Sıfırdan Sonsuza Matematiğin Öyküsü 1

Salman Rushdie

One of their most heated debates in that first year was over a novel. The book was called The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, and it was a parody of the Prophet’s life set in Bombay. Muslims widely considered it blasphemous and it provoked so much outrage that it seemed people were talking of little else. The odd thing was no one had even noticed the publication of the book to start with – it wasn’t actually on sale in Pakistan – but then a series of articles appeared in Urdu newspapers by a mullah close to our intelligence service, berating the book as offensive to the Prophet and saying it was the duty of good Muslims to protest. Soon mullahs all over Pakistan were denouncing the book, calling for it to be banned, and angry demonstrations were held. The most violent took place in Islamabad on 12 February 1989, when American flags were set alight in front of the American Centre – even though Rushdie and his publishers were British. Police fired into the crowd, and five people were killed. The anger wasn’t just in Pakistan. Two days later Ayatollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran, issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s assassination.

My father’s college held a heated debate in a packed room. Many students argued that the book should be banned and burned and the fatwa upheld. My father also saw the book as offensive to Islam but believes strongly in freedom of speech. ‘First, let’s read the book and then why not respond with our own book,’ he suggested. He ended by asking in a thundering voice my grandfather would have been proud of, ‘Is Islam such a weak religion that it cannot tolerate a book written against it? Not my Islam!”

History of Pakistan

My country may not be very old but unfortunately it already has a history of military coups, and when my father was eight a general called Zia ul-Haq seized power. There are still many pictures of him around. He was a scary man with dark panda shadows around his eyes, large teeth that seemed to stand to attention and hair pomaded flat on his head. He arrested our elected prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and had him tried for treason then hanged from a scaffold in Rawalpindi jail. Even today people talk of Mr Bhutto as a man of great charisma. They say he was the first Pakistani leader to stand up for the common people, though he himself was a feudal lord with vast estates of mango fields. His execution shocked everybody and made Pakistan look bad all around the world. The Americans cut off aid.

To try to get people at home to support him, General Zia launched a campaign of Islamisation to make us a proper Muslim country with the army as the defenders of our country’s ideological as well as geographical frontiers. He told our people it was their duty to obey his government because it was pursuing Islamic principles. Zia even wanted to dictate how we should pray, and set up salat or prayer committees in every district, even in our remote village, and appointed 100,000 prayer inspectors. Before then mullahs had almost been figures of fun – my father said at wedding parties they would just hang around in a corner and leave early – but under Zia they became influential and were called to Islamabad for guidance on sermons. Even my grandfa” ther went. Under Zia’s regime life for women in Pakistan became much more restricted. Jinnah said, ‘No struggle can ever succeed without women participating side by side with men. There are two powers in the world; one is the sword and the other is the pen. There is a third power stronger than both, that of women.’ But General Zia brought in Islamic laws which reduced a woman’s evidence in court to count for only half that of a man’s. Soon our prisons were full of cases like that of a thirteen-year-old girl who was raped and become pregnant and was then sent to prison for adultery because she couldn’t produce four male witnesses to prove it was a crime. A woman couldn’t even open a bank account without a man’s permission. As a nation we have always been good at hockey, but Zia made our female hockey players wear baggy trousers instead of shorts, and stopped women playing some sports altogether.

Many of our madrasas or religious schools were opened at that time, and in all schools religious studies, what we call deeniyat, was replaced by Islamiyat, or Islamic studies, which children in Pakistan still have to do today. Our history textbooks were rewritten to describe Pakistan as a ‘fortress of Islam’, which made it seem as if we had existed far longer than since 1947, and denounced Hindus and Jews. Anyone reading them might think we won the three wars we have fought and lost against our great enemy India.

Everything changed when my father was ten. Just after Christmas 1979 the Russians invaded our neighbour Afghanistan. Millions of Afghans fled across the border and General Zia gave them refuge. Vast camps of white tents sprang up mostly around Peshawar, some of which are still there today. Our biggest intelligence service belongs to the military and is called the ISI. It started a massive programme to train Afghan refugees recruited from the camps as resistance fighters or mujahideen. Though Afghans are renowned fighters, Colonel Imam, the officer heading the programme, complained that trying to organise them was ‘like weighing frogs’.

