Conditions of Renaissance and Its Shells!

By Dr. Al-Khidir Haroun
It is not nostalgia alone, ladies and gentlemen, that stirs our hearts, nor is it merely the desire to sit where we are in pursuit of comfort, relaxation, and inaction. Nor should the oft-repeated talk of the “good old days” be read as proof of that. Rather, the reason is that we live through days of immense hardship compared to our recent past. Such words are the sighs of regret, for by the nature of things, life moves forward through continuous effort and grappling with difficulties, not backward. Thus, our talk of the time that was once beautiful carries regret, not a wish for regression.
Like all normal people everywhere, we yearn for ease, avoid hardship and oppression, and reject foolish calls to abandon cars, trains, and airplanes in favour of donkeys, mules, and horses. Our profound wisdom has always been: “If a person is given the choice between two matters, he chooses the easier one.”
This is followed by praise and gratitude to the Creator, the All-Providing Judge, for allowing us to live within the folds of the modern age without burdening ourselves with an unnecessary estrangement in order to achieve renaissance. We must strive to be the giving hand, not one waiting for crumbs and handouts, unlike Mustafa Kemal, who was made “the father of Turkey” (Atatürk)! He wrenched it a century ago from the hands of its fathers who had made it a vast empire whose “Sublime Porte” gazed at rain clouds with a smile, recalling Harun al-Rashid who centuries earlier said in his glory: “Rain wherever you will, your revenues shall come to me.”
But Mustafa Kemal plunged deeply into westernisation, seeking lofty heights without any real need for such extremity. He changed Turkish script from Arabic to Latin, thereby completing the estrangement of generations, severing them from their noble heritage — once immortalised in epic victories — so much so that today they know little of that which once inspired pride, resilience, and defiance.
Sadly, and despite such sacrifices, other nations advanced while preserving their cultures, reaching the highest pinnacles — like Japan, China, and India.
Perhaps Turkey today seeks to correct its path, though at a very high cost — the loss of an entire century.
We, like Japan, China, and India, also wish to launch like intercontinental rockets, grounded in our noble heritage of values, ethics, and faith, so as to ease life further and uphold human dignity without reliance on donations, handouts, and charity to feed and heal the hungry and sorrowful.
I mention all this while searching for an enlightened young man who reaches for fruit high on the trees, for this magnificent literary piece that inspires giving — penned by the wonderful writer Ahmad Hasan al-Zayyat in Al-Risala in 1935. It was once read to us by our late great teacher, Sadiq Muhammad Ahmad, in Madani Secondary School, who began a European history lesson with its introduction, later included in my memoirs (Letters of Memory and Longing). May God’s mercy pour down upon him like rain.
He read aloud, in a captivating radio-like voice, the introduction: “Who are those walking in the pallor of dusk…” and was delighted that I later recalled it, sending me a tender note of thanks before his passing.
That essay moved us profoundly. We ran through the affectionate streets of Madani, aflame with the desire for movement, searching for issues of Al-Risala, which had ceased publication decades earlier, until we found one in the library of Sheikh Yahya Hussein al-Sharafi, then head of the Yemeni community and a man of letters, through his son Dr. Muhammad, our classmate. May God have mercy on them both.
I now republish it here as a lesson, so that as we face life’s trials, we may distinguish between the conditions of renaissance and its mere shells:

