Kenan Camurcu

The epicenter of the August 17th earthquake was the İzmit Gulf, and as a result, my city, İzmit, suffered devastating destruction—unimaginably severe. In the Bağçeşme cemetery, there are numerous tiny graves of infants whose date of death is written as August 17, 1999.

Those were the days when self-proclaimed freelance preachers, celebrity sheikhs, leaders of societies and congregations, heads leading to false beliefs, and all manner of similar analog-era religious zealots screamed that the earthquake was God’s punishment to the victims, the oppressed, and the deprived who had lost their loved ones and hadn't even had a moment to grieve. They claimed we had strayed from an Islamic life, that immodesty had engulfed everything, that sins had run rampant, and that this was the only retribution we should expect—this is how God delivers His wrath.

Those old enough will remember. Younger people can look up the archives. These sociopathic, insensitive people said all of this—and more.

Naturally, reasonable and moderate religious people asked these reckless insolents how they knew the earthquake was God's punishment. Theologians also emerged, attempting to explain, as a principle of methodology, that the examples cited from the Qur'an were historical information, and that no rule could be extracted suggesting all earthquakes signify divine retribution. Yet, they remained weak against organized religiosity; they couldn't overcome them or make their voices heard effectively. The state, for some reason, chose not to employ the "incitement of hatred and hostility among the public and defamation" statutes against them. The relentless pursuit that instantly targets political opponents showed unnecessary and unwarranted understanding towards these rogue provocateurs, who were disrupting public order under the guise of an inverted Islam.

The burgeoning reaction, rage, and rejection—at truly astonishing rates today—against religion, the religious, and everything religious-sounding, traces its fermentation back to those very days. It is the perennial handiwork of organized religiosity showing an advanced disrespect for people's suffering.

The perfect catastrophe of August 17th left people with no tolerance threshold for pain. It flattened all emotion. As we were uncontrollably tossed about in a zero-gravity universe of feelings, Can Dündar's article in Cumhuriyet, titled "His Wrath Surpassed His Mercy," caused the magma in people's consciences to erupt. They desperately wanted to say exactly this to the absolute sovereign who created the earthquake, but they lacked the courage. Some people read Dündar’s article aloud at the head of their loved ones' coffins during the burial ceremonies. They did not want to find solace in qāri’s (reciters) who, for a certain fee, would recite verses in a melodious voice, guaranteeing the deceased's transfer to the hereafter. They had objections and rebellion, and that is how they expressed their reaction.

Seeing the powerful impact of the article, organized religiosity, with its characteristic ignorance, certainly did not miss the opportunity for a public lynching. They shrieked that Dündar was disobedient to God, encouraging people to revolt, and that saying such things would cause apostasy. Threats of apostasy, hellfire, ingratitude (kufrān al-niʿmah), thanklessness, and disbelief (kufr) flew through the air. Dündar, attempting to diffuse the tension, explained repeatedly that he had referred to the wrath of nature surpassing its mercy in the article. He was constantly forced to correct the record, stating that he had not written it with the intent attributed to him by the campaign. Organized religiosity, of course, did not say, "Oh, sorry about that." Would they pass up this opportunity when the climate of religious despotism was so favorable?

I don't know if Dündar said this out of apprehension or if he genuinely meant nature and not God. Had he meant God, he actually had no reason to fear; theologically, humans have the right to reproach and rebel against Him. Rebellion and objection are components of faith, just like obedience. Since the Absolutely Perfect Creator does not explain to us why He does not prevent the flawed, deficient, and evil in the life He created, a human reaction can very well be rebellion, reproach, or complaint. Did not the Prophet Jacob, in the agony of losing his son Joseph, say, "I complain of my grief and sorrow to God" (Qur'an 12:86)? Even though the word "complain" (shikāyah) is clearly stated in the verse, the established Muslim community (institutional Islam) distorts the verse, translating it as "I present my grief to God." This is necessary to align it with their theory of servitude, which assumes a hierarchy from a God above to a human below. They do this just as they distorted the verse in Taha 121, which clearly states that Adam disobeyed and went astray (ʿaṣā wa ghawā) from God. Exegetes (Tafsīr) expend effort with baseless, unfounded claims that the "disobedience" here is not rebellion in the known sense.

Those whose lives know no lack, when advising patience to those whose lives are nothing but lack—in their miserable existence—rely on these interpretations. According to the assumption of the warning, if the poor and deprived let even a small word of complaint, rebellion, or objection slip from their mouths about their condition, they will ruin their afterlife as well. Thus, a person whose worldly life is already miserable also ruins their afterlife with a single sentence. Then comes the flowery language about the absolutely just, merciful God who protects and cares for His servants.

The God of their imagination is the helper and friend of the powerful, the wealthy, and the self-sufficient (mustaghnī), who gained their fortune and power through countless schemes and frauds. But this God has no eyes to see, does not love, and does not care about the weak, the poor, and the destitute who cannot climb above the lowest rung, no matter how hard they try.

