EL ESCORIAL - The medieval monks who built the giant Monastery of El Escorial couldn't have imagined that their all-Catholic civitas dei would someday host hot debates on the future of political Islam. Yet that's exactly what happened here, in this little Spanish town located some 45 kilometers northwest of Madrid, this week. The “political Islam” in question was Turkey's incumbent AKP, the Justice and Development Party, and its namesake in Morocco, the Parti de la Justice et du Développement.
“The Moroccan AKP”, as they call it, or simply the PJK with its French initials, is an interesting phenomenon. Some Turks are aware of the party and many assume that the AKP is its franchiser, but actually the Arab/Berber party precedes that of Mr. Tayyip Erdoğan. It was vaguely on the scene for a long time, until it adopted its current name in 1998 and accepted the leadership of Dr. Saâdeddine El Othmani, with whom I shared a panel in El Escorial, and a dinner at the residence of Turkey's ambassador to Madrid, Mr. Ender Arat.
The Debate Over ‘Political Islam'
Both Dr. El Othmani and I was here to speak at a seminar organized by Casa Árabe, a newly-established Spanish institution supported by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation. The aim of the seminar was mainly to analyze Turkey's experience with the AKP, and to explore whether it can be a source of inspiration for Islamic parties in the Arab world to become legitimate actors in democratic politics. The organizers have apparently been impressed by the AKP's transition from Islamism to conservative democracy, and hope that it can be a model in the Middle East and the Maghrib. Indeed, this is a much-debated issue in the Western media and the intellectual circles nowadays. “Should we support the existence of Islamist parties,” many people ask, “would it help them moderate themselves?”
In the face of that question, there are those who say that “political Islam” should never, ever be tolerated. (In the West they would be called “the hawks.” In Turkey, they would be called “the establishment.”) On the other hand, there are people who say that “political Islam” indeed should be given a chance. For my part, I think that the debate is misconstructed, because the term “political Islam” can be quite misleading. (Similarly, one would be wrong to speak about “political Christianity,” if he refers to it to explain strikingly different phenomena such as the Christian Democrats of modern Europe and the Inquisition or the Crusaders of medieval Christendom.) There can be quite different ways that Islam can influence politics – and for a believer it is only right that it should do so. The crucial question is whether Islam will influence politics in a democratic or totalitarian way. What is definitive is whether Muslims will synthesize their faith with tyranny and violence or freedom and moderation.
The Taliban or al-Qaeda has shown that the former is possible. But the latter is viable, too. And the latter is possible only when Islamic parties – or other political forces – accept the fact that in any society, not everybody is going to be a Muslim, and not all Muslims are going to be pious and practicing ones. Once that is acknowledged, then “political Islam” will abandon its coercive goals and tools to Islamize society, and will be forced to articulate and represent Islamic values within the rules of the democratic game. In Turkey although there are many ultra-secularists who are still suspicious of the AKP in that regard – because for them the only good Muslim is a totally non-observant one – but there are also many secular analysts who think Mr. Erdoğan's party indeed has evolved into what one can call “Muslim democracy.”
The Bulb and The Gas Lamp
I was wondering whether that would apply to the “Moroccan AKP,” and asked this of Dr. El Othmani. His answer was positive and he emphasized that his party does not have any aim to impose any sort of Islamic life on Moroccans when it comes to power. (In September this year, there are general elections and the JDP hopes to be number one, which they hope will make them the leader of the expected coalition.) He underlined that “Turkey is their model,” and what they want to build is a peaceful, open, democratic Morocco – a message he also gave at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace recently. However there are differences between Morocco's JDP and Turkey's AKP, and there is a very good reason for that: Morocco is neither secular nor republican. It is a monarchy whose king is defined as “the commander of the faithful” – a title Islamic caliphs held from the earliest times. Thus references to Islam are totally valid in Morocco's political life.
There are also other issues that the JDP does not share the AKP's more liberal attitudes. “We believe in the market economy,” says Dr. El Othmani, “but with an effective redistribution system.” When I asked about the way Hamas fights Israel, he says they don't support attacks against civilians – which is commonly known as terrorism – but also doesn't condemn them by noting that Israeli bombs also kill Arab children. This is different from the stance of the AKP, which holds that Hamas should stop its armed struggle and work within the ways of diplomacy.
Perhaps, the symbolic difference in the emblems of the AKP and the JDP are there for a reason. Interestingly, lamps represent both parties: But while that of AKP is a modern electric bulb, the latter has a very classic and oriental gas lamp.Which implies the fact that there will be differences among parties with Muslim values according to the context they emerge from and operate in. They should all be welcomed if they renounce totalitarianism in the name of Islam. If they don't, then they, of course, would not deserve a legitimate space in the democratic game.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
09 Aralık 2007 Pazar
Morocco's 'AKP' Is Moroccan, After All
EL ESCORIAL - The medieval monks who built the giant Monastery of El Escorial couldn't have imagined that their all-Catholic civitas dei would someday host hot debates on the future of political Islam. Yet that's exactly what happened here, in this little Spanish town located some 45 kilometers northwest of Madrid, this week. The “political Islam” in question was Turkey's incumbent AKP, the Justice and Development Party, and its namesake in Morocco, the Parti de la Justice et du Développement.
“The Moroccan AKP”, as they call it, or simply the PJK with its French initials, is an interesting phenomenon. Some Turks are aware of the party and many assume that the AKP is its franchiser, but actually the Arab/Berber party precedes that of Mr. Tayyip Erdoğan. It was vaguely on the scene for a long time, until it adopted its current name in 1998 and accepted the leadership of Dr. Saâdeddine El Othmani, with whom I shared a panel in El Escorial, and a dinner at the residence of Turkey's ambassador to Madrid, Mr. Ender Arat.
The Debate Over ‘Political Islam'
Both Dr. El Othmani and I was here to speak at a seminar organized by Casa Árabe, a newly-established Spanish institution supported by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation. The aim of the seminar was mainly to analyze Turkey's experience with the AKP, and to explore whether it can be a source of inspiration for Islamic parties in the Arab world to become legitimate actors in democratic politics. The organizers have apparently been impressed by the AKP's transition from Islamism to conservative democracy, and hope that it can be a model in the Middle East and the Maghrib. Indeed, this is a much-debated issue in the Western media and the intellectual circles nowadays. “Should we support the existence of Islamist parties,” many people ask, “would it help them moderate themselves?”
In the face of that question, there are those who say that “political Islam” should never, ever be tolerated. (In the West they would be called “the hawks.” In Turkey, they would be called “the establishment.”) On the other hand, there are people who say that “political Islam” indeed should be given a chance. For my part, I think that the debate is misconstructed, because the term “political Islam” can be quite misleading. (Similarly, one would be wrong to speak about “political Christianity,” if he refers to it to explain strikingly different phenomena such as the Christian Democrats of modern Europe and the Inquisition or the Crusaders of medieval Christendom.) There can be quite different ways that Islam can influence politics – and for a believer it is only right that it should do so. The crucial question is whether Islam will influence politics in a democratic or totalitarian way. What is definitive is whether Muslims will synthesize their faith with tyranny and violence or freedom and moderation.
The Taliban or al-Qaeda has shown that the former is possible. But the latter is viable, too. And the latter is possible only when Islamic parties – or other political forces – accept the fact that in any society, not everybody is going to be a Muslim, and not all Muslims are going to be pious and practicing ones. Once that is acknowledged, then “political Islam” will abandon its coercive goals and tools to Islamize society, and will be forced to articulate and represent Islamic values within the rules of the democratic game. In Turkey although there are many ultra-secularists who are still suspicious of the AKP in that regard – because for them the only good Muslim is a totally non-observant one – but there are also many secular analysts who think Mr. Erdoğan's party indeed has evolved into what one can call “Muslim democracy.”
The Bulb and The Gas Lamp
I was wondering whether that would apply to the “Moroccan AKP,” and asked this of Dr. El Othmani. His answer was positive and he emphasized that his party does not have any aim to impose any sort of Islamic life on Moroccans when it comes to power. (In September this year, there are general elections and the JDP hopes to be number one, which they hope will make them the leader of the expected coalition.) He underlined that “Turkey is their model,” and what they want to build is a peaceful, open, democratic Morocco – a message he also gave at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace recently. However there are differences between Morocco's JDP and Turkey's AKP, and there is a very good reason for that: Morocco is neither secular nor republican. It is a monarchy whose king is defined as “the commander of the faithful” – a title Islamic caliphs held from the earliest times. Thus references to Islam are totally valid in Morocco's political life.
There are also other issues that the JDP does not share the AKP's more liberal attitudes. “We believe in the market economy,” says Dr. El Othmani, “but with an effective redistribution system.” When I asked about the way Hamas fights Israel, he says they don't support attacks against civilians – which is commonly known as terrorism – but also doesn't condemn them by noting that Israeli bombs also kill Arab children. This is different from the stance of the AKP, which holds that Hamas should stop its armed struggle and work within the ways of diplomacy.
Perhaps, the symbolic difference in the emblems of the AKP and the JDP are there for a reason. Interestingly, lamps represent both parties: But while that of AKP is a modern electric bulb, the latter has a very classic and oriental gas lamp.Which implies the fact that there will be differences among parties with Muslim values according to the context they emerge from and operate in. They should all be welcomed if they renounce totalitarianism in the name of Islam. If they don't, then they, of course, would not deserve a legitimate space in the democratic game.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
“The Moroccan AKP”, as they call it, or simply the PJK with its French initials, is an interesting phenomenon. Some Turks are aware of the party and many assume that the AKP is its franchiser, but actually the Arab/Berber party precedes that of Mr. Tayyip Erdoğan. It was vaguely on the scene for a long time, until it adopted its current name in 1998 and accepted the leadership of Dr. Saâdeddine El Othmani, with whom I shared a panel in El Escorial, and a dinner at the residence of Turkey's ambassador to Madrid, Mr. Ender Arat.
The Debate Over ‘Political Islam'
Both Dr. El Othmani and I was here to speak at a seminar organized by Casa Árabe, a newly-established Spanish institution supported by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation. The aim of the seminar was mainly to analyze Turkey's experience with the AKP, and to explore whether it can be a source of inspiration for Islamic parties in the Arab world to become legitimate actors in democratic politics. The organizers have apparently been impressed by the AKP's transition from Islamism to conservative democracy, and hope that it can be a model in the Middle East and the Maghrib. Indeed, this is a much-debated issue in the Western media and the intellectual circles nowadays. “Should we support the existence of Islamist parties,” many people ask, “would it help them moderate themselves?”
In the face of that question, there are those who say that “political Islam” should never, ever be tolerated. (In the West they would be called “the hawks.” In Turkey, they would be called “the establishment.”) On the other hand, there are people who say that “political Islam” indeed should be given a chance. For my part, I think that the debate is misconstructed, because the term “political Islam” can be quite misleading. (Similarly, one would be wrong to speak about “political Christianity,” if he refers to it to explain strikingly different phenomena such as the Christian Democrats of modern Europe and the Inquisition or the Crusaders of medieval Christendom.) There can be quite different ways that Islam can influence politics – and for a believer it is only right that it should do so. The crucial question is whether Islam will influence politics in a democratic or totalitarian way. What is definitive is whether Muslims will synthesize their faith with tyranny and violence or freedom and moderation.
The Taliban or al-Qaeda has shown that the former is possible. But the latter is viable, too. And the latter is possible only when Islamic parties – or other political forces – accept the fact that in any society, not everybody is going to be a Muslim, and not all Muslims are going to be pious and practicing ones. Once that is acknowledged, then “political Islam” will abandon its coercive goals and tools to Islamize society, and will be forced to articulate and represent Islamic values within the rules of the democratic game. In Turkey although there are many ultra-secularists who are still suspicious of the AKP in that regard – because for them the only good Muslim is a totally non-observant one – but there are also many secular analysts who think Mr. Erdoğan's party indeed has evolved into what one can call “Muslim democracy.”
The Bulb and The Gas Lamp
I was wondering whether that would apply to the “Moroccan AKP,” and asked this of Dr. El Othmani. His answer was positive and he emphasized that his party does not have any aim to impose any sort of Islamic life on Moroccans when it comes to power. (In September this year, there are general elections and the JDP hopes to be number one, which they hope will make them the leader of the expected coalition.) He underlined that “Turkey is their model,” and what they want to build is a peaceful, open, democratic Morocco – a message he also gave at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace recently. However there are differences between Morocco's JDP and Turkey's AKP, and there is a very good reason for that: Morocco is neither secular nor republican. It is a monarchy whose king is defined as “the commander of the faithful” – a title Islamic caliphs held from the earliest times. Thus references to Islam are totally valid in Morocco's political life.
There are also other issues that the JDP does not share the AKP's more liberal attitudes. “We believe in the market economy,” says Dr. El Othmani, “but with an effective redistribution system.” When I asked about the way Hamas fights Israel, he says they don't support attacks against civilians – which is commonly known as terrorism – but also doesn't condemn them by noting that Israeli bombs also kill Arab children. This is different from the stance of the AKP, which holds that Hamas should stop its armed struggle and work within the ways of diplomacy.
Perhaps, the symbolic difference in the emblems of the AKP and the JDP are there for a reason. Interestingly, lamps represent both parties: But while that of AKP is a modern electric bulb, the latter has a very classic and oriental gas lamp.Which implies the fact that there will be differences among parties with Muslim values according to the context they emerge from and operate in. They should all be welcomed if they renounce totalitarianism in the name of Islam. If they don't, then they, of course, would not deserve a legitimate space in the democratic game.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
Thus Spoke the Zarathustrian Kurds
Mehdi Zana, the former mayor of Diyarbakır and a prominent figure among Turkey's Kurdish nationalists, has made the news twice in the past weeks with his claims on Kurdish history. First, he argued that Kurds simply had a brighter record before Islam. Second, as we read in the weekly news magazine Aksiyon, he claimed that the authentic religion of the Kurds is Zoroastrianism. They later converted to Islam, according to Zana, “due to the fear of the sword,” and “as a big mistake.”
By all that, Mr. Zana actually presents a pattern of thought that many modern nationalists have adhered to: the glorification and revival of the pre-Islamic or pre-Christian pagan religions. Since both of these Abrahamic faiths preach a brotherhood which transcends and even surpasses all tribal, ethnic and national identities, they are highly disturbing for the nationalist agendas. That's why the Nazis hated Christianity and tried to replace it with a neo-pagan faith in the German Reich and its messianic Fuehrer. Less radical nationalisms tried softer programs of de-Abrahamification. In its first two decades, Turkey lived through a similar experience with the official denigration of Islam as an “obstacle to progress,” and the invention of a mythical “glorious history” of pre-Islamic pagan Turks. The bizarre “Turkish Language Thesis,” which argued that the Turkish race simply created much of the human civilization during the Neolithic period, is a joke and perhaps and embarrassment for today, but it was the official truth in the 30's.
’The Seed of The Aryan Race’
Now it is the Kurd's turn, apparently. And it is not just Mehdi Zana who tries to glorify the pre-Islamic history of the Kurdish people. As I have examined in my book, “Rethinking the Kurdish Question,” (unfortunately, only available in Turkish for the moment) there is a rhetoric among Kurdish nationalist which one can justifiably call as “Kurdish History Thesis.”
Kurdist ideologues such as Cemşid Bender have long argued that Kurds are the founders of the Mesopotamian civilization and they were the ones who invented pottery, agriculture, and even mathematics. These are simply speculations, of course, because there is in fact no historical data to confirm or falsify them. What these writers do is simply to pin some important achivements in the history of the Middle East and then to invent links between them and “Kurdishness.” It is exactly the same “method” that Turkists used in the 30's to “discover” links between Central Asian Turks and Ancient Egyptians. (The Ancient Egyptians must have been of the Turkish stock; how else could they be so smart to build the pyramids?)
