The invisible enemy, Coronavirus, which is not visible to the naked eye, is a silent killer, and still has numerous characteristics that are not yet fully known. Miniscule as it is, it has already thrown all our lives into disarray with its unchecked power.
It is doing what no power could achieve until now. It almost united all world states that have been in various feuds, rivalries, and at war with one another around a common problem by means of keeping them busy with itself. It made all institutes, which had become the essentials of global life culture, which were thought would interrupt life if it stopped for a single hour, take a break for an unforeseeable future; it changed life habits; it pulled a sudden brake on life which was going at full throttle. It killed us before dying and brought the end of time before doomsday.
The believers experience death before dying periodically at pilgrimage, through fasting and performing prayers. It is a religious duty to experience this. Answering the call inviting us to an experience that unites, communizes against a routine separating, dividing, conflicting and distancing routine of life together with a community of believers makes us experience the death experience before dying; it is making us discover ourselves.
Of course, people answer the call to experience this voluntarily.
This experience teaches that life is composed of a game and entertainment. However, knowing that life is such does not indoctrinate one not to take life seriously, but on the contrary, to take it more seriously – but through its real meaning.
It thus leads us to the awareness and will to vow not to be carried away by the charm of a world that is beyond our control, not to violate the rights of other people – with whom we have been created from the same essence – not to oppress people, not to submit to the oppressors, not to serve the servant and also prevent others from doing it. We understand that nothing that we thought we earned in this world is permanent, nothing that we thought was ours belongs to us, on the contrary, we understand that our whole being belongs to Him.
Of course, we understand this together with the difference in our interpretation. Nonetheless, this experience does not result in the same effect in everyone who answers this call.
Consequently, now, a virus is forcing us to live such an experience in a different way. An experience that suddenly resets all the progress made by humankind in the name of science, technology and development is expected to remind humanity of some humility in the name of humanism, right? Regardless of the level of knowledge they have reached, what humankind knows is still so little compared to what he does not know.
As a matter of fact, those who are involved in the philosophy of science, in fact, those who are involved in science itself, have come much closer to this awareness worldwide. These circles are long aware of the meaningless of fighting religion from the contented, arrogant humanism of the 19th century.
The coronavirus has interestingly united the whole world against a common enemy. The popular rule in sociology is coming true. A common enemy strengthens group solidarity and forms a new group awareness.
Perhaps this virus came into our lives to play such a role. It seems as though it came to tell us about our own state as humans, to teach us about ourselves, our state of humanity. Interestingly, it is like this virus has such a mindset and objective. If we figure out its biological genetic, we may not be able to read this message, but this effect is quite clear in its spiritual genetic.
Of course, it is possible to read in our humane state and with the differences in our interpretation. There are those who cannot keep themselves from reading such a clear situation with their incorrigible quarrels and excuses.
Someone, whose name is not worth mentioning, chose to remain deaf and blind to Turkey’s exemplary scientific efforts with respect to fighting coronavirus and sarcastically said, “If someone is going to find the vaccine for coronavirus, it is the saints of Tillo” – unaware that he is in a state of being mocked.
I do not know about the saints in Tillo, a district in Turkey’s southeastern Siirt province, because to me, all humans are saints. They are either the saints of God or the devil. Muslims are one another’s saints, while the disbelievers are one another’s. There is no category other than saint anyway. Everybody chooses whose saint they are going to be and somehow makes this obvious.
However, the positive knowledge tradition in Tillo is as serious as the Islamic knowledge tradition there. The book titled “Marifetname” (Islamic Cosmology and Astronomy), written 250 years ago by İbrahim Hakkı, a student of İsmail Fakirullah in Tillo, along with his other works, are advanced level tomes that collate all the positive sciences of the time and present them with faithful integrity, while presenting them in an Islamic paradigm.
This is not something we expect someone whose character and culture is to oppose through mocking and attacking to know. What can eyes that remain blind and ears that remain deaf see or hear in the face of a clear sign that has paralyzed the entire world, its science, technology, transport, communication, capitalism, financing; what can such a mind comprehend?
He is not even aware yet that he too is one of the “saints”. Yes, he is a saint, but whose saint?