The Truth-Love of Anarchist Naturism vs. The Power Obsession of Organized Religiosity

I suggest we look at the questions that arise in existential theology concerning the contradiction and conflict between wrath and mercy. These are the questions that Muslim authorities, who cannot resolve them, advise us not to engage with because our limited and restricted intellect cannot grasp them.

Popular Islam, which maintains its religious life with the clichés and memorized sermons of the ignorant, is incapable of a proper reading of the Qur'an. It fails to interpret the stories in the verses, connect the expressions and propositions with the cultural and historical conditions of the time, or draw rational and informative conclusions relevant to its own era. This is because, in religious matters as in almost every other, it is uneducated, unqualified, incompetent, inadequate, ill-equipped, and unsuited. Consequently, while purportedly interpreting the narratives of the Qur'an, it gets bogged down in unnecessary, misplaced, and meaningless details. It cannot see the essential, the core, the essence, or the kernel; even if explained, it cannot comprehend or grasp it, as it lacks curiosity and enthusiasm.

Its piety consists of sanctifying a book (mushaf)—printed on paper by machines in a very human effort, with faulty, discarded copies either collected and destroyed/burned—as “The Qur’an” and hanging it up high. This is precisely like the anecdote in Umar’s autobiography, after he became caliph, where he recounts making an idol out of halva (or dates) and eating it when hungry (Mahmud el-Akkad, Abkariyyetu Ömer, Mansura: 2015, p. 214). This is an irrational behavior that even those who had attributed sacredness to statues before converting to Islam did not engage in, let alone figures like Ali and Ammar who never dealt with idols. Their ascription of divine sacredness, the prohibition of touching without wuḍūʾ (ablution), and the properties of an anti-misfortune talisman to a book they manufactured with their own hands can only be explained by deep and profound ignorance.

They never consider: did the Prophet, who was the embodiment of the Qur'an during the period before it was compiled into a book, or Ali, nicknamed "the speaking Qur'an," or other learned companions, receive the same treatment as the book does today? If customs that did not exist when the Qur'an was not a book, and which emerged after the Prophet, can be considered religious and sacred, then who, besides God and His Prophet, can be authorized to issue such a directive?

The Qur'an is not a proper name, to begin with. It means "The Reading." The reading of what? Primarily, of the Torah. In this regard, Muhammad, like Jesus, is a type of sect within the Semitic religion. Jesus was Jewish, Muhammad was Arab; they are cousin ethnicities and people of the same cultural basin.

It is for this reason that it is impossible for this religiosity to understand that reproach and complaint, even objection and rebellion to God, are related to a believer’s faith. This is also why they ascribe preposterous meanings to one of the most intriguing scenes in the Qur'an: God's dialogue with the angels.

Let us tell the true interpretation:

"And when your Lord said to the angels, 'Indeed, I will place a successor (khalīfah) upon the earth.' They said, 'Will You place upon it one who will cause corruption therein and shed blood, while we declare Your praise and sanctify You?' He said, 'Indeed, I know that which you do not know.'" (Qur'an 2:30).

It seems the angels objected to the creation of a new generation of khalīfah (successor/posterity), a human species that had appeared before on earth and corrupted/degraded life. They did not find this compatible with the wisdom of creation. Their objection to God, who declared He would try an intention that had already been experienced and failed, is actually a critique of Him.

Classical theory holds that God put the angels in their place with the final sentence. From this, it derives the necessity for humans not to ask too many questions, putting themselves in the place of those angels. The understanding that one must believe and surrender even without comprehension stems from this.

However, if the dialogue described in the verse happened in a literal sense, as popular Islam claims, the angels clearly objected to and criticized God. The thing they opposed was that while non-human species in the billions-of-years-old world live life according to its meaning, praising and giving thanks to God, recreating the human species, whose sole occupation is sowing discord and corruption, did not seem compatible with the wisdom of creation. We understand that despite this, God would give the human species one more chance. He asks the angels to trust that He knows what they do not.

According to the detail in the Torah, God's purpose was to create a being that would rule in His place on earth (Genesis 1:26-28). The commentary on this scene states that this was God's consultation with the angels. Some angels claimed humans would be merciful, while others asserted they would be merciless. God stated He would create both (Midrash Bereishit Rabbah 8:6).

Agnostics say that it is impossible to understand God or these matters, and thus metaphysical issues should be kept out of life, in their own private domain, right? What is the Muslim who views the agnostic as irreligious doing differently? What is the Islamic curriculum teaching—that one cannot understand the secret of creation, the nature of God, or anything at all, and therefore must merely surrender—saying that is different from the agnostic's understanding? The surrender it speaks of is purely and solely metaphysical. It is a formulation that has no bearing or connection to one's actions in this world. This is because that surrender does not deter the plundering of the public treasury, the suppression of rights and freedoms, or the filling of prisons with political criminals. The Muslim mind very successfully separates these two domains.

