Homoeconomicus, the Human, and the Mortal
Let us begin by positioning economic activity as “just one” of the vital needs of the mankind. Indeed, political economy is one of the significant factors in many social and individual behaviors. But it is just one, and it is not the substructure (the base). Sometimes it is a result, and sometimes it is a determinatum… This is the case if we perceive human beings as a multi-layered and versatile unique species, that is, if we get rid of the Darwinian influence and try to look at the issues together with all sciences, not just from biology. If we define the human as beings forced to meet infinite needs with limited resources and interpret their existence, or rather their capacity to become free individuals, as finding a way out of this cycle, then there is no logical path left except to become Marxist. The human must be masters of their labor to be masters of themselves… Yet, herein lies Marxism’s paradox. Enlightenment thinkers repeatedly defined the human within these dilemmas of the mortal. These definitions couldn’t solve the problems of the mankind then Nietzsche proposed the “übermensch” as solution while Freud put forward more individual solutions by using the human’s childhood, that is, primitive human, the mortal, as a role model. Marx recognized the importance of the sociality and sought all answers within it. However, he also spoke from within the same paradigm and adopted the assumption that the collectivization of the means of production or the re-dominance of communal values through the circular motion of history would prevail. This extremely deterministic and tautological perception of the human, the history and the nature is bigger than the problems created by capitalism, it is the most fundamental problem of the European thought and the modern paradigm… If you object to the notion that capitalist political economy is the primary determinant—the infrastructure—of everything related to the human today, then you must construct the truth and the envisioned future of the human, including economic activity, upon a different framework. Marxism is the name of the mentality of producing extremely capitalist, homo-economicus and materialist solutions, forgetting its justified and profound criticisms of capitalism while talking about alternative solutions.
Adam, Paradise, and Exodus
What do I mean? Let us explore this through the concept of “Adam.” Ultimately, the human species is a single individual, and all events and phenomena are the inner turmoil of this one person. Everything around us is merely an illusion, and everything has already happened once and for all time. Our experiences are but the reverberations of that original moment of the existence. The human is engaged in an inner struggle between their earthly nature (the mortal) and their transcendental side (the human). Goodness and evil are abstractions of the mortal and the human sides in this conflict. From the perspective of religious myths, our mortal side remains in Paradise. Paradise represents the state of the mankind before reasoning, perceiving, or understanding. The mortal is our one side, like other living beings, lives solely through the programmed instincts. Our reasoning, perceiving and thinking side, on the other hand, expresses the point of rising from the mortal state and reaching the consciousness of thinking and thus existence with an ontological leap that we call humanization. This leap means the state of being exodus and experiencing the tragedy of being expelled from heaven. The Paradise we departed from is not a place free of conflict but a place where there is no awareness of conflict. The lion hunts and eats a gazelle when hungry, mates with its partner, and rests under a tree, repeating this cycle endlessly. The lion is in Paradise. The human, however, perceive this cycle, understanding the lion’s hunger, the gazelle’s tears, the pleasures of the body, the amusement and the act of resting. The human being is then the one who thinks about the reasons for this cycle. The human is the one who tries to change this cycle. The human is the one who objects to this cycle. Or the human is the one who desires this cycle again. However, for a lion, neither the concepts of hunger, tears, pleasure nor rest mean anything. It only feels and experiences all of these. Our mortal side is an animal in this sense. And all its actions, like the lion, the fox, the cockroach, are instinctive. But there is a difference between the mortal and other animals. The mortal also have the human side and are aware of the knowledge and consciousness of all forms of perceiving that are the product of reason. That is, each human being is both the mortal and the human at the same time, and mankind’s inner struggle results in the triumph of our mortal side in some of us and our human side in others. The end of this internal struggle is not actually an accurate description. This fight continues for each individual until death. We actually die as the side that dominates the sum of our lives.
