Ertugrul and Life Lessons

Treachery. 
Treachery, the tool of the power-hungry bowing to his caprice
Destined to earn a land piece.
Machiavellian intrigue to entice friend, foe & family to feud 
All to murder, mime, rape, pillage and plunder - no one can seclude.
Brave-hearts arise from the ocean - the rocking cradle of earth 
Courage, resilience & reliance on Allah forge hearts with no mirth.
Treachery rears hissing like serpents ensnaring the faint-hearted
Hypocrites bow to god Treachery and creaks open doors of the martyred.
Martyrdom comes a calling
Hypocrites keep on falling.
Ertugrul & Ibn Al Arabi bowed to Allah & followed Al-Ameenﷺ
The harbinger of victory emboldened souls beholden to the Unseen.
Templars, pejorative 'Beys' & heartless beings align like phalanxes
Guarding ill gotten gains like praying mantis
Perish to nothingness in an abyss of waste
All their blood, a bloody paste.
Arise then truth against falsehood
With Knights who stood
Treachery coiled like the serpent to strike
Venom everywhere! Alas its head on a spike
Everything came right 
For the next fight.
Treachery reborn 
Is forlorn 
But another martyr is born
Again treachery is torn!...

I became engrossed watching Ertugrul while my wife and I had to self-isolate as a result of the COVID-19 infection. Her results were positive and it meant 14 days of TLC. The opportunity prevailed to devote time to more reading, writing, prayer and punctuating it all with bouts of watching Ertugrul. My love for reading history had me spellbound to appreciate a non-colonialist narrative of Islam through the script of Ertugrul. Watching it with a pensive mind open my mind to how treachery weakens tribes, clans, nations and huge alliances and how, the lone action of one man can and will change the path of destiny for mankind when it has degenerated to the ebb of subterfuge.

Subterfuge, trickery, deviousness, deceit, evasion and hypocrisy flood the earth in the hearts of man therefore, it lurks for life like a asphyxiating patient crying for oxygen. When oxygen rejuvenates life, instantly the suffocation gives way to hope. Treachery is suffocating in all of us but, when given that one instant of obeisance it grows like a serpent that deceived Adam and Eve (Peace be upon both). Your heaven is your heart and soul, your Adam, your Eve give them to the devil and hell is your embrace but, little do you know because you have made hell your heaven. In this heaven you need company and crowds because you need to reign supreme. So you connive, contrive, conspire, conjure and with cunning disguise you beguile a brother, a son, a mother, a daughter, a clan, a tribe, a castle, a holy alliance and a people to a sinister plot of masked futures of brimming with gold pots at the end of rainbows. Alas! all hopes die like Amr ibn Hishām but the treachery is still the blood transfusion through the ages.

The age we live in is surely more complex and intricate in the realm of spy games, espionage, geo-politics and fight for natural resources. Therefore, treachery is of a new brand based on what has come from past and it is more vindictive, elusive, troublesome, mischievous, disastrous and enigmatic. Enigmas excite us too because it appears to have answers to life’s mysteries and a means to solve problems that are also paranormal. The enigma of the Loch Ness monster is still a cause for research and overtaking the Loch Ness puzzle is the persistent investigation of UFOs. Treachery’s nature is to create conundrums and presented it like a dish fit a king to entice you into a fatal attraction.

I was livid to eventually learn how fatal attractions can divide people wider than the space between east and west. In the first series of Ertugrul, we find Suleman Shah facing treachery by is own blood brother, Kurdoğlu. The treachery sucks the power of unity of the Kayi clan like how a leech sucks blood from its victims. The traitor, Kurdoğlu, works like a weasel from the inside of Kayi clan and adds fuel to the fire as more eruptions with the Templars wreak havoc in the land. It comes to a close when he is beheaded by Ertugrul. His beheading does not end the treachery but it only gets more bolder and more sly. Here it dawned on me that unity for bigger cause is side tracked by infighting and opens the door of overwhelming successful strides for enemies to master their plots, schemes and plans. In the wake of this innocent lives are lost forever but not hope because, it is the genuine nature of man to hate evil in all its forms.