While discussing these matters, one must be courageous enough to care zero about the threat of expulsion from established Islam. There is nothing desirable about belonging to the Muslim identity of organized religiosity anyway. It is a religion and religiosity where the search for truth holds no meaning or value. It is an ideological identity, sickened, diseased, and afflicted with an obsession with power. For this reason, I suggest anarchist naturism to consciences that ponder the meaning, nature, beginning, and end of existence. Anarchist naturism does not have an established, organized, corporate, bureaucratic, hierarchical, authoritarian, or authoritative religion; it has a pure and unadulterated faith without authority or hierarchy.

Faith Occurs When the Heart is Convinced

What needs to be done is to ask, question, and search for the truth, like the Prophet Abraham: "And [remember] when Abraham said, 'My Lord, show me how You give life to the dead.' [God] said, 'Have you not believed?' He said, 'Yes, but [I ask] only that my heart may be satisfied/convinced.'" (Qur'an 2:260).

Abraham believed epistemologically, but his heart needed ontological proof. The heart's conviction is achieved through experience. It is empirical. This is why the condition for faith in the existence, oneness, and attributes of God in Kalām (Islamic theology) texts is verification (taḥqīq). That is, examination, reasoning, judgment, comparison, reflection, drawing conclusions, and making a decision. To believe because one is told to—faith by imitation (taqlīd)—is not acceptable and is rejected (Zarkashi, Bahru’l-Muḥīt, Cairo: 1992, 9/277).

The more numerous and detailed the formalities, rituals, rites, ceremonies, beliefs, and practices in a religion, the more disconnected its adherents are from verification (taḥqīq). It means they have not embraced faith through reasoning and the conviction of the heart. The simpler, plainer, and easier a religion is, the more space it has opened up for its adherents' taḥqīq.

The rejection of imitative faith and the condition of verified faith is a procedural rule and a cliché to be memorized and quickly passed over in basic religious education. It needs to be tested. Can a person who has believed in God's existence, oneness, and attributes through taḥqīq—who has examined, researched, and been convinced by evidence—establish a political-economic regime based on theft and plunder, for example? Can they systematize the arrest and silencing of political opponents? Can they deliberately destroy nature and animal life? Can they harbor hostility towards animals—cats, dogs—who are referred to as "nations like you" (Qur'an 6:38)? Would they form an army of trolls for character assassinations, black and dirty propaganda, or sign up as contract soldiers in a troll army, choosing ambushing as their profession? Are all the evil they commit, the dirty language they use, the lies they tell, the money they steal, the actions of a believing person? These are not evil deeds to be counted as sins one stumbles into by mistake or accident. They are deliberate, knowing, intentional, calculated, and planned evils. These are the inevitable consequences of imitative faith. If they had verified faith, they would not dare commit these wicked acts.

An Unempirical God is Useless to Anyone

Faith born of verification means believing as if one sees God. The hypothesis that God is an emotional experience certainly holds a measure of truth, but it is incomplete. God must also be empirical. That is, it is impossible to speak of God's existence without empirical testimony. Otherwise, why would God present empirical testimony of nature as proof of His own existence, right?

The Prophet Moses said to God, "Show me [Yourself], that I may look upon You." (Qur'an 7:143). The verse does not object to this method of experience. It only explains that its realization is impossible (Exodus 33:20). When Moses' addressees said, "We will not believe you until we see God outright" (Qur'an 2:55), exegetes largely see the failure to meet this expectation as a punishment. According to these tafsīr, they were struck by lightning and died as punishment. Yet, the request mentioned in the verse is the exact same as Moses' desire to experience God by seeing Him (Qur'an 7:143). What could happen if God appeared was shown to Moses with the example of the mountain. God revealed Himself to the mountain, and the mountain crumbled to dust. When Moses' addressees wanted to see God, the same thing that happened to the mountain happened to them. If the lightning was a punishment, why were they resurrected and asked to learn a lesson from this experience? (Qur'an 2:56). They did, in fact, learn a lesson and said, "You speak to us, and we will listen, but let not God speak with us, lest we die." (Exodus 20:19).

Not to digress, of course, but concerning the issue of God speaking, there is a point of undeniable importance regarding the theory of revelation. Rudolf Otto states that the God of the Old and New Testaments is a being who speaks and communicates verbally with humans (The Idea of the Holy, Istanbul: 2014, p. 28). Although the speaking of the Torah’s God is not exactly the same as the speaking of the God-Man in the Evangelion (Gospel). It is clear that the model of God speaking and communicating verbally was directly copied into the Muslim theory of revelation. In the Muslim theory of revelation, too, it is God who speaks. For this reason, they interpret the phrase "Indeed, the revelation is the word of a noble messenger" in Sūrat al-Takwīr (verse 19) as referring to "the angel of revelation, Gabriel," despite having no basis for this. Consequently, they appoint a messenger to Muhammad, who is referred to as "the messenger of God" in the verses, making him the messenger's messenger. Yet, the text clearly states that Muhammad is the messenger of God, not the messenger of revelation.

I will leave this topic for an article that will examine the ethnology and anthropology of the Qur'an and continue.