Zoroastrianism conceptualized this dualism, distorted from the Abrahamic monotheistic tradition, as the realms of light and darkness. The struggle between the light and the darkness has persisted with similar conceptual essence in Sabians, Christianity, and Islam. In ancient Sumerian-Babylonian mythology, in Egypt, in India, and in China… This dual conflict certainly has theological and mythological stories. All of them, in the final analysis, aim to emerge from the darkness through spiritual enlightenment. Salvation through reenlightenment/redemption is only possible with a roadmap or guide. And religions are this map itself, and the holy books and prophets are the guide.
Modern mythologies have reproduced these ancient narratives. Ideologies act as prescriptions for salvation. Wars are fought, and lives are sacrificed for them. Capitalism, on the other hand, offers a simpler form of salvation, one not worth dying for: earn, live well, and die happy. While ideologies and religions promise salvation through labor, sacrifice, and a distant destination to be achieved in the future, capitalism convinces humans that they can reach the same goal now, while remaining in their mortal state. It says, “You don’t need to tire yourself; everything you wish to achieve in the future is already here and now. If you simply seize what is within your reach, you can satisfy all your desires.” Capitalism is the roadmap for our mortal side.
Muhammad Iqbal expresses this idea when he says, “The paradise humans left behind was the world they lived in as the mortal, and the paradise they will reach is a transcendent place they will earn with their own hands. Most people have yet to leave this worldly paradise.” What he means is that most people are still unaware of their actions. They kill, steal, and entertain themselves, but they do not reflect on these actions. The faint consciousness of their human side occasionally surfaces, slowing them down or even taking precedence, but as a whole, it can be said that the majority of the mankind has not yet attained the awareness of being truly, the human.
Some anthropological theses describe the paradise of the holy books as the transition to settled life in the Euphrates-Tigris basin, in Mesopotamia, and say that here, the mortal first experienced the agricultural revolution and became the human through sexual, social and nutritional taboos. The prohibition of incest and adultery pushes people to mate with others outside of their families, to become part of a family, to become conscious of lineage and to socialize. Socialization forced the human to blend, synthesize, and share with others. These theses say that the nutritional taboo provides humanization by giving up eating human flesh, blood, etc. and by using fire, cleaning, and transforming animals and plants into food through labor. This approach suggests that the human first learned to domesticate animals and, in the process, learned to domesticate women. The domestication of women gave rise to the idea that other humans could also be domesticated, leading to slavery. Marxist anthropology builds on this concept, arguing that civilized humans became stratified by class and that this class-based society could only be transcended by returning to the initial communal way of life.
Freud says that the human acquires a neurotic personality due to the taboos mentioned above, that this is how their whole drama begins, and that as they gets rid of these neuroses, they will once again experience that first happy moment. According to Freud, the taboos that civilized humans also alienated them from their desires, making civilization itself a neurotic phenomenon. He believed that the human must find a way to live without suppressing their instincts, thereby returning to their childhood or their initial paradise.
Hegel, on the other hand, celebrated civilization as the human’s maturity. He advocated that this was only possible through a political spirit, where the state assumes the role of a father figure to enlighten its “children,” i.e., society. He argued that history’s spiritual cycle, its dialectical flow, could synthesize into a transcendent level at a political moment, which he defined as the state. Hegel interpreted the unification of fragmented German principalities around a shared ideal as the fundamental problem of humanity.
Aryan Metaphysics: The Eternal Dualism and the Chaos
It is no coincidence that all these modern theories emerged from the German, from the Aryan mindset.
The Aryan intellect is a modern interpretation of Zoroastrian metaphysics. The concepts of dualism, dialectics, and totalizing explanations took their first shape within Zoroastrian metaphysics. Whether we describe the conflict between the light and the darkness as neurotic oscillations, class struggles, national conflicts, or the fight between truth and falsehood, at its core lies Zoroastrianism. Any theory that reads the universe, life, history, and the society through an absolute form of contradiction, conflict, and the chaos can be seen as a version of the Zoroastrianism’s primal dualist religiosity.
