Kenan Çamurcu

In front of the building where we lived, there was likely a 50-year-old mulberry tree. It was the only thing left from the ecocide of the construction metastasis in the street. They cut it down on the grounds that it prevented vehicle parking. When the administration announced this "service," someone said, "May Allah be pleased with you." This is the kind of Islam that celebrates ill-treatment of nature, which Allah has presented as proof of His existence and oneness in hundreds of verses in the Qur'an, hoping for His pleasure. This Islam is now fixated on the dog we rescued from the street. It can't even tolerate hearing its natural sound, which is legally, morally, and philosophically natural. It doesn't care about the detailed story of the dog that slept with the believing youths in the cave in the Qur'an (Surah Al-Kahf 18 and 22), nor many other examples.

The government, which argues that the purpose and spirit of Law No. 5199 are to find homes and parents for homeless animals, should have also included provisions in the law to address conservative individuals who harass those acting in accordance with this purpose and spirit.

We remember, don't we, the ecocidal aggression of the "Turkey-backed group" in Afrin, mercilessly cutting down a thousand-year-old olive tree and shouting victory cheers with laughter (even mentioning the Prophet's name "Ya Muhammad" in the background anthem)? And the Qatari in Istanbul Başakşehir who, for pleasure, drove his car over sleeping dogs on the ground, crushing them? The torment, oppression, torture, and massacres in the so-called shelters, which are concentration camps, are also from the same pen. All the perpetrators are of the same homo-politicus ilk, with a Muslim identity. They are excessively lavish in using Allah, the Prophet, the Qur'an, and other religious concepts.

Where inflationary religiosity uses religious concepts profusely and inappropriately, causing religious life to lose its naturalness and go berserk, naturally, whatever is done is seen as being commanded by Allah. If the immune system they have built by putting God forward shows how recklessly they squander even religion and faith, what wouldn't they do with human affairs?

We are shaken every day by a new example of the tragedy unfolding in the toxic atmosphere of the anti-dog campaign, based on media manipulations. Everyone who loves nature is anxiously panicked about where this will lead. Those hostile to nature and full of hatred and anger towards Allah's animal community are, of course, pathologically insensitive. There's a situation akin to thousands of deviants from the Muslim world emerging from their hiding places to rush into a safari of savagery when the magnet of absolute evil, ISIS, appeared.

A sick people attacking dogs and cats with vile thoughts incompatible with human dignity, murderous feelings, and maniacal methods. These terrifying acts are not exceptional or isolated. It's organized, collective, mass horror.

In old Turkey, those with anti-nature, anti-dog, anti-cat, and anti-women false religions used to practice them among themselves, unable to raise their heads or voices. Now, emboldened by the protection provided by conservative power, they are brazenly revealing their perversions. We are in the incubation period of a local and national Talibanism.

Conservative, sanctimonious, neo-nationalist Turkish Islam, from its elites to its common people, is the most ignorant and oppressive of all Islams in the world. Political piety, i.e., conservatism, is precisely the politicized and compounded form of this dark ignorance.

Aggressors emboldened by practices targeting homeless animals are lying in wait, ready to raid every area of life step by step. To avoid saying, "we shouldn't have given up the homeless animals" when they attempt to subjugate everyone who isn't like them, we must stand firm against all kinds of attacks now.

This is the contradiction between people who are aware of living in nature and embrace peaceful coexistence with living beings in nature, and people who aim to enslave nature and everything within it. Those who feel that Islam, which sees nature as an enemy and adversary, is not the same religion are right. Religion is a state of consciousness regarding the wholeness of creation. A religion that sees nature and everything within it as an enemy cannot be divine. It is merely an ideology that serves to legitimize human malicious desires. Islam hostile to nature and species of living beings is a bastardized religion, an innovation, a fabrication; it has no connection to Islam, the religion of nature/primordial disposition (fitra). Their talk of belief in Allah is merely a slogan and an ideology of domination. In reality, they believe in nothing but power and wealth.