There is no problem with the desire to see God. This is not a demand that should be rejected. It has not been rejected, in fact. But the technical issue here is that the eye in the body and its optical capacity are not sufficient for this (Qur'an 6:103). There is a physical reason why eyes cannot see God. How can the naked eye see the subatomic universe? In fact, there is no concrete being that one could see even with prosthetic support.

What is this desire to see God? Because it does not seem fair to expect belief in God without experiencing His existence. It is not necessary to see Him with the eye, but we need to see His concrete actions. For instance, if we receive a response to the calls and appeals referred to as prayer (du'a), it would be as if we had seen Him. How can a God who does not reveal Himself even in this way expect to be believed?

National and global prayer chains and large campaigns are being organized for Gaza, but they are not observed to yield results. Either the Creator does not accept the prayers, calls, or supplications of the opponents because He finds Netanyahu to be in the right, or He does not interfere with what is happening. Or perhaps these prayers are not actually for persuading God, but for the Palestinian industry to remain active and for donations to continue. In other words, they are performing all those prayers to maintain the momentum of the donation sector, and the matter has nothing to do with God. If they are praying to motivate God into action, there has been no success.

If there is a God who intervenes in injustices, He is not obligated to show it in the place chosen by Muslims. He would also intervene in the destruction, burning, and massacres of civilians, women, the elderly, and children, which Islamist terrorists carry out in Somalia, Nigeria, and Sudan with much greater statistics than Gaza. The effect of prayer is not seen there either. Some explain the prayers’ lack of effect by saying that they do not deserve God's help. Well, without receiving information from God, who can know who deserves help and who does not?

Those who try to look with a different and new eye will be astonished to see that all the verses thought to be prayers in the Qur'an are expressions of wish, expectation, and motivation. If the prayer described by classical theory is an effective method, why can it not be verified? The starving, those who perished helplessly in Nazi death camps, the deprived, those struggling with need and difficulty, those groaning under a thousand kinds of oppression—these and countless others pray, but they do not receive a response. Those who interpret some coincidental developments as a response to their prayer do not consider that they themselves established the causal relationship.

There are numerous uncertainties that classical theory cannot explain. The consolation resorted to in these situations is that the work of the Creator, whose wisdom cannot be questioned, defies human understanding. This is a universe where hopelessly waiting in the refuge of helplessness is considered sincere faith. "How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!" (Romans 11:33). This realization forbids speaking and debating about God, discussing religion, and falling into doubt or suspicion (Salih b. Abdulaziz, al-Wāfī, Abu Zabi: 2006, p. 130). How can intellectual development be achieved with this intellectual silence?

There is a system flaw in the Muslim definition of God and the conception of the Divine. For this reason, it prohibits reflection on the Creator. A hadith was even fabricated: "Ponder over the creation, not the Creator." Even the source of the narration calls it "weak in chain" (sanaduhu ḍaʿīf) (Sakhawi, al-Maqāṣid al-Ḥasanah, Beirut: 1993, hadith 13484). In other studies, it is listed among fabricated narrations (Ali Hasan Ali al-Halabi, Mawsūʿat al-Aḥādīth, Riyadh: 1999, 3/571).

The Muslim identity sees the way out of this impasse in avoiding existential questioning and searching, rejecting agendas that would aid intellectual refinement, and inventing accredited fields of struggle focused on the annihilation of the other. They consider questioning to be disbelief. This is because their religiosity is not about faith, but an ideological identity. They do not actually care whether God exists or not. They act as if He were practically absent.

What makes Islam an ideological stance is its definition of the opponent as someone who is not of its religion. In this way, the worldview that corrupts and degrades the state of nature does not become the real target of the struggle. On the contrary, Islam, which has become harmonized with and conservative of that worldview, regards the cosmic vision that exalts integration, participation, sharing, and commonality in living life as the enemy.

Belief acquired without questioning, examining, researching, or reflecting is a taught and memorized belief and falls into the category that Muslim theologians call "imitative faith (taqlīdī īmān)." It is part of a massive, collective, habitual routine. This faith is not acceptable in theory. Yet, the praxis of Islam praises and embraces imitative faith.

Atheism Towards the God of Islam is As Lawful as Mother's Milk

A God in the sense intended and defined by the theory of Islam does not exist. For those who are a-theist by that definition, their choice is as lawful as mother's milk (helal). Or, those who choose atheism by denying the Creator principle in reaction to the established Islam’s definition of God suffer at most a philosophical error. The Islam that claims God will punish this effort with hellfire recognizes God with a conception that is, at best, capricious, sensitive, and narcissistic.

We can be sure that the philosophical error of a moral person will be excused by the Creator. Conversely, we can also be sure that the immoral person, though their forehead never leaves the ground in prostration, will not be in the same place as the good in the afterlife. The numerous examples in the sacred texts confirming that existence was created on the axis of justice, mercy, and love are sufficient to affirm this judgment.