Another emphasis of the Kurdist ideologues is that they are of the Aryan race. This actually started in the heydays of the Nazi regime, when nationalist Kurdish intellectuals bought into the ideology of their German masters, including their hatred towards the Semitic peoples and cultures. Luckily for us, the plans for the Aryan domination of the world failed with the victory of the Allies against the Wehrmact in 1945. But the spirit lived among radical nationalists, which included some Kurds who were keen to potray their disputes with Muslim Turks and Muslim Arabs as the struggle of the modern Aryans against the narrow-minded Semites. No wonder Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the terrorist PKK, once proudly declared, “Kurds are the seed of the Aryan race.”
History by invention
The effort by Kurdish nationalist such as Mehdi Zana to praise and revive Zoroastrianism (or, Zarathustrianism) is a part of thispolitical agenda. Whether this is a justified project or not is a matter of debate and the answer will change according to where you stand. I personally think that creating a separate Kurdish nation — which will, inevitably, demand its own nation-state — is a bad idea, both for the Kurds and their long-time neighbors. The process of creating such an entity will unavoidably raise the ethnic tension in the region and spark horrible ethnic cleansing operations. Just remember what happened during the Indo-Pakistani Partition or the destruction of Yugoslavia.
Moreover, how can one know that a Kurdish nation-state, even once established, will be good for the Kurds? (Believe me, having your own nation-state is not necessarily a blessing.) What really matters is whether you live in a political system which is run by democracy and which respects your rights and freedoms.And a hypothetical “Kurdistan” could well be far-off from those principles.
The second and more objective trouble with the project for Kurdish nationalism is that it deliberately distorts historical facts. Islamic period was not a “dark age” for Kurds. Quite the contrary, according to Kurdish historian Mehrdad Izady, “the golden age of Kurdish culture” was lived between the 10th and 12th centuries, which is long after Kurds' acceptance of Islam. Izady even defines the period as “the Kurdish centuries of Islam.”
The same is true also for Turks. Pre-Islamic Turkish history does not bear many signs of a rich civilization. All the great poets, writers, philosophers, scientists, or architects of Turkish history come from the Islamic period. (This was no suprise: The Islamic Middle East was the peak of civilization in the Middle Ages, and both Kurds and Turks benefited from that. And what allowed that golden age was the openness of the Muslim civilization towards other cultures; a wisdom some Muslims seem to have forgotten today.)
Denying and distorting these facts of the history of the Middle East will not help any of its peoples, including the Kurds. We need to discover, not invent, our history. We Turks lived through a bad experience in that regard. It would be only unwise for the Kurds to repeat the same mistake.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
By all that, Mr. Zana actually presents a pattern of thought that many modern nationalists have adhered to: the glorification and revival of the pre-Islamic or pre-Christian pagan religions. Since both of these Abrahamic faiths preach a brotherhood which transcends and even surpasses all tribal, ethnic and national identities, they are highly disturbing for the nationalist agendas. That's why the Nazis hated Christianity and tried to replace it with a neo-pagan faith in the German Reich and its messianic Fuehrer. Less radical nationalisms tried softer programs of de-Abrahamification. In its first two decades, Turkey lived through a similar experience with the official denigration of Islam as an “obstacle to progress,” and the invention of a mythical “glorious history” of pre-Islamic pagan Turks. The bizarre “Turkish Language Thesis,” which argued that the Turkish race simply created much of the human civilization during the Neolithic period, is a joke and perhaps and embarrassment for today, but it was the official truth in the 30's.
’The Seed of The Aryan Race’
Now it is the Kurd's turn, apparently. And it is not just Mehdi Zana who tries to glorify the pre-Islamic history of the Kurdish people. As I have examined in my book, “Rethinking the Kurdish Question,” (unfortunately, only available in Turkish for the moment) there is a rhetoric among Kurdish nationalist which one can justifiably call as “Kurdish History Thesis.”
Kurdist ideologues such as Cemşid Bender have long argued that Kurds are the founders of the Mesopotamian civilization and they were the ones who invented pottery, agriculture, and even mathematics. These are simply speculations, of course, because there is in fact no historical data to confirm or falsify them. What these writers do is simply to pin some important achivements in the history of the Middle East and then to invent links between them and “Kurdishness.” It is exactly the same “method” that Turkists used in the 30's to “discover” links between Central Asian Turks and Ancient Egyptians. (The Ancient Egyptians must have been of the Turkish stock; how else could they be so smart to build the pyramids?)
Another emphasis of the Kurdist ideologues is that they are of the Aryan race. This actually started in the heydays of the Nazi regime, when nationalist Kurdish intellectuals bought into the ideology of their German masters, including their hatred towards the Semitic peoples and cultures. Luckily for us, the plans for the Aryan domination of the world failed with the victory of the Allies against the Wehrmact in 1945. But the spirit lived among radical nationalists, which included some Kurds who were keen to potray their disputes with Muslim Turks and Muslim Arabs as the struggle of the modern Aryans against the narrow-minded Semites. No wonder Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the terrorist PKK, once proudly declared, “Kurds are the seed of the Aryan race.”
History by invention
The effort by Kurdish nationalist such as Mehdi Zana to praise and revive Zoroastrianism (or, Zarathustrianism) is a part of thispolitical agenda. Whether this is a justified project or not is a matter of debate and the answer will change according to where you stand. I personally think that creating a separate Kurdish nation — which will, inevitably, demand its own nation-state — is a bad idea, both for the Kurds and their long-time neighbors. The process of creating such an entity will unavoidably raise the ethnic tension in the region and spark horrible ethnic cleansing operations. Just remember what happened during the Indo-Pakistani Partition or the destruction of Yugoslavia.
Moreover, how can one know that a Kurdish nation-state, even once established, will be good for the Kurds? (Believe me, having your own nation-state is not necessarily a blessing.) What really matters is whether you live in a political system which is run by democracy and which respects your rights and freedoms.And a hypothetical “Kurdistan” could well be far-off from those principles.
The second and more objective trouble with the project for Kurdish nationalism is that it deliberately distorts historical facts. Islamic period was not a “dark age” for Kurds. Quite the contrary, according to Kurdish historian Mehrdad Izady, “the golden age of Kurdish culture” was lived between the 10th and 12th centuries, which is long after Kurds' acceptance of Islam. Izady even defines the period as “the Kurdish centuries of Islam.”
The same is true also for Turks. Pre-Islamic Turkish history does not bear many signs of a rich civilization. All the great poets, writers, philosophers, scientists, or architects of Turkish history come from the Islamic period. (This was no suprise: The Islamic Middle East was the peak of civilization in the Middle Ages, and both Kurds and Turks benefited from that. And what allowed that golden age was the openness of the Muslim civilization towards other cultures; a wisdom some Muslims seem to have forgotten today.)
Denying and distorting these facts of the history of the Middle East will not help any of its peoples, including the Kurds. We need to discover, not invent, our history. We Turks lived through a bad experience in that regard. It would be only unwise for the Kurds to repeat the same mistake.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
The Turkmen Theocracy Lost Its God
Saparmurat Niyazov, or "His Excellency Turkmenbashi, President of Turkmenistan and Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers" as his official title reads, was one of the few remaining icons of a 20th century political phenomenon: Cult of personality. As a man who grew up in a Soviet orphanage, and who built his political career in the Communist Party of the Soviet Republic of Turkmenistan, he was loyal to the heritage of his late comrades such as Stalin or Mao, who depicted themselves as secular gods.
"Turkmenbashi," i.e. "Head of Turkmens," had been running Turkmenistan since the fall of the Soviet Union. He continued with the Soviet style politics, and thus didn't allow any political opposition to flourish. During his 15-year reign, freedom of speech has been virtually non-existent. Any criticism of the leader has been considered treason and punishable by lengthy prison terms, imprisonment in mental institutions, or exile to camps in remote areas. Government informers have been closely monitoring the society to find out such enemies of the people, i.e. proponents of freedom.
Autocratic rule seems to be the norm in most ex-Soviet Republics — including the mother of all, Russia — but Niyazov had taken it to new heights. He portrayed himself as an all-knowing guide to his people. In tradition with Lenin and Stalin — remember Leningrad and Stalingrad — he renamed the town of Krasnovodsk, on the Caspian Sea, after himself. "Turkmenbashi" also became the name of several schools and airports. His face appears on all banknotes and his large portraits hang all over the country, especially on major public buildings and main streets.
There is even a "Melon Day," in which the "Turkmenbashi melon," a new crossbreed product, is praised for "its delicious aroma, excellent taste and large size," and Turkmen children eat them joyfully under the all-seeing eyes of their leader's abundant busts. "The Turkmen melon is the source of our pride," said Niyazov in a statement published in Turkmen newspapers."Its taste has no equals in the world, the smell makes your head spin."
And it really had done so. The ideas of Turkmenbashi have been the official ideology of Turkmenistan since 1991. His pink and green volume known as the Rukhnama (Book of the Spirit) was translated into many languages and was continuously reproduced by state newspapers. Turkmenbashi had also adopted the image of the "sun-leader," a popular theme in other dictatorships like North Korea, which envisions an almost supernatural savior enlightening his otherwise-in-darkness nation. Niyazov actually brought his own creative contribution to this political cult with the Neutrality Arch, a fancy structure which is the tallest building of the capital Ashgabat. At its top, there is gold-plated statue of Niyazov that rotates 360 degrees every 24 hours so as to always face the sun. The idea is that the illuminates his nation with the one he gets from the skies.
But don't get it wrong: All this official cult was not for the sake of the all-modest Niyazov, but for his all-thankful people. "I'm personally against seeing my pictures and statues in the streets," he once said, "but it's what the people want."
Interestingly, the state propaganda — which had been defining what the people want without asking them much — have recently been stressing the Turkmen leader's health and vigor, emphasizing his once-grey hair miraculously turning jet-black. Which could, of course, be explained in more mundane terms.
And just yesterday Niyazov faced the inevitable ending of every mortal. The question awaiting his people is whether they will come to explain the whole Niyazov experience in mundane terms — as an embarrassing relic of communist despotism, perhaps — or whether they will seek yet another sun-leader.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
"Turkmenbashi," i.e. "Head of Turkmens," had been running Turkmenistan since the fall of the Soviet Union. He continued with the Soviet style politics, and thus didn't allow any political opposition to flourish. During his 15-year reign, freedom of speech has been virtually non-existent. Any criticism of the leader has been considered treason and punishable by lengthy prison terms, imprisonment in mental institutions, or exile to camps in remote areas. Government informers have been closely monitoring the society to find out such enemies of the people, i.e. proponents of freedom.
Autocratic rule seems to be the norm in most ex-Soviet Republics — including the mother of all, Russia — but Niyazov had taken it to new heights. He portrayed himself as an all-knowing guide to his people. In tradition with Lenin and Stalin — remember Leningrad and Stalingrad — he renamed the town of Krasnovodsk, on the Caspian Sea, after himself. "Turkmenbashi" also became the name of several schools and airports. His face appears on all banknotes and his large portraits hang all over the country, especially on major public buildings and main streets.
There is even a "Melon Day," in which the "Turkmenbashi melon," a new crossbreed product, is praised for "its delicious aroma, excellent taste and large size," and Turkmen children eat them joyfully under the all-seeing eyes of their leader's abundant busts. "The Turkmen melon is the source of our pride," said Niyazov in a statement published in Turkmen newspapers."Its taste has no equals in the world, the smell makes your head spin."
And it really had done so. The ideas of Turkmenbashi have been the official ideology of Turkmenistan since 1991. His pink and green volume known as the Rukhnama (Book of the Spirit) was translated into many languages and was continuously reproduced by state newspapers. Turkmenbashi had also adopted the image of the "sun-leader," a popular theme in other dictatorships like North Korea, which envisions an almost supernatural savior enlightening his otherwise-in-darkness nation. Niyazov actually brought his own creative contribution to this political cult with the Neutrality Arch, a fancy structure which is the tallest building of the capital Ashgabat. At its top, there is gold-plated statue of Niyazov that rotates 360 degrees every 24 hours so as to always face the sun. The idea is that the illuminates his nation with the one he gets from the skies.
But don't get it wrong: All this official cult was not for the sake of the all-modest Niyazov, but for his all-thankful people. "I'm personally against seeing my pictures and statues in the streets," he once said, "but it's what the people want."
Interestingly, the state propaganda — which had been defining what the people want without asking them much — have recently been stressing the Turkmen leader's health and vigor, emphasizing his once-grey hair miraculously turning jet-black. Which could, of course, be explained in more mundane terms.
And just yesterday Niyazov faced the inevitable ending of every mortal. The question awaiting his people is whether they will come to explain the whole Niyazov experience in mundane terms — as an embarrassing relic of communist despotism, perhaps — or whether they will seek yet another sun-leader.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
Holocaust Denial Won't Help Iran—or Palestine
Iranian leaders apparently think that they are doing their nation a favor nowadays by hosting anti-Semitic ideologues such as David Duke, the leader of Ku Klux Klan, for a conference which challenges the truth of the Jewish Holocaust. Are they right?
First, one should recall what Holocaust denial, or as its proponents call it, "Holocaust Revisionism," is. It is a fringe movement that started in the 60's by the French historian Paul Rassinier's "The Drama Of The European Jews" and American historian David Hoggan's "The Myth of the Six Million." In the 70's a few other historians like Arthur Butz, David Irving and Robert Faurisson joined the line. In 1979 the Institute for Historical Review (IHR) was founded in California, which became, and still acts as, the headquarters of the "revisionist" movement.
Those in the movement might have different tones and shades, however their basic argument is the same: Although many Jews did suffer and die during World War II, there were no specific measures to exterminate them, such as the horrific gas chambers of Auschwitz, Belzec or Treblinka. All the evidence pointing to the Nazi Final Solution - which, according to mainstream historians, resulted in the extermination of six million Jews, along with millions of Gypsies and Slavs, and many communists and homosexuals - is, according to these "revisionists," fake or somehow exaggerated. They argue that there was indeed an American, British and Jewish conspiracy to make Jews look like victims and to demonize Nazi Germany.
Of course such a reading of history makes the Nazis look much nicer then they have been seen up to now. Therefore it is no accident that some of the leading figures in "Holocaust Revisionism" are Nazi sympathizers and neo-Nazis. Other fascist groups like the Ku Klux Klan are also enthusiastic supporters of Holocaust denial.
The Iranians, who accuse the Israelis for using the Holocaust propaganda to serve their political causes, need to see the irony here: "Holocaust Revisionism" is a political tool, too, which is used to whitewash the Nazis. And it is not only morally corrupt but also politically unwise to try to help the Palestinian cause by forming an alliance with the latter day saints of Nazism. President Ahmedinejad will serve his nation better if he realizes that the anti-Semitism of the Nazis incorporated a deep hatred towards not only Judaism, but also its theological legatees, i.e. Christianity and Islam.
Actually if the Iranians, and other Muslims nations, really want to help Palestinians, they can do this not by objecting to but by empathizing with the Jewish Holocaust. Then, they can, for example, challenge the Israelis for imitating the brutality of the Wehrmacht with their bloody incursions in Palestine and Lebanon.
It is a pity that for the current conference in Tehran, the mullahs didn't consider inviting Khaled Mahameed, the Palestinian peace activist who opened a Holocaust institute in Nazareth last year, to help his fellow Arabs understand, not deny, the Holocaust. Such guests would bring more honor to the land of the Persians then the Ku Klux Klan leaders.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
First, one should recall what Holocaust denial, or as its proponents call it, "Holocaust Revisionism," is. It is a fringe movement that started in the 60's by the French historian Paul Rassinier's "The Drama Of The European Jews" and American historian David Hoggan's "The Myth of the Six Million." In the 70's a few other historians like Arthur Butz, David Irving and Robert Faurisson joined the line. In 1979 the Institute for Historical Review (IHR) was founded in California, which became, and still acts as, the headquarters of the "revisionist" movement.