Zoroastrianism expresses the deviation from the Abrahamic monotheism doctrine, the externalization of the human’s inner struggle, its alienation and its idealization by taking it to theological level. Perhaps for this reason, any kind of religious, ideological or political understanding inspired by Zoroastrianism, after a while, becomes alienated from its purpose of origin, from itself, from its members, from the human, from the nature and the life, and begins to drift. The human is simply a tool of this way of thinking, and the goals that exist for the human become supra-human goals for which the human is sacrificed. Zoroastrianism, which is the theology of the lower class, the Aryan tribes exiled from India creating a tribalism in the Iranian plateaus and going to war with India, after a while began to universalize the Indian upper caste, which it defined as the god of evil (Angra Manyu-Ahriman), and to see everything other than itself as the world of Ahriman (the devil). Otherizing the devil and perceiving it as an evil god, that is, looking for evil outside, in others, in history and in the universe, is an addition that Zoroastrianism makes to the human consciousness. Eternal conflict, absolute enmity, and all religious wars, class struggles, political conflicts, Zionist Judaism, crusades, and nationalism can easily be added to Zoroastrianism’s gallery of ideas.
Roman Metaphysics: Absolute Order
What lies beyond this? The theory of order by Aristotle and the Egyptian-Roman tradition. The chaotic universe of Zoroastrian theology, based on the eternal conflict between two opposing forces, seems to have been transcended in the Egyptian-Roman tradition by the idea of the absolute order. All types of conflicts in the universe, nature, and among the human beings are resolved through absolute authority and the rigid laws of that authority, allowing order to prevail. The Egyptian-Roman tradition perceives an order within chaos in nature and applies the same principle to the human. A lion is a lion and acts as one. A mouse is a mouse, and a fox is a fox. If everyone knows their place and takes what they deserve, there is no conflict. Everyone gets their share. It is the gazelle’s duty to flee without expecting mercy from the lion, and if caught, it must accept its fate. This is justice. The cycle of nature functions due to this order. The human, by establishing such an order, they can live in a fair environment. A slave born into slavery should strive to be a good slave, and a noble should aim to be a good noble. Evil arises when slaves attempt to become nobles, or when nobles engage in servile tasks. This disrupts the order, and chaos begins. The essence of paganism, or polytheism, is the acceptance of all powers and wills in nature and society as a divine authority, and the approval of obedience to them as the basis of peace and order. In other words, polytheism is not the belief that there is more gods than one Allah in the heavens and the earth, but that all forces of nature and society are divine authorities, and that the existence of these forces separately is approved, and that obedience to each is seen as obligatory in proportion to their own power. The issue is not the number of gods, but submission to the realms of divinity, holiness, mastery, hierarchy, privilege and self-sufficiency, in other words, the consciousness of being a servant and slave. This metaphysics is the product of thousands of years of tyrannical and oppressive economic-political tradition, and its essence is to enslave the human in the name of God. The process of organizing the use of slave labor for societal development, which began in Babylon and Egypt, was further refined and legalized in Rome by Egyptian elites relocated to Italy after the Persian invasion of the 6th century BCE. At the root of the most organized, well-equipped and long-lasting experience of this slave system lies the Egyptian-Babylonian mathematical tradition, the commercial accumulation of Mediterranean piracy and the coercive form of hegemony of the military agricultural policy. Rome forged its European and Mediterranean dominance in wars against southern pirates (Carthage) and northern barbarians (Germanic/Celtic tribes). Rome is famous for its law because the enactment of this coercive sovereignty and the transformation of these laws into a permanent legal procedure and principle are Roman inventions. The issue is not the content of this law but the fact that the existing order was transformed into one of voluntary consent through law. The deification of emperors, kings, sultans, lords, states, laws, commanders, and heroes was the outcome of the enslavement of the majority, and Roman paganism is the most typical example of this historical human tragedy.
