“Melâmet (the path of blame) has ended throughout the East,” lamented our famous poet Yahya Kemal regarding its passing; perhaps this path of wisdom is one worthy of a new rebirth. Do you know who they called a “Melâmi”? They were the brave souls who showed the courage to reveal not their virtues, but their faults and shortcomings!

A Melâmi is a person who, despite living a life full of goodness and beauty, forgets and disregards all their virtues, merits, and successes, exposing their slightest fault with the greatest delight and, by thrusting that fault before everyone’s eyes, finds joy in being condemned by all. Making everyone forget their virtues and succeeding in occupying both themselves and the world with their flaws is their greatest happiness…

In their view, the greatest offense was to boast of goodness. For the real skill is not in doing good, but in battling evil. Anyone can do good to a greater or lesser extent. But crushing evil is the greatest achievement. Otherwise, goodness remains merely a web of hypocrisy, and all the dignity and honor of humanity are strangled within that web. Goodness is a duty fulfilled through the heart’s desire and humility, and the state befitting a human is only to achieve it and only to keep it alive. Yet, what meaning does goodness have if it does not strike at the root of evil? Therefore, the root of evil must be broken so that goodness may grow and flourish freely. In other words, the true struggle is the battle against evil; to succeed in this struggle, one must expose every shade and every grain of evil—whether hidden or manifest—with the most exaggerated disgust, point it out to everyone, and work to be cleansed of it…

These are the Melâmis, these brave men… Heroes who show the courage to expose all the faults of their inner selves, declaring and winning the greatest war against them. Melâmet has no robe, no cloak, no sheepskin, or dervish lodge. Because melâmet is not an organization, but a taste, a temperament, a divine guidance, an inner expansion. It is a bounty and a heroism born within a person. Those who live it are the ones who have found the way.

In this world, the greatest health is the purity of the inner self, the greatest rest is the peace of conscience, and the greatest success is the destruction of the microbes that gnaw at the soul. This is the greatest goal the Melâmi strives to keep alive and realize. (Ömer Rıza Doğrul)