The Russian invasion transformed Zia from an international pariah to the great defender of freedom in the Cold War. The Americans became friends with us once again, as in those days Russia was their main enemy. Next door to us the Shah of Iran had been overthrown in a revolution a few months earlier so the CIA had lost their main base in the region. Pakistan took its place. Billions of dollars flowed into our exchequer from the United States and other Western countries, as well as weapons to help the ISI train the Afghans to fight the communist Red Army. General Zia was invited to meet President Ronald Reagan at the White House and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at 10 Downing Street. They lavished praise on him.

Prime Minister Zulfikar Bhutto had appointed Zia as his army chief because he thought he was not very intelligent and would not be a threat. He called him his ‘monkey’. But Zia turned out to be a very wily man. He made Afghanistan a rallying point not only for the West, which wanted to stop the spread of communism from the Soviet Union, but also for Muslims from Sudan to Tajikistan, who saw it as a fellow Islamic country under attack from infidels. Money poured in from all over the Arab world, particularly Saudi Arabia, which matched whatever the US sent, and volunteer fighters too, including a Saudi millionaire called Osama bin Laden.

We Pashtuns are split between Pakistan and Afghanistan and don’t really recognise the border that the British drew more than 100 years ago. So our blood boiled over the Soviet invasion for both religious and nationalist reasons. The clerics of the mosques would often talk about the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in their sermons, condemning the Russians as infidels and urging people to join the jihad, saying it was their duty as good Muslims. It was as if under Zia jihad had become the sixth pillar of our religion on top of the five we grow up to learn – the belief in one God, namaz or prayers five times a day, giving zakat or alms, roza – fasting from dawn till sunset during the month of Ramadan – and haj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, which every able-bodied Muslim should do once in their lifetime. My father says that in our part of the world this idea of jihad was very much encouraged by the CIA. Children in the refugee camps were even given school textbooks produced by an American university which taught basic arithmetic through fighting. They had examples like, ‘If out of 10 Russian infidels, 5 are killed by one Muslim, 5 would be left’ or ‘15 bullets – 10 bullets = 5 bullets’.

Some boys from my father’s district went off to fight in Afghanistan. My father remembers that one day a maulana called Sufi Mohammad came to the village and asked young men to join him to fight the Russians in the name of Islam. Many did, and they set off, armed with old rifles or just axes and bazookas. Little did we know that years later the same maulana’s organisation would become the Swat Taliban. At that time my father was only twelve years old and too young to fight. But the Russians ended up stuck in Afghanistan for ten years, through most of the 1980s, and when he became a teenager my father decided he too wanted to be a jihadi. Though later he became less regular in his prayers, in those days he used to leave home at dawn every morning to walk to a mosque in another village, where he studied the Quran with a senior talib. At that time talib simply meant ‘religious student’. Together they studied all the thirty chapters of the Quran, not just recitation but also interpretation, something few boys do.

The talib talked of jihad in such glorious terms that my father was captivated. He would endlessly point out to my father that life on earth was short and that there were few opportunities for young men in the village. Our family owned little land, and my father did not want to end up going south to work in the coal mines like many of his classmates. That was tough and dangerous work, and the coffins of those killed in accidents would come back several times a year. The best that most village boys could hope for was to go to Saudi Arabia or Dubai and work in construction. So heaven with its seventy-two virgins sounded attractive. Every night my father would pray to God, ‘O Allah, please make war between Muslims and infidels so I can die in your service and be a martyr.’

For a while his Muslim identity seemed more important than anything else in his life. He began to sign himself ‘Ziauddin Panchpiri’ (the Panchpiri are a religious sect) and sprouted the first signs of a beard. It was, he says, a kind of brainwashing. He believes he might even have thought of becoming a suicide bomber had there been such a thing in those days. But from an early age he had been a questioning kind of boy who rarely took anything at face value, even though our education at government schools meant learning by rote and pupils were not supposed to question teachers.

