Microphones are open for prayer, closed to justice

Can there be a religion that does not see poverty, misery, lawlessness, and the loss of justice? Does religion not test the conscience? Does God not put to the test the person who remains mute, blind, and deaf in the face of injustice? Surely not. If so, how are we to explain this indifferent, careless mentality of faith that we experience in the name of religion?

As is known, there are many associations, foundations, and communities organized in the name of religion. They come together because they must have specific goals, purposes, and concerns. Otherwise, there would be no meaningful reason for coming together. This is exactly where the problem begins. Almost all of these organizations we are talking about do not see the poverty being experienced, do not care about it, and do not include it in their list of concerns or religious duties. For instance, they do not voice the fact that even rent cannot be paid with a pension, and that consequently, retirees are being abandoned to the streets. They do not shout that the minimum wage, which is just a notch above the pension, is also a starvation wage, and that such earnings are incompatible with human dignity and honor. They do not say, "With these wages, the right to housing, which is one of the most fundamental rights, is being violated; this has no place in religion or faith." They do not declare from those ornate podiums that, along with housing, other fundamental rights such as nutrition, health, and education are also under threat. Naturally, they tell us, "These are not problems for religion; in our religion, there is no place for such issues, and if there were, we would voice them." Of course, sentences are not formed with these exact words, but silence implies consent, and the absence of objection implies approval. They approve, we understand.

So, what are all these organizations preaching? They say pray, fast, do not drink alcohol? Of course, for a believer, all these commandments are also to be preached. But is a person who does not speak out against the injustice happening right before their eyes, who does not see their neighbor abandoned to the streets, who ignores the student who cannot eat at school, and who does not object to an economic model based on inequality of opportunity, fulfilling the command of religion when they pray? Could religion, and therefore God, have asked for such a human type from humanity in the name of morality, virtue, and a dignified life? Naturally, neither does faith ask this of a person, nor can a person of integrity legitimize this situation in the name of faith. In the most general sense, this is a crisis of faith, an absence of faith. It is a crisis because faith is under threat in such hands. It is an absence because, for the sake of personal interests, the soul of spirituality has also been destroyed, and believers who are faithless have been created.

Look, in the rule of law index, Turkey has fallen 38 places in the last decade (between 2015-2025). I think you know what this means. With this index, a general "humanization map" of a country is drawn based on measurements such as human rights, access to justice, corruption, and authoritarianism. The decline in this index naturally reveals the absence of the most fundamental rights in our lands, social decay, and lost tomorrows. Because the absence of all these phenomena we have listed is also a wreckage left for the future. It is the heavy destruction left by a society that is collapsing in terms of institutions, morality, and ethical values. These results are obtained through scientific studies. Just like the table in which Turkey was placed in the 2025 corruption index. In this table, Turkey was in 124th place among 182 countries. Among the countries that received the same score as us were Djibouti, Mongolia, Niger, and Uzbekistan.

So, we have arrived at this point: Institutions organized in the name of religion, schools opened, and structures built do not see or hear about justice, human rights, inequality of opportunity, or income distribution, and they do not make the suffering caused by these their concern. All of this is not being preached in the name of religion. Microphones are not set up for this, and podiums are not established for these concerns. Preachers do not take to the streets for these issues. In that case, there is no humanity in the religion they live; there is no organization of goodness, no condemnation of oppression. The communities that have turned into holdings, the associations with bloated balance sheets, and the sheikhs who make bosses jealous are saying this. And so are the texts within the religion they are trying to kill.