The Meaning of the Word Islam and its Corruption – an Alevi View

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This text is one of Seyit Derviş Tur Dede’s writings on the Alevi faith. For a general introduction, see: What is Alevism? Its faith, history and core values

The Meaning of the Word Islam and its Corruption

To understand the concept of “Islam” better, it is useful to know in which senses the root verb of this word is used.

The word Islam means believing in Allah, embracing faith and surrendering to Allah. For the word Islam is an extremely comprehensive and meaningful word which, beyond believing, also brings with it surrender, peace, justice, freedom and security.

1. to surrender to Allah, to believe in Allah and to be bound to Him,
2. to believe from the heart, without doubt and without hypocrisy,
3. to choose Islam as one’s religion, to enter Islam. In short: to believe in the oneness of Allah and to embrace faith. To know Almighty Allah, to believe in Him and to surrender to Him – this is Islam:

Surah Al Imran, verse 19: With Allah, the true religion is Islam. The meaning of “religion” (din) is “obedience and surrender”.
How verses 14 and 15 of Surah al-Hujurat in the Qur’an describe Islam:
“O Muhammad, those Bedouins say to you: We have believed. Say to them: You have not believed; rather say: We have become Muslims. For the faith with which you would believe is not in your hearts. As long as you do not believe and embrace faith, you cannot be Islam. But if you believe in Allah and His Prophet, embrace faith and obey, and keep His commandments, Allah is merciful and forgiving.”
Surah al-Baqara, verse 136: We believe in what has been sent down to us from Allah, and in what was sent to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob and their descendants, in what was given to Moses and Jesus and to the other prophets by their Lord, making no distinction between any of them. We are simply among those who surrender to Allah.
If we reflect on this, the communities of the Prophet David, the Prophet Moses and the Prophet Jesus are all communities that recognise the oneness of Almighty Allah, believe in Him and have embraced faith.
The Qur’an states the following clearly: the name of the community of religions brought by the prophets – who conveyed messages to humanity through holy scriptures and who recognise the oneness of the one God, Allah – is Islam. Yet as long as you do not affirm the oneness of Allah with your tongue (ikrar), believe with your heart and surrender to Allah, you cannot be Islam. This is also what the Qur’an means by Islam.
Sadly, immediately after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, the true religion of Islam that he had brought was corrupted for the sake of self-interest and advantage. They brought back the slave system and the order of exploitation of the Age of Ignorance (Jahiliyya), far removed from right and justice, and built a fabricated religion of Islam. By force, they presented this to ignorant people before the world as “the religion of Muhammad”. Two different religions of Islam that have come down to our day are still kept alive among us:

1. There is the religion of Islam that the Prophet Muhammad sent down (brought) with the Qur’an.
2. There is the fabricated Islam corrupted by Muawiya and the Umayyads.
   But if you look carefully, almost all the things the Prophet Muhammad forbade are still practised in Umayyad Islam. See how the Prophet Muhammad, in his sermon at his last pilgrimage, the Farewell Pilgrimage, shaped the Islam he had brought with the Qur’an:

 

1. He abolished the blood feuds that had continued since the Age of Ignorance and from that time forbade blood revenge within the Islamic community.
2. He abolished and forbade “interest” (usury), the order of exploitation of the Age of Ignorance.
3. “O people, you have certain rights over your women. Women too have certain rights over you. Treat them well. You took them in the name of God, giving your word to Allah. By Allah’s command you have become lawful to one another” – with these words he brought equality between woman and man.
4. It was forbidden to meet with another, second woman apart from one’s lawfully wedded wife. He likewise forbade a woman to meet with anyone other than her lawful husband. By explaining that this is adultery and a sin, he prescribed monogamy.
5. In his sermon at Arafat he said that no one among people is superior to another, and thereby established equality among human beings.
6. “The human being is sacred; do not kill one another, do not strike off one another’s heads, do not do to others what you would not consider fitting for yourselves.” In this way he set out human rights and law.
7. The father is not responsible for the son’s crime, nor the son for the father’s; he forbade killing an innocent person in place of the guilty one for the sake of revenge.
8. “Repay the debts you have taken. Keep your word where you have stood surety.” With these words he established truthfulness, honesty and justice among people.
9. He forbade all ugly customs left over from the Age of Ignorance that harm humanity.
10. In the last parts of the sermon of Ghadir Khumm (Kadir Hum), with the words “O people, today I have perfected your religion for you; I have chosen Islam for you as your religion”, he determined the essence of the religion he had brought.
11. “O people, I too am a human being like you, and my days too have drawn near. Soon I shall depart from among you. I leave you two trusts: one is the noble Qur’an, the other my Ehl-i Beyt (my family, the Ahl al-Bayt). As long as you hold fast to them and do not depart from the path of the Qur’an and my Ehl-i Beyt, you will not go astray.”
12. “O people, I have conveyed to you every word that Allah commanded me. I am responsible for my duty. O people! Know that Allah is my mawla (lord and protector). And I am the mawla of all believers. Whoever’s mawla I am, Ali is his mawla too. Ali’s flesh is my flesh, his blood is my blood: ‘Ali is from me, and I am from Ali.’” These words are long, but I do not wish to lengthen this. There he conferred the velâyet (spiritual authority and sainthood) on Ali and announced to the hundreds of people present that Ali would lead Islam in his place. That is why the Alevis follow the Islamic path and rites (yol and erkân) that Imam Ali and the Ehl-i Beyt carried on. That is why the Alevis say: we are the essence of Islam.