It's clear that this malevolent appetite for hatred and genocide against dogs is a simulation for these harmful beings. They want a purification (purge) festival. This is a craze that will be tested on dogs and then expand towards humans. The carnivorous motivation behind slaughtering sacrifices everywhere with excitement and lust, even though it's obligatory only during the Hajj, is ostensibly that. That enthusiasm stems from the dark thought that the animal whose meat is eaten deserves it because it's at a lower level in the hierarchy of life. That's why they named the day of Hajj al-Akbar "Eid al-Adha" (Feast of Sacrifice). Although it's not, they portray sacrifice as an indispensable command of Allah, turning it into a day of madness with countless incidents.

The Qur'an's hierarchical listing of three types of living creatures at the same level without hierarchy, and the statement that their common origin is water, addresses this very discrimination that views animals as inferior species: "And Allah has created every [moving] creature from water. Some of them walk on their bellies, some on two legs, and some on four." (Surah An-Nur 24:45). Commentators state that those walking on their bellies are snakes and worms, those on two legs are humans and birds, and those on four legs are other animals. (For example, Al-Qurtubi [d. 1273], Al-Jami‘ li-Ahkam al-Qur'an, 6/224, Dar al-Fikr 2019). But what they neglect is that all these living creatures are grouped under the same categorical definition (dabbah) and aligned as sub-categories of a common origin of species. Moreover, from the perspective of Qur'anic literature, the mention of humans in the second place proves that, contrary to popular belief, they are not the last link in the perfection of existence. Another important detail is that the movement of these three types of living creatures is described as "walking." That is, creatures without feet do not crawl, as the Turkish expression, which also contains a derogatory connotation, might suggest; they walk like humans.

In the worldview of Islam, the religion of nature, "animal" refers to all living creatures that can walk. Humans are a subspecies and heading under this main category. Excluding Descartes' biological definition of "speaking animal," philosophers, according to their inclinations, preferred to qualify it with different attributes based on their emphasis: social animal, systematic animal, etc. Al-Farabi's hayawan al-insi (human animal/living being) refers to sharing the same essence with animals. Hayawan al-madani (civil animal) is related to the ability to establish social life. (Al-Farabi, Risalat al-Sa'adah, 14).

In Surah Al-Ankabut 29:64, after warning that this worldly life belonging to humans is nothing but play and diversion, it is stated that the true and lasting life is the one to be lived in the hereafter. The word used for this life is "hayawan" (animal/living being). While commentaries state that this word means eternal and perfect life, they do not dwell on why such a word was chosen. The Iranian scholar Ali Akbar Qureshi, in Qamus al-Qur'an, states that the root of the word is "hayy" (life), and that when it was "hayayan," the second 'ya' letter turned into a 'waw' (hayawan). Even if for the afterlife, calling life "hayawan" and this being the general name for walking species can be associated with the fact that animal life began millions of years before human life. They are the hosts. Humans joined this established, natural, real life much later and ruined it with their evil will and choice.

The angels' objection (Surah Al-Baqarah 2:30) to the recreation of the "species that will cause mischief and shed blood" (caliph/successor), after apparently having experienced human-induced destruction many times, has been transformed by horrible human Muslims into praise and rank, with the distortion that humans were made Allah's caliph. Humans, who claim superiority over animals that have existed for 2 billion years, and who want to dominate and enslave nature with all its living species, are "very ignorant, very oppressive" (Surah Al-Ahzab 33:72). The Muslim boast of ashraf al-makhluqat (the noblest/most superior of created beings) is hollow, empty, and baseless. On the contrary, no living creature other than humans is mentioned with negative or bad attributes in the Qur'an.

How many miles away from the understanding of religion, world, and life of these people is the prayer the Indian dervish had inscribed on his clogs: "Mother Nature, I beg your forgiveness for the lives I extinguish with every step I take." The ritual where indigenous peoples (Native Americans) apologize and seek forgiveness with embarrassment from the animal they hunted or killed for sustenance is actually a rebellion against the helplessness created by necessity. For this reason, vegetarianism can rightly be seen as an advanced level of piety, asceticism, and dervishhood. Veganism, on the other hand, is the exact equivalent of asceticism. For reel (existing, actual, established) Islam, these carry no meaning, which is consistent with their ordinary course of life.

