerned. But Arınç, the deputy prime minister who signs the decree, says “I don’t think of it, why don’t you instead?”
Descartes would have said, “I think, therefore I am no deputy prime minister.”
Politics and military history is full of victories of the sword and might. But the victories that build the pyramid of culture and civilization are those of the heart. Are you afraid of the victories of the heart? I guess: yes. The more good the Kimse Yok Mu charity does for people and the more it wins over their hearts, the worse it is for you.
Charity is a moral and humane faculty, it is above politics. In Gallipoli many of our sons, of our soldiers that we left buried there didn’t hesitate to extend a helping human hand to the enemy. And didn’t Saladin’s high-mindedness in war make Richard the Lionheart cry like a kid?
This is how Islamic history teaches humanitarian help. But are you children of another history? What is the explanation of such a hate and grudge that even enemies of Muslims were spared in history? Are you that intolerant of a charity that doesn’t approve of the AKP? There are many people in need across the world and in this country. Do you think we live in Mehmed the Conqueror’s prosperous land with no one to give zakat to; where the zakat hung on a tree along with a note in Cağaloğlu would wait there for three months?
There is no need to say there is great responsibility in your actions. You may have no fear of the law or people’s rights, but don’t you even have any concern of history’s final judgment? A responsible administrator is supposed to feel accountable in the face of history and to shun its verdict. Just as in the case of Sultan Abdulhamid II’s Grand Vizier Said Pasha, of which I wrote on July 5th. Said Pasha would read and examine each and every petition and document that reached his office.
A friend of the pasha asks about his meticulousness. “Pasha,” he says, “are you afraid of the sultan, is that why you are so sensitive and rigorous?”
Sait Pasha says, “No, it is not because of the sultan, it is because I’m concerned about the verdict of history!”
Even on the brink of collapse this is an Ottoman statesman’s approach.
But Arınç says, “We read the beginning, but we don’t go into the detail.”
In Arınç’s case the above question would be like this:
“Do you sign without thinking because you are afraid of the sultan? Don’t you know that there is Allah above the sultan?”
Don’t you see that your heedless signature will make many of the poor suffer?
“Do I have to think of Kimse Yok Mu? Why don’t you instead?” says Arınç. Surely they are thinking of the day to come when they will demand their rights. Both they, and the poor and needy… But don’t you ever think of what your response will be on that day? May Allah give you some consideration.
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