It was around the time he was praying to go to heaven as a martyr that he met my mother’s brother, Faiz Mohammad, and started mixing with her family and going to her father’s hujra. They were very involved in local politics, belonged to secular nationalist parties and were against involvement in the war. A famous poem was written at that time by Rahmat Shah Sayel, the same Peshawar poet who wrote the poem about my namesake. He described what was happening in Afghanistan as a ‘war between two elephants’ – the US and the Soviet Union – not our war, and said that we Pashtuns were ‘like the grass crushed by the hooves of two fierce beasts’. My father often used to recite the poem to me when I was a child but I didn’t know then what it meant.

My father was very impressed by Faiz Mohammad and thought he talked a lot of sense, particularly about wanting to end the feudal and capitalist systems in our country, where the same big families had controlled things for years while the poor got poorer. He found himself torn between the two extremes, secularism and socialism on one side and militant Islam on the other. I guess he ended up somewhere in the middle.

I am Malala

As in most families, the girls stayed at home while the boys went to school. ‘They were just waiting to be married,’ says my father.

School wasn’t the only thing my aunts missed out on. In the morning when my father was given cream or milk, his sisters were given tea with no milk. If there were eggs, they would only be for the boys. When a chicken was slaughtered for dinner, the girls would get the wings and the neck while the luscious breast meat was enjoyed by my father, his brother and my grandfather. ‘From early on I could feel I was different from my sisters,’ my father says.

Derviş

Kendini Allah’a adamış bir hakikat eri, aynı zamanda bir kanaat ve istiğna insanıdır. O, aç ve susuz kaldığı zamanlarda dahi, açarsa derdini sadece Allah’a açar ama kat’iyen halka arz-ı ihtiyaçta bulunmaz ve bulunmak da istemez. Dervişin, “kapı eşiği” mânâsına gelmesi, insanlara karşı zillet gösterme anlamı itibarıyla değil, Allah karşısındaki tevazuu, mahviyeti ve kendini sık sık sıfırlayarak, maddî-mânevî üzerinde taşıdığı değerlerin izafîliğini vurgulaması açısındandır.Onun, insanlara karşı aynı alçak gönüllülüğü göstermesi de Yaratan’dan ötürü, özü ve mahiyetindeki ilâhî cevherlerle başlı başına antika bir Hak sanatı olması itibarıyladır.

İhlâs Kulesi ve Çukur

Sâlik, tam kazanma kuşağının zirvelerinde iken kaybetme çukurlarına yuvarlanabilir; yuvarlanabilir zira, zirvelerle çukurlar birbirlerine zıt oldukları hâlde hep yan yana bulunurlar. İhlâs kulesinin tepesinden düşecek birinin düz bir zemine değil de, derin bir çukura yuvarlanacağının hatırlatılması, değişik bir zaviyeden, zirvelerle çukurların bu beraberliğini vurgular. Onun içindir ki, seyr u sülûkta yolculuk ilerledikçe temkine, teyakkuza daha fazla ihtiyaç duyulagelmiştir.

Nefs-i Emmare – Nefs-i Levvame

Nefs-i emmare mertebesinde bir mü’min, çok defa işlediği günahların ya farkında değildir ya da hayatını hesapsız yaşamaktadır. Hatta namazında, niyazında, evrâd u ezkârında olsa da, henüz kendi kendini kontrol etme ve iç murâkabe düşüncesi gelişmediği için, ne tam taatin şuurunda ne de mâsiyetin idrakindedir. Böyle birinin, her zaman elinden tutulmaya, havf u recâ dengesine uyarılmaya, mârifet, muhabbet ve mehâfet hisleri açısından derinleştirilmeye ihtiyacı vardır. Sâlikin, bu ilk mertebede nasihat dinlemesi, kusurlarını hafızasına nakşedip sık sık kendini sorgulaması, ibadet ü taatte kararlı davranıp günahlara karşı da dişini sıkarak dayanması “cihad-ı ekber”in mebdei sayılır. Böyle bir mebde yolcusu mübtedî sâlikin, mücâhedesini devam ettirdiği ölçüde, duygu ve düşüncelerinde bazı farklılaşmalar hissedilmeye başlar; bunların başında da, yaptığı en güzel amelleri dahi yeterli bulmama ve olumsuz davranışlarının en küçüğünü bile ciddî ciddî sorgulama hususları gelir ki; işte bu mertebe “nefs-i levvame” mertebesidir.

