Those who belong to the community of Muslim Believers, or the Umma, are commanded to endorse Al-wala’ wa-l-bara’ (Arabic: الولاء والبراء), literally “loyalty and disavowal,” a concept which signifies loving and hating for the sake of Allah. Among other things, Believers are to love those who are obedient to Allah — that is, fellow Muslims — and to defend and assist them. Hating for the sake of Allah signifies showing anger towards those who oppose Allah, that is all non-Muslims.
A few recent news items suggest that Muslim solidarity is not what it’s cracked up to be.
Here’s a story about Turkish unhappiness with Syrian refugees:
Authorities in Istanbul set a four-week deadline on July 22 for Syrians living without approval in Turkey’s largest city to return to provinces where they are registered or face forced removal to those regions.
It was not immediately clear how many people could be affected by the order, but Istanbul’s new mayor has said that a total of 1 million Syrians live in the city compared with Interior Ministry figures showing 500,000 are registered.
Turkey’s recession-hit economy and high levels of unemployment have fueled anger against the 3.6 million Syrians living in Turkey, the largest refugee population to have fled the eight-year-old civil war in neighboring Syria.
Turks who are resentful of the Syrians view them as offering cheap labor and taking jobs from Turks, and using services including health and education.
Monday’s order in Istanbul follows two clashes in the city earlier this year when crowds attacked Syrian shops and properties. There have also been reports of some Syrians being returned to northern Syria.
Most Syrians live in southern Turkish provinces near the Syrian border but Istanbul province, in the northwest, has the largest Syrian population of any province in the country.
Syrians who have a temporary protection permit must stay in the province where they are registered, and obtain a special permit to travel elsewhere in Turkey.
The Istanbul governor’s office said on Monday that Syrians who have temporary protection permits in provinces other than Istanbul have until Aug. 20 to return to those provinces, and will be returned if they stay after that date.
Syrians who do not have temporary protection permits will be sent to provinces specified by the Interior Ministry, it said.
There have been several reports in recent weeks of Syrians being deported to Syria. Reuters has spoken to three people who said they were sent without their consent to areas of northern Syria controlled by Ankara and Turkey-backed rebels in the past few days.
The three told Reuters they were forced to sign a document that said they were voluntarily returning to Syria. One of the men said he was deported with at least 100 other Syrians.
The Turkish government has not commented on the reports of deportations.
Turkey is a signatory to agreements that bind it to a non-refoulement principle, an international customary law rule that prohibits countries from returning people to a place where they risk facing persecution or threat to life.
The Turks are not inclined to offer continued solidarity with the Syrian Muslims. There are too many of those Syrians — 3.6 million — and they’ve outstayed their welcome. The Turks have had it with Syrians receiving free schooling and medical care from the state. Their anger is quite a contrast with the European nations that continue to uncomplainingly offer Muslim economic migrants not just education and medical care but also free or highly subsidized housing, unemployment benefits (without the need to have first been employed in the country), and family allowances.
They are also angry that Syrians — those that do work — offer cheap labor, driving down the wages of Turkish workers. That groups of Turks have violently attacked Syrians, for costing them jobs and lowering their wages, is a sign of how bad relations between the Turks and their fellow Muslims from Syria have become.
By sending back to the provinces where they were first registered possibly a half-million people (out of an estimated total of one million Syrians now in Istanbul) the Turkish government is declaring Istanbul, the largest city in the country, off-limits to 3.1 out of 3.6 million Syrians. Those who had not been registered, but been employed by Turks, or had started little shops, will lose those jobs and their shops will close. They will have to start over, if they can, in the provinces. Their lives are now for the second time being uprooted: first when they fled from Syria to Turkey, and now, when they are banished from Istanbul and the lives they had created for themselves. The fact that some Syrians have started to be forcibly sent back to Syria, after first having been made to sign documents claiming they were “voluntarily” returning home, signals that Turkey is determined to rid itself of as many of these Syrians as quickly as possible. Many Turks are just fed up with the Syrians. A recent survey by Kadir Has University in Istanbul found that 67.7 percent of the participants were “not content with the presence of Syrian refugees” in Turkey. A popular hashtag is #UlkemdeSuriyeliIstemiyorum (I don’t want Syrians in my country) that had been around has reappeared on social media. The newly-elected mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, after being elected, said that “the refugee issue is a severe trauma” in some districts. And even President Erdogan has noted that Turkey has now spent $37 billion on Syrian refugees.
Meanwhile, in Europe, Muslim economic migrants, including some Syrians, continue to have every possible benefit lavished upon them, without experiencing any of the troubles that Syrians experience in Turkey. Muslim migrants — now mainly Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans — find greater generosity among non-Muslim hosts than among fellow members of the umma; it’s all so confusing.