The logical and scientific errors in the chain of propositions that atheist activism establishes, despite its inability to provide an explanation for the first, beginning, origin, or source, are well-known to everyone. Yet, there is no impurity or contamination in the philosophical error of an atheist who does not falter on the matters of honesty and goodness. Conversely, the state of a so-called believer who is a liar, a thief, a scoundrel, corrupt, fraudulent, heedless of rights and law, and unconcerned with truth is the lowest of the low (asfal al-sāfilīn) (Qur'an 95:5, Romans 1:24-25)—the most wretched, most disgraceful, and most vile form of disbelief, as defined by etymology.

When we compare the non-believing "Pepe," José Mujica, in Uruguay—whose life was devoted to the struggle for justice, who was dedicated to making his people happy even when he became president, and who ended his life with the same personal economic scale with which he began it—with a Muslim leader who is his complete opposite, what we want to say will be understood.

Therefore, the manifestos of the "ex-Muslim" can be said to follow the catalog of evaluation shown in the Qur'an, rather than being related to the activism of atheists who have ceased to believe: "So direct your face toward the religion, inclining to truth (ḥanīf). [Adhere to] the nature of God upon which He has created mankind. There can be no alteration to the creation of God. That is the correct religion, but most of the people do not know." (Qur'an 30:30).

Those who leave corrupted Islam are in the religion of morality. Morality is the state of conformity to creation. It is the resetting of life and belief to the presumed original settings. It is the activation of the good and bright side of human nature (from the root khulq - akhlāq).

This is the objection, protest, and reaction of the religiosity represented by Muhammad to the established, popular religiosity—led by Abu Sufyan—which claimed adherence to the religion of Abraham. If we compare them, which one does the current Islam resemble? Does it resemble the religion of Abu Sufyan—the tradesman of wealth, power, domination, favoritism, and privilege—or the religion of Muhammad—who rejected property, position, rank, and privilege, and was indistinguishable from those around him? The answer is very easy, isn't it?

The travel expense of a person who repeatedly travels to Mecca and Medina (these trips, other than the Hajj, are called Umrah in Arabic—a kind of tourist trip) because they cannot get enough is equal to the livelihood effort of a poor person for one year. Yet, both are of the same religion. That Muslim cannot get enough and keeps going, while this Muslim works for a year for the amount he spends on a single trip. Both believe in the same God, and that God will put both in paradise, right? Oh, and if the poor Muslim objects and rebels against this situation, he will descend into hell, while the wealthy Muslim will go to heaven for the sake of those trips. This is their belief in religion and God.

The Pragmatic Believer's Plan for High-Bonus Retirement from Life

Why did God create the universe, the world, and living life? There is no answer to this most fundamental question. The attempts at childish-level explanations by Muslim preachers who lack education in social sciences, philosophy, philology, or even religious studies are futile. They do not appeal to the adult intellect.

They have a prescription, an aspirin, and they give it for every headache problem. The solution they offer to the question of why the universe was created is the verse, "And I did not create the jinn and mankind except to worship Me" (Qur'an 51:56). Classical theory gives the verse the meaning of the reason for the creation of existence and emphasizes the phrase "except to worship Me." However, the emphasis is on the word "Me." The verse is not an answer to the question "Why was the universe created?" but an answer to the question "Whom should one worship?"

Even prominent thinkers from various religions worldwide have no reasonable answer as to why God needed to create. Despite the noteworthy efforts of Christian scholars, who excel in their ability to empathize with the thoughts and questions of the other, even they cannot provide heart-soothing answers. Furthermore, all the arguments, explanations, and answers produced are guesses, assumptions, and interpretations. They are not propositions sourced from sacred texts. Although what is said about the purpose of creation is not an answer to the "why" question, believers focus on teleological, goal-oriented appeals to save the situation.

Believers take a practical and pragmatic view. Instead of dealing with the unanswerable "why" question and gaining nothing, it seems more profitable to fulfill the duty in the purpose of creation and retire from worldly life with a good bonus. They do not worry that the problem remains unresolved. After all, how will it be resolved without information and news coming from God?

Believers should not be so quick to be happy with this nimble maneuver of escaping the "why" question. Because the moment they take refuge in the "purpose" explanation, a greater problem awaits them.

When they stop asking the reason for creation and focus on its purpose, they will find no comforting explanation for the human duty of servitude. When they say that God created living life and humans to serve Him, they will crash into a harsh proposition and question: Does God need human servitude? Did He feel incomplete when He had not created a being to worship Him? Whose need does it look like to create beings for the purpose of worship, praise, and supplication? The created's or the Creator's?

What will God gain by punishing a human in this life or the next when that human refuses to believe in Him? What does the human lose? What can a God gain—satisfaction, perhaps?—by punishing and torturing a creature who has no power to harm Him, with His absolute might?

