Don't look at just one side with a single eye.
Don't mistake losing the eye and the sight it had for the eye and sight themselves.
That is the kind of awareness and state that fascism, and the hatred and division it creates, along with the lies it spreads, produces in you.
Sight, thinking ability, and the capacity for review are lost, destroyed.
The vision that has been ruined and lost is passed off as vision itself; the absence of thought is passed off as thought itself.
Instead, what you should be able to do is acquire two, three, or more eyes and see things from every direction.
Moreover, looking and seeing must not be only about tearing something out of context to find fault with it.
Don't look at or say anything anywhere by selling your conscience, or for the sake of vested self-interest.
At least before your own conscience, be honest, just, and impartial in that path.
Don't harbor blind hostility or hatred toward anyone.
Because of blind hostility and hatred you harbor, don't be unjust to anyone. Know that blind hostility, hatred, and envy are a fire that burns and consumes you yourself. That is why it also ends up destroying others and the surrounding world.
But it begins by first burning and destroying you.
Regarding Islam and Muslims, many people are under a deep misunderstanding, and are caught up and stirred in the turmoil that misunderstanding has produced.
Many who give themselves the label of "seekers" are stuck in the misfortune of carrying that misunderstanding around as if it were a great understanding.
Under the pretext of the word and description "freedom," they become slaves.
Turmoil and confusion are not a position — they are the absence of a position; it is the loss of whatever position one had, for those who don't realize this.
Muddy water doesn't clarify anything, does it?
Turmoil and confusion, made to feel like a great position or ideal, are in fact the absence of any position or ideal.
That is why what happens among them isn't inquiry; instead, it is a justification for the state they are trapped in — the claim of "freedom" is just a label given to the condition they are stuck in.
Whims given the name freedom.
Enslavement to carnal desire given the name freedom.
What they have isn't a position, isn't an ideal; it is only justification for continuing to be as they have become and to keep doing what they are already doing.
Many positions, philosophies, and explanations are simply covers for guilt — a search for a convenient philosophy to justify wrongs already being committed.
Islam is not what they have understood it to be.
Islam is not a religion created by a priesthood.
Islam is not a religion that created a priesthood.
There is no priesthood in Islam; there must not be.
Islam is the religion that abolished every kind of priesthood and every kind of exploitation.
In Islam, everyone stands the same distance from, and in the same closeness to, God.
There are no priests in Islam, none for Muslims.
If there is anything, it is that everyone is equally a "priest," a "saint" — or equally someone capable of error. That's all.
Islam: a straight line equally connecting God and all humanity.
Suited to the upright-minded: one God, one human being, face to face.
Islam is without contradictions, without room for doubt, without exploitation. Straightforward, with clarity.
Without priesthood and exploitation. Founded only on social justice. Ensuring only social welfare. That is Islam. Generally, no one imagines that such a religion — one that isn't like other religions — could exist.
That is why many misunderstand Islam, assuming it to be like what is commonly said about it.
Is there a religion founded only on social justice, without priesthood and exploitation, that ensures only social welfare? Could there be such a religion that isn't like other religions?
There is such a thing. There will be such a thing. That is Islam.
Islam is not what anyone has understood it to be.
Islam is a religion like nothing anyone has understood.
Therefore, while condemning everything indiscriminately with closed eyes, don't also condemn what is right along with it.
Don't shut your own eyes, mind, and spirit of inquiry by condemning what is right outright.
If someone commends good and forbids evil and injustice by reasonably speaking of heaven and hell, without engaging in any kind of exploitation or priestly cruelty, what is wrong or bad about that?
Some will ask: such an Islam and such a Muslim community as described above doesn't exist anywhere.
That isn't true — such an Islam and such a Muslim community do exist, everywhere.
Many close their eyes to it, pretend not to see even when they see, and walk about as if they don't see it. That's the reality.
If someone knocks to open the door, they bolt it shut even further from inside.
That bolting shut from within, that being closed, they give the beautiful name of "freedom" and "inquiry" to.
They revel in the name of "seekers."
To maintain the label of "seekers," even when they find something, they pretend not to have found it.
Because if it becomes known that they have found it, they would lose the name and label of "seeker," their self-identity, their label, and their pride.
So, in order to remain seekers, to be known only as seekers, they close their eyes — even when they find something, they act as if they haven't seen it. They try their best not to find it.
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