Those in the movement might have different tones and shades, however their basic argument is the same: Although many Jews did suffer and die during World War II, there were no specific measures to exterminate them, such as the horrific gas chambers of Auschwitz, Belzec or Treblinka. All the evidence pointing to the Nazi Final Solution - which, according to mainstream historians, resulted in the extermination of six million Jews, along with millions of Gypsies and Slavs, and many communists and homosexuals - is, according to these "revisionists," fake or somehow exaggerated. They argue that there was indeed an American, British and Jewish conspiracy to make Jews look like victims and to demonize Nazi Germany.
Of course such a reading of history makes the Nazis look much nicer then they have been seen up to now. Therefore it is no accident that some of the leading figures in "Holocaust Revisionism" are Nazi sympathizers and neo-Nazis. Other fascist groups like the Ku Klux Klan are also enthusiastic supporters of Holocaust denial.
The Iranians, who accuse the Israelis for using the Holocaust propaganda to serve their political causes, need to see the irony here: "Holocaust Revisionism" is a political tool, too, which is used to whitewash the Nazis. And it is not only morally corrupt but also politically unwise to try to help the Palestinian cause by forming an alliance with the latter day saints of Nazism. President Ahmedinejad will serve his nation better if he realizes that the anti-Semitism of the Nazis incorporated a deep hatred towards not only Judaism, but also its theological legatees, i.e. Christianity and Islam.
Actually if the Iranians, and other Muslims nations, really want to help Palestinians, they can do this not by objecting to but by empathizing with the Jewish Holocaust. Then, they can, for example, challenge the Israelis for imitating the brutality of the Wehrmacht with their bloody incursions in Palestine and Lebanon.
It is a pity that for the current conference in Tehran, the mullahs didn't consider inviting Khaled Mahameed, the Palestinian peace activist who opened a Holocaust institute in Nazareth last year, to help his fellow Arabs understand, not deny, the Holocaust. Such guests would bring more honor to the land of the Persians then the Ku Klux Klan leaders.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
Put the Fear of God Back Into the Mideast Peace Process
The historic visit to Israel earlier this month by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, leader of the Justice and Development Party, proves a Muslim who is serious about his religion can be friendly to Israel, and that those who predicted a decline in Turkish-Israeli relations following the rise of Erdogan's Islamic-inspired conservative party were wrong.
As another Muslim from Turkey, let me offer a personal story of my visit to Israel, especially to those who might still be, quite understandably, suspicious about the possibility of a real, committed amity between serious Muslims and the Jewish state.
This past December, I was in Israel for the first time as a guest of the American Jewish Committee's "Project Interchange." Along with eight other fellow journalists from Istanbul and Ankara, I toured the Holy Land and marvelled at most of what I saw. The most astonishing moments for me, though, were two prayers I made in Jerusalem.
The first one was at the al-Aqsa Mosque. Like all Muslims, during that prayer I paid tribute to the one and only God, the creator of the heavens and the earth. Toward the end of the prayer — again, like all Muslims — I also commended former believers, including "the descendants of Abraham."
After that, I left the Temple Mount to head toward the Western Wall, where Jews were praying toward the spot where the Holy of the Holies once stood. I could not resist the empathy. These believers were praising the one and only God, the Creator of heaven and earth, too. Moreover, they were the very descendants of "the descendants of Abraham" that I had commended just five minutes before.
I did not hesitate to join them in prayer. I approached the Wall, and I recited the single phrase that I know in Hebrew: "Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Ehad." I was quite sure that "Our Lord" was one.
This figurative moment deepened my existing conviction that a lasting peace between the Jewish state and its Muslim neighbours, and a rapprochement between Judaism and Islam, is possible.
Let me explain how.
Jews According to the Koran
The term Islam is mostly used to define the faith that started with the Prophet Mohammad in 7th century Arabia. In that context, Islam is a distinct — or even a rival — faith to Christianity and Judaism. However, there is a second and more encompassing meaning of Islam: It merely means submission to God; and it dates back not to Mohammad but way beyond to Adam, the first human being. We can call this primordial Islam, which is actually mere monotheism.
One little-recognized fact is that when the Koran speaks about Islam, it virtually always means the primordial one. That's why many Old Testament prophets are mentioned as "Muslims." They were, of course, Jewish prophets, but this meant that they were "Muslims," as well, for being a Muslim simply means submitting to God.
This is why the Koran makes no distinction between the Prophet Mohammad and the prophets and kings of the Old Testament. It also tells us that God "sent down the Torah containing guidance and light" (5:44). Moreover, the Koran declares Abraham as the "forefather" to all Muslims (22:78). Therefore, one could argue that all Muslims are, whatever their ethnic origin might be, honorary Semites.
There are also parts of the Koran that criticize Jews severely, and some current Muslims who embrace anti-Semitism quote them quite frequently. Yet there is a very crucial point that they fail to recognize: The Koran criticizes Jews not for being Jews, but rather for failing to be so. To be more precise, the Koran condemns only those Jews who disobeyed God and abandoned His law — such as those who worshipped the Golden Calf, refused to enter the Holy Land, disobeyed Jewish prophets, venerated the idol Baal and so on.
Moreover, while such deviators are condemned in the Koran, righteous Jews are praised. In one particular chapter, after first telling about the sins committed by those from "People of the Book" — a term that refers to Jews and Christians as the bearers of previous revelations — the Koran says, "They are not all alike; of the People of the Book there is an upright party; they recite God's communications in the night time and they adore (Him)... Those are among the good (3:113-4).
The logical outcome of this is that Muslims should esteem and appreciate Jewish — and Christian, for that matter — piety.
Unfortunately, among many contemporary Muslims it is very hard to find such a positive approach to Jewish piety. This stems from a misconception that they take for granted: The Koran teaches that its advent de-legitimised Judaism and Christianity. In fact, the Koran itself presents a somewhat different view. Of course all humans are invited to enter Islam, but those who choose to remain as Jews and Christians are promised salvation, as well, as long as they are faithful and pious. "Those who are Jews, and the Christians," says the Koran, "all who have faith in God and the Last Day and act rightly, will have their reward with their Lord" (2:62).
Moreover, the Koran envisions a kind of monotheistic pluralism. In a direct appeal to Prophet Mohammad, we read that the existence of different monotheistic paths is not against God's will: "Had God willed, He would have made you a single community, but He wanted to test you regarding what has come to you. So compete with each other in doing good" (5:48).
Respecting Israel, As a Muslim
The perspective I am describing is pretty unorthodox in today's Islamic world, but it is right there in the Koran, the single unquestionable source of Islam, waiting to be rediscovered.
That koranic perspective led me to admire much of what I saw in Israel during my six-day trip last December. I kept, and still keep, my reservations and criticisms on some of the Israeli policies toward Palestinians, but the nature of Israeli society gained my approval in many ways. I was, for example, pleased to see the respect and recognition of the Sabbath, kosher laws and other religious practices in the Jewish state.
I was also glad to see that fellow Muslims who live under Israeli rule are quite free to practice their faith — a blessing they could not have in some countries with a Muslim majority. One such place is my own country, Turkey, where any religious symbol is fiercely expelled from the public square. In contrast to Turkey's secularist monism, the overall picture in Israel presented a pluralism in which the sacred and the secular coexist with mutual respect. At least to my eyes, the Israeli model looks much more appealing than the Turkish model.
The idea that Jewish religiosity deserves respect from Muslims leads us to reconsider another issue: Zionism. Most Muslims loathe the term and what it represents, but maybe that is not a very Islamic position at all.
As is well known, Zionism developed in the late 19th century with the sole purpose of establishing a Jewish nation state, which was definitely not an unjustified objective. But where should this hypothetical state be founded? Most Zionists were pretty secular, and they did not appeal to religion to find an answer. That's why they considered many alternatives. Yet the religious and historical aspiration to Eretz Israel gained ascendancy and became undisputed after the Balfour Declaration.
When I, as a Muslim, rethink that early debate in Zionism, I see no other way than sympathizing with the choice of Eretz Israel. There are two important reasons.
First, the Jewish aspiration to the Holy Land is valid. Not only is it declared in the Torah, which is definitely important for us Muslims, but it's also confirmed in the Koran. In verse 5:21, we read that Moses led the Israelites to the Holy Land and said: "My people! Enter the Holy Land which God has ordained for you, do not turn back in your tracks and so become transformed into losers."
The second reason is that the Jewish aspiration to Palestine is a religious commitment that we Muslims cannot ask the Jews to abandon. The very fact that Jews did not give up a central theme in their religion is a profound testimony to the power of faith. Had Israel been a state in Uganda named "The People's Republic of the Jewish Nation," with a hammer and sickle in its flag — or anything but the star of David — then it would be a testimony to the power of secularization. We Muslims, by default, have to support the religious, not the secular, way.
All this means that there can well be an Islamic argument for the right of Israel to exist. However, and of course, this should be combined with an insistence on the rights of Palestinians to live in security, dignity and peace. How this will be achieved is a political question, but a proper Islamic theology would demand that the two peoples in the Holy Land, Jews and Arabs, find a way to co-exist in peace and mutual respect.
Another piece of good news is that Jewish theology presents a similar basis for peaceful coexistence, as well. Biblical passages such as "You shall neither mistreat a stranger nor oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt" (Exodus 22:21) makes it clear that Jews have an obligation to be generous to gentiles. Today's Palestinians are such strangers. Moreover, unlike the pagan Canaanites of biblical times, who hated both Israel and its God, they are fellow monotheists.
No Peace Without God
This final evaluation should lead us to reconsider the role of religion in the quest for peace in the Middle East. Many people think that such a role is inherently negative in effect, and therefore must be marginalized as much as possible. Once you put the "religious zealots" out of the picture, this secularist view assumes, things will be much easier.
Yet the secularist view has a serious flaw: It does not work. If religion is pushed out of the picture, it strikes back vigorously. In short, religion has to be a part of the solution; otherwise the solution becomes impossible.
Islam has the potential, in itself, to help bring about that solution. This is also true for Judaism, as it is for Christianity. As the Psalmist sensibly declared three millennia ago, "fear of God" is the beginning of wisdom — not of fanaticism, hatred and violence.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
As another Muslim from Turkey, let me offer a personal story of my visit to Israel, especially to those who might still be, quite understandably, suspicious about the possibility of a real, committed amity between serious Muslims and the Jewish state.
This past December, I was in Israel for the first time as a guest of the American Jewish Committee's "Project Interchange." Along with eight other fellow journalists from Istanbul and Ankara, I toured the Holy Land and marvelled at most of what I saw. The most astonishing moments for me, though, were two prayers I made in Jerusalem.
The first one was at the al-Aqsa Mosque. Like all Muslims, during that prayer I paid tribute to the one and only God, the creator of the heavens and the earth. Toward the end of the prayer — again, like all Muslims — I also commended former believers, including "the descendants of Abraham."
After that, I left the Temple Mount to head toward the Western Wall, where Jews were praying toward the spot where the Holy of the Holies once stood. I could not resist the empathy. These believers were praising the one and only God, the Creator of heaven and earth, too. Moreover, they were the very descendants of "the descendants of Abraham" that I had commended just five minutes before.
I did not hesitate to join them in prayer. I approached the Wall, and I recited the single phrase that I know in Hebrew: "Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Ehad." I was quite sure that "Our Lord" was one.
This figurative moment deepened my existing conviction that a lasting peace between the Jewish state and its Muslim neighbours, and a rapprochement between Judaism and Islam, is possible.
Let me explain how.
Jews According to the Koran
The term Islam is mostly used to define the faith that started with the Prophet Mohammad in 7th century Arabia. In that context, Islam is a distinct — or even a rival — faith to Christianity and Judaism. However, there is a second and more encompassing meaning of Islam: It merely means submission to God; and it dates back not to Mohammad but way beyond to Adam, the first human being. We can call this primordial Islam, which is actually mere monotheism.
One little-recognized fact is that when the Koran speaks about Islam, it virtually always means the primordial one. That's why many Old Testament prophets are mentioned as "Muslims." They were, of course, Jewish prophets, but this meant that they were "Muslims," as well, for being a Muslim simply means submitting to God.
This is why the Koran makes no distinction between the Prophet Mohammad and the prophets and kings of the Old Testament. It also tells us that God "sent down the Torah containing guidance and light" (5:44). Moreover, the Koran declares Abraham as the "forefather" to all Muslims (22:78). Therefore, one could argue that all Muslims are, whatever their ethnic origin might be, honorary Semites.
There are also parts of the Koran that criticize Jews severely, and some current Muslims who embrace anti-Semitism quote them quite frequently. Yet there is a very crucial point that they fail to recognize: The Koran criticizes Jews not for being Jews, but rather for failing to be so. To be more precise, the Koran condemns only those Jews who disobeyed God and abandoned His law — such as those who worshipped the Golden Calf, refused to enter the Holy Land, disobeyed Jewish prophets, venerated the idol Baal and so on.
Moreover, while such deviators are condemned in the Koran, righteous Jews are praised. In one particular chapter, after first telling about the sins committed by those from "People of the Book" — a term that refers to Jews and Christians as the bearers of previous revelations — the Koran says, "They are not all alike; of the People of the Book there is an upright party; they recite God's communications in the night time and they adore (Him)... Those are among the good (3:113-4).
The logical outcome of this is that Muslims should esteem and appreciate Jewish — and Christian, for that matter — piety.
Unfortunately, among many contemporary Muslims it is very hard to find such a positive approach to Jewish piety. This stems from a misconception that they take for granted: The Koran teaches that its advent de-legitimised Judaism and Christianity. In fact, the Koran itself presents a somewhat different view. Of course all humans are invited to enter Islam, but those who choose to remain as Jews and Christians are promised salvation, as well, as long as they are faithful and pious. "Those who are Jews, and the Christians," says the Koran, "all who have faith in God and the Last Day and act rightly, will have their reward with their Lord" (2:62).
Moreover, the Koran envisions a kind of monotheistic pluralism. In a direct appeal to Prophet Mohammad, we read that the existence of different monotheistic paths is not against God's will: "Had God willed, He would have made you a single community, but He wanted to test you regarding what has come to you. So compete with each other in doing good" (5:48).
Respecting Israel, As a Muslim
The perspective I am describing is pretty unorthodox in today's Islamic world, but it is right there in the Koran, the single unquestionable source of Islam, waiting to be rediscovered.
That koranic perspective led me to admire much of what I saw in Israel during my six-day trip last December. I kept, and still keep, my reservations and criticisms on some of the Israeli policies toward Palestinians, but the nature of Israeli society gained my approval in many ways. I was, for example, pleased to see the respect and recognition of the Sabbath, kosher laws and other religious practices in the Jewish state.
I was also glad to see that fellow Muslims who live under Israeli rule are quite free to practice their faith — a blessing they could not have in some countries with a Muslim majority. One such place is my own country, Turkey, where any religious symbol is fiercely expelled from the public square. In contrast to Turkey's secularist monism, the overall picture in Israel presented a pluralism in which the sacred and the secular coexist with mutual respect. At least to my eyes, the Israeli model looks much more appealing than the Turkish model.
The idea that Jewish religiosity deserves respect from Muslims leads us to reconsider another issue: Zionism. Most Muslims loathe the term and what it represents, but maybe that is not a very Islamic position at all.
As is well known, Zionism developed in the late 19th century with the sole purpose of establishing a Jewish nation state, which was definitely not an unjustified objective. But where should this hypothetical state be founded? Most Zionists were pretty secular, and they did not appeal to religion to find an answer. That's why they considered many alternatives. Yet the religious and historical aspiration to Eretz Israel gained ascendancy and became undisputed after the Balfour Declaration.
When I, as a Muslim, rethink that early debate in Zionism, I see no other way than sympathizing with the choice of Eretz Israel. There are two important reasons.