These are the issues never considered by those who choose to remain in the prison of Islam as an ideological identity. They operate within the sociological cluster without ever resorting to contemplation, without embarking on a spiritual journey, without deepening their faith, and without a focus on spiritual hygiene. Research, in fact, confirms this situation. According to the combined data from Konda, PEW, MetroPOLL, and Istanbul University Sociology, the rate of performing the five daily prayers is only around 20% within the 70-plus percent who are most vocal about defining themselves with a Muslim identity. They are ultra-enthusiastic when it comes to displaying their identity, but they are a dry crowd that falls away when it comes to the requirements of piety. They are a closed society that gets a zero-zero result in producing ideas, creating works, making inventions, and production, but is very keen when it comes to trolling, being a keyboard warrior, shouting and yelling, and finding the quickest way to get ahead.

Why, of course, should they bother with the issues we are trying to discuss? Why should they pursue the labor of internal spiritual development (içbükey manevi gelişim) when they can maintain their worldly life with an outward display of Islam (dışbükey Müslümanlık fotoğrafı)? Who will see and reward their preoccupation with spirituality?

The question of why life was created does not interest Muslim authorities either. They are indifferent. But then, why are they so fiercely hostile to the interpretations, objections, criticisms, and even protests about this matter from different faiths or non-believers who do choose to engage with the topic? Why do they jump up and down with a conquest-oriented, invasive, domineering ideology determined to silence all voices?

God Cannot Be Collective; He Must Exist Separately for Each Individual

The religiosity that assumes the issue is about proving God's existence never understands that this is the easiest part of the job. The question of the First Beginning is the one the atheist "passes" on. This is because they cannot explain how the universe, existence, and living life emerged without a Creator power. They attribute their inability to explain to the inadequacy of scientific activity and defer the search for an answer. They choose to be content with the belief of non-belief until a scientific explanation is found, and they assert and believe that this, too, is scientific.

The believer, on the other hand, assumes that all problems will be solved once God's existence is proven. However, the real problems begin from this point. How will we find the answers to the questions related to a God whose existence is unquestionable? There are no answers to these questions in the divine texts we possess. Nor have we heard the answers to these questions from the prophets whom we believe witnessed universes or dimensions beyond the visible world. To find an answer, communication and contact are needed. How does God communicate with humans? If one says "revelation," the question remains: what is revelation if one does not believe that God speaks like a human? If God speaks and acts like a human—that is, if He is a perfect version of a human—why do Muslims object to Christians seeing Jesus as God?

Proving God's existence with philosophical and logical proof does not get you off the hook. You are still on a slope, and you must explain why the God whose existence you are certain of does not demonstrate His presence in the stages of life. Testimonies about how God's existence was proven in the life of a certain person are useless. Faith cannot be based on narration (rivāyah). God must be a verifiable entity for each individual separately, otherwise, creation becomes meaningless.

This is the knot where philosophy and Kalām wrestle with the problem of evil/theodicy. Philosophers and theologians grade good and evil from absolute to relative in the theodicy problem. They offer examples that suggest any good, except for absolute good, may contain evil. For instance, they say that rain is essentially full of good, but sometimes people may be harmed by it, which is the small evil within it. A natural gas pipeline in a city, for example, is essentially and predominantly good, but it sometimes carries a small evil in the form of poisoning and explosion incidents (Hasan Iftikharzadeh, "Shurūr wa Adl-i Ilāhī," Faslname-i Taḥaṣṣuṣī-yi Muṭālaʿāt-i Qur’ān wa Ḥadīth-i Safīnah, 2017: 51, p. 39).

We are aware, aren't we, that these examples make God a collective God? God, who ordains good for some, is powerless against the small evil within that good harming others. Even if the vast majority is good, what good is that good—which brings kindness, gain, comfort, ease, and relief to others—to the person who is harmed by the small evil within it? On the contrary, that person has the right to see no good in it at all because they were harmed. Cannot God ordain good for everyone individually? If He cannot, how is He all-powerful? If He can but does not, how is He absolutely just? Furthermore, if He does not provide protection and patronage to the powerless and disadvantaged, how can He be al-Raḥmān (The Most Gracious) and al-Raḥīm (The Most Merciful)?

The relationship between God and His servant cannot be one-sided. The servant will worship Him, but God will give the servant nothing. This is not a just relationship. It is also contrary to God's mercy.

God must be al-Raḥmān and al-Raḥīm for each of His servants individually. He must demonstrate His justice for everyone individually. He must be the Provider of Sustenance for everyone individually. The assumption that some people benefit from the manifestation of these attributes while others who do not should strengthen their faith by looking at them is the product of an absurd system of belief.

The idea of being grateful and content with one's own situation by looking at those who are in a worse condition is illogical, unreasonable, and strange. Negative faith cannot exist. Their bad situation does not make your bad situation understandable. Someone worse off than you does not make your badness a reason for gratitude. Nor does it legitimize contentment, which should be a reason for gratitude. Faith must be positive. God must help their bad situation, and your bad situation too.

In the flow of life where God knows what is on land and in the sea, and not a leaf falls except with His knowledge (Qur'an 6:59), if the oppressed, the deprived, and the poor are worn down under so much torment with His knowledge, what does His failure to intervene make of the infinitely powerful Creator? It is certain that there is a sharp error in the conception of the Creator that we have been taught and made to memorize.

