Diriliş Ertuğrul, A Review

As Ertugrul Bey (a character played by a Turkish actor, Engin Altan Düzyatan) uncovered every of the enemies’ plot in Diriliş Ertuğrul, his brother, Gundogdu and others like him would worry about how trouble always seemed to follow Ertugrul everywhere he went. They were comfortable with being just a nomadic group, feeding their livestock, making good fabric and securing good bargains with their caravans. They didn’t mind avoiding all of the trouble looming over the Muslim world as long as it didn’t affect their tribe.

I can help but relate this to how our present problems as an Ummah is because a lot of us are complacent. We may not necessarily like the state of the Ummah but we have made ourselves comfortable in it. We have trivialized the issues and decided to ‘dey our dey’ because ‘we no want wahala’.

In my opinion, this is still pretty much the root of our problems as an Ummah. We have become comfortable in our immediate environment. We do not consider the problems of other Muslims as our responsibility even though those problems could easily turn around to affect us too. We have made ourselves forget the primary objective of Islam; to establish truth and justice and to make the will of Allah supreme.

Ertugrul could have handed over Halime Sultan and her family to Karatoygar, he could have sought another fresh land for his tribe and leave Ameer El-Aziz of Aleppo to his problems, he could have let the Templar Knights have whatever they wanted to let sleeping dogs lie, but he didn’t. This was not because he enjoyed being a trouble magnet or being the centre of attraction, but because he always looked at the bigger picture. He knew that the problems of some Muslims, if not tackled, would eventually become the problems of all Muslims. He looked at every situation considering the interests of the Muslim World and the objective of Allah for Islam. He was insightful, foresighted and resilient.

We might say that not everyone is made to be insightful, to be foresighted or to be resilient but it behoves the one who can not see the bigger picture by himself to support the greater cause whenever the opportunity is presented.

Gundogdu was perhaps this kind of person, even though easily swayed to the side of the unreasonable, he would always offer his support to any cause that his brother championed. Importantly, it was evident that some of the strongest weapons of the enemies was to create disunity among Muslims and plant hypocrites who sold the Muslims out. From Karatoygar, to Nasir, to Kurdoglu, the traitors served as the greatest weapons against their own brothers. This is reflective of the fact that the hypocrites, deliberate or unintentional ones, are the greatest problem of the Ummah. They aid the enemies of Islam in sowing the seeds of discord, misunderstanding and injustice among the Muslims.

Here and now, we as an Ummah will only be able to achieve our divine assignment of establishing the will of Allah, His truth and ensuring justice, if only we retrace our root’s virtues of collectivism, togetherness and unity.

▪︎Titilope Olurode writes from Ilorin, Kwara State