Al-Risala Magazine / Issue 88 / Where Are the Turks Being Driven? (1935)
Who are those walking in the pallor of dusk on the borders of the West, hastening their steps as though fleeing the day, never glancing back as if escaping from Sodom? Who are those journeying between light and shadow along a deceptive, obscure path—fluttering like the evening’s ghosts on a child’s bedside, advancing on the road from behind so that they may not return to their kin?
It is a nation sprung from the very heart of the East—nurtured in its light, molded by its months, and breathing its fragrances. Fate, however, handed its reins to a band of its sons who were raised outside its embrace, shaped by a foreign upbringing, and carried away by alien principles. With resentment, they severed it from the sunrise, from the source of spirit, the wellspring of emotion, and the cradle of faith. They led it, forcibly, into a dubious road, a suspicious end, and an unfamiliar world. Then they declared to its soul: Shed your Eastern identity by decree of law; to its heart: Believe other than your creed by force of power; to its tongue: Speak a language other than your own by the will of the ruler; to its present: Cut off from the past by the authority of the republic; to its land, environment, and nature: Separate from Asia by order of government! As though nations are forged by legislation, and human nature transformed by decrees!
Slow down, you drivers of the caravan and guides of the march! You are departing from homeland to exile, from loyalty to enmity, from brotherhood to servitude. What grievance do you hold against the East—the cradle of mankind, the dwelling of religions, the fountain of inspiration, the theater of dreams, and the beginning of creation? Did not the same hand that created Japan today also create China, India, Babylon, Persia, the Hebrews, and the Arabs yesterday?
The sun of civilisation first cast its rays upon us at the dawn of existence, then its noon illuminated us with light, sentiment, and power, until it inclined toward the West where its rays reached the edge of twilight. Indeed, it must set, but indeed, it must rise again. Its setting can only be there, and its rising can only be here. Why then do you not wait with us, cousins, for its imminent rising upon its original homeland?
Already, as you see, some of its rays have touched Japan; now a glimmer has shone upon the cradle of Arabism and the lands of Islam. Soon, its brilliance will blaze across the farthest and nearest East, and the earth will once again tremble and swell, bursting forth with geniuses who improvise wisdom, uncover knowledge, legislate morals, and push human civilisation toward its farthest horizons.
They said to the Anatolian Turk: What have you to do with the East? What do you have to do with the Arabs? What do you have to do with Islam? Come, let us seek your ancestors in Olympus, your kin in the Forum, your civilisation in the Louvre. Then they forced him to don the hat, compelled him to write from left to right, separated religion from state, stripped Turkish of Arabic, deprived the devout people of Islamic traditions, forbade them the ethics of the East, abolished their two feasts, replaced Friday with Sunday, ferried the bewildered, stunned nation on battleships to the European shore, then burned behind them the ships of Tariq!
Yet the true Turk, illuminated by the light of Islam, refined by the learning of the Arabs, and participant in the glory of conquest, never inclined his heart to such imposed transformation. His soul remained where the Prophet Muhammad had placed it, and his body where Mehmed the Conqueror had established it!
The true danger lies with the youth—those whom war hardened and peace betrayed. They blamed their misfortunes and setbacks solely on the idea of the Caliphate and banished it from the earth. Excessive hostility then led them to reject everything associated with Eastern identity, Arabism, and religion. They will stifle in their present the spirit of the past, silence within their consciences the voice of history, build their nationalism on borrowed foundations, renew their identity upon reckless imitation, submit their intellects to a deadly bondage—then, inflated with arrogant cries, proclaim: Turkey for the Turks! And Time, the mocking witness, will answer: Indeed, and Turks for Europe!
Your Excellency, the great Ghazi Atatürk! You mended the broken wing, revived “the sick man,” and delivered youthful Turkey from the black clutches of calamities—this is beyond dispute. Your revered name is the title of its modern history; your indomitable resolve is the pillar of its present constitution; your restless spirit is the support of its coming future. But you wronged your own history by defying the laws of nature in reform and departing from logic in renewal. I fear the vigilant recorder will one day inscribe: You revived a state but slew a nation; you built a constitution but destroyed a creed; you resurrected a language but buried a culture!
What crime have the Arabs committed against the Turks, when they entrusted them with the faith and safeguarded to them the Message? What guilt has Islam upon the Turks, when it lifted them from obscurity and delivered them from ignorance? And what remains of the Turks—their language, their culture—if you erase from all that the trace of Arabism and its faith?
Are the Arabs any less than the Italians or the Germans? Is Islam weaker in elevating people than the paganism of Japan? It is but a wave of rampant materialism that has blinded the eyes and clouded the hearts. Its flood will recede, and the horizons of virtue and truth will shine again—if only after a while!
Ahmed Hassan Al-Zayyat

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