BETWEEN LOYALTY AND TRUST

Our beloved Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was most famously known as al-amin (trustworthy, truthful) during the first forty years of his life before he received divine revelation. Even those who had difficulty in believing in divine revelation later found themselves listening to his messages, for in their eyes a person of such trustworthiness would not declare himself a prophet without any apparent reason.

To have absolute trust in someone’s words and actions is considered to be almost impossible today as exemplified in the difficulty of encountering a person who does not gossip. Neither can we refrain from emphasizing the inevitability of living in an age of glorified and even sanctified evil. In fact, we invent mitigating reasons for ourselves as if it were inconceivable to be an unquestionably trustworthy person, a person of his word. As if it were possible to confine trustworthiness, honesty and loyalty to historical definitions.

We have almost come to suppose that that beloved person, that loyal friend who would never say anything unpleasant behind our back could not possibly exist. The only motivation that keeps our friendships going is our need to talk about ourselves. We are unable to develop other ways of sharing.

And the popular culture too constantly markets more and more ‘aggressive’ attitudes to us in this context.

It suggests to us that we can be more expressive and cooperative if we badmouth each other at every opportunity, confess our sins and let off everything in our chest. It preaches to us that we can strengthen our relationships by investigating our faults and playing the ‘shrinks’ of each other. Women on morning TV shows are encouraged to exhibit their private family matters to millions of audience to relieve themselves and to look for solutions with thousands of people. We seem to forget that the more we dig, the more we get caught up in this web. And the people that turn us into ‘shrinks’ keep making money as long as they can ‘feature’ our problems.

I cannot help but wonder if it is possible to continue to love our loved ones ‘truly’ without talking behind their backs or gossiping about them. Can we really call our feelings for them ‘love’ if we have not grown in divine love yet?

Nevertheless, all this pretentious propaganda has not yet erased from our memory this ancient knowledge: We have a Listener and a Speaker even when we do not utter a word. Therefore, it is more than enough to beseech for His help to understand that we are not alone. I believe that it is possible to communicate with others without damaging the trust of our loved ones and still find real friends who will share our loneliness and consider our problems as their own. It is possible today and it will be possible tomorrow till the Day of Judgment.

I find this as one of the greatest blessings that Islam has honored the human beings with. I know that we will attain a miraculous state of well-being if we follow this path which makes it possible for us to become people of their word. A Muslim is someone in whose hands and tongue we have absolute trust, is he/she not?

However, those who assume that they are the ones to determine how we live our lives want us to have doubts about our loved ones, our neighbors and even those people we have not yet met. They instill in us paranoia to take measures of security towards protecting their own interest by living in a constant state of doubt about others and not having any trust in people’s words or actions. And they achieve this by affirming with strong conviction that our only reward for being so vigilant is, again, ourselves.

What aggravated this mood of paranoia underlined by a need to take exaggerated security measures was of course 9/11. Ever since the events of 9/11, governments have been adding to their strategies of protection from the ‘evil’ perpetrated by enemies they devise as targets to mask in the eyes of their people the terror they themselves commit.

There are talks of keeping records of the fingerprints of students in the UK, which is known as the state that spies on its citizens at the highest level. And what is more, these fingerprints are said to have been gathered without the knowledge of students or parents. 3500 schools and libraries have already started to give lunch by means of fingerprints. Some other schools have gathered fingerprints even by having the children play a ‘game of espionage’.

Who could claim that the words of people who take measures against their own children whom they regard as potential spies or future criminals can be trusted? Whose word can we trust if we keep assuming that everyone does or can plot against us? Putting all this aside, how can we even ensure others that they can trust us, our own words?

Again in the UK since last year, if there occurs a transaction over a certain limit in the bank accounts of people with the name Muhammad, these accounts have started to be blocked out of a fear of alleged support of terrorism. For according to what these people claim, Muhammad is the most repeating name among people who were charged as the perpetrators of the terrorism of 9/11 and many others.

I am not repelled in the face of this terrible situation where the name of our beloved master, whose love in our hearts cannot even be paralleled by the love we have for our own children, is identified with every other terrorist action and he is intended to be engraved in our subconscious as a ‘suspect’. I show patience. Just like the way He did when people threw stones at him in the gardens of Taif.

His whole life, he never looked for people’s faults, he showed mercy to those who tried to kill him or insulted him, he forgave his enemies, he even honored and valued them...By following in the footsteps of our beloved or just by having the intention to do at least some of his practice, it must be possible to become one of ‘trustworthy’ people in these difficult times.

On the other hand, though, I cannot help but wonder: Who can we trust if we constantly have doubts about people we do not know? Can we obey the word of our loved ones without question if we do not trust them? And how can we learn loyalty if we can not trust our loved ones? Is not the trust we have for others the yardstick for the loyalty we have to our own word?