The Rhythm of Historical Migration
The Egyptian-Roman and Persian-Zoroastrian ways of thinking are like the conflict between the internal factions of China and India. Both approaches originate from these regions. Throughout history, as in modern times, the Chinese and the Indian geographies have been humanity’s population reservoirs. History pulses with a rhythm of mass population transfers from these regions approximately every thousand years. Indeed, throughout recorded history, massive migrations from the Chinese and Indian basins have occurred rhythmically during the millennia before Christ, around the beginning of the Common Era, and during the first millennium CE. These migrations, fueled by major internal wars, famines, and conflicts, erupt as massive explosions roughly every thousand years and are followed by centuries of aftershocks. Each period of this historical rhythm has given rise to great wars, enduring empires, major religions, or philosophical teachings, whose outcomes have persisted as smaller conflicts and contradictions.
The great migration wave of the first millennium BCE flowed from India to Iran, the Caspian basin, and Mesopotamia, eventually reaching the Middle East, Anatolia, and the Balkans. The ancestors of today’s Iranians, Kurds, Arabs, Armenians, and some Caucasian peoples emerged from this wave. Around the beginning of the Common Era, another wave of migration began. Starting with the Huns from the Chinese basin, massive populations were moved to the Russian steppes, Europe, and the Balkans. Today’s Balkan peoples, northern Europeans (especially Germanic, Celtic, and Slavic groups), are products of this wave. The migrations of the first millennium CE involved the peoples of the Chinese basin, now identified as Turks or Mongols, in their last major migration wave. (Currently, we are in another phase of this historical rhythm, potentially on the brink of another significant population transfer from the Chinese and Indian basins.)
The Two Archetypes of Eastern Thought: China and India
Returning to the topic, the idea of order as the upper caste’s theological narrative in India and China, and chaos and salvation as the lower caste’s theology, constitute the two fundamental modes of thought that have shaped history. These concepts were transported via great migrations to the Iran-Babylon-Egypt basin and conceptualized in the autonomous Greek city-states, which were colonies of Egypt. (Apart from this, there is no distinct philosophy or discovery attributed to Greece. Greece merely documented, classified, and transmitted what was happening and being discussed around it.)
The internal wars of Indian and Chinese tribes transported by migrations to these regions have continued since 2000 BCE in the form of conflicts such as Sumer-Elam, Hittite-Egypt, Persia-Greece, and Iran-Rome.
Philosophically, Plato represents the India-Iran axis, while Aristotle represents Egypt. Plato’s philosophy reflects the ideal order of the upper caste, whereas Aristotle’s philosophy represents the rational order of the middle class. Plato’s death during the Persian invasions and Aristotle’s role as an advisor to Alexander, the commander of the Egyptian army, are not coincidences.
This history of warfare is also the history of humanity’s struggle to humanize itself, encompassing the internal battle between the human and the mortal natures. The Abrahamic message of monotheism represents the synthesis of these fractions of the dualism and the order, forming the roots of the two primary philosophical-political constructs that persist to this day.
The Nomad and the City
One way to interpret these geopolitical conflicts, which can also be defined as the inner contradictions of civilization, is as a war between the nomad and the sedentary.
With the transition to the Neolithic age, known as the agricultural revolution, conflicts between nomadic communes and peasant communes began. This is one of the most enduring contradictions in history, continuing even today. Nomadism, or in anthropological terms, hunter-gatherer-herder communities, operates at the clan level with kinship-based solidarity, matriarchal-naturalist-animist belief systems, and understanding of communal property. In contrast, peasants, dependent on the land, develop kinship-based solidarity at the tribal-family level, private property concept, and belief systems centered on authoritarian personal gods or deities. Nomadic communities attempt to seize the harvests of sedentary communities, while sedentary communities exclude and disdain nomads, trying to keep them out of their living spaces. This is the essence of the conflict. (If we reinterpret this as migrants versus metropolitans, the conflict remains ongoing.)
Archaeological findings note that these clashes, which drive the engine of history, have led to both great syntheses of civilizations and massive destruction through large-scale migrations and wars. All major prophets and religions emerged within the turmoil created by these great migrations and wars. Marxist readings interpret nomadic communes as examples of communal production systems, while settled civilizations are examples of individualistic production systems based on private property. Ali Shariati describes Abel as the communal shepherd and Cain as the individualistic farmer tied to private ownership. Marxism’s reduction of this conflict to a mere class struggle has made it easier to overlook the other dimensions of history and the human reality, leading to the pitfall of crude materialism and economism.