First, the Jewish aspiration to the Holy Land is valid. Not only is it declared in the Torah, which is definitely important for us Muslims, but it's also confirmed in the Koran. In verse 5:21, we read that Moses led the Israelites to the Holy Land and said: "My people! Enter the Holy Land which God has ordained for you, do not turn back in your tracks and so become transformed into losers."
The second reason is that the Jewish aspiration to Palestine is a religious commitment that we Muslims cannot ask the Jews to abandon. The very fact that Jews did not give up a central theme in their religion is a profound testimony to the power of faith. Had Israel been a state in Uganda named "The People's Republic of the Jewish Nation," with a hammer and sickle in its flag — or anything but the star of David — then it would be a testimony to the power of secularization. We Muslims, by default, have to support the religious, not the secular, way.
All this means that there can well be an Islamic argument for the right of Israel to exist. However, and of course, this should be combined with an insistence on the rights of Palestinians to live in security, dignity and peace. How this will be achieved is a political question, but a proper Islamic theology would demand that the two peoples in the Holy Land, Jews and Arabs, find a way to co-exist in peace and mutual respect.
Another piece of good news is that Jewish theology presents a similar basis for peaceful coexistence, as well. Biblical passages such as "You shall neither mistreat a stranger nor oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt" (Exodus 22:21) makes it clear that Jews have an obligation to be generous to gentiles. Today's Palestinians are such strangers. Moreover, unlike the pagan Canaanites of biblical times, who hated both Israel and its God, they are fellow monotheists.
No Peace Without God
This final evaluation should lead us to reconsider the role of religion in the quest for peace in the Middle East. Many people think that such a role is inherently negative in effect, and therefore must be marginalized as much as possible. Once you put the "religious zealots" out of the picture, this secularist view assumes, things will be much easier.
Yet the secularist view has a serious flaw: It does not work. If religion is pushed out of the picture, it strikes back vigorously. In short, religion has to be a part of the solution; otherwise the solution becomes impossible.
Islam has the potential, in itself, to help bring about that solution. This is also true for Judaism, as it is for Christianity. As the Psalmist sensibly declared three millennia ago, "fear of God" is the beginning of wisdom — not of fanaticism, hatred and violence.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
Ibn-Khaldoun Essay Contest
Here is a brief note: The Atlas Foundation is organizing the second Ibn-Khaldoun Essay Contest and I strongly advise young writers to consider joining it. Islamic world needs to focus on the means of creating economic prosperity, and the best medium for that, as Islamic scholar Ibn-Khaldoun argued centuries ago, is based on free markets and limited governments. It is time to rediscover that wisdom and apply to modern realities.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
News from The Dallas Morning News
Mustafa Akyol, a 35-year-old Istanbul journalist who often defends the AKP in his column, says the party miscalculated when it tried to criminalize adultery and to create alcohol-free areas in some towns. That gave secularists an excuse to accuse the party of setting off on the slippery slope to Turkey's Talibanization. "From my point of view, this is just a conservative moral policy which even sometimes I criticize – but this is not the way to sharia," Mr. Akyol says. "If you can't negotiate and agree on these things, you push [observant Muslims], and you tell them there is no place for your lifestyle in this country."
"Since there's a justified suspicion of Islamism in the world, they're calling anybody with an Islamic identity who wants to get involved in politics a Taliban. The thing we have to remember is that the Muslim world is really diverse. It's not always a clean debate between 'good' secularists and 'bad' Islamists."
The affable Mr. Akyol is himself a practicing Muslim, at ease with European and American thought. He believes it is certainly possible for Islam to be reconciled to liberal democracy and points out that the modernizing ideas of Fazlur Rahman, the late University of Chicago scholar who was a towering figure of contemporary Islamic thought, are highly influential in leading Turkish Islamic circles – including the AKP leadership. Mr. Akyol also points to the popularity of Islamic teachers like Fethullah Gulen and Mr. Gulen's mentor, the late Said Nursi, who advocate a more liberal form of Islam that seeks dialogue with other religious traditions, for the sake of resisting materialism.
Mr. Gulen, like Mr. Nursi before him, ran afoul of the Kemalist state and had his views suppressed. This crushing of even moderate Islam is exactly the kind of thing that feeds religious radicalism, Mr. Akyol argues. That, and the class snobbery of secularists. Among the elite, he says, religious consciousness is considered a mark of the rube. But this stereotype, which the journalist admits has more than a kernel of sociological truth, is giving way to a new reality that secular elites are reluctant to accept.
"What's happening now is that Islamic people are changing. Their children are getting an education, and they're getting some power," says Mr. Akyol. "In Turkey, this is a class issue, too. The upper classes are afraid of the lower classes becoming as high as themselves."
"Since there's a justified suspicion of Islamism in the world, they're calling anybody with an Islamic identity who wants to get involved in politics a Taliban. The thing we have to remember is that the Muslim world is really diverse. It's not always a clean debate between 'good' secularists and 'bad' Islamists."
The affable Mr. Akyol is himself a practicing Muslim, at ease with European and American thought. He believes it is certainly possible for Islam to be reconciled to liberal democracy and points out that the modernizing ideas of Fazlur Rahman, the late University of Chicago scholar who was a towering figure of contemporary Islamic thought, are highly influential in leading Turkish Islamic circles – including the AKP leadership. Mr. Akyol also points to the popularity of Islamic teachers like Fethullah Gulen and Mr. Gulen's mentor, the late Said Nursi, who advocate a more liberal form of Islam that seeks dialogue with other religious traditions, for the sake of resisting materialism.
Mr. Gulen, like Mr. Nursi before him, ran afoul of the Kemalist state and had his views suppressed. This crushing of even moderate Islam is exactly the kind of thing that feeds religious radicalism, Mr. Akyol argues. That, and the class snobbery of secularists. Among the elite, he says, religious consciousness is considered a mark of the rube. But this stereotype, which the journalist admits has more than a kernel of sociological truth, is giving way to a new reality that secular elites are reluctant to accept.
"What's happening now is that Islamic people are changing. Their children are getting an education, and they're getting some power," says Mr. Akyol. "In Turkey, this is a class issue, too. The upper classes are afraid of the lower classes becoming as high as themselves."
Michael Gerson, Washington Post Columnist, Reports
Michael Gerson, who used to be the speech writer of President Bush, and is currently a fellow at the CFR and a columnist for The Washington Post, has a piece titled, "An Islamic Test for Turkey." I appear in Mr. Gerson’s remarks as follows:
Secularists accuse the AKP of seeking a slow-motion Islamist revolution. Turkish writer Mustafa Akyol — a young, pro-American moderate conservative with a tendency to quote philosopher Leo Strauss — regards this as a serious overreaction: "The AK Party has traces of Islamism, but it is moving toward becoming a conservative, Muslim democratic party," more akin to the Christian Democratic parties of Europe. So far, the AKP has been pro-capitalism, pro-European Union and a defender of Islamic family values, instead of being an advocate of Islamic law.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
Secularists accuse the AKP of seeking a slow-motion Islamist revolution. Turkish writer Mustafa Akyol — a young, pro-American moderate conservative with a tendency to quote philosopher Leo Strauss — regards this as a serious overreaction: "The AK Party has traces of Islamism, but it is moving toward becoming a conservative, Muslim democratic party," more akin to the Christian Democratic parties of Europe. So far, the AKP has been pro-capitalism, pro-European Union and a defender of Islamic family values, instead of being an advocate of Islamic law.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
US News and World Report Reports
[Turkey’s] delicate issues will continue to include Islam and the question of how much religion is permissible in the public sphere. Mustafa Akyol, a bright young columnist for the English-language Turkish Daily News, makes a very convincing case for the moderate traditional religiosity that most AKP supporters embrace.
This is very far from the totalitarian variety of political Islam that Islamists promote. It does not seek to impose religious sharia law on society. It does not go in for the fundamentalist simplicities of the Saudi Wahhabis. Some religiously minded Turks were attracted to political Islam after Iran's 1979 revolution, Akyol explains, but Islamism largely disappeared when the military dissolved the Welfare Party-led government in 1997.
AKP's brand of Islamic religiosity derives, Akyol says, from the rich Ottoman traditions, which include a strong admixture of philosophically broad-minded Sufism. The party's religious inspirations are not Islamists like Sayyid Qutb but Said Nursi (1879-1960), whose apolitical writings on faith and morality sparked a popular movement. More recently, Fethullah Gulen's teachings on interfaith dialogue and the compatibility of belief and secularism have inspired followers to found schools, publishing houses, and even a newspaper to spread his message.
But there are many Turks who argue that not even Gulen can be trusted. They say his followers in government eventually attempt to legislate Islamic morality. "The secularists' argument is that if you let a little religion in the public sphere, you will ultimately have a big problem," Akyol counters. "My argument is that if you don't, then you will have a bigger problem."
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
This is very far from the totalitarian variety of political Islam that Islamists promote. It does not seek to impose religious sharia law on society. It does not go in for the fundamentalist simplicities of the Saudi Wahhabis. Some religiously minded Turks were attracted to political Islam after Iran's 1979 revolution, Akyol explains, but Islamism largely disappeared when the military dissolved the Welfare Party-led government in 1997.
AKP's brand of Islamic religiosity derives, Akyol says, from the rich Ottoman traditions, which include a strong admixture of philosophically broad-minded Sufism. The party's religious inspirations are not Islamists like Sayyid Qutb but Said Nursi (1879-1960), whose apolitical writings on faith and morality sparked a popular movement. More recently, Fethullah Gulen's teachings on interfaith dialogue and the compatibility of belief and secularism have inspired followers to found schools, publishing houses, and even a newspaper to spread his message.
But there are many Turks who argue that not even Gulen can be trusted. They say his followers in government eventually attempt to legislate Islamic morality. "The secularists' argument is that if you let a little religion in the public sphere, you will ultimately have a big problem," Akyol counters. "My argument is that if you don't, then you will have a bigger problem."
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
Fareed Zakaria Agrees on ‘Fact-Free Paranoia’
On May 2, I had a piece in the Turkish Daily News titled "The Secularist Hype In Turkey Is A Fact-Free Paranoia.” In his May 14 piece, Fareed Zakaria, the editor and columnist of the Newsweek magazine, agreed with my assessment in his piece which had the web title, “Worries About Turkey Are ‘Fact-Free Paranoia’.” Based on his evaluation of the Turkish political scene, and his interview with Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül, Dr. Zakaria wrote,
Gul is right. The secular establishment's suspicions about the AK are best described by Turkish columnist Mustafa Akyul as "fact-free paranoia.
The only thing is that my surname is Akyol, not Akyul. But no problem. I appreciate Dr. Zakaria’s quote and agreement.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
Gul is right. The secular establishment's suspicions about the AK are best described by Turkish columnist Mustafa Akyul as "fact-free paranoia.
The only thing is that my surname is Akyol, not Akyul. But no problem. I appreciate Dr. Zakaria’s quote and agreement.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
Interview in the Danish Daily Kristeligt Dagblad
The full text is down below, for those who can read Danish. (And if any of those privileged kindly decide to let me know about the content, I will appreciate.)
Til kamp mod den gensidige mistillid
Der er ingen modsætning mellem at være muslim og modernist, mener den tyrkiske upcoming intellektuelle Mustafa Akyol. Han har et ben i hver lejr og ser det som sin mission at gøre op med de mange misforståelser mellem Vesten og Islam.
Af Camilla Wass
Den lyse lejlighed i den europæiske del af Istanbul er som taget ud af et Ikea katalog - rene linier, cremefarvede vægge og funktionelle møbler. I køkkenet snurrer en espresso maskine, og i en hvid reol står Koranen side om side med tyrkisk litteratur og tunge værker med vestlige tænkere.
Henslængt i en hørsofa sidder Mustafa Akyol – han er 34 år og betegner sig selv som en modernistisk muslimsk intellektuel.
”Jeg kalder mig selv freelance muslim. Jeg tilhører ikke en retning inden for Islam, men jeg tror på en rationel vej i Islam. Jeg mener, at mange af de værdier, der findes i den moderne verden, er i overensstemmelse med Islam, ” siger han.
Skrivebordet i hjørnet af stuen bliver flittigt brugt. Som fortaler for en demokratisk, pro-vestlig og moderne udgave af Islam er Mustafa Akyol en efterspurgt kommentator i både tyrkisk og amerikansk presse. Han er fast klummeskribent på den tyrkiske avis Referans, og han skriver desuden for bl.a. The Weekly Standard, Washington Times og IslamOnline. Oven i det rejser han jævnligt til udlandet for at holde foredrag om Islam og modernitet.
”Jeg ser mig selv som en ’upcoming star’ på den intellektuelle arena – ikke fordi jeg går efter berømmelsen, men fordi jeg føler, at jeg har en forpligtelse til at gøre mit for at stoppe de mange misforståelser mellem Vesten og Islam,” siger han.
Misforståelser på begge sider
Den skrattende lyd fra et af Istanbuls mange minarettårne når ind i lejligheden, men Mustafa Akyol gør ikke mine til at rejse sig og vende snuden mod Mekka. Ganske vist er han dybt troende muslim, men han har sin egen måde at praktisere troen på.
”For det meste samler jeg mine bønner om aftenen, det passer bedre ind i min dagsrytme. Jeg faster heller ikke under Ramadanen, for jeg har brug for mad og drikke til at kunne tænke klart, ” siger Mustafa Akyol.
Lige nu kredser hans tanker om den såkaldte ’profetvideo’ fra Dansk Folkepartis Ungdom, der truer med endnu engang at bringe Vesten og den islamiske verden på kollisionskurs.
“Det kan godt være, at det er lovligt at gøre grin med religion. Men det er moralsk forkert, det er uhøfligt, og det vil føre til flere reaktioner og mere fjendtlighed. Jeg synes ikke, det er det, vi skal prøve at opnå,” siger Mustafa Akyol.
Efter hans mening er fronterne mellem ’Vesten’ og Islam efterhånden blevet kridtet alt for skarpt op.
”Mange muslimer mener, at modernitet er det onde selv, ligesom mange folk fra Vesten mener, at Islam er en voldelig, intolerant religion. Jeg mener, at begge sider tager fejl,” siger han.
I de vestlige medier går der ikke en dag, uden at Islam, terrorisme og krav om reformer i Mellemøsten trækker de store overskrifter. Ifølge Mustafa Akyol begår de vestlige medier en stor fejl ved at sætte lighedstegn mellem Islam og Mellemøsten.
”30 procent af alle verdens muslimer bor i Mellemøsten, men det, der sker i regionen, er ikke repræsentativt for Islam. Det er ikke Islam, der skaber intolerance eller fastlåshed i Mellemøsten, det er de sociale, historiske og politiske betingelser, der gør Islam snæversynet i denne region. Hvis man i stedet kigger på Bosnien, så ser man en helt anderledes fredelig praktisering af Islam,” pointerer han.
Mustafa Akyol mener desuden, at medierne har et stort ansvar for at skabe de stereotype billeder af Islam.
”Højtråbende radikale muslimer får stor plads i medierne. Det er sexet i mediemæssig forstand, når der sprænges selvmordsbomber, men ikke når der plantes blomster. Og det er med til at forvrænge billedet af Islam,” siger han.
Anti-vestlig tendens i Islam
På den anden side mener Mustafa Akyol også, at muslimerne har et forvrænget billede af Vesten.
”Blandt muslimer er der en udbredt opfattelse af, at der er et stærkt had mod Islam i Vesten. Jeg er helt sikker på, at der findes mange mennesker, der hader Islam – men jeg tror ikke på, at der er en samlet vestlig blok, der vil angribe Islam,” siger han.
Han mener derfor, at muslimerne gør klogt i at holde hovedet koldt, når karikaturer af Profeten Muhammed og andre provokationer dukker op i medierne.