Nefs-i levvame mertebesindeki bir sâlik, limandan açılmış, rıhtımdan fırlamış ve O’na doğru yürümeye –bu yürüme kalbîdir ve tamamen sâlike ait bir keyfiyet sayılır– başlamıştır ama; o, yine de yer yer sapmalar yaşar.. kaymalara maruz kalır.. bazen hatalar gelir sevapların çehresini karartır ve hayatında güzellikleri çirkinlikler takip eder.. sık sık sürçer ve düşer; sonra da her defasında nedametle toparlanır.. istiğfarla hem günahlarından arınır hem de şer temayüllerinin kökünü kesmeye çalışır ve ümitle yoluna devam eder. Sadece bunları yapmakla da kalmaz; sürekli nefsini kınar.. vicdan azabıyla kıvranır.. zaman gelir iç ızdıraplarını gizli iniltilerle seslendirir ve zaman gelir halvet koylarına koşar, duygularını gözyaşlarıyla münacatlaştırır ve hep inler durur. Nefs-i levvame erbabı berzah yolcusu sayılır ve kalb ibreleri mihrab-ı tâmmı tespit heyecanıyla tir tir titrer, fikirleri âfâk ve enfüs arası gel-gitler yaşar, dilleri de ya “Lâ ilâhe illallah” der, “Lâ maksûde illallah” mülâhazasıyla O’na teveccüh ve iştiyakını ortaya koyar veya doğrudan doğruya O’nun “Maksud-u bi’l-hak” ve “Mâbud-u bi’l-istihkak” olduğunu mırıldanır durur.

Besmele

Çocukların Hastalıkları Hakkında

Rızık - Şükür

Yağmur ve Şükür

Kusurunu Bilmek

Şeytanın mühim bir hilesi insana kusurunu itiraf ettirmemektir. Böylece istiğfar ve Allah'a sığınma yolunu kapatır. Hem nefsin gururunu tahrik eder ki, kendini avukat gibi savunsun, âdeta kusurlardan uzak görsün.

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Nefsini itham eden kusurunu görür. Kusurunu itiraf eden, bağışlanma diler. Bağışlanma dileyen Allah'a sığınır. Allah'a sığınan da şeytanın şerrinden kurtulur. Kusurunu görmemek o kusurdan daha büyük bir kusurdur. Kusurunu itiraf etmemek büyük bir noksanlıktır. İnsan kusurunu görürse o,  kusur olmaktan çıkar; itiraf ederse affa hak kazanır.

Kürtler Sizin Neyiniz Olur?

Yıllardır dillendirilen “Ermeniler millet-i sadıka idi.” klişesine benzer bir şekilde Kürtler için söylene gelen kardeşlik, sadakat, bağlılık, fedakarlık ve feragat gibi onlara ait özelliklerin karşısında bizim sayacağımız hangi özelliklerimiz var diye oturup düşünmenin zamanı geldi, geçiyor.

Türkler Anadolu'nun kapılarını zorladıkları zaman Kürtler, Selçuklulara yardım etmişler. İslam derin bir krize girdiği zaman Kürt liderin etrafında toplanan Müslümanlar İslam'ın onurunu Haçlılardan kurtarmış, Safevi'ye karşı onlar siper olmuş, Çanakkale'de onlar bizimle omuz omuza savaşmışlar, kurtuluş mücadelesini birlikte vermişiz. İslam'ın yasaklandığı dönemde Kürt alimleri öne çıkmış dinin bu coğrafyadan tamamiyle silinip gitmesini engellemiş. Kürdistan medreseleri hâlâ Arapçanın ve İslam ilimlerinin koruyan ve son zamanlarda merkezî şehirlerimizdeki üniversitelere de aktaran yerler olarak anılır.