The Divided ‘One’: Good and Evil
Let us revisit the concept of the human versus the mortal.
The human and the mortal… are two aspects of a single being. It is the contradiction of the divided “One” (Adam). Adam is not the name of a man, but of a human substance that has not yet been divided into two. It is divided first into men and women, then into the human and the mortal. All other divisions stem from here. The division into male and female represents an endless reproduction, the continuity of the species, that is, the effort for biological immortality, while the division into the human and the mortal represents the continuation of the same desire for immortality on a spiritual level. The representation of the human and the mortal as images of good and evil can be found in the story of Abel and Cain… The conflict between these two brothers can be read as the war between good and evil, between nomad and settler, between communal and individualist communes, or even between civilized and barbarian. But it should not be forgotten that there are always the human qualities and the mortal qualities on both sides,…just as there are inside each person… That is why, beyond the class war in history, there is the war between the human and the mortal, the struggle for human’s existence and the tragic civil war of the effort to become the human. Analyzing class war by omitting these existential dimensions is an incomplete reading.
At this point, it is worth to recall internal leftist debates that attempted to transcend the classic evolutionary perspective… Contrary to positivist evolutionists, who imagined evolution as a pyramid of perfection ascending from primitive beings to the human, a group of scientists in Soviet Russia envisioned evolution as a proliferation and diversification starting from single-celled organisms toward an infinite horizon. Positivist evolutionism, with its tendency to deify the human, came to regard other living beings and human beings who failed to “become divine” as nature’s waste. However, the true essence of evolutionary theories—aligned with the Soviet scientists’ perspective—rested on a design of a reversed biological pyramid and this design, in which every living is being considered sacred, responsible for, and dependent on one another, aligns with Islamic philosophy’s notion of the human’s responsibility as the most honorable existence of all created, to pursue truth and achieve moral and intellectual excellence. Unfortunately, Western sects, conflating scientism with science, empiricism with positivism, and material analysis with materialism, turned the quest for truth into an instrument of dehumanization and enmity toward the human.
Religiosity and Religion
Without a conception of the human—or more precisely, without grasping the essence of the ethical goal you wish to achieve within a transcendent framework—every word about the human is meaningless. For this reason, religions are significant, and as Hikmet Kıvılcımlı stated, religions do not lie. Religions represent the human’s subconscious. We can read the history of the human’s inner war through religious narratives, find light on truth through religions, and shed light on the problems of today and the future. The reason why people cling tightly to religiosity is not their immaturity, ignorance, manipulation by dominant classes, or distorted historical consciousness, on the contrary, religiosity matures people, raises awareness, compels them to reflect on themselves and nature, and encourages contemplation of the past and future. It instills the goal of humanization and shapes consciousness. Religiosity is a holistic perspective. We call religiosity the sum of economic, political, philosophical, moral, sociological, psychological, and cosmic perspectives… Humanization, that is, rational thinking, is only possible through the profound and vast perspective of religiosity.
In this sense, the effort to reason and become one’s own master—that is, the struggle for humanization—is inherently a religious matter. This is so much the case that even non-religious Marxists, who fight selflessly without expecting anything in return, are often profoundly humble, wise, and resolute, akin to devout believers. The committed human type is a product of religiosity. Religiosity expresses the human’s effort to exist by clinging to immanent and transcendent truths.
