Friendship. A crisis that requires a new approach to political and social analysis

Loneliness, mistrust, increased hatred between people, and distance between them, have become a hallmark of the world we live in, a crisis that requires a new approach to political and social analysis.

Reducing politics to a friend/foe relationship leads to a trend that consumes and undermines friendly relations, and relegates political competition between friends to an individual level, and the inevitable fate is that magic turns against the magician, and friends taste the cup of violence and hatred that they have long instigated by yesterday's comrades against their enemies. This is a logical path, you cannot expect a person who abandons his morals in the face of an adversary, to regain those morals if he disagrees with a friend, and thus he has lost twice: his creation, his friend.

We must say that the literature and philosophy that has been written about the scarcity of friends does not attempt to diagnose this problem, but rather tries to normalize our relationship with this tragic situation and invites us to surrender to it. Therefore, revisiting that literature is the starting point for recovering all our losses. The philosophy of scarcity of friends, which began with Aristotle's phrase "My friends, there is no friend!" influenced all subsequent philosophies. But what our Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, did, was completely contrary to that, he taught us how to turn our enemies into friends, and he built a large community of people who were hated enemies, who always clashed with swords, competed to undermine each other's power, turned their hostility out of love, pursued common virtues, and became comrades of a common goal, and what Muslim philosophers then wrote about friendship and brotherhood was much less than that proverb achieved by the Holy Prophet in his constant biography.

Early Muslim writers such as Ibn al-Muqaffa, who provided important texts on friendship, grouped Iranian, Greek, Indian, and Arab rule into a syncretic framework that later evolved into a rich tradition in the vast geography of Islamic civilization.

Then came later Muslim philosophers such as Ibn Miskawayh, Nasr al-Din al-Tusin and Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi (the author of the only book directly related to friendship, entitled Friendship and Friend), al-Mawardi, and Ibn Hazm, all influenced by the notions of friendship contained in non-Islamic sources (especially Aristotle), and under this influence the friend appeared in their writing as a rare coin difficult to find, acknowledging that the standards they set for him were difficult to meet in person. Ibn Hazm's definition of the ideal qualities of friendship is typical in this regard, he says:

"One of the reasons for wishing for love is that God Almighty gives man a sincere friend, gentle to say, simple in length, good in socket, accurate executor, capable of statement, slender-tongued, venerable dream, knowledgeable, little violation, great help, very tolerable, patient with evidence, great approval, beautiful violation, level of conformity, Mahmoud creatures, blind of trumpets, inevitable help, averse to distance, noble entrance, expense of fools, ambiguous meanings, knowing wishes, good morals, secret races, secret, much righteousness, true honesty, safe betrayal, Generous soul, penetrating sense, true intuition, guaranteed help, full of safeguarding, famous loyalty, apparent singing, fixed Quraiha, exerting advice, Mostaqen Wydad, docile, good belief, honest tone, light Al-Mahja, chaste temperament, welcomed arm, broad chest, impatient, familiar with Al-Imhad, and does not know the symptoms, rests to him with his blabble, and participates in the solitude of his thought, and negotiates in his silence. And there is in him the one who loves the greatest comforts, and where is this?"

When this is your perception of a true friend, you have to accept that it will be impossible to find. But it is also remarkable that these texts place all responsibilities and expectations on the shoulders of that friend, and there is no advice on what I (I) should do to find this friend and deserve this friendship, and to help him to be close to that ideal model. What we have tells us that the friend I'm looking for should be like this, but, what should I be, and what should we all be? Not to kill in ourselves the "qualities of a friend" when we assume them in others and not in us, as if one of us says: Let me be who I am, but my friend on the other side must be perfect.

However, we cannot overlook the mention of Imam Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, who was an exception in this current influenced by the ancient Persian, Greek, Indian and Arabic philosophies and made it part of the tradition of Islamic philosophy. Al-Ghazali is the author of the most comprehensive text on friendship inspired by the Qur'an, the Sunnah of the Prophet, his hadiths and the behavior of his companions without being influenced by any of these foreign cultures. Although he was the one who read Aristotle and translated some of his texts into Arabic, he was not moved by what he said, and friendship showed abundant potential value within Islamic borders.

As it is said in some songs: "You cannot find a true friend in the dream world" A friend is not someone we can imagine in ourselves, or dream of like Ibn Hazm or others. There is an effort to find him, we must go through the struggles to prove it. If there are no difficulties or effort, the only friend we can find in dreams will be a friend killed in our souls. To reach the friend, we have to ride the horse of love, like the Prophet, peace be upon him, and like Al-Ghazali who understood him well.