Anlatılan bütün hikayelerde öne çıkan sadece Kürtlerin âlicenaplığıdır. Türkler Kürtlere bunların karşılığında ne vermiş, sorusuna ise utangaç bir iki kelamdan başka söyleyecek sözümüz yok. Kürt Selçuklu'ya yardım etmiş, Selçuklu onların zaten Bizans zamanında da var olan beyliklerini ve özerkliklerini tanımış. Osmanlı özgürlüklerine dokunmamış, dağlarında özgür gezmişler. Son döneminde İstanbul iskelelerinde hamal olarak Osmanlı'nın ucuz işgücü olmuş. Gerektiğinde Doğu'da Ermeni'ye, Batı'da 6-7 Eylül'de Rum ve Yahudi'ye karşı tetikçilerimiz olmuş. Ülkeyi doğusunda batısında beraber savunup beraber kurtarmış ama bu ülkenin eşit yurttaşı olamamış. Hâlâ da Kürtlere verebildiğimiz bir şey diye aklımıza fındık bahçelerinde verdiğimiz gündelik işler geliyor.

En sonunda ulus devletimizi kurup Kürtleri önce öteleyip yok saymışız. İtiraz edenlerini, isyan edip hakkını arayanlarını yargılayıp infaz etmişiz. Eğitimden kalkınmadan mahrum bırakıp bölgelerini en geri kalmış yerler olarak tutmuşuz. İliklerimize işlemiş milliyetçi duygularla varlıklarını ellerinden alıp külliyen yok saymaya kalkmışız. “Dağlarda kart kurt ederken” çıkan sesten türemiş bir topluluk olarak tanımlamaya kalkmışız. Türk olmadıklarını adımız gibi bildiğimiz halde olmadıkları bir şeyin kalıpları içine girmeye zorlamışız. Yedi yaşına kadar konuştuğu dili yok sayıp yedi yaşında yeni bir dile doğmaya zorlamışız. Bunun getirdiği travmayı hesaba bile katmamışız. Sonra birileri hasbel kader ortaya çıkmış içinde bulundukları şartlara itiraz edecek olmuş. Onları da birer birer susturmuşuz. Ardından nereden geldiği belli olmayan şaibeli bir heyulaya mecbur ve mahkum etmişiz. Sivil siyasetten ümidi kesenler bu heyulanın gölgesine sığınır olmuşlar. Ne heyulayı ortadan kaldırabilmiş, ne de içine doğduğu ortamı düzeltip yaşayamaz hale getirebilmişiz. Yapabileceğimiz şeylerin en kolayı olan, insanları zorla kucaklarına ittiğimiz terörden dolayı itham edip yargılamış, bir kavmin hayatta görebileceği en kötü şartlara mahkum etmişiz.

Bütün bunlar olurken memleketin vicdan sahipleri susmuş, akıl sahipleri iki kelam etmemiş, kalp sahipleri içlerinde varsa bir sızı onu da dışa vuramamışlar.

Şimdi “Kürtler bizim kardeşimiz” söylemi elden ele dolaşıyor. Her büyük ağabey gibi kardeşini ezmenin gerekçesi olarak sunulan bu söylem öylesine bir güzel kılıfla sunuluyor ve karşılarındakinin de bu söylemi alıp kabul etmesi isteniyor ki akıl şaşar. Kardeş isen bir kez olsun büyüklük ettiğin bir anı göster ki kardeşin de kardeşliğini hissetsin. Kardeşliğin tarihten geliyorsa tarihten bir alicenaplık örneği göster. Dinden geliyorsa, dinin gereklerinden birini dahi olsa uygulayıp kardeşine gösterdiğin bir ref'etinden bir merhametinden bahset. Modern değerlerden gelen bir şey varsa tanıdığın bir haktan, sunduğun eşit şartlardan bahset. Yoksa, sadece Kürtlerin fedakârlıklarından kaynaklanan, sadakatten, feragatten, fedakârlıktan bahsetme, bunlar senin isteyeceğin şeyler değil senin insaniyetin karşısında karşındaki insanın göstermek zorunda kalacakları davranışlardır. Sen hangi alicenaplığının karşısında bunları istiyorsun onu düşün. “Ana dilde ölülerine ağıt yakabiliyor” olmaları karşılığında bu istenenler biraz fazla değil mi? Çok geç olmadan kararını ver. Çünkü Kürtler çoktandır bunu sormaya başladı: “Kürtler sizin neyiniz olur?”

İhsan Çolak

Zaman, 8 Ekim 2015, Perşembe