The perception of religiosity as a distorted false consciousness has cost those who hold this view more than it has harmed religiosity itself. However, it is worth noting that Islam, which emerged as a critique of corrupted forms of religiosity such as institutionalized paganism, Judaism, and Christianity, eventually succumbed to corruption itself, transforming into institutionalized religion over time. Institutional religion is a distorted form of religiosity. The role of religion as a guide to humanizing the mortal disappears as it becomes institutionalized, reduced to a psychological and political tool that compromises humanity’s mortal side. Over time, the endless desires and ambitions of the masses hide behind the veil of religion, morphing into a distorted morality. Similarly, authorities turn the state—essentially a religious institution—into an instrument of domination using the guise of religion. With its two key features—the clergy class and the conservative interpretation of untouchable dogmas—institutional religion becomes a historical deformity of religion. Here, it is essential to carefully distinguish between religion and religiosity versus institutional religion. Otherwise, falling into the same error as Marxism is inevitable.
The Abrahamic Tradition: Monotheism (Tawhid)
Returning to the subject; Islam, which shows how to overcome the chaos and order theories of Zoroastrianism and Rome, which complement but also criticize each other, by going down to their Abrahamic essence and with a higher combination, that is, the straight and middle path, has also destroyed Iran and Rome geopolitically, put an end to the sacrifice of humanity in the name of chaos or order theories, and given the human the consciousness of being the Most Noble of Creatures. This means that in the prologue of creation in the Quran, Allah says that He will create a vicegerent on earth … All the angels object. Allah says, I know what ye know not. The angels objected, saying, “Wilt Thou place therein one who will make mischief therein and shed blood?” That is, there is an animal species on earth that has developed up to the mortal’s state. By breathing into him from his spirit, God will enable him to become the human, that is, to reason and perceive. Thus, the mortal who becomes the human will be the highest of all creatures, a species that will bring order to the universe and, as it does so, will complete its humanization and earn the right to eternal life. Only the devil persists in his words and continues his objection to the human. The devil’s objection is due to his jealousy and arrogance at this opportunity given to the human.
In this narrative, if we interpret angels as all beings and forces in the universe and nature that submit to the human -living things, natural laws, atoms, etc.- and interpret iblis as everything that opposes the human and derails them from humanization—greed for private property, power, gold, oppression, sexual perversion, selfishness, lie, homicide, greed and cruelty—then the following emerges: Islam’s concept of the human is neither like Zoroastrianism or Judaism, where the human are soldiers, children, or chosen beings of God, nor like Roman Christianity, where the human depend on sacred representatives of God on earth. Instead, Islam regards the human as beings who free themselves through their choices, actions, and piety (taqwa), thereby becoming independent and constructing their existence. In the Qur’an, iblis (the satan) is not God’s counterpart but the human. Unlike Zoroastrianism, Islam does not posit two opposing gods of good and evil. There is one absolute willpower governing the universe and everything in it. Similarly, unlike Christianity, Islam’s satan is not “the other,” an outsider, or a foreigner. Instead, satan is a tendency hidden within the mortal aspect of the human themselves. Therefore, despite all the dogmas of institutional religions, Islam has revived the Abrahamic tradition, made humans the subject, and has defined them as free and rational individuals by removing the slaves of gods and underage children from being an area of conflict, and has also eliminated the theological deviation that demonized the other, the alien, the foreigner, that is, made other people enemies in some way, and has said that there is no enemy other than the oppressors and your own self. Islam calls the struggle against oppressors the “lesser jihad” and the struggle against the self the “greater jihad.” Because really, in the final analysis, every kind of cruelty lies within each person…
How faithfully Muslims have adhered to these teachings throughout history is as complex a question as how faithful Believers of Moses have been to Moses, Christians to Jesus, or Marxists to Marx. However, one thing is certain: with Islam, the wars between Iran and Rome ended, and pagan and animist theologies that humiliated humanity and resigned the oppressed to their fate were defeated. Through Islam, Arabs, Persians, Indians, Turks, Kurds, Greeks, Armenians, Balkan peoples, Asians, and Africans began to be treated as the human. Epochs emerged in which human dignity was upheld, life was valued, and actions such as murder, lie, plunder, rape, and oppression were regarded as abhorrent. Certainly, many forms of injustice and oppression occurred. But such actions were always recorded in history and collective Muslim memory as acts of injustice. This is because Islam provided these societies with a measure of humanization.