”Jeg synes, det er meget vigtigt, at vi som muslimer reagerer rationelt og separat på hver enkelt af disse hændelser, frem for at se det som en samlet konspiration mod os og vores religion. Der er mange vers i Koranen, som siger, at muslimer ikke skal være vrede, men i stedet kontrollere deres vrede,” påpeger Mustafa Akyol.
Han mener ikke, at den aggressivitet, der bliver forbundet med Islam, har rod i Koranen.
”Fundamentalt set handler Islam om at elske Gud for alt, han har skabt, om at have en positiv attitude over for andre mennesker, og om at være taknemmelig, tilgivende, hjælpsom, rolig og tolerant,” siger han.
Kristne og muslimer har meget til fælles
Mustafa Akyol mener, at et andet stort problem ved Islam er, at religionen er gennemsyret af en anti-vestlig, anti-kolonialistisk ideologi.
”I radikale islamistiske kredse er der en tendens til at beskrive hele den vestlige civilisation som egoistisk, overfladisk og hedensk. Men vi muslimer er nødt til at bryde med myten om ’det materialistiske Vesten’. Det er vigtigt at huske på, at der også findes et Vesten med høj moral og en tro på, at der findes en Gud,” siger han.
Mustafa Akyol er oprindelig uddannet historiker og var i slutningen af 1990’erne på studieophold i USA. Opholdet blev en øjenåbner for ham.
”Jeg har altid været ’en muslim i jeans’, forstået på den måde, at jeg kender og beundrer den vestlige livsstil og de moderne værdier som demokrati, frihed til at træffe individuelle valg, og frihed til at udtrykke sig, som man vil. Jeg blev meget inspireret af at se, hvordan de troende i USA har formået at smelte deres religion ind i et åbent, liberalt samfund. Jeg har fået nogle rigtig gode venner i det kristne miljø i USA, og jeg synes, det er utrolig vigtigt at huske på, at Islam ikke er så forskellig fra kristendommen eller jødedommen. Det er alle tre monoteisitiske religioner, der udspringer fra de samme kilder,” siger han.
Mustafa Akyol lægger i mange af sine tekster vægt på det religiøse fællesskab, han har oplevet med kristne. Mens konflikten omkring karikaturerne af profeten Muhammed var på sit højeste, skrev han en kommentar om, at det var forkert at se konflikten som et eksempel så sammenstød mellem civilisationer.
”Jeg oplevede, at der under karikaturkrisen tegnede sig et skel mellem de troende og de ikke-troende. Mange kristne autoriteter tog muslimernes parti, fordi de godt kunne sætte sig ind i, at muslimerne følte sig krænket. Jeg mener derfor ikke, at det vi oplever, er en konflikt mellem det moderne, frie vesterlændinge og fundamentalistiske muslimer. En muslim behøver ikke at være fundamentalist, bare fordi han tror på, at Gud skabte verden. Det er faktisk hjørnestenen i den muslimske tro. På den anden side, så behøver man ikke at være ateist for at være modernist,” siger Mustafa Akyol med et intenst blik i de mørke øjne.
Muslimer misforstår Koranens budskab
Budskabet om, at Islam og modernitet sagtens kan gå hånd i hånd, glider ikke lige let ned hos alle. Mustafa Akyol modtager jævnligt mails fra muslimer, der mener, at han er på vildspor.
”Men som jeg ser det, er et af de største problemer ved Islam, at mange muslimer følger de gammeldags fortolkninger af Koranen. Koranen indeholder en række principper, som man kan fortolke på flere forskellige måder, men det er indlysende, at vi ikke skal tage det, der står i Koranen, bogstaveligt. Muslimer rider ikke længere rundt på kameler, vi kører bil ligesom alle andre. Og det er på tide, at vi sætter spørgsmålstegn ved de traditionelle fortolkninger af Islam. Jeg mener, at vi skal tage de moralske principper, der ligger i Koranen og putte dem ind i en kontekst, der passer til vores tid,” siger han.
Lydene fra Istanbuls gader sniger sig sammen med efterårssolen ind i lejligheden. Her lige uden for døren mødes modernitet og tradition i en by, der som den eneste i verden strækker sig over to kontinenter.
I Tyrkiet er omkring 98 procent af befolkningen muslimer, og Tyrkiet er det eneste sekulære styre i den muslimske verden. Ganske vist har regeringspartiet Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP), med premierminister Erdogan i spidsen, rødder i Islam, men partiet kalder sig konservativt og er en af de varmeste fortalere for et tyrkisk medlemskab af EU.
”Tyrkiet er langtfra perfekt, men jeg mener alligevel, at Tyrkiet er et godt eksempel på, hvordan man kan integrere en åben form for Islam i et moderne samfund. Muslimerne i Tyrkiet vil ikke have en islamisk, men en demokratisk stat. De ønsker at leve i en stat, hvor de har frihed til at praktisere deres religion. Jeg går ind for, at Tyrkiet skal være en sekulær stat. Men man kan sagtens have et religiøst samfund i en sekulær stat,” siger han.
Mustafa Akyol rejser i denne uge til USA for at holde foredrag sammen med kristne intellektuelle. Her skal de bl.a. diskutere ’intelligent design’.
”I naturen findes der utallige tegn på, at universet er designet – og det ser jeg som et bevis på, at Gud eksisterer. Det er tydeligt, at det er en del af ’den guddommelige plan’, at folk skal være forskellige. Så det er op til os at få det bedste ud af forskellighederne,” siger han.
På hjemmesiden www.thewhitepath.com kan man læse et udpluk af Mustafa Akyols tekster, der stort set alle sammen kredser om islam og modernitet. The White Path er en engelsk oversættelse af Mustafas efternavn Akyol.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
Til kamp mod den gensidige mistillid
Der er ingen modsætning mellem at være muslim og modernist, mener den tyrkiske upcoming intellektuelle Mustafa Akyol. Han har et ben i hver lejr og ser det som sin mission at gøre op med de mange misforståelser mellem Vesten og Islam.
Af Camilla Wass
Den lyse lejlighed i den europæiske del af Istanbul er som taget ud af et Ikea katalog - rene linier, cremefarvede vægge og funktionelle møbler. I køkkenet snurrer en espresso maskine, og i en hvid reol står Koranen side om side med tyrkisk litteratur og tunge værker med vestlige tænkere.
Henslængt i en hørsofa sidder Mustafa Akyol – han er 34 år og betegner sig selv som en modernistisk muslimsk intellektuel.
”Jeg kalder mig selv freelance muslim. Jeg tilhører ikke en retning inden for Islam, men jeg tror på en rationel vej i Islam. Jeg mener, at mange af de værdier, der findes i den moderne verden, er i overensstemmelse med Islam, ” siger han.
Skrivebordet i hjørnet af stuen bliver flittigt brugt. Som fortaler for en demokratisk, pro-vestlig og moderne udgave af Islam er Mustafa Akyol en efterspurgt kommentator i både tyrkisk og amerikansk presse. Han er fast klummeskribent på den tyrkiske avis Referans, og han skriver desuden for bl.a. The Weekly Standard, Washington Times og IslamOnline. Oven i det rejser han jævnligt til udlandet for at holde foredrag om Islam og modernitet.
”Jeg ser mig selv som en ’upcoming star’ på den intellektuelle arena – ikke fordi jeg går efter berømmelsen, men fordi jeg føler, at jeg har en forpligtelse til at gøre mit for at stoppe de mange misforståelser mellem Vesten og Islam,” siger han.
Misforståelser på begge sider
Den skrattende lyd fra et af Istanbuls mange minarettårne når ind i lejligheden, men Mustafa Akyol gør ikke mine til at rejse sig og vende snuden mod Mekka. Ganske vist er han dybt troende muslim, men han har sin egen måde at praktisere troen på.
”For det meste samler jeg mine bønner om aftenen, det passer bedre ind i min dagsrytme. Jeg faster heller ikke under Ramadanen, for jeg har brug for mad og drikke til at kunne tænke klart, ” siger Mustafa Akyol.
Lige nu kredser hans tanker om den såkaldte ’profetvideo’ fra Dansk Folkepartis Ungdom, der truer med endnu engang at bringe Vesten og den islamiske verden på kollisionskurs.
“Det kan godt være, at det er lovligt at gøre grin med religion. Men det er moralsk forkert, det er uhøfligt, og det vil føre til flere reaktioner og mere fjendtlighed. Jeg synes ikke, det er det, vi skal prøve at opnå,” siger Mustafa Akyol.
Efter hans mening er fronterne mellem ’Vesten’ og Islam efterhånden blevet kridtet alt for skarpt op.
”Mange muslimer mener, at modernitet er det onde selv, ligesom mange folk fra Vesten mener, at Islam er en voldelig, intolerant religion. Jeg mener, at begge sider tager fejl,” siger han.
I de vestlige medier går der ikke en dag, uden at Islam, terrorisme og krav om reformer i Mellemøsten trækker de store overskrifter. Ifølge Mustafa Akyol begår de vestlige medier en stor fejl ved at sætte lighedstegn mellem Islam og Mellemøsten.
”30 procent af alle verdens muslimer bor i Mellemøsten, men det, der sker i regionen, er ikke repræsentativt for Islam. Det er ikke Islam, der skaber intolerance eller fastlåshed i Mellemøsten, det er de sociale, historiske og politiske betingelser, der gør Islam snæversynet i denne region. Hvis man i stedet kigger på Bosnien, så ser man en helt anderledes fredelig praktisering af Islam,” pointerer han.
Mustafa Akyol mener desuden, at medierne har et stort ansvar for at skabe de stereotype billeder af Islam.
”Højtråbende radikale muslimer får stor plads i medierne. Det er sexet i mediemæssig forstand, når der sprænges selvmordsbomber, men ikke når der plantes blomster. Og det er med til at forvrænge billedet af Islam,” siger han.
Anti-vestlig tendens i Islam
På den anden side mener Mustafa Akyol også, at muslimerne har et forvrænget billede af Vesten.
”Blandt muslimer er der en udbredt opfattelse af, at der er et stærkt had mod Islam i Vesten. Jeg er helt sikker på, at der findes mange mennesker, der hader Islam – men jeg tror ikke på, at der er en samlet vestlig blok, der vil angribe Islam,” siger han.
Han mener derfor, at muslimerne gør klogt i at holde hovedet koldt, når karikaturer af Profeten Muhammed og andre provokationer dukker op i medierne.
”Jeg synes, det er meget vigtigt, at vi som muslimer reagerer rationelt og separat på hver enkelt af disse hændelser, frem for at se det som en samlet konspiration mod os og vores religion. Der er mange vers i Koranen, som siger, at muslimer ikke skal være vrede, men i stedet kontrollere deres vrede,” påpeger Mustafa Akyol.
Han mener ikke, at den aggressivitet, der bliver forbundet med Islam, har rod i Koranen.
”Fundamentalt set handler Islam om at elske Gud for alt, han har skabt, om at have en positiv attitude over for andre mennesker, og om at være taknemmelig, tilgivende, hjælpsom, rolig og tolerant,” siger han.
Kristne og muslimer har meget til fælles
Mustafa Akyol mener, at et andet stort problem ved Islam er, at religionen er gennemsyret af en anti-vestlig, anti-kolonialistisk ideologi.
”I radikale islamistiske kredse er der en tendens til at beskrive hele den vestlige civilisation som egoistisk, overfladisk og hedensk. Men vi muslimer er nødt til at bryde med myten om ’det materialistiske Vesten’. Det er vigtigt at huske på, at der også findes et Vesten med høj moral og en tro på, at der findes en Gud,” siger han.
Mustafa Akyol er oprindelig uddannet historiker og var i slutningen af 1990’erne på studieophold i USA. Opholdet blev en øjenåbner for ham.
”Jeg har altid været ’en muslim i jeans’, forstået på den måde, at jeg kender og beundrer den vestlige livsstil og de moderne værdier som demokrati, frihed til at træffe individuelle valg, og frihed til at udtrykke sig, som man vil. Jeg blev meget inspireret af at se, hvordan de troende i USA har formået at smelte deres religion ind i et åbent, liberalt samfund. Jeg har fået nogle rigtig gode venner i det kristne miljø i USA, og jeg synes, det er utrolig vigtigt at huske på, at Islam ikke er så forskellig fra kristendommen eller jødedommen. Det er alle tre monoteisitiske religioner, der udspringer fra de samme kilder,” siger han.
Mustafa Akyol lægger i mange af sine tekster vægt på det religiøse fællesskab, han har oplevet med kristne. Mens konflikten omkring karikaturerne af profeten Muhammed var på sit højeste, skrev han en kommentar om, at det var forkert at se konflikten som et eksempel så sammenstød mellem civilisationer.
”Jeg oplevede, at der under karikaturkrisen tegnede sig et skel mellem de troende og de ikke-troende. Mange kristne autoriteter tog muslimernes parti, fordi de godt kunne sætte sig ind i, at muslimerne følte sig krænket. Jeg mener derfor ikke, at det vi oplever, er en konflikt mellem det moderne, frie vesterlændinge og fundamentalistiske muslimer. En muslim behøver ikke at være fundamentalist, bare fordi han tror på, at Gud skabte verden. Det er faktisk hjørnestenen i den muslimske tro. På den anden side, så behøver man ikke at være ateist for at være modernist,” siger Mustafa Akyol med et intenst blik i de mørke øjne.
Muslimer misforstår Koranens budskab
Budskabet om, at Islam og modernitet sagtens kan gå hånd i hånd, glider ikke lige let ned hos alle. Mustafa Akyol modtager jævnligt mails fra muslimer, der mener, at han er på vildspor.
”Men som jeg ser det, er et af de største problemer ved Islam, at mange muslimer følger de gammeldags fortolkninger af Koranen. Koranen indeholder en række principper, som man kan fortolke på flere forskellige måder, men det er indlysende, at vi ikke skal tage det, der står i Koranen, bogstaveligt. Muslimer rider ikke længere rundt på kameler, vi kører bil ligesom alle andre. Og det er på tide, at vi sætter spørgsmålstegn ved de traditionelle fortolkninger af Islam. Jeg mener, at vi skal tage de moralske principper, der ligger i Koranen og putte dem ind i en kontekst, der passer til vores tid,” siger han.
Lydene fra Istanbuls gader sniger sig sammen med efterårssolen ind i lejligheden. Her lige uden for døren mødes modernitet og tradition i en by, der som den eneste i verden strækker sig over to kontinenter.
I Tyrkiet er omkring 98 procent af befolkningen muslimer, og Tyrkiet er det eneste sekulære styre i den muslimske verden. Ganske vist har regeringspartiet Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP), med premierminister Erdogan i spidsen, rødder i Islam, men partiet kalder sig konservativt og er en af de varmeste fortalere for et tyrkisk medlemskab af EU.
”Tyrkiet er langtfra perfekt, men jeg mener alligevel, at Tyrkiet er et godt eksempel på, hvordan man kan integrere en åben form for Islam i et moderne samfund. Muslimerne i Tyrkiet vil ikke have en islamisk, men en demokratisk stat. De ønsker at leve i en stat, hvor de har frihed til at praktisere deres religion. Jeg går ind for, at Tyrkiet skal være en sekulær stat. Men man kan sagtens have et religiøst samfund i en sekulær stat,” siger han.
Mustafa Akyol rejser i denne uge til USA for at holde foredrag sammen med kristne intellektuelle. Her skal de bl.a. diskutere ’intelligent design’.
”I naturen findes der utallige tegn på, at universet er designet – og det ser jeg som et bevis på, at Gud eksisterer. Det er tydeligt, at det er en del af ’den guddommelige plan’, at folk skal være forskellige. Så det er op til os at få det bedste ud af forskellighederne,” siger han.
På hjemmesiden www.thewhitepath.com kan man læse et udpluk af Mustafa Akyols tekster, der stort set alle sammen kredser om islam og modernitet. The White Path er en engelsk oversættelse af Mustafas efternavn Akyol.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
Why is The AKP Reasonable on Kurds?