The hysterical desire of an understanding that pours concrete over the ground and aims to de-landscapize everywhere, and why it cannot look at the earth and its blessed soil like people loyal to primordial disposition (fitra), should not be solely attributed to making money from concrete. There is also an underlying ideological, cultural, and religious cause for the malady. We are in a frightening, intimidating, and tedious interregnum where secular radicalism, whose historical philosophical foundation lies in war with nature, is now seen as the guardian of nature, while Islam, whose philosophical foundation lies in harmony with nature, is waging war against nature with the weapon of concrete.

A mu'min (believer) means both one who is trusted and one who inspires trust. That's why it is one of Allah's attributes. A mu'min is someone who is certain of Allah's existence as a witness in nature. When they are certain of His existence and integrate with nature, they become a guarantee for the safety of living life. In Surah Al-Hujurat 49:14, those whose claim to faith is not accepted and who are dictated to be content with being Muslim are those who do not possess this quality that would entitle them to be included in the definition of a mu'min. The theological and sociological tradition of contemporary Islam is the Islam of Al-Hujurat 49:14. (The Arabs said, "We have believed." Say, "You have not believed; but say, 'We have submitted [i.e., become Muslim],' for faith has not yet entered your hearts.") Because at that time, being Muslim (submission/Islam) was like a Pax Romana. It meant joining a peace pact. Being a mu'min was a different category, requiring radical change in beliefs and actions.

The equation is quite simple: if all species of living creatures are warned in the Qur'an as unique verses of Allah's existence and oneness, yet many who think they believe are at the forefront of harming, even showing hostility towards, that living life under various pretexts, then the claimed belief is false.

According to Plato, the universe was filled with God. Bruno's aesthetic pantheism was born in this bed. Ibn 'Arabi's wahdat al-wujud (unity of existence). Aristotle, inspired by Thales, while conveying the idea that the universe is full of gods, interpreted this to mean that the soul permeates the entire universe. (Étienne Gilson, God and Philosophy, 24). The world was also a superorganism. However, Aristotle, while designing the mechanical cosmology that would become a source for the dominant Muslim conception, removed the prime mover God from outside the universe. This is the unpleasant adventure of nature's alienation from humanity, starting with Bacon transforming it into an enemy to be subjugated. While these ideas are no longer remembered fondly in the lands where they flourished, Muslims have become disciples of positivist ideology, rushing to jihad against nature and its species. They normalize hatred towards animals and the cruelty inflicted upon them.

The English philosopher Bacon (d. 1626), considered the intellectual father of the modernization of torture, viewed nature, which he assumed to be female, as an entity to be "bridled and enslaved," whose "secrets were to be forcibly extracted by torture." For example, making the earth vomit gold by poisoning it with cyanide, fully supported by conservative Muslims, is excessively Baconian.

Descartes considered plants and animals as machines, claiming they had no souls (Bedia Akarsu, Çağdaş Felsefe [Contemporary Philosophy], 6). Like Nietzsche's "übermensch," a tyrannical and despotic regime will emerge from the existential philosophy aimed at proving human superiority and its dominion over the earth and living life. The perfection hierarchy in Darwin, where humans are the final stage, is treated as the crown of victory in the universe of existence by the Muslim mind. This is what ashraf al-makhluqat means. This definition does not appear in the Qur'an. The Prophet did not say it either. Muslims fabricated it.

The false belief that humans were created in the image of Allah (Bukhari 6227) is the basis of alienation from nature. From this point on, the path is opened for the destruction of nature, hostility towards living beings other than the human species, and the madness of invading nature. The origin of considering humans as a superior species is also the claim of resemblance to God. Thankfully, Copernicus shattered the geocentric conception, and the anthropocentric doctrine that regarded humans as the rulers, owners, and proprietors of the earth, and other species as human slaves, was demolished. Thanks to this deconstruction and revolution, all species in nature were aligned at the same level. The false belief that the human species, which emerged in the last 50,000 years, is superior to all other species and their master was destroyed. On the contrary, humans are cosmomorphic beings, a microcosm in the circular scheme of life, not a pyramid (Bedia Akarsu, Çağdaş Felsefe [Contemporary Philosophy], 93).