To the rebellion that asks where God's mercy is, given the poverty, pain, oppression, and disasters they endure, the answer given is that God is actually merciful, provides sustenance, and protects them, but they simply do not understand it. Why would God help a person struggling in pain and in need of assistance in a way that the person cannot understand? What is the purpose of all this secrecy and mysteriousness? What does God gain by helping in hidden, secretive ways that the person cannot grasp? If His purpose is to help His servant, what is the meaning of that help if the servant does not realize it?

This is undoubtedly an attempt to salvage faith through such cryptic designations when no concrete proof of God's help can be shown. Instead of taking such a circuitous route with so much indirection, the appropriate action would be to provide tangible, concrete, verifiable examples if they exist.

Preachers who attribute the calamities that strike people to God's love for that servant are essentially giving therapy from the pulpit to the poor and deprived. And for free, no less. It is, of course, an attempt at consolation in the depressive moment of helplessness and hopelessness. Otherwise, who would welcome affliction? For a person crushed under calamity, neither their life nor their acts of worship are genuine. Those who advise patience with tranquility, peace, and pleasure to people experiencing breakdown in their stressful lives are well-fed and carefree. Can those who are deeply worried about how to finish the day due to poverty listen to advice for patience with composure, serenity, and endurance from them?

The advice to be patient, given by those who are immune to the test of poverty and deprivation, to those whose lives are nothing but poverty and deprivation, stems from their clear understanding that God will not appear miraculously to deliver them from that life. Therefore, they preach patience—that is, self-restraint. The word patience (ṣabr) in the lexicon is defined as "confining one's soul" (Razi, Mukhtār al-Ṣiḥāh, Beirut: 1999, 1/172). They must chain their souls and not commit the transgression of seeking their rights. It is quite clear that the advice to be patient contains no hope or good news at all.

The Despotic God of Islamist Radicalism or the Suffering God of Spinoza and Ibn Arabi?

The philosopher and clergyman Boris Gunjević made an effective contribution to the problem of evil with a bold interpretation. He proposed that God does not intervene in evils, but suffers from the events that occur (with Slavoj Žižek, The Suffering God: Reversing the Apocalypse, 2013).

It is impossible to verify or falsify whether God intervenes in life on a global scale and for all people. Even the most massive global public opinion survey would result in statements and testimonies that are ultimately personal stories of individually perceived causality and connection. The fabrication of stories to save faith is an added bonus. Objective measurement is impossible. However, the reality constantly repeating itself in the lands of those who start and end their lives poor, or even hungry, can serve as a sample. If God had touched these lives, they would not be in this condition.

What we are saying applies to those who conceive of God's intervention in life as a positive and beneficial leap. When such a thing is not observed, a theory about God's intervention has been developed nonetheless. Fazlur Rahman's theory is one such example. Fazlur Rahman described the relationship between existence and God as the receiving of the energy of existence from God (Major Themes of the Qur’an, Chicago: 2009, p. 24). This is divine causality.

According to the assumption, there is a functioning system; existence and creation get their energy from God to operate and run. But God does not change its functioning or intervene in it. Disruptions may occur in this functioning. Victims, injustices, oppressions, etc., are the flaws of the system. The system is not perfect in this regard. It is flawed. God does not eliminate these flaws and perfect the system. The system continues with its flaws. But it receives the energy of existence from God.

But why would an absolutely perfect God who does not intervene in flaws consent to the system operating defectively? When He Himself is absolutely perfect, why does He supply energy to and perpetuate a flawed system? If it is said that He has no part in the flaws, then it is conceded that He is merely observing what happens. If so, why are Muslim authorities shedding tears because young people are becoming deists?

Even if the assumption that God is involved in every aspect of life were proven true, the subject of this intervention would necessarily be Muslims. The intervention will not be realized through an invisible hand or through supernatural epiphanies and manifestations. Instead, people's intellect, knowledge, experience, education, and abilities will carry out this intervention. Muslims who say, "Tie your camel securely, and then rely on God," are not sitting aside and waiting for God to do the work anyway. They point to the verse that motivates self-defense against the attacks of the polytheists: "Fight them; God will punish them by your hands" (Qur'an 9:14) and similar verses. But there are also verses that reprimand the Muslim who sees himself as the agent of action. For example, Anfal 17: "You did not kill them, but God killed them. And you did not throw when you threw, but God threw." Or Hajj 40: "If God had not repelled some people by others, monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques in which the name of God is much mentioned would have been demolished." What happened now to the precaution of tying the camel securely instead of leaving the job to God?

Unless Muslims possess the most insurmountable intellect, knowledge, qualification, and abilities in the world, Islam will always lag behind the knowledge produced by other intelligent people. Muslims who assert that God is involved by making themselves the hidden subject revert to their historical behavior when they fall behind—because the reality is not that way, and divine causality is realized through human activity. They get angry, become aggressive, resort to violence, and try to deflect criticism directed at them—using force if they have the power, or appealing to victimhood narratives and campaigns otherwise.