Anybody who follows Turkish politics these days will notice that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government is quite reasonable on matters relating to the Kurdish question. First, Prime Minister Erdoğan has resisted the calls from other parties and the “mainstream media” to launch a massive war against northern Iraq. He, instead, insisted on building an effective cooperation with the United States to crack down on the terrorist PKK — and only the PKK, not Iraqi Kurds. Plus he managed to build that cooperation in his meeting with U.S. President Bush early this month.
More recently, Erdoğan opposed the closure of the Democratic Society Party (DTP) — which is commonly and aptly called “PKK's Sinn Fein” — by Turkey's Constitutional Court. In fact the prime minister severely criticizes the DTP for not renouncing terrorism, but he also wants to keep its cadre in the democratic game rather than “sending them to the mountains.”
No Cowboys Here
As the Turkish Daily News reported yesterday, the prime minister also said the priority is to make the terrorists lay down their weapons and not launching an offensive into northern Iraq.“We are not cowboys with guns in our hands,” he reminded. And he said so in the face of harsh accusations from Devlet Bahçeli, the leader of the ultra-nationalist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), who blamed him for “treason.”
Ruşen Çakır, a senior journalist and an expert on Kurdish politics, notes in his latest column that Erdoğan is the dove on the Kurdish question while Bahçeli is the hawk. Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Baykal, according to Çakır, is somewhere in between. (Whereas I think he is rather close to Bahçeli.)
TDN columnist Semih İdiz points to the same fact about AKP. In his piece in daily Milliyet, which is titled “The way of Erdoğan is the most reasonable way,” İdiz argues that Erdoğan “follows a pragmatic policy based on humane, legal and democratic parameters instead of a revanchist line.”
President Abdullah Gül, who is coming from the same political tradition with Erdoğan, is similarly sensible. Yesterday, during his official visit to Georgia, he made reconciliatory remarks about Iraqi Kurdistan and its leader, Massoud Barzani. He added that Turkey would isolate terrorism only with “stronger democracy”.
Now, how should we explain all this? Why the AKP people are much more open-minded than others on the Kurdish question? These people are called “Islamists,” right? So they are supposed to be more dogmatic than their secular rivals such as the CHP folks. But the reality is just the opposite. Why is that?
State Ideology
I think the answer lies in a very basic fact about Turkish politics. Here, the most rigid dogmatism is what the former president Ahmet Necdet Sezer proudly called “state ideology.” The political scene is divided between those who believe — and even worship — the state ideology, and those who rather believe in plain reality.
Kurds are the litmus test here. According to the state ideology, there are no Kurds. They simply aren't supposed to exist on the face of the earth. If they live in Turkey, they are called “mountain Turks.” (They at best can be a trivial branch of the glorious Turkish race.) If they live in Iraq, then they are called Iraqis. If someone dares to call them Kurds, the adherents of the state ideology go crazy. They even go crazier if someone utters the term “Kurdistan.”
But a reality-based mind would see no problem in any of these terms, because they have been is existence for centuries. In the Ottoman Empire, eastern provinces such as Diyarbekir were called “bilad-ı ekrad,” which means “the lands of the Kurds.” In mid 19th century, the Ottomans even established a “Kurdistan province,” which included much of today's southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq. For the Ottomans, people were called what they were. Theirs was a reality-based empire.
Then came the ideology-based republic, whose elites had decided to rename and re-identify the whole country. This, these elites presumed, was the only way to modernization. And they have tried really hard to realize their dream.
But reality is a stubborn thing. The more you attack it, the more it hits back. And it did.
The Reality-Based Community
Today reality has become much more vindicated than it was in the Cold War years. The brave new world of globalization takes everything hidden under the carpet puts them in the middle of your living room. All the diversity that exists within the Turkish society is becoming more visible and vocal. We now have Kurds, Sufi orders, other Sunni communities, Alevis, Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Arabs, Assyrians, Protestants, Shiites, and so on. Unlike the neighboring Iran, we even have gays and lesbians.
Now, the question is how to build a new Turkey which will accept all these differences and give them space under a liberal, pluralist democracy. The AKP folks get that, because they are not brainwashed by the “state ideology.” This doesn't guarantee that they won't make mistakes, which they do. But it means that they have the mental capacity to understand reality and act accordingly. And, alas, that's not a very common talent in our officially-ideologized Turkey.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
More recently, Erdoğan opposed the closure of the Democratic Society Party (DTP) — which is commonly and aptly called “PKK's Sinn Fein” — by Turkey's Constitutional Court. In fact the prime minister severely criticizes the DTP for not renouncing terrorism, but he also wants to keep its cadre in the democratic game rather than “sending them to the mountains.”
No Cowboys Here
As the Turkish Daily News reported yesterday, the prime minister also said the priority is to make the terrorists lay down their weapons and not launching an offensive into northern Iraq.“We are not cowboys with guns in our hands,” he reminded. And he said so in the face of harsh accusations from Devlet Bahçeli, the leader of the ultra-nationalist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), who blamed him for “treason.”
Ruşen Çakır, a senior journalist and an expert on Kurdish politics, notes in his latest column that Erdoğan is the dove on the Kurdish question while Bahçeli is the hawk. Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Baykal, according to Çakır, is somewhere in between. (Whereas I think he is rather close to Bahçeli.)
TDN columnist Semih İdiz points to the same fact about AKP. In his piece in daily Milliyet, which is titled “The way of Erdoğan is the most reasonable way,” İdiz argues that Erdoğan “follows a pragmatic policy based on humane, legal and democratic parameters instead of a revanchist line.”
President Abdullah Gül, who is coming from the same political tradition with Erdoğan, is similarly sensible. Yesterday, during his official visit to Georgia, he made reconciliatory remarks about Iraqi Kurdistan and its leader, Massoud Barzani. He added that Turkey would isolate terrorism only with “stronger democracy”.
Now, how should we explain all this? Why the AKP people are much more open-minded than others on the Kurdish question? These people are called “Islamists,” right? So they are supposed to be more dogmatic than their secular rivals such as the CHP folks. But the reality is just the opposite. Why is that?
State Ideology
I think the answer lies in a very basic fact about Turkish politics. Here, the most rigid dogmatism is what the former president Ahmet Necdet Sezer proudly called “state ideology.” The political scene is divided between those who believe — and even worship — the state ideology, and those who rather believe in plain reality.
Kurds are the litmus test here. According to the state ideology, there are no Kurds. They simply aren't supposed to exist on the face of the earth. If they live in Turkey, they are called “mountain Turks.” (They at best can be a trivial branch of the glorious Turkish race.) If they live in Iraq, then they are called Iraqis. If someone dares to call them Kurds, the adherents of the state ideology go crazy. They even go crazier if someone utters the term “Kurdistan.”
But a reality-based mind would see no problem in any of these terms, because they have been is existence for centuries. In the Ottoman Empire, eastern provinces such as Diyarbekir were called “bilad-ı ekrad,” which means “the lands of the Kurds.” In mid 19th century, the Ottomans even established a “Kurdistan province,” which included much of today's southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq. For the Ottomans, people were called what they were. Theirs was a reality-based empire.
Then came the ideology-based republic, whose elites had decided to rename and re-identify the whole country. This, these elites presumed, was the only way to modernization. And they have tried really hard to realize their dream.
But reality is a stubborn thing. The more you attack it, the more it hits back. And it did.
The Reality-Based Community
Today reality has become much more vindicated than it was in the Cold War years. The brave new world of globalization takes everything hidden under the carpet puts them in the middle of your living room. All the diversity that exists within the Turkish society is becoming more visible and vocal. We now have Kurds, Sufi orders, other Sunni communities, Alevis, Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Arabs, Assyrians, Protestants, Shiites, and so on. Unlike the neighboring Iran, we even have gays and lesbians.
Now, the question is how to build a new Turkey which will accept all these differences and give them space under a liberal, pluralist democracy. The AKP folks get that, because they are not brainwashed by the “state ideology.” This doesn't guarantee that they won't make mistakes, which they do. But it means that they have the mental capacity to understand reality and act accordingly. And, alas, that's not a very common talent in our officially-ideologized Turkey.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
The Verse at The Gate — and a Koranic Debate
Is the Koran a “created” or an “uncreated” book?
This question might sound vague and even meaningless to many modern minds, but it was a crucial one among Muslims during the initial centuries of Islam. Indeed, there were bitter disputes and even clashes between those who gave different answers.
Those who thought that the Koran was “created” were mainly the followers of the Mutazilite school. They were also known as “Rationalists,” because they made emphasis on the role of human reason in understanding God’s will. For the Mutazilites, both the Koran and human reason were created by God, and a believer had to use both of them in harmony to make a sense of the world.
Rationalists versus Traditionalists
On other side, there were the “Traditionalists,” which were spearheaded by Imam Ahmad Ibn Hanbal. They were skeptical of reason, which they saw as a potential to lead men astray. They rather insisted on the “imitation” of the Prophet: a Muslim had to try to emulate all the details of the life of Muhammad, instead of using his own judgment.
If reason was one issue that divided the Mutazilites and the Traditionalists, the nature of the Koran was another. The question I mentioned — whether the Koran is a “created” or an “uncreated” book — was actually their toughest bone of contention. The Mutazilites said that the Koran is a “created” book, which meant that it presented God’s message to a specific society at a specific point in time. The Koran’s principles were eternally valid, they said, but its “wording” was affected by temporal realities. So, they said, the Koran should be interpreted by looking at its context — and with the help of reason.
The Traditionalists, on the other hand, believed that Koran was “the uncreated word of God.” This meant that the Koran existed in eternity with God himself. So its verses could not have been influenced by the context of a specific period in human history. They thought not only the principles but also the literal details of the Koran were eternally valid.
The dispute between the two groups lasted for centuries, until when the Traditionalist won over the others around the 13th century. But the Mutazilite thought did not totally disappear. Moreover, new schools emerged which found middle ways between the two opposing view. The Maturidi school, which became popular mainly among the Turkish speaking peoples, was the most popular of these compromises. On the other hand, the strictest form of Traditionalism survived in the form of Wahhabism — which is the official faith of today’s Saudi Arabia.
Enter Zeynep Sultan mosque
What made me recall all this “Islamic hermeneutics 101” knowledge is the recent controversy in the Turkish media about a Koranic verse (5/51) put on the entrance of an Istanbul mosque by its imam. “O you who believe! Do not the Jews and the Christians as your friends and protectors,” the verse reads. “They are the friends of one another; any of you who takes them as friends is one of them.”
The daily Hürriyet made a news story out of this Koranic display, which apparently commended Muslims to not to be in good terms with Jews and Christians. Can each verse of the Koran be displayed like this, the paper asked, or should Muslims be a selective?
Then some secularist commentators started to question whether the Koran should be taken seriously at all. Fellow TDN columnists Burak Bekdil took a similar line yesterday in his piece, “The 'script' at Zeynep Sultan Mosque.” According to Mr. Bekdil, “dogmatic Muslims” had to stop being “selective.” They had to either take everything literally, or stop taking the Koran as a guide in daily life. Otherwise, according Mr. Bekdil, Muslims would end up in being unprincipled. At least, he argued, that was the case with the vice president of the Religious Affairs Directorate, who asked the imam of the aforementioned mosque to remove that Koranic verse on Christians and Jews. “Why does he not approve the ‘script' at the Zeynep Sultan mosque,” Mr. Bekdil asked. “On what grounds?”
Yesterday, an answer came from the vice president of the Religious Affairs Directorate, Dr. İzzet Er. “We have commended our imams to use verses that will not create misunderstandings” he said. Then he explained the problem in this particular case:
“Misunderstandings take place when verses are taken out of their context. This verse relates to a war situation… At the time, Muslims were at war with Jews and the verse was basically warning them for not establishing close links and passing information that could amount to war secrets. In peace, the verse does not apply, and all Muslims are indeed supposed to be friend with other peoples.”
Dr. Er also noted to the famous motto of the Turkish Sufi sage Yunus Emre, “Loving all creation for the sake of the Creator,” as the Islamic ideal. He could also have pointed out to another Koranic passage, 60/8-9, which indeed puts the controversial verse about Jews and Christians in context:
“God does not forbid you from being good to those who have not fought you in religion or driven you from your homes, or from being just towards them... God merely forbids you from taking as friends those who have fought you in religion and driven you from your homes and who supported your expulsion.”
A principled effort
Here is my take on the whole affair: Turning some particular Koranic verses into slogans might indeed create big problems, because these verses need to be understood within their contexts. (Similarly, quotes from the books of Joshua or Leviticus could give very harsh messages, by which most contemporary Jews and Christians would not stand.)
Therefore, it was indeed a mistake to put the “don’t take Christians and Jews as friends” verse on the gate of a mosque. There are many other verses of the Koran which are not bound with context — such as the ones relating to God’s majesty, mercy or justice, or human morals — and which can be freely quoted. But not all verses are like that.
Making this distinction is not treason to God’s word, as some fundamentalists would angrily claim — and some secularists would sarcastically conclude. No, quite the contrary, it is indeed a sincere and principled effort to understand what the divine message really means. It is also the effort which will help creating a bright future for the Muslim world — if there will ever be one.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
This question might sound vague and even meaningless to many modern minds, but it was a crucial one among Muslims during the initial centuries of Islam. Indeed, there were bitter disputes and even clashes between those who gave different answers.
Those who thought that the Koran was “created” were mainly the followers of the Mutazilite school. They were also known as “Rationalists,” because they made emphasis on the role of human reason in understanding God’s will. For the Mutazilites, both the Koran and human reason were created by God, and a believer had to use both of them in harmony to make a sense of the world.
Rationalists versus Traditionalists
On other side, there were the “Traditionalists,” which were spearheaded by Imam Ahmad Ibn Hanbal. They were skeptical of reason, which they saw as a potential to lead men astray. They rather insisted on the “imitation” of the Prophet: a Muslim had to try to emulate all the details of the life of Muhammad, instead of using his own judgment.
If reason was one issue that divided the Mutazilites and the Traditionalists, the nature of the Koran was another. The question I mentioned — whether the Koran is a “created” or an “uncreated” book — was actually their toughest bone of contention. The Mutazilites said that the Koran is a “created” book, which meant that it presented God’s message to a specific society at a specific point in time. The Koran’s principles were eternally valid, they said, but its “wording” was affected by temporal realities. So, they said, the Koran should be interpreted by looking at its context — and with the help of reason.
The Traditionalists, on the other hand, believed that Koran was “the uncreated word of God.” This meant that the Koran existed in eternity with God himself. So its verses could not have been influenced by the context of a specific period in human history. They thought not only the principles but also the literal details of the Koran were eternally valid.
The dispute between the two groups lasted for centuries, until when the Traditionalist won over the others around the 13th century. But the Mutazilite thought did not totally disappear. Moreover, new schools emerged which found middle ways between the two opposing view. The Maturidi school, which became popular mainly among the Turkish speaking peoples, was the most popular of these compromises. On the other hand, the strictest form of Traditionalism survived in the form of Wahhabism — which is the official faith of today’s Saudi Arabia.
Enter Zeynep Sultan mosque
What made me recall all this “Islamic hermeneutics 101” knowledge is the recent controversy in the Turkish media about a Koranic verse (5/51) put on the entrance of an Istanbul mosque by its imam. “O you who believe! Do not the Jews and the Christians as your friends and protectors,” the verse reads. “They are the friends of one another; any of you who takes them as friends is one of them.”
The daily Hürriyet made a news story out of this Koranic display, which apparently commended Muslims to not to be in good terms with Jews and Christians. Can each verse of the Koran be displayed like this, the paper asked, or should Muslims be a selective?
