Islam's Reformers .pdf

they get little use from the people. On the other hand, they donot neglect rendering even small services to them. When nohodja was left behind within four years of the First World War towash dead bodies in villages, it was understood that even thehodjas, who were regarded ignorant, were not unnecessary oruseless. Later in the time of Sultan Vahîddedîn Khan, many ofthe subjects that are taught in today’s high schools werereinstated in the curricula of the madrasas in Istanbul, yet it wasseen that no hodja was graduated as qualified as the earlierones. We have told briefly in the preface about the reasons thatcaused the decay of these centers of knowledge which in thepast had educated Molla Fenârî, Molla Husrev, Ebussu’ûd, IbnKemâl, Gelenbevî and many others. Freemasons had not onlydeprived the madrasas of knowledge and monetary funds butalso spread the nickname ‘softas’ (bigots) for ‘students’. It issurprisingly fortunate that, despite such defeatism and neglectshown to them, madrasas have produced men of knowledgewho could more or less rebut the enemies of religion, and thismust be because of the faid and baraka (blessing) in theexaltedness of the profession of teaching Islam. Some madrasagraduate men of religious profession, being unable to endurethe insults directed to them through official tongues, have hadto throw themselves into other areas of business in order toprotect their honour, while some others, taking no notice of theinsults, have adhered to their religious and national customsand continued living in an endeavour against their nafs. It isobvious that those who graduated from the madrasas whichhad been brought into an undesired state and deprived ofteaching knowledge and science could not be men ofknowledge. For this decay, there was another more effectivereason, which was unnoticed and therefore not mentioned byreligion reformers: the hodjas who should have performed theduty of al-amru bi ’l-ma’rûf wa ’n-nahyu ’ani ’l-munkar more thanothers kept silent against and even followed the cruel who putthe madrasas into such a state, even sometimes helping thedegenerate who introduced irreligiousness into this country anderadicated the religion. Although the fingers distinguishing rightfrom wrong with unmistakable attention and unshakenconviction should belong to religious hands and there should bemen of religion ahead of fighters for Islam opposing to injustice,the recent state of men of religion has been more tragic. Men of- 79 -