ارطغرلErtugrul

[This student wrote a commentary on the famous Turkish historical drama Ertugrul a few months ago.  This comment was, in fact, less about the play and more about the popular opinion that prevailed in our country, which made the play extremely popular throughout the Muslim world.  In this commentary, the artistic and moral merits of the play were openly

acknowledged, but at the same time there was some criticism of the prevailing thought, the weakness of which, despite all the sacrifices of the last two hundred years, has humiliated Muslims to this day.  Are victims.  Many people praised this criticism, but some people celebrated very badly.  But going beyond the likes and dislikes of the people is the real national service to which the welfare of the nation is concerned.

 Nowadays this drama is being shown on PTV by translating it into Urdu and now crores of people will watch this drama.  It is against this background that this comment is being republished.  With the hope that after wasting two centuries in blind and useless sentimentality, it is time for our young generation to learn the right lessons from history.  Even if no lesson is learned, the responsibility is fulfilled in all circumstances. Abu Yahya]

 History and history lessons

 History is said to be the memory of nations, but the fact is that the role of history in the life of nations is far more important.  It plays a key role in shaping their subconscious, national mood and psyche.

 However, for this student, more important than the history of a nation is the angle from which its intellectuals and scholars show history to the nation.  What lessons do they draw from the pages of history that shape the nation's psyche?  And how they relate the past to the present.

 This is the background in which the student took time out of his busy schedule and responsibilities to watch the drama Ertugrul, presented by the Turkish state TV channel TRT, and according to the deputy director of the institution, more than 78 so far.  This drama series is being watched in countries and it is constantly increasing.

 The first season of this series in our country was presented by a private channel with Urdu dubbing.  Recently, Prime Minister Imran Khan directed PTV to show the play with Urdu dubbing.  However, the drama is still available on social media and the Internet with Urdu subtitles.

 Features of Ertugrul drama

 Because of my interest in history, my older brother insisted many years ago that I should watch this play.  But such dramas consist of so many episodes that it is virtually impossible for a person like me to take the time to watch them.  But coincidentally, I got some time in the last few days to watch all the seasons of this drama.  That was when the prime minister announced that the play would be aired on state television.  As a result, the drama will soon be seen in large numbers in public.  Therefore, it was felt that I should present my findings to the readers in the context of the above, which is more important than history, from which angle history is being presented.

 The Ertugrul drama is a very successful commercial drama.  It is not easy to keep the audience interested in such long dramas.  One of the ways in which this has been done all over the world is to make such TV series full of nude and obscene scenes.  Where this is not possible, semi-nude women's clothing must be included.  This makes a large number of viewers watch such series with interest.

 Since the Ertugrul drama was set in a religious context and was to be aired on the official channel of the Islamist government in Turkey, it does not contain any pornographic scenes or any aspect of nudity in women's clothing.  Is.  This is undoubtedly an admirable thing, but obviously the play was meant to be attractive to the audience.  For this purpose, two more methods of popularizing dramas were adopted.  The first is that the drama often depicts scenes of war.  Secondly, in order to keep the interest of the audience, the story of the play has tried to maintain the element of thrill by bringing new twists and turns from the traitors, their tricks and conspiracies.

 Together, these two elements combine elements of suspense and thrill into a play that play a key role in making any play or story popular.  The acting, directing, music, location, filming and other technical aspects of the actors are also of very good quality.  All these things together have made this play a standard and popular play.

 But above all, the feature of this play is that it pays a lot of attention to the character building of the people.  Religious and moral teachings have become part of the permanent drama.  Relationships with God, love of religion and compassion for the ummah have been repeatedly shown which are high spiritual and moral attributes.  At the same time, Islam has been presented as the only way for the welfare of humanity and justice.

 An explanation of a historical fact

 Before proceeding, it is necessary to clarify a historical fact.  That is, the historical facts about Ertugrul are few and far between, and most of what is known is a myth.  All in all, Ertugrul belonged to the Qai tribe, one of the nomadic Turkish tribes who fled to present-day Syria and Turkey in search of refuge, terrified by the devastation of the Tartars.  Were  On the way, Ertugrul saw two armies fighting.  He helped the weaker group, including about 400 of his soldiers, and defeated the other group.

 This weak group was the army of Sultan Aladdin of the Roman Seljuk government in Turkey and the other powerful group was the Mongol invaders.  So the Sultan was pleased and gave him the territory of Sagut as a jagir which was connected to the Byzantine Empire.  This area was a permanent battlefield and after that he spent the rest of his life fighting with these people and expanding his territory. In this whole struggle there will be only one and a half wars which can be recorded in the pages of history.  Otherwise, most of Ertugrul's life is historically obscured.