Then some secularist commentators started to question whether the Koran should be taken seriously at all. Fellow TDN columnists Burak Bekdil took a similar line yesterday in his piece, “The 'script' at Zeynep Sultan Mosque.” According to Mr. Bekdil, “dogmatic Muslims” had to stop being “selective.” They had to either take everything literally, or stop taking the Koran as a guide in daily life. Otherwise, according Mr. Bekdil, Muslims would end up in being unprincipled. At least, he argued, that was the case with the vice president of the Religious Affairs Directorate, who asked the imam of the aforementioned mosque to remove that Koranic verse on Christians and Jews. “Why does he not approve the ‘script' at the Zeynep Sultan mosque,” Mr. Bekdil asked. “On what grounds?”
Yesterday, an answer came from the vice president of the Religious Affairs Directorate, Dr. İzzet Er. “We have commended our imams to use verses that will not create misunderstandings” he said. Then he explained the problem in this particular case:
“Misunderstandings take place when verses are taken out of their context. This verse relates to a war situation… At the time, Muslims were at war with Jews and the verse was basically warning them for not establishing close links and passing information that could amount to war secrets. In peace, the verse does not apply, and all Muslims are indeed supposed to be friend with other peoples.”
Dr. Er also noted to the famous motto of the Turkish Sufi sage Yunus Emre, “Loving all creation for the sake of the Creator,” as the Islamic ideal. He could also have pointed out to another Koranic passage, 60/8-9, which indeed puts the controversial verse about Jews and Christians in context:
“God does not forbid you from being good to those who have not fought you in religion or driven you from your homes, or from being just towards them... God merely forbids you from taking as friends those who have fought you in religion and driven you from your homes and who supported your expulsion.”
A principled effort
Here is my take on the whole affair: Turning some particular Koranic verses into slogans might indeed create big problems, because these verses need to be understood within their contexts. (Similarly, quotes from the books of Joshua or Leviticus could give very harsh messages, by which most contemporary Jews and Christians would not stand.)
Therefore, it was indeed a mistake to put the “don’t take Christians and Jews as friends” verse on the gate of a mosque. There are many other verses of the Koran which are not bound with context — such as the ones relating to God’s majesty, mercy or justice, or human morals — and which can be freely quoted. But not all verses are like that.
Making this distinction is not treason to God’s word, as some fundamentalists would angrily claim — and some secularists would sarcastically conclude. No, quite the contrary, it is indeed a sincere and principled effort to understand what the divine message really means. It is also the effort which will help creating a bright future for the Muslim world — if there will ever be one.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
Turks, Jews and Arabs
In the year 1454, Rabbi Yitzhak Sarfati of the Ottoman city of Edirne sent a letter to his co-religionists in Europe who were suffering under the persecutions of medieval anti-Semites. “"Leave the torments you endure in Christendom,"” the Rabbi suggested, “"and seek safety and prosperity in Turkey."” This Islamic land was a haven for all, he added. “"Here every man dwells at peace under his own vine and fig tree.”"
Many Sephardic Jews listened to Sarfati's advice in 1492, when they were expelled from the all-Catholic Spain simply because they remained loyal to their faith. Ships carried many Jewish refugees to Ottoman lands, where they were personally welcomed by Sultan Bayazid II, who was one of the most pious of all Ottoman monarchs.
Bernard Lewis, the doyen of Middle Eastern studies in the West, once said: "the Jews were not just permitted to settle in the Ottoman lands, but were encouraged, assisted and sometimes even compelled." For them, the lands of Islam became the lands of safety.
Islamdom versus anti-Semitic Europe
The fact that medieval Islamdom was much more tolerant to Jews than Christendom had much to do with theology. The Christian doctrine, for a long time, considered Jews as “"Christ killers"” and showed a strong zeal to convert them into the faith of the Cross. Islam, on the other hand, regarded both Judaism and Christianity as somewhat flawed and outdated yet still legitimate monotheisms. That's why anti-Semitism, the paranoid hatred of Jews, was unknown in the Islamic world when it was the norm in Christian Europe.
Indeed, anti-Semitism would come into the Middle East from Europe. In Islamic lands, the first blood libel — the crazy slander that Jews use the blood of young children for the “matzo,” the unleavened Passover bread — erupted in Damascus in 1840. And it was the French consul in the city, Monsieur Ratti Menton, who made it up. After several months of craze, and some international protest, Sultan Abdülmecid issued his famous decree on the "Blood Libel Accusation" to settle the matter. "For the love we bear to our subjects,”" the Sultan said, "“We cannot permit the Jewish nation, whose innocence for the crime alleged against them is evident, to be worried and tormented."
Well, that was the scene in the 19th century, during which Islamdom was still much more Jewish-friendly than Europe. Yet the picture is completely opposite today. The Middle East is probably the most anti-Semitic part of the world, whereas Europe has done a lot to compensate for its historic sins. Lunacies such as the blood libel would appear only in some very marginal, neo-Nazi type circles in Europe. In the Arab world, though, all such classic elements of anti-Semitism show up in quite mainstream publications.
The Curse of The Conflict
The main reason for the anti-Semitization of the Middle East has been the Arab-Israeli conflict. Until the 20th century, Arabs saw Jews as just a religious community whose right to exist was guaranteed by Islamic law. In the 20th century, though, Jews became the colonizers. The reaction to Israel's policies turned into a hatred towards Jews. The Arabs who were motivated by this political fervor went back to traditional Islamic texts to mine elements that could, at least seemingly, justify their rage.
This anti-Semitic attitude found in the contemporary Arab world is one of the obstacles toward peace in the Holy Land. (Another obstacle is, of course, Israel's own fanatics, who bitterly oppose the formation of a viable Palestinian state and whose hatred toward the Arabs matches the abhorrence felt against the Jews by the anti-Semitics.) What is needed is the rise of leaders on both sides who can reject and even tone down the loathing in their societies toward the other side. Another thing that is needed are third parties that will understand both sides and will encourage a peaceful solution.
The United States, as the world's superpower, is obviously the most important of these third parties, but it has a problem: Most Palestinians, and Arabs in general, consider the American government as not an honest broker, but a supporter of Israel first and foremost. That's why; first, the US should move towards neutrality, and secondly, make other third parties involved in the process.
While the first option above does not seem very likely to happen in the near future, the second one is possible, and actually in progress. The existence of a Quartet on the Middle East, which includes, besides the US, Russia, European Union and the United Nations, corresponds precisely to that.
Get Turkey in the process
Now here is the heart of this matter — and this column: Turkey can well become an important third party in the peace effort between Israel and Palestine. It is not only an imperative country of the region, but also the heir of the Ottoman Empire which ruled the Middle East quite peacefully for four centuries. As a predominantly Muslim but non-Arab country, it has been more or less free from the rise of anti-Semitism in the Middle East. The tragedy of the Palestinians have of course effected the Turkish people, but it did not have the same impact that it had in the Arab world.
That's why Turkey has very good relations both with Palestine and Israel. That's why both the Israeli President Shimon Peres and the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas were warmly welcomed in the Turkish Parliament the other day. Moreover, just note the fact that 340 of the 550 members of the Turkish Parliament who applauded Peres were members of the so-called Islamist AK Party. Here, obviously, you have an Islam which is more on the tradition of Ottoman Sultan Bayazid II than on the line of radical Islamists of Egypt or Pakistan. It should be appreciated, and utilized, more.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
Many Sephardic Jews listened to Sarfati's advice in 1492, when they were expelled from the all-Catholic Spain simply because they remained loyal to their faith. Ships carried many Jewish refugees to Ottoman lands, where they were personally welcomed by Sultan Bayazid II, who was one of the most pious of all Ottoman monarchs.
Bernard Lewis, the doyen of Middle Eastern studies in the West, once said: "the Jews were not just permitted to settle in the Ottoman lands, but were encouraged, assisted and sometimes even compelled." For them, the lands of Islam became the lands of safety.
Islamdom versus anti-Semitic Europe
The fact that medieval Islamdom was much more tolerant to Jews than Christendom had much to do with theology. The Christian doctrine, for a long time, considered Jews as “"Christ killers"” and showed a strong zeal to convert them into the faith of the Cross. Islam, on the other hand, regarded both Judaism and Christianity as somewhat flawed and outdated yet still legitimate monotheisms. That's why anti-Semitism, the paranoid hatred of Jews, was unknown in the Islamic world when it was the norm in Christian Europe.
Indeed, anti-Semitism would come into the Middle East from Europe. In Islamic lands, the first blood libel — the crazy slander that Jews use the blood of young children for the “matzo,” the unleavened Passover bread — erupted in Damascus in 1840. And it was the French consul in the city, Monsieur Ratti Menton, who made it up. After several months of craze, and some international protest, Sultan Abdülmecid issued his famous decree on the "Blood Libel Accusation" to settle the matter. "For the love we bear to our subjects,”" the Sultan said, "“We cannot permit the Jewish nation, whose innocence for the crime alleged against them is evident, to be worried and tormented."
Well, that was the scene in the 19th century, during which Islamdom was still much more Jewish-friendly than Europe. Yet the picture is completely opposite today. The Middle East is probably the most anti-Semitic part of the world, whereas Europe has done a lot to compensate for its historic sins. Lunacies such as the blood libel would appear only in some very marginal, neo-Nazi type circles in Europe. In the Arab world, though, all such classic elements of anti-Semitism show up in quite mainstream publications.
The Curse of The Conflict
The main reason for the anti-Semitization of the Middle East has been the Arab-Israeli conflict. Until the 20th century, Arabs saw Jews as just a religious community whose right to exist was guaranteed by Islamic law. In the 20th century, though, Jews became the colonizers. The reaction to Israel's policies turned into a hatred towards Jews. The Arabs who were motivated by this political fervor went back to traditional Islamic texts to mine elements that could, at least seemingly, justify their rage.
This anti-Semitic attitude found in the contemporary Arab world is one of the obstacles toward peace in the Holy Land. (Another obstacle is, of course, Israel's own fanatics, who bitterly oppose the formation of a viable Palestinian state and whose hatred toward the Arabs matches the abhorrence felt against the Jews by the anti-Semitics.) What is needed is the rise of leaders on both sides who can reject and even tone down the loathing in their societies toward the other side. Another thing that is needed are third parties that will understand both sides and will encourage a peaceful solution.
The United States, as the world's superpower, is obviously the most important of these third parties, but it has a problem: Most Palestinians, and Arabs in general, consider the American government as not an honest broker, but a supporter of Israel first and foremost. That's why; first, the US should move towards neutrality, and secondly, make other third parties involved in the process.
While the first option above does not seem very likely to happen in the near future, the second one is possible, and actually in progress. The existence of a Quartet on the Middle East, which includes, besides the US, Russia, European Union and the United Nations, corresponds precisely to that.
Get Turkey in the process
Now here is the heart of this matter — and this column: Turkey can well become an important third party in the peace effort between Israel and Palestine. It is not only an imperative country of the region, but also the heir of the Ottoman Empire which ruled the Middle East quite peacefully for four centuries. As a predominantly Muslim but non-Arab country, it has been more or less free from the rise of anti-Semitism in the Middle East. The tragedy of the Palestinians have of course effected the Turkish people, but it did not have the same impact that it had in the Arab world.
That's why Turkey has very good relations both with Palestine and Israel. That's why both the Israeli President Shimon Peres and the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas were warmly welcomed in the Turkish Parliament the other day. Moreover, just note the fact that 340 of the 550 members of the Turkish Parliament who applauded Peres were members of the so-called Islamist AK Party. Here, obviously, you have an Islam which is more on the tradition of Ottoman Sultan Bayazid II than on the line of radical Islamists of Egypt or Pakistan. It should be appreciated, and utilized, more.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
Apostasy is a Right, Not a Crime
NEW YORK- Western governments and the international media focused on a bizarre court case in Afghanistan in February 2006. The accused was Abdul Rahman, a 41-year-old Afghan citizen, who was on the verge of receiving a death penalty. His “crime” was abandoning Islam and converting to Christianity.
Soon Rahman was saved thanks to international pressure on the Afghan government, but his story was only one of the many severe violations of religious freedom in the contemporary Islamic world.
Traditional Shariah (Islamic law) considers apostasy a major crime that deserves capital punishment. And this continues to be implemented. In some cases like that of Rahman, official courts sentence converts to death. In other cases, barbaric vigilantes attack converts from Islam to other religions such as, and most commonly, Christianity.
Persecution of Christians
Compass Direct News, an agency devoted to “raising awareness of Christians worldwide who are persecuted for their faith” routinely passes information on such apostasy cases. Ex-Muslims are consistently suppressed, harassed and attacked by their former co-religionists. As a Muslim, I feel ashamed to read such news.
But does it mean that Islam is a religion that is inherently at odds with human rights, as some critics argue? No. It just means that there are elements in the Islamic tradition, which were created by men in pre-modern times but should be discarded in the modern era.
What I mean by that is most obvious when we look at the origin of the Islamic ban on apostasy. To the surprise of many, this prohibition does not originate from the Koran, Islam's one and only divine source. The Koran includes no earthly punishment for apostasy, and actually includes many verses, which cherish religious freedom.
There is no compulsion in religion” declares a famous verse (2:256). There are also other ones, such as, "It is the truth from your Lord; so let whoever wishes have faith and whoever wishes be unbeliever." (18:29). There is nothing in the Koran that would justify a forced belief in Islam. And, of course, a forced belief in anything is a totally absurd concept. If someone becomes or stays a believer because he is forced to do so, then that faith will simply have no meaning. That can at best create a “hypocrite,” the character that the Koran denounces as the worst of men.
How then came the ban on apostasy? Well, it was a political, not religious, verdict that soon became a part of the religious canon. David Forte, professor of Law at Cleveland State University, explains this fact very briefly and vividly in his article titled “Islam's Trajectory.” “"The primary justification for the execution of the apostate is,"” he notes:
“That in the early days of Islam, apostasy and treason were in fact synonymous. War was perennial in Arabia. It never stopped. To reject the leader of another tribe, to give up on a coalition, was in effect to go to war against him. There was no such thing as neutrality. There were truces, but there was never permanent neutrality. It is reported, for example, that immediately after the death of Mohammed, many tribes apostatized. They said in effect, "the leader whom we were following is gone, so let's go back to our own leaders.' And they rebelled against Muslim rule. The first caliph, Abu Bakr, ordered such rebels to be killed.
Many scholars argue that the tradition that all apostates had to be killed had its origin during these wars of rebellion and not during Mohammed's time. In fact, many argue that these traditions in which Mohammed affirmed the killing of apostates were apocryphal, made up later to justify what the empire had been doing.”
A Natural Right
This shows two things: Apostasy cannot be considered as a crime in today's world. It is, indeed, a natural right. People should have the right to believe or disbelieve in Islam.
The second thing that the origin of the apostasy ban shows is that Islamic sources need a serious reconsideration. What most Muslims attach themselves to as divine commandments are actually the political and cultural codes of the early centuries of Islam, which were, to be sure, man-made facts. The divine principles of a religion should remain eternally valid, but not its historical context.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
Soon Rahman was saved thanks to international pressure on the Afghan government, but his story was only one of the many severe violations of religious freedom in the contemporary Islamic world.
Traditional Shariah (Islamic law) considers apostasy a major crime that deserves capital punishment. And this continues to be implemented. In some cases like that of Rahman, official courts sentence converts to death. In other cases, barbaric vigilantes attack converts from Islam to other religions such as, and most commonly, Christianity.
Persecution of Christians
Compass Direct News, an agency devoted to “raising awareness of Christians worldwide who are persecuted for their faith” routinely passes information on such apostasy cases. Ex-Muslims are consistently suppressed, harassed and attacked by their former co-religionists. As a Muslim, I feel ashamed to read such news.
But does it mean that Islam is a religion that is inherently at odds with human rights, as some critics argue? No. It just means that there are elements in the Islamic tradition, which were created by men in pre-modern times but should be discarded in the modern era.
What I mean by that is most obvious when we look at the origin of the Islamic ban on apostasy. To the surprise of many, this prohibition does not originate from the Koran, Islam's one and only divine source. The Koran includes no earthly punishment for apostasy, and actually includes many verses, which cherish religious freedom.