Muslims who have pledged allegiance to Enlightenment humanism and have "Islamized" the "superior species" belief are hostile to all animals, especially dogs, to living life, to primordial disposition (fitra), and thus to Allah who created them. While reacting with explosions of anger to merciful treatment of homeless dogs, they pursue a conspiracy theory that a "dog food lobby" is behind this compassion. Even if this were true, protesting the lobby would require them to make the food themselves and feed Allah's animal community, right? On the contrary, they want them starved and dead. There are dogs with bones protruding from their skin due to hunger in dozens of houses, and the residents of those houses are not bothered by this cruelty at all. They are the embodiment of cruelty. This pitch-black world waging war against homeless dogs is hostile to living life. They don't feed hungry animals that come to their door for the sake of Allah, and when the animal fends for itself, they torture it with hatred and anger. Let's make their vocabulary a crime in flagrante delicto: in the emotional ugliness of the Muslim, an animal that dies is considered "telef," meaning wasted, seeing it not as a valuable life created by Allah but as mere property in a monetary sense. The curses and insults produced in Turkish using the names of dogs and other animals show the true nature, incivility, and even hopeless state of this people. Their minds and emotional worlds will not be purified until they cleanse their language from this filth.

The conservative people are lustfully loyal to the Enlightenment's "noblest of creatures" creed. However, humans are neither a superior species nor the pinnacle of evolution. They have an obligation to strive for the continuation of living life. Oppressive humans, instead of fulfilling the trust they have been entrusted with (Surah Al-Ahzab 33:72), are pursuing destruction.

The perversion of superiority manifests as white supremacy, religious superiority, or human superiority over animals. As long as humans see themselves as the masters of nature and superior beings with the right to do whatever they want to others, savagery will not end. Muslims need to be civilized. They need to be taught that they were not created in the image of Allah, do not represent God, and are not Allah's caliph. This belief is false, invalid, and wrong. This perverse belief paves the way for the destruction of nature, hostility towards living beings, and the madness of invading nature.

The belief in a superior species (ashraf al-makhluqat) distorts the Qur'an according to this corrupt creed. The hypothesis of "superior religion" created for Islam is also a product of this twisted mentality, even going so far as to use the historical phrase "And We wished to make them leaders" (Surah Al-Qasas 28:5), originally said for the Jews, for Islam.

Those who translate the last sentence of Surah Al-Isra 17:70 (وّفَضَّلْنَا هُمْ عَلٰى كَث۪يرٍ مِمَّنْ خَلَقْنَا تَفْض۪يلًا) with the claim that humans are superior to all created beings are students, disciples, and believers of Enlightenment thinking, which is obsessed with dominating nature.

Islam, which is beholden to humanism, fails to see that the word "created beings" in the verse is expressed with the particle "man" (مَنْ), which applies to intelligent beings. Furthermore, it is accompanied by the particle "min" (مِمَّنْ), which expresses "from some of" (teb'iz). This means the verse uses the particle "man," which is used for intelligent beings, for all created beings, thus aligning them with humans, and also warns with the particle "min" that each of them has superiorities over others. So, humans are not the only superior ones. Every species has its unique superiorities.

In the Prophet's Medina, neither dogs nor other living creatures were hated in this way. This is because the warning "They are communities like you" (Surah Al-An'am 6:38) was the principle that granted animals immunity in social life. Abdullah ibn 'Umar narrated that during the Prophet's time, dogs roamed freely in the Prophet's Mosque (Masjid al-Nabawi) and even urinated in the mosque (Abu Dawud 382, Ibn Khuzaymah 300, Ibn Hibban 1656). Despite this, no one chased them away. Compare contemporary Islam's campaign of "dog terror," its cruel methods of collecting dogs from the streets, and its exhibition of extreme examples of cruelty in torture camps disguised as shelters, with the Prophet's approach.

