Reunion of East and West
There are roads and doors leading from one good to another and from one evil to another. The days of religious festivals, when human feelings overflow, are blessed days that multiply good deeds.
On these blessed days, new doors, windows and roads are opened for new good deeds. Some take these days as a chance to give a helping hand to the needy people around them. Some turn these days into an opportunity to win back the hearts of relatives they have long neglected. Others benefit from these days by using them to end familial breaches. Maybe what makes religious festivals real festivals is the belief that these days are different than other times. When we act with this belief in mind, we are better able to stop making deliberate mistakes and committing sins and to turn ourselves into real vicegerents of God on earth.
Religious festivals take on greater importance when they make each individual more sensitive toward his environment and the needy around him, and they spread this effect to the entire society, just as the recent Eid al-Adha did for four days. Or more precisely, just as the recent Eid al-Adha exhorted thousands of western Turkish businessmen and volunteers to leave their families, relatives, comfort and luxury for the sake of knocking on the doors of the terrorism-hit, long-neglected and tired people of eastern and southeastern Anatolia.
Apparently, these businessmen and volunteers had been waiting for a flare to be set off. This flare they had been waiting for was set off by Fethullah Gülen, the most venerated social leader in Turkey, who advocates goodness, humanity and helping others.
Apparently, they had just been waiting for Gülen to say "The people of the East and Southeast are grateful and devoted. Friendships there should be deepened with mutual visits. We should never assess the trustworthy and valiant people of the Southeast the way we do some who have gone astray, and we should treat them the way they are."
They had been waiting for Gülen's call for giving a helping hand to the oppressed and victimized people of the East and Southeast: "We should not play into the hands of those trying to spark sectarian conflicts and ethnic fights. We are a nation with all the Circassians, Georgians, Abkhazians and Kurds. Whoever may perpetrate whatever evil, we don't and should never become separated, and we don't and should never betray our common values and history. Even though some try to divide us, we should ever be in search of ways to further calm the atmosphere and to consolidate our fraternity."
Thousands of benevolent people -- businessmen, teachers the self-employed -- who considered this call a command from a divine land, immediately made their decision before Eid al-Adha: They were going to spend this upcoming holiday not at their cozy homes with their families, but with the southeastern and eastern people with whom our ties are endangered by the shadow of violence and terrorism and because of years of negligence. They were not going to leave these people, with whom we have firmly rooted historical, cultural and blood ties, alone. They were going to perform their Eid prayer in the small mosque in their neighborhood, slaughter their sheep in the impoverished neighborhoods, knock on their neighbors' doors, celebrate their religious feast while embracing them, sit at their humble tables and be guests in their small rooms, in which 10-15 people live together.
According to figures given by the Kimse Yok Mu? aid organization, some 60,000 sacrificial animals were slaughtered in the region by western businessmen and help volunteers, and they distributed the meat to poor families. Maybe it's possible to count the number of the slaughtered animals, but is it possible to count the number of bridges of fraternity built between hearts?
Without a doubt, those who went from the west benefited from this reunion with our eastern brothers as much as they did, because they discovered that their fellow countrymen are their brothers whom they have long neglected, just as the easterners felt that the westerners were their real brothers.
And they all made a decision together: This fraternity cannot be one feast long. It cannot be limited to one religious festival. From now on, the feast of brotherhood should be spread all year round. Southeasterners and easterners opened their homes to their westerner brothers and shared their spiritually rich but physically poor tables, and now it's the westerners' turn. Now, thousands of western families are awaiting the day when they host their oppressed and victimized eastern and southeastern brothers in their homes.
The east and west are reuniting on account of these blessed days. Long-separated brothers are embracing one another again, and as a result, peace is capturing a new front on this soil.
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