 Obviously, the drama that has been made with such a comprehensive information, it was inevitable that most of it would consist of fiction in terms of incidental details.  At the beginning of the play itself, in each episode, it is made clear in Turkish that all the stories, events and characters narrated in this play have been created inspired by history.  So the drama that is actually being shown is a fiction in its own right.  In fact, in some places, history has been misrepresented.  For example, in the third season, it is shown that on the occasion of Ertugrul's war with the Christians, Sultan Aladdin helped his group and saved them from defeat and forced the Christians to flee.  Historically, the opposite has happened.  It was Ertugrul who defeated the enemy with the help of the Sultan in a difficult situation.  Historians disagree on whether the group was Mongol or Christian, but not on whether Ertugrul helped and in return he was given the estate of Sagut.

 However, the purpose of this description is to show that the drama is more about Ertugrul's real life than how his presenters are trying to convey history.  Want to make people's minds up by learning the lessons of  Since this mind is the mind of contemporary Muslims, unfortunately it has all the weaknesses due to which Muslims are not able to continue their decline in the present.

 In this context, the student will analyze these aspects of the play.  This analysis may be difficult on some natures, but the same request can be made to such friends in the language of Iqbal.

 Bitter me in the grass

 That even poison sometimes works as an antidote

 Training and purification of ideas instead of heroism

 The main idea of ​​this play is a favorite concept of modern Muslims.  That is, for Muslims, the only way to avoid internal disturbances, external dangers, constant decline and defeats is for a great leader to come and fix everything.  Ertugrul is portrayed as such in the play.  The truth is that the fact that everything was fine at the hands of a great leader was not entirely correct even in ancient times, but even a little bit of truth in the ancient monarchy is now dead.  Has done

 This is the age of social power.  This social power arises when there are a significant number of trained people in the society and especially in its middle class and elite.  They are morally sensitive.  They know the art of listening to different opinions, reflecting on them and refining their thoughts beyond prejudices.  No individual can change or change the destiny of a single nation. Whenever a great leader comes forward, there are many people behind him who are quietly performing the duty of training and cooperating with the nation.

 The example of Turkey

 Take Turkey, where we see a seemingly political leader in the form of Erdogan.  But few people know that before Erdogan there was a whole intellectual struggle that lasted for more or less a century and that struggle kept alive the religious spirit and Islamic morality in the people of Turkey despite the anti-religious thinking of Kamal Ataturk.  ۔  Reformers and their movements, such as the innovators Saeed Nursi (1871-1960) and Fethullah Golan (born 1941), not only did not allow the Turkish nation to distance itself from Islam, but continued to build its character, despite decades of anti-Islamic coercion by Kamal Ataturk.  ۔  Although Golan's later differences with Tayyip Erdogan came to the fore, these reform movements instilled in the people the spirit that provided opportunities for a good leadership to work, a supportive team, and support in society, but also in general.  Kept the moral spirit of the society alive.  Therefore, it is just a matter of stories that the society should stand on lies, hypocrisy, dishonesty and a leader should come and change the destiny of the nation.  This is not the case in the real world.

 Moreover, this is not the era of monarchy in which a chief with the help of a handful of his comrades seizes power and then paints the society in his own color.  In this day and age, if someone comes aggressively or democratically, he will have to make the worst compromises if not society.  We have seen it all happen in our own country.  First I saw Zia-ul-Haq who was not personally accused of financial corruption, but to maintain his undemocratic power he pushed the country into the hell of corruption.  The democratic example is that of our current Prime Minister, whose entire power consists of compromises and utopias.

 But unfortunately in our country people do not understand this fact.  Instead of improving society, renewing knowledge, purifying ideas, educating people morally and instilling a spirit of faith in them, they sit hand in hand waiting for a leader.

 Myths and miracles remain

 The reason for this is that in this play, the elders with supernatural powers have to be with the main character.  The way Ibn Arabi's character is portrayed in this play has no authentic historical basis.  But more than that, in this play, apart from being a moral mentor and a perfect physician, his role is also to help this great leader by using his spiritual powers. Only this lament of Iqbal can be read on such things.

 There is no longing in the Sufi circle

 Myths and miracles remain

 The Qur'an gives us complete guidance about the rise and fall of nations.  He says that honor and humiliation and taking and giving the kingdom is in the hands of God.  His decisions are enforced by his angels, not some elders.  Whoever the human being is, he is in a state of trial.  As for his decisions, he makes his decisions based on his own principles.  The most basic of these is the nation's passion for reform and betterment.  Knowledge and morality, where does that nation stand?  If the moral attitude is low, then even if you get power in a temporary way, it is taken away, and if the moral attitude of the nation is high, then the leadership and guidance of the world is given to that nation.