Muslim conservatives, on whom no warning or rule works, are at times brazenly wild, aggressive, and uncontrolled in their hostility towards the Creator and the nature He created, to the extent that it warrants their collection. Because they are not prevented, they have formed gangs and are terrorizing society with the animosity they express in media campaigns. The law needs to be activated against this criminal activity. We are in need of the law's swift, immediate, and effective response to those who instigate the killing of animals and to those who commit these acts with the perversity of cold-blooded serial killers. In a murder committed with monstrous feelings, there is no hierarchy among lives. The law must also be subject to this principle. Every moment that public reflection and reaction to these murders are delayed causes an increase in the erosion of society's humanity.

The slogan of the extermination campaign is "dog terror." There are also those who soften this language, as those who use such an expression appear to be so deranged and sick that they shouldn't be allowed to roam freely. They say, for instance, "aggressive species." Yet, in nature, there is no aggressive species—that is, no species that causes mischief, disrupts, or is a nihilistic predator—other than humans.

What happened at Memorial Hospital during Hurricane Katrina, which wiped out New Orleans in five days in August 2005, was subject to legal proceedings. The matter was depicted in the series Five Days at Memorial. It was very shocking. During the flood, the rate at which the water level in the hospital rose was much faster than the rate of patient evacuation. They felt they had to make a decision. The witness statement in the court file is as follows:

• Some employees asked what the most humane thing to do for the animals would be.
• The most humane thing is not to abandon them to their death.
• How will that happen?
• By injecting pentathol. You give a dose, and they'll fall asleep and die.

Then they also sedated and killed patients they found difficult to save. First, the terminally ill, then the extremely overweight ones who were hard to move.

The fact that reel Islam currently wants to normalize the killing of dogs is a training exercise for eliminating other weak links in possible and future times. It also doesn't hide its impatience for the turn of political opponents to come.

The reaction of Islam, hostile to Allah's created dog community, to living life, and to nature, to the protection of oppressed dogs, is based on hating the lifestyle of those who advocate for dogs' right to life. Their expressing hostility towards the lifestyle of those who advocate for dogs' right to life through hostility towards dogs is undoubtedly sick and dangerous. They should seek professional help, heal, and then be accepted by society. Because they could put any other living creature, including humans, in place of dogs at any moment.

There's a problem of uncontrolled individuals who, instead of directing their anger and reaction towards local governments that fail to do their job, attack defenseless dogs with malice. Census, sterilization, education, feeding, and care could be done with very small budgets, but they are not. There's only a hysterical call for massacre.

This Islam, which loves the slogan that if zakat were given properly, there would be no poor people, organizes anti-animal hatred and animosity against the aggressive behavior of animals left hungry on the streets due to constant humiliation, threats, harassment, and abuse, instead of providing food and shelter. We are in a sick, malevolent, dark mental universe that demonizes animals and targets them. This is hostility, grudge, and hatred waging war against the creations of Allah, the Lord of humans, animals, and plants, i.e., all realms. It is fighting against nature and the natural. It is the war of artificiality, million-dollar cars, concrete, money, and power against Allah's creation and truth. It is the struggle between right and wrong. All the political dialectics it presents are fake.

The poverty of conscience that views animals as secondary and establishes a hierarchy of life, and the state of canine-phobia, is madness. Expecting understanding from those who attempt to invent primitive ages instead of striving to develop civilization is a disrespect for living life.

In the Qur'an, in the story of the youths who fled from an oppressive government and people and took refuge in a cave (Surah Al-Kahf 18 and 22), people continue to conduct a witch hunt and oppression against dogs, even reading the verse that highlights the dog and personifies it, adding it to the number of youths, despite having no connection to the subject.