The Alevi community, which believes in the Prophet Muhammad, Imam Ali and the Ehl-i Beyt and has embraced this faith, keeps alive the true Islam that was sent down. The fabricated Islam brought by the Umayyads is kept alive by the Sunni community. At no time in history have the Alevis accepted the fabricated Islam of the Umayyads as religion or faith. The Alevi community has believed in and embraced the Ehl-i Beyt Islam brought by the Prophet Muhammad and Imam Ali. Certain false missionaries who know nothing of the path and its rites, and faithless people who merely play at being Alevi, try – in order to deceive the uninformed community – to present the fabricated, false Islam of the Umayyads as the true Islam of the Prophet Muhammad and, by saying “We are not Islam”, to lead the Alevi community away from the true Islamic faith.
The Companions (Sahaba) asked the Prophet Muhammad: “O light of my eyes, from whom shall we learn the knowledge of Islam after you have gone to God?” The Prophet Muhammad said: “I am the city of knowledge and Ali is its gate. Whoever would come to me, let him first go to Ali. ‘Ali completes me.’” If we were to sum up Imam Ali briefly: Hz. Pir says: “That holy spirit clothed itself in a human body inside the Kaaba and came into the world as Ali.” Hazrat Mevlana (Rumi), in the section “Nat-ı Ali” of his Masnavi, uses the following words: “Ali is the speaking Qur’an. He is the imam who explains. He is the friend of God (veli). He is the sun of the being of the people of purity (safa). The exalted attributes of God (Hakk) are the attributes of Ali. The attributes of God are in any case not separate from him. The aim in knowledge is the exalted Ali. No one but he knows the wisdom of God. He is with God; God appears through him. The Prophet Muhammad, at the degree of nearness to God, in the sacred precinct of union with Allah, saw his secret. He heard Ali’s speech from Ali. In that place where he united with Ali, no one is found but Ali.”

But sadly, missionaries who merely play at being Alevi, and of whom it is unclear whom they serve, are doing very great harm to our sacred faith by brainwashing uninformed Alevis: they present the Wahhabi and Salafi creed brought by the Umayyads – which beheads people crying “Allahu Akbar”, regards interest as permissible, considers marriage to four women lawful, issues fatwas for the marriage of girls aged eight and ten, calls everyone who does not believe as they do an unbeliever and declares their killing obligatory – as if it were the Islamic faith of the Alevis. The Ottomans massacred people who were Alevi. These self-serving missionaries who say “We are not Islam” are massacring the Alevi faith of the Ehl-i Beyt. Dear friends! The Islam brought with the Qur’an by the Prophet Muhammad, Imam Ali and the Ehl-i Beyt, which we have described above, is what we call Islam. They, on the other hand, call the fabricated Islam of the Umayyads Islam. To make you conform to them, they practise deceit. They slander knowingly. We do not accept Umayyad Islam as Islam. We have nothing to do with it. In fact, judging by what they do and the way they go, it is they themselves who believe in the Umayyad Islam they describe to you. I wish all Alevi cans (fellow believers) to be aware of this situation. With my respects.
Seyit Derviş Tur

1. What does fasting mean?
2. Why does one fast?
3. How many kinds of fasting are there?
4. Why do the Alevis not fast for 30 days in Ramadan?
5. Is fasting an act of worship (ibadet)?

 

1. The fasts made obligatory by the Qur’an: the Muharram fast and the Ramadan fast.
2. The fast of thanks and gratitude.
3. The fast of atonement (kefaret).

 

1. What is worship (ibadet)?
2. How many kinds of worship are there?

Answer –

1. The worship of fasting.
2. The worship of zikir (remembrance of God).
3. The worship of prostration (secde).

Dedem (my dede), this week a text headlined “The domestic and national products of the Turkish-Islamic Synthesis” was circulated on social media by the A.B.F. Have you read this text? If you have, how do you interpret it?

My child, the claim that we have anything to do with the Turkish-Islamic Synthesis is an unconscionable slander. The whole text is full of slander anyway. The text is full of contradictions in itself. Whoever wrote it clearly does not have the slightest knowledge of the Alevi faith and Alevi history. In one line he says: (Alevism, with its own distinctive faith, has never been and will never be under the monopoly of any religion, any book or any nation). See, by saying this he rejects the religion of Islam of the Prophet Muhammad and Imam Ali and the Qur’an, and with the word “nation” (millet) the Ehl-i Beyt and the Twelve Imams. With the sentence in this line he excludes them all.
Look! In the line below he lists: “With the motto Hakk–Muhammad–Ali, under the guidance (rehberlik) of Hünkar Hacı Bektaş Veli and Pir Sultan.” Whoever wrote this is very ignorant. A person who does not know what he is saying. Nefs-i emmare (the self that commands evil)! He has made his mind a prisoner of the interests of his ego and is unaware of what he is saying. This ignorant person has readily resorted to slander without any knowledge. Such people can always lie and slander with ease. Imam Ali has a beautiful counsel; he says: “The slander of the liar, the hypocrite and the two-faced never ends; never befriend them.” Honestly, I pity these people. May Allah reform them too, I say.

Translated from the Turkish original by Seyit Derviş Tur.