 However, the bottom line is that nations do not achieve greatness and progress with the arrival of a single leader.  Today it is a society whose collective power changes the destiny of the nation.  The real work to be done is the moral training and intellectual purification of the society.  If we wait for the great leader, nothing will come of it except disappointment and deception.

 The battlefield is now the field of knowledge

 The second problem with the theme of this play is that it captivates the viewers in this romantic world where some brave swords in their hands cut off the infidels, defeat the enemies and raise the awareness of the victory of the Muslims.  The importance of knowledge is sometimes discussed in the play, but its dominant theme, which is shown so frequently that it is impossible not to sit in the mind of the viewer, is that there are some brave ones, each of whom  He raises the knowledge of Islam by destroying a thousand enemies with his sword.  Our childhood was spent in this romantic world after reading Naseem Hijazi's novels.  But as he grew older, his studies revealed the bitter truth that this romantic world is now completely irrelevant.  In the last two centuries, we have produced thousands of heroes like Ertugrul, but the end result of the nation's total decline in knowledge and morals was that they all took to the field dreaming of Muslim domination and left the world empty-handed.

 Unfortunately, we have not yet learned a lesson.  The steam engine was invented more than two and a half years ago when human power was replaced by the power of knowledge.  Unfortunately, Muslims have not heard of this incident to this day.  Or in other words, the intellectual and intellectual leadership of Muslims do not allow Muslims to acknowledge this fact.  They still keep Muslims alive in a world where some brave warriors on horseback fought the war of Islam.

 I wish someone would tell my people that the war is still going on, but the battlefield has changed.  Now it is the field of knowledge, the world of technology and the race of inventions where the real victory of nations is decided.  Now the world has entered the age of knowledge with the sword.  Now the power of knowledge becomes military power.  The power of knowledge is the economic power.  It is the power of knowledge that gives the technology that propels one nation ahead of another.  It is the power of knowledge that makes inventions that put one nation on the path to greater development than another.  I wish our nation understood this fact before further defeats, humiliations and disgrace.

 If anyone disagrees with us, just look at how much our education budget is.  How many Nobel Prizes have we won in science?  What standards do our universities have in the world in scientific research?  By all such standards, it would be great news if the entire Islamic world, consisting of two billion Muslims, could compete with a single developed Western country.

 Conspiracies and betrayals

 The third weak point of the theme of this play is that it shows so many conspiracies and betrayals that the viewer is convinced that conspiracies are being hatched against us everywhere in the world.  There is no merit in other nations but their total capital is to conspire.  Our real weakness is that there are traitors among us.  Otherwise no one can defeat us.

 This is a very unrealistic way of thinking which is unfortunately very common among Muslims.  This attitude will increase a lot in the viewers of this drama.  The fact is that in God's world, things are different.  Here in a nation where moral sense is alive, merit is common, justice is established, the nation is ahead in science and art, it is not easy to betray them and conspiracies are not effective.  Betrayal and conspiracy are effective only against the weak.  Morally powerful people continue their journey despite every conspiracy.

 Similarly, it is important to understand that other nations are not just conspiring.  They also have many high qualities and talented people.  When two nations compete, it is not really a matter of who conspires more successfully against the other.  Rather, the real competition is over who is more talented than the other and where justice, fairness and merit are common.  Every conspiracy against a nation that lags behind in these things will come to fruition, otherwise it will fail.

 Abstract

 These are the three aspects of the Ertugrul drama that subconsciously become part of the heart and mind of the viewer.  But these are the three aspects that have not allowed the decline of Muslims in the last two hundred years to end.  That is, instead of empowering the society, they are waiting for the arrival of a great leader who, with the help of some elders, will make the Muslims dominant in the world in spite of all their moral degradation.  The second is that Muslims are still mentally alive on the battlefield where physical strength is decisive, while the world has advanced to the milestone of knowledge and technology in which the dream of domination and success without skill is crazy.  Is.  Thirdly, Muslims forget all their weaknesses and consider some traitors and external conspiracies as the cause of their humiliation and defeat.

 The fact is that Muslims will be far from the pinnacle of power until they fix these three things.  People who want to see Ertugrul drama must watch it.  If you want to enjoy this drama, you must do it.  If you want to be proud of your history and past, do it too.  But please don't make it relevant.  Otherwise, the series of defeats that has been going on for two centuries will continue in this century as well.  If possible, keep in mind the points made by this student.  In them lies the path to our ascension.

 Wherever you are, let the servants be a cause of mercy for God, not a cause of pain.