The form and spectacle of treachery in Ertugrul is a reflection of what we are witnessing today on a global scales. We don’t see beheadings of traitors but we have seen regime decapitations by the USA and allies to usher in Democracy and a war economy. Consider for a moment just how much coin has been, is been and will be spent to maintain the Occupied State of Palestine. It will become clear only when you see who drives the need to be in state of war. Without prejudice question the need for the 1000km concrete wall in Occupied Palestine that snakes through villages, olive groves, homes and farm lands and see if you can write a convincing story about it. Let the audience of your story be the likes of Isaa/Jesus, Ebrahim/Abraham or Moosa/Moses (PBUH). They dealt with greater treachery and today they stand with reverence in the hearts of man. We see the open defiance to the UN Resolutions on the Occupied State of Palestine and this makes me think very deeply on how the actual British Mandate of Palestine was formed. Most definitely it was formed on the basis of treachery and one can only imagine what it must have been like then and now. The way we see treachery play out in Ertugrul would make you imagine what went on behind the scenes then and now for the State of Israel to come into being. Imagine the unholy alliances, the conniving, the lies upon lies, planned military failures and satanic friends like rungs on a ladder working to achieve a goal which still engulfs the world in an enigma. How many more Kurdoğlus are we still going to see setting son against father and so on? We will see a thousand more because the world has become empty of justice and full of treachery.

Take the narratives of the traitors from Ertugrul and use it as a litmus test to prove that we are living in a world of greater deception, vile clandestine plans to conquer and vanquish people and lands. Like the tapestry of perfected artwork of a Persian rug lies the weaving of many nimble and deft hands to give a masterpiece similarly, in the crafting of nation states we know today, the millions of plans, assassinations and killings feigns the shaman’s evil whisperings and that of his master, Noyan the Mongolian warrior who terrorised clans on the steppes of the Kayi and other clans. Today’s treachery comes in the guise of agreed upon peace deals in the towers of the United Nations where more cobwebs are spun to keep Africans fighting Africans, to keep stirring the old enemy pot of tribalism in the Middle East, to keeping furthering the agenda of occupying powers in foreign lands and to sustain a war economy. Borders of countries are redrawn, new nation states are formed, age old resolutions meant for peace are shredded and capitalist democracy forced down the throats of developing countries only to keep the world divided so that the power of veto rests with just five nation states. If this is not treachery then what is it?

What is it then? I am drawn to the majestic landscapes featured in Ertugrul and wonder how our rain forests are been depleted on a daily basis with the full researched knowledge of the UN? Is this not treachery on a colossal scale where the lives of creation are compromised because of coal, wood, iron and ore? It is but, we don’t see it that way because we are immensely comfortable with the luxuries of life so much so that we ignore the COVID-19 restrictions and be in full mirth in the face of impending doom. Today, how many African countries are witnessing the looting of their resources by their own leaders who are in treacherous cobwebs of trading their lands on the stock exchange in the guise of foreign investment? It is beyond shock! Shock therapy, I am told got people out of insanity but, for the sane to accept treachery as game that has to be played is actually planning his own ‘check-mate.’ It is all about making the right move to change the course of destiny.

Ertugrul was on the move on a hunting mission and had a gazelle in his sights ready for the arrow to pierce it but, in that moment the cries of a lone woman in the company of her father and brother shifts the course of history. The woman, Halime Sultan, at the mercy of a Templar reading to violate her in front of her father and brother finds the arrow’s phallus penetrating his own flesh. A new wound is open with the family saved by the gallant action of one man. Treachery was revealed and torn that day to show how it will rear its ugly head again and again and again but, the door of justice was opened on the bodies of all those who enjoined in good and forbade evil. This is how treachery is going to fought. It will be fought in the hearts and minds of people and until we don’t get the treachery out of our own hearts, the greater treachery will consume us as how fire consumes wood. In the end the wood is ash and serves nothing but, the just cause of only one moment will reshape history forever. Live like you can make history because, treachery will make you the full stop in sentence because, you were the fool not even worthy of name except a dot on page to make the next sentence a continuation of more fools. This is not the space you want to be in.

In your life there are telling signs if you have inclination to treachery. It is best described by the most honourable man to have graced the earth. His name Muhammad ﷺ. He had this to say :

Treachery on Muhammad ﷺ martyred many
It came from every nook and cranny.
Vile and envious souls laboured with grit
Until Muhammad ﷺ made the moon split
The hypocrites lost sight
And Muhammad ﷺ still shines bright.

Abdullah Sujee

Abdullah Sujee