If Spinoza (d. 1677) is right—that is, if the creative power is Nature itself, or even the universe, and things operate according to rules and laws—then God is will-less. Such a God must be devoid of meaning and purpose in the act of creation. This, however, contradicts the concept of God. In Ibn Arabi's (d. 1240) theory of "emanation" (fayḍ), God did not create the universe from nothing; rather, His names and attributes overflowed. Or rather, God Himself overflowed with His names and attributes. But did this overflow occur beyond His control? Could He not prevent the overflow? In that case, He would be a power without will, like Spinoza's God.

Islam believes in an autonomous God. He does whatever He wills, recognizes no rule, and is accountable to no one. This is the despotic God of Islamist radicalism. It is the metaphysics of tyranny (Plato, Republic, 558a, 562c), which sees the right to act as they please in their resemblance to God.

Yet, God is not an autonomous God. He does not do whatever strikes His fancy. He binds Himself by the rule He established. That is, morality is in effect as a principle, rule, and value in the temporal flow of the existence He created. Can He break His promise, or fail to keep His word? No, He cannot, because He declared from the beginning that He is bound by the rule, "He does not break His promise" (Qur'an 13:31).

But can a deficiency in the power and will of a God who binds Himself by His own rule be assumed? As asked in the famous paradox, Can God destroy Himself? If He cannot, His power is not infinite. According to Thomas Aquinas's principle, "God can do absolutely everything that is possible" (Summa Theologica, NY: 2007, vol. 1 part 1, p. 138). But He does not, and cannot, do what is impossible. Therefore, the Muslim conception of a God who intervenes in everything is not correct.

According to Nicolai Hartmann, in a world that God created according to a plan, the human being, as a moral entity, is eliminated (Bedia Akarsu, Çağdaş Felsefe - Contemporary Philosophy, p. 107). Both the anthropomorphic God in the classical theory of Islam and the understanding of humanity detached from its cosmomorphic nature cancel and annihilate morality. There must be a non-intervention zone for responsibility, obligation, will, freedom, and, naturally, morality to exist.

Muslims have no doubt that they must accept the historicity of social life in the time of the Prophet and practice their faith with suitable tools and equipment in the present time. Even the most fundamentalist can cheerfully say that the camel of that day corresponds to a luxury vehicle with a certain horsepower today. For those who do this to the anthropology of religion, the requirement to imitate the knowledge, understanding, perception, and interpretation of texts from five hundred, six hundred, or a thousand years ago when it comes to matters of faith is, of course, cultural schizophrenia.

Muslims are ignorant about God. They are at a level of utter ignorance. They even mistake "Allah" for a proper noun. They are that ignorant, uninformed, unaware, and incurious. Allah is not the equivalent of the Hebrew "Yahweh." It is the equivalent of Elohim. Elohim is a singular word in a plural form. Yahweh is a proper noun. Allah is not a proper noun; it means al-Ilāh, or The God (with a capital G). Al-Ilāh is a description of a kind of creative power. Cultural differences are also effective in describing and naming creative power. The anthropomorphic qualities of the God intended by al-Ilāh in 7th-century Hejaz are entirely cultural characteristics, and the flaws in them originate from the culture. Because that cultural background was used, in the verses, God is reclining on a throne (Qur'an 7:54), stretching His hand over the hands of those who swear allegiance (Qur'an 48:10), His face is before you no matter which direction you turn, east or west (Qur'an 2:115), and Moses is raised under His eye (Qur'an 20:39), among other human attributes.

The problem lies in the perpetuation of the same perception of God despite today's knowledge and experience. In that case, the knowledge of the creative power and the religion derived from that source regresses to the level of 7th-century knowledge. This is the reason why the Muslim intellect has remained stuck more than a thousand years behind.

The Muslim conception of God is a super-version of themselves. An authoritarian father standing over his child; a God who watches every move, sets rules for every behavior, scolds, and frightens with torture-level punishment. Perhaps this is why those who believe in that God are known everywhere they are for violence, intimidation/terror behavior, incompatibility with the culture they live in, and opposition to order and regularity. They have no intention of changing, renovating, or developing. In their current state, they expect to be accepted in the civilized world. Furthermore, they are imposing this on the countries that granted them a high standard of life and the societies that made sacrifices. They have declared war on the truth that this is impossible in the face of humanity's current development.

Rousseau, in The Social Contract (On Civil Religion), explained that there were no religious wars in antiquity because there was no concept of one city imposing its own god on another. In pre-Islamic Mecca, there was also no religious war because there was no divine domination, and Mecca did not attempt to spread to the surrounding lands. Immediately after the Prophet, the conquest-oriented approach emerged, universalizing the new god "Allah" and making it an instrument of domination. This was Ecumenical or Catholic Islam. Conquests and invasions began, and plunder, tribute, and slavery resurfaced. Thus, the issue begins with the conception of God in the established Muslim community as an ideological identity and grips the entire structure in a chain reaction. If anyone wants to make a new beginning, like the Messenger of God, Muhammad, this is the zero point to start from.

Transleted by Gemini