Islam’s middle path transcends the conflict between the light and the darkness, good and evil, by offering a higher synthesis. Overcoming this contradiction means seeking the solution to the most fundamental problems of the history, the human, and the existence, namely the ontological, class, external, and internal conflicts, in the free action of man, within a concrete balance and harmony (justice) established by liberation, briefly say, in the justice of freedom. In this sense, monotheism (tawhid) represents the highest level of abstraction in the mathematics of the macrocosmos and microcosmos (the external and internal universes) and only through this abstraction, the mortal become the human and become free, and reach the level of responsibility necessary to safeguard justice. The historical meaning of religion, that is, the Abrahamic tradition and its last link, Islam, is to preserve this level.
Zoroastrianism, or Aryan dualism, seeks justice in an Armageddon where a self-proclaimed “good” (divine and benevolent existence) perpetually clashes with “evil” forces arbitrarily defined by subjective factors. Freedom is to be oppopnent within the dialectic of endless conflict, and justice will be realized in an imaginary paradise at the end of this conflict. All religious, sectarian and ideological movements with Zoroastrian leaven, therefore, express an endless opposition, struggle, conflict, dissatisfaction, negation, rejection, in other words, a solidified discharge of negative energy. The enemy is always someone else, and they represent the blindness of being closed to the truth within the unquestioned righteousness of being the chosen people, tribe or side of an absolute good. With the psychosis of being victims of an evil world, they always hide in dissimulation of the present, develop different vital existences behind masks of multiple identities, that is, live in secret, hidden, mysterious worlds of belief with esoteric interpretations. Therefore, justice, freedom, happiness are always in that uncertain future and a savior-redeemer/messiah/mahdi- is awaited to reach it. Modern versions of the Aryan-Zoroastrian mind continue themselves in different styles within every religion, ideology and sect. The god of this metaphysics is incomplete and will only complete his existence at the end of the conflict. Therefore, Zoroastrianism divides humans into helpers of the (good) god and demons of the (evil) god. The Zoroastrian god, the sun, is symbolized by brightness, light, divine light and fire, and only those who are ‘enlightened’ are righteous and just. This belief lies at the root of all kinds of understandings that divide, separate and alienate humanity in some way, such as group solidarity, racism, tribalism, partisanship, communalism and religiousness. A universal, historical and the human integrity, a universality, an inner liberation and a just perception can never emerge from this perspective. The esoteric-Rafidhi interpretations of institutional religions, left-Marxist ideologies and national socialist-nationalist movements are essentially Zoroastrianism.
Roman pagan metaphysics, on the other hand, defines justice as the balance established for the sake of order and defines the interiorization of the master-slave dialectic within the authority-obedience law as order. State, army, judiciary, law and religion are the cornerstones of Roman pagan metaphysics. Individual and social existence is shaped by the idea of divine/natural order. Accepting what is as it is, interpreting what exists as a divine result, and considering its disruption (chaos) as evil is the essence of the Roman idea of order. The divine provides its order through its representation on earth, that is, through a sacred hierarchy, and the state, the ruler, the elected upper classes, religious institutions and clergy, and the administrators are obliged to a divine mission as the owners of this natural/innate hegemony. Therefore, the state, the judiciary and the law are the means of ensuring people’s absolute obedience through their rational power, while institutional religions are the means of ensuring the same obedience through their spiritual power. Protecting what exists essentially depends on the continuation of the master-slave order, and the god of this metaphysics is the name of domination over the human. The perception of God as an absolute ruler, authoritarian, patriarchal God, requires unquestioning obedience from his servants and punishes harshly those who do not comply. Chaos, anarchy, objection, questioning, and opposition are the work of the devil, and the reward-punishment system is a technique for establishing a divine order in this world through laws and in the afterlife through divine judgment. Human beings are of two classes, masters and slaves, and justice means preserving the ancient balance between these classes, ensuring order for people through absolute obedience, and seeking happiness within this order. Roman pagan metaphysics is the metaphysics of the main body of institutional religions – orthodox interpretations -, right-wing, nationalist, statist ideologies and the modern liberal-capitalist order.
Justice is the Mother of the Blessing (the State), and Freedom is the Mother of the Justice.
The Tawhidi (the monoteistic)-Abrahamic tradition is the name of transforming justice into a principle that establishes order based on equality and freedom, in contrast to this ancient Zoroastrian and Roman metaphysics. God is a transcendent and immanent being who creates at every moment and is beyond his creations. The cosmic order of the universe is the laws of the God and life is the movement of these laws. The human is a responsible being who is equipped to reach the essence of his own existence, and his free will is determined by this degree of responsibility. To exonerate God from his creations is to see both good and evil as a matter of the human freedom and responsibility. Uniting God, on the other hand, means, as a high effort of abstraction, to accept all kinds of beings as equally created, that is, to regard divinity and lordship as exclusive to God alone, without giving any created beings the rank of divinity, blessing, privilege or reverence. This perception is based on man’s effort to reach the essence of his own existence, the existence of the universe, nature, all living things, and all people. Therefore, Tawhid means participating in the holistic flow of life with the dignity and personality gained through free will, establishing equal relationships with other creatures, and considering the responsibility of living and the solution of problems as worship. For the Abrahamic/monotheistic tradition, justice is a goal that can be achieved through human effort, struggle and endeavor. Freedom is the fundamental dynamic of existence that provides this. Only free people, people who can think freely, those who can have a free personality can ensure justice. Therefore, all of humanity’s ancient civil wars, Adam’s war with his self, the war between the human and the mortal, the war between master and slave, the war between nomad and settled, are the means of realizing the dynamic of human’s liberation, that is, their creation of themselves with their own will, their becoming their own master, this divine mission of God. For this reason, monotheistic metaphysics values the human, the human’s free will, rejects everything that mortgages that will, and rebels against any god that dominates the human. There is only God and only he is to be worshipped properly. (His cosmic laws and advices that are for the benefit of the human, nature and all living things are to be respected and obeyed.) Because in reality, there are only his laws and there is no other option. Realizing this requires grasping the divine and the human together. Allah breathed His spirit into Adam and there is no god but Him. However, the human is still incomplete and in order to complete their deficiencies, they are obliged to gain an independent existence by constantly rejecting everything that attempts to dominate them other than Allah, in the name of holiness. The continual rejection of domination over the human is a precondition for the establishment of individual and social order on the principles of equity, equality, truth and reasonableness. In this sense, freedom is also the basis of justice.
This liberating effort for justice is a Muslim effort, no matter where it is made and in whose name it is made. Therefore, every action that overcomes the mortal side of the human and humanizes them is an Islamic effort, every thought is an Islamic thought and every path is the path of Islam. Regardless of those who carry it out, wherever there is a right action, a just attitude, a humane action, a conscientious stance, a policy that serves and elevates the human, prevents domination and oppression, opens the way for the human, and makes the human dear, that is Islam. This is what the verse ‘Keep justice and goodness superior’ means. A Muslim opposes all oppressors and supports all oppressed people, regardless of their identity. Regardless of religion, sect or ideology, they support all correct, good, beautiful, just and humane actions. They want justice and goodness for every person, everywhere, under all circumstances, and they struggle for this. Because the perception of monotheism requires this. To consider oneself, one’s tribe, nation, religion, sect and party superior is Zoroastrianism. Accepting the yoke of the powerful, the state, money, status, dominant culture, and popular habits that have become fashionable, and following the path of these hegemony tools according to time and place, is voluntary servitude and the slavery of Roman paganism.
Defending justice and goodness among the people and for all people, no matter what the cost, is Abrahamic/monotheistic/hanif Islam. This monotheistic morality, which purifies the mortal’s shortcomings, is a true path of truth that humanizes the human, that is, liberates them. Therefore, Islam is the last religion and it needs to overcome the scourge of institutionalism and find itself in accordance with its essence. Only then it will be better understood that all thoughts and actions taken for the sake of justice, freedom and goodness mean the straight path, that is, Islam.