In Surah Al-Kahf 18, although the dog is described as "stretching out its forelegs (dhira'ayhi)" as it is said for humans, anti-dog translations interpret the word "foreleg" in the verse as "leg." This is a madness that even corrects Allah. Yet, if it were meant to be "leg," it would have been said so, as in An-Nur 24:45. While it is narrated that the dog slept beside the believers who took refuge in the cave ("And their dog stretching out its forelegs at the entrance," Al-Kahf 18), and is even mentioned as a person in addition to the number of youths ("They will say, 'There were three, their fourth was their dog.' And they will say, 'There were five, their sixth was their dog...' And they will say, 'There were seven, their eighth was their dog.' Say, 'My Lord is most knowing of their number.'" Al-Kahf 22), it is a grave error to take the fabricated narration "Angels do not enter a house that has a dog" (Bukhari 5949) as a creed.

I do have a guess about the subconscious reason for dog hatred.

Dog hatred might stem from Aisha, whom they chose as their religious source, intending to start a civil war against the legitimate and elected leader Ali, and the fact that dogs were the creatures that exposed her ambition. The "dogs of Haw'ab" incident (Ibn Kathir, Al-Bidayah wa al-Nihayah, 6/212) is a shocking trauma in the Sunni subconscious:

After the overthrow of Caliph Uthman by popular revolt, when the Umayyad family's rule ended, hundreds of representatives from various regions came to Medina and elected Ali as leader. This was the first election in early Islamic history. This development displeased the faction that had transformed the participatory governance of the Prophet's era into domination. They made Aisha, the daughter of the first Caliph Abdullah ibn Abi Quhafah (Abu Bakr), their spiritual leader and organized an armed uprising against the Commander of the Faithful Ali. In the Battle of Basra (656), known in history as the "Battle of the Camel" in reference to Aisha's camel, the army suppressed the rebels' uprising.

The "dogs of Haw'ab" issue is related to the Battle of Basra. When the rebels arrived at the pond of Haw'ab, they heard dogs barking. Aisha was frightened when she heard the sounds. This was because the Prophet had told her, "Beware, lest you be the one at whom the dogs of Haw'ab bark?" (Ibn Qutaybah, Al-Imamah wa al-Siyasah, 1/82). According to narrations, upon hearing the dog sounds, Aisha, recalling the warning, wanted to turn back. Zubayr ibn al-Awwam claimed that the guide had given wrong location information. Talhah ibn 'Ubayd Allah also swore that it was not Haw'ab. In other words, they lied. (Yusuf al-Sanusi al-Hasani [d. 1490], Ikmal Ikmal, 8/248, 2008. This commentary on Sahih Muslim states that this was the first false testimony in Islam.)

Aisha, as "the one at whom the dogs of Haw'ab barked," caused the death of hundreds of people in the bloody uprising. A year later, Mu'awiyah would take over where Aisha left off and launch the second uprising, killing 800 companions, including the Prophet's ancient friend Ammar ibn Yasir and Uways al-Qarani, known as "the companion who did not see the Prophet," who fought in the Battle of Badr and were part of the Pledge of Ridwan.

The "dogs of Haw'ab" story is one of the most reliable narrations found in Sunni sources (Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Musnad, 6/52, 97).

Let's open a parenthesis here and ask about the reason for the hostility towards dogs in Twelver Shi'ism, which is known for its reaction to Aisha given this situation. This is it: Twelver Shi'ism, which was the smallest branch of Shi'ism until the 12th century, gained an independent identity thanks to its teacher Mu'tazilah. However, when it inoculated the irfan-based Alid/Alevi tradition with established fiqh, it returned to the Sunni basin. This is the essence of why Sunni and Shiite fiqh are happily expressed as being almost identical as a leaven for unity (wahdah). Among the Shi'ite branches, Twelver Shi'ism can be said to have Sunnified Shi'ism from a fiqh perspective. This hypothesis is the subject of a separate article.

The subconscious of conservative dog hatred, an inheritor of the political Sunnism fabricated in Mu'awiyah's court, might contain the "dogs of Haw'ab" culture. Dogs remind them of peace, justice, right and truth; they warn against discord, mischief, rebellion, uprising, and evil. Naturally, they dislike it.

Translated by Gemini