There is no compulsion in religion” declares a famous verse (2:256). There are also other ones, such as, "It is the truth from your Lord; so let whoever wishes have faith and whoever wishes be unbeliever." (18:29). There is nothing in the Koran that would justify a forced belief in Islam. And, of course, a forced belief in anything is a totally absurd concept. If someone becomes or stays a believer because he is forced to do so, then that faith will simply have no meaning. That can at best create a “hypocrite,” the character that the Koran denounces as the worst of men.
How then came the ban on apostasy? Well, it was a political, not religious, verdict that soon became a part of the religious canon. David Forte, professor of Law at Cleveland State University, explains this fact very briefly and vividly in his article titled “Islam's Trajectory.” “"The primary justification for the execution of the apostate is,"” he notes:
“That in the early days of Islam, apostasy and treason were in fact synonymous. War was perennial in Arabia. It never stopped. To reject the leader of another tribe, to give up on a coalition, was in effect to go to war against him. There was no such thing as neutrality. There were truces, but there was never permanent neutrality. It is reported, for example, that immediately after the death of Mohammed, many tribes apostatized. They said in effect, "the leader whom we were following is gone, so let's go back to our own leaders.' And they rebelled against Muslim rule. The first caliph, Abu Bakr, ordered such rebels to be killed.
Many scholars argue that the tradition that all apostates had to be killed had its origin during these wars of rebellion and not during Mohammed's time. In fact, many argue that these traditions in which Mohammed affirmed the killing of apostates were apocryphal, made up later to justify what the empire had been doing.”
A Natural Right
This shows two things: Apostasy cannot be considered as a crime in today's world. It is, indeed, a natural right. People should have the right to believe or disbelieve in Islam.
The second thing that the origin of the apostasy ban shows is that Islamic sources need a serious reconsideration. What most Muslims attach themselves to as divine commandments are actually the political and cultural codes of the early centuries of Islam, which were, to be sure, man-made facts. The divine principles of a religion should remain eternally valid, but not its historical context.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
Why is The AKP Reasonable on Kurds?
Anybody who follows Turkish politics these days will notice that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government is quite reasonable on matters relating to the Kurdish question. First, Prime Minister Erdoğan has resisted the calls from other parties and the “mainstream media” to launch a massive war against northern Iraq. He, instead, insisted on building an effective cooperation with the United States to crack down on the terrorist PKK — and only the PKK, not Iraqi Kurds. Plus he managed to build that cooperation in his meeting with U.S. President Bush early this month.
More recently, Erdoğan opposed the closure of the Democratic Society Party (DTP) — which is commonly and aptly called “PKK's Sinn Fein” — by Turkey's Constitutional Court. In fact the prime minister severely criticizes the DTP for not renouncing terrorism, but he also wants to keep its cadre in the democratic game rather than “sending them to the mountains.”
No Cowboys Here
As the Turkish Daily News reported yesterday, the prime minister also said the priority is to make the terrorists lay down their weapons and not launching an offensive into northern Iraq.“We are not cowboys with guns in our hands,” he reminded. And he said so in the face of harsh accusations from Devlet Bahçeli, the leader of the ultra-nationalist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), who blamed him for “treason.”
Ruşen Çakır, a senior journalist and an expert on Kurdish politics, notes in his latest column that Erdoğan is the dove on the Kurdish question while Bahçeli is the hawk. Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Baykal, according to Çakır, is somewhere in between. (Whereas I think he is rather close to Bahçeli.)
TDN columnist Semih İdiz points to the same fact about AKP. In his piece in daily Milliyet, which is titled “The way of Erdoğan is the most reasonable way,” İdiz argues that Erdoğan “follows a pragmatic policy based on humane, legal and democratic parameters instead of a revanchist line.”
President Abdullah Gül, who is coming from the same political tradition with Erdoğan, is similarly sensible. Yesterday, during his official visit to Georgia, he made reconciliatory remarks about Iraqi Kurdistan and its leader, Massoud Barzani. He added that Turkey would isolate terrorism only with “stronger democracy”.
Now, how should we explain all this? Why the AKP people are much more open-minded than others on the Kurdish question? These people are called “Islamists,” right? So they are supposed to be more dogmatic than their secular rivals such as the CHP folks. But the reality is just the opposite. Why is that?
State Ideology
I think the answer lies in a very basic fact about Turkish politics. Here, the most rigid dogmatism is what the former president Ahmet Necdet Sezer proudly called “state ideology.” The political scene is divided between those who believe — and even worship — the state ideology, and those who rather believe in plain reality.
Kurds are the litmus test here. According to the state ideology, there are no Kurds. They simply aren't supposed to exist on the face of the earth. If they live in Turkey, they are called “mountain Turks.” (They at best can be a trivial branch of the glorious Turkish race.) If they live in Iraq, then they are called Iraqis. If someone dares to call them Kurds, the adherents of the state ideology go crazy. They even go crazier if someone utters the term “Kurdistan.”
But a reality-based mind would see no problem in any of these terms, because they have been is existence for centuries. In the Ottoman Empire, eastern provinces such as Diyarbekir were called “bilad-ı ekrad,” which means “the lands of the Kurds.” In mid 19th century, the Ottomans even established a “Kurdistan province,” which included much of today's southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq. For the Ottomans, people were called what they were. Theirs was a reality-based empire.
Then came the ideology-based republic, whose elites had decided to rename and re-identify the whole country. This, these elites presumed, was the only way to modernization. And they have tried really hard to realize their dream.
But reality is a stubborn thing. The more you attack it, the more it hits back. And it did.
The Reality-Based Community
Today reality has become much more vindicated than it was in the Cold War years. The brave new world of globalization takes everything hidden under the carpet puts them in the middle of your living room. All the diversity that exists within the Turkish society is becoming more visible and vocal. We now have Kurds, Sufi orders, other Sunni communities, Alevis, Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Arabs, Assyrians, Protestants, Shiites, and so on. Unlike the neighboring Iran, we even have gays and lesbians.
Now, the question is how to build a new Turkey which will accept all these differences and give them space under a liberal, pluralist democracy. The AKP folks get that, because they are not brainwashed by the “state ideology.” This doesn't guarantee that they won't make mistakes, which they do. But it means that they have the mental capacity to understand reality and act accordingly. And, alas, that's not a very common talent in our officially-ideologized Turkey.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
More recently, Erdoğan opposed the closure of the Democratic Society Party (DTP) — which is commonly and aptly called “PKK's Sinn Fein” — by Turkey's Constitutional Court. In fact the prime minister severely criticizes the DTP for not renouncing terrorism, but he also wants to keep its cadre in the democratic game rather than “sending them to the mountains.”
No Cowboys Here
As the Turkish Daily News reported yesterday, the prime minister also said the priority is to make the terrorists lay down their weapons and not launching an offensive into northern Iraq.“We are not cowboys with guns in our hands,” he reminded. And he said so in the face of harsh accusations from Devlet Bahçeli, the leader of the ultra-nationalist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), who blamed him for “treason.”
Ruşen Çakır, a senior journalist and an expert on Kurdish politics, notes in his latest column that Erdoğan is the dove on the Kurdish question while Bahçeli is the hawk. Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Baykal, according to Çakır, is somewhere in between. (Whereas I think he is rather close to Bahçeli.)
TDN columnist Semih İdiz points to the same fact about AKP. In his piece in daily Milliyet, which is titled “The way of Erdoğan is the most reasonable way,” İdiz argues that Erdoğan “follows a pragmatic policy based on humane, legal and democratic parameters instead of a revanchist line.”
President Abdullah Gül, who is coming from the same political tradition with Erdoğan, is similarly sensible. Yesterday, during his official visit to Georgia, he made reconciliatory remarks about Iraqi Kurdistan and its leader, Massoud Barzani. He added that Turkey would isolate terrorism only with “stronger democracy”.
Now, how should we explain all this? Why the AKP people are much more open-minded than others on the Kurdish question? These people are called “Islamists,” right? So they are supposed to be more dogmatic than their secular rivals such as the CHP folks. But the reality is just the opposite. Why is that?
State Ideology
I think the answer lies in a very basic fact about Turkish politics. Here, the most rigid dogmatism is what the former president Ahmet Necdet Sezer proudly called “state ideology.” The political scene is divided between those who believe — and even worship — the state ideology, and those who rather believe in plain reality.
Kurds are the litmus test here. According to the state ideology, there are no Kurds. They simply aren't supposed to exist on the face of the earth. If they live in Turkey, they are called “mountain Turks.” (They at best can be a trivial branch of the glorious Turkish race.) If they live in Iraq, then they are called Iraqis. If someone dares to call them Kurds, the adherents of the state ideology go crazy. They even go crazier if someone utters the term “Kurdistan.”
But a reality-based mind would see no problem in any of these terms, because they have been is existence for centuries. In the Ottoman Empire, eastern provinces such as Diyarbekir were called “bilad-ı ekrad,” which means “the lands of the Kurds.” In mid 19th century, the Ottomans even established a “Kurdistan province,” which included much of today's southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq. For the Ottomans, people were called what they were. Theirs was a reality-based empire.
Then came the ideology-based republic, whose elites had decided to rename and re-identify the whole country. This, these elites presumed, was the only way to modernization. And they have tried really hard to realize their dream.
But reality is a stubborn thing. The more you attack it, the more it hits back. And it did.
The Reality-Based Community
Today reality has become much more vindicated than it was in the Cold War years. The brave new world of globalization takes everything hidden under the carpet puts them in the middle of your living room. All the diversity that exists within the Turkish society is becoming more visible and vocal. We now have Kurds, Sufi orders, other Sunni communities, Alevis, Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Arabs, Assyrians, Protestants, Shiites, and so on. Unlike the neighboring Iran, we even have gays and lesbians.
Now, the question is how to build a new Turkey which will accept all these differences and give them space under a liberal, pluralist democracy. The AKP folks get that, because they are not brainwashed by the “state ideology.” This doesn't guarantee that they won't make mistakes, which they do. But it means that they have the mental capacity to understand reality and act accordingly. And, alas, that's not a very common talent in our officially-ideologized Turkey.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
The Wedge Strategy Turkey Needs Against Terrorism
The Turkish Parliament has given the government authorization to order a military operation into northern Iraq in order to hit the outlawed Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) terrorists. Thus we might see some “action” in Iraq soon. Yet I don't expect a massive, full-scale incursion. There rather will be, I guess, pointed attacks to specific PKK camps. Some guerrillas might be killed — and I hope that no civilian will be harmed. But will this “end the PKK terror” as some hot-headed Turkish pundits wishfully think?
No, not really. Military action against the PKKwill give some harm to the terrorist organization, but it will not finish it off. Actually, even if our armed forces had managed to kill all the PKK fighters in arms — which is not even remotely possible — the problem would have not ended. Because the PKK is not a squadron of isolated and numbered aliens beamed from a far galaxy. It is a movement with popular support among some of Turkey's Kurdish citizens. When the army kills a PKK militant, he is soon replaced by his cousin or nephew who is driven by the same sentiment and ideology. If that psycho-ideology remains alive, then so will the PKK.
Kurds? What Kurds?
It is hard to fully analyze that mindset which continuously feeds the PKK, but I think its root causes can be divided into two broad categories:
1) The sins Turkey has committed against its Turkish citizens.
2) Ethnic Kurdish nationalism, which was provoked by Turkey's sins, but which has become a force of its own.
The first category refers to all the assimilationist policies that Turkey has inflicted on its Kurdish citizens since 1925. The latter had proudly lived as Kurds for centuries under the Ottoman rule, but the brand-new Turkish Republic suddenly decided that they are, in fact, Turks. In fact, the whole design of the Turkish Republic was a bit problematic. It was not constructed according to the aspirations of the citizens. Quite the contrary, the state started to construct the citizens according to its own aspirations. Therefore “the principles of the Republic” have a become rigid doctrine which deny the realities of the people. The very existence of Kurds, for example, was not accepted until the early 90s. Even the slightest usage of the Kurdish language was considered as a criminal act.
No wonder that during my childhood years in Ankara, I wasn't aware of the existence of such an ethnic group in Turkey. The first time I heard two men speaking Kurdish in Istanbul, I thought that they must have been tourists from some Middle Eastern country.
It was impossible for most of our Kurdish citizens to avoid being traumatized by this repression. So there is a justification for their distrust towards the traditional establishment and its official ideology. But a democratic and free Turkey is also possible and we have been moving toward that direction for quite some time. Restrictions on the Kurdish identity have been eliminated gradually since the 90s. Under the incumbent AKP, and thanks to the EU process, Kurdish citizens have gained virtually every legal right that they had been dreaming of. The economic situation in the predominantly Kurdish southeast is also improving. So, there is light at the end of the tunnel, and it has become pretty close.
But the PKK, which claims to stand for Kurdish rights, still carries out attacks and kills people at this hopeful moment. Why?
The answer brings me to the second root cause I have mentioned above: Ethnic Kurdish nationalism. Like all late nationalisms, the Kurdish one is romantic, irrational and furious. Its believers want not to live under a free and democratic Turkey, but to form a whole brand new country called “Kurdistan.” The formation of that state will be a bloody and messy affair, and it is even impossible for the foreseeable future, but these realistic troubles do not matter for the surrealist nationalist.
Inserting A Wedge
The PKK is driven to irrationalism because not only of this ideology, but also of the megalomania of its leader. Abdulllah Öcalan has speeches in which he compares himself to Jesus Christ and Prophet Muhammed. “When Jesus died, people cried for him only for three days,” he once said, “but I when I was captured, hundreds of Kurdish sons and daughters burnt themselves alive.” So, he can well continue to order them to burn themselves — and the whole country — alive.
In the face of all that, Turkey should realize what its strategy should be. Since the problem is not Kurdish identity but Kurdish nationalism and especially its militant form, we should be very careful to distinguish between the two. The whole strategy indeed should be directed at wining the Kurdish citizens and marginalizing the Kurdish nationalists. All the policies should be directed at inserting a wedge between the two.
As for the Kurds in north Iraq, we should have no problem with them, too, as far as they don't support the PKK. The existence of a Kurdish entity in Iraq doesn't necessarily threaten us, if we can manage to make our own Kurds happy and satisfied.
The bottom line is that our enemy is not the Kurds or “Kurdishness.” The only enemy is the PKK and we can defeat it only by winning more and more Kurds on our side — whether that be in Turkey or in Iraq.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
No, not really. Military action against the PKKwill give some harm to the terrorist organization, but it will not finish it off. Actually, even if our armed forces had managed to kill all the PKK fighters in arms — which is not even remotely possible — the problem would have not ended. Because the PKK is not a squadron of isolated and numbered aliens beamed from a far galaxy. It is a movement with popular support among some of Turkey's Kurdish citizens. When the army kills a PKK militant, he is soon replaced by his cousin or nephew who is driven by the same sentiment and ideology. If that psycho-ideology remains alive, then so will the PKK.
Kurds? What Kurds?
It is hard to fully analyze that mindset which continuously feeds the PKK, but I think its root causes can be divided into two broad categories:
1) The sins Turkey has committed against its Turkish citizens.
2) Ethnic Kurdish nationalism, which was provoked by Turkey's sins, but which has become a force of its own.
The first category refers to all the assimilationist policies that Turkey has inflicted on its Kurdish citizens since 1925. The latter had proudly lived as Kurds for centuries under the Ottoman rule, but the brand-new Turkish Republic suddenly decided that they are, in fact, Turks. In fact, the whole design of the Turkish Republic was a bit problematic. It was not constructed according to the aspirations of the citizens. Quite the contrary, the state started to construct the citizens according to its own aspirations. Therefore “the principles of the Republic” have a become rigid doctrine which deny the realities of the people. The very existence of Kurds, for example, was not accepted until the early 90s. Even the slightest usage of the Kurdish language was considered as a criminal act.
No wonder that during my childhood