recourse are placed in their hearts, and these are belief in God and belief in the hereafter. This is kindness and compassion for them. It otherwise means slaughtering those wretched innocents with the drunkenness of nationalist patriotism, like a crazy mother slaughtering her child with a knife. It is a savage cruelty and wrong, like pulling out their brains and hearts and making them eat them to nourish their bodies.
The fifth group are the poor and the weak. The poor, who, because of their poverty, suffer greatly at the heavy burdens of life, and the weak, who are grieved at life’s awesome upheavals – do they receive no share from nationalist patriotism? Is it to be found in the movements you have instituted under the name of European-style, unveiled, Pharaoh-like civilization, which only increase their despair and suffering? The salve for the wound of indigence may be found in the sacred pharmacy of Islam, not in the idea of racialism. The weak receive no strength and resistance from the philosophy of naturalism, which is dark, lacks consciousness, and is bound to chance; they may receive them from Islamic zeal and the sacred nationhood of Islam!
The sixth group is the youth. If the youth of these young people had been perpetual, the wine you have given them to drink through negative nationalism would have had some temporary benefit and use. But when they painfully come to their senses as they advance in years, when they awaken from that sweet sleep in the morning of old age, their distress at the pleasurable drunkenness of youth will make them weep, and the passing of their pleasant dream will cause them much grief. It will make them exclaim: “Alas! Both my youth has gone and my life has departed, and I am approaching the grave bankrupt; if only I had used my head!” Is the share of nationalist patriotism for this group to enjoy themselves briefly and temporarily, and to be made to weep regretfully for a very long time? Or is their worldly happiness and pleasure in life to be found in making their fleeting youth permanent through worship and by spending that fine, sweet bounty, not on the way of dissipation but on the straight path in the form of offering thanks so as to gain eternal youth in the Realm of Bliss? You say, if you possess even a grain of intelligence!
I n S h o r t : If the Turkish nation consisted only of young people, and if their youth was perpetual, and they had no place other than this world, your European-style movement under the screen of Turkism might have been counted as nationalist patriotism. You might have been able to say about me as someone who attaches little importance to the life of this world, considers racialism to be “the European disease,” tries to prevent young people pursuing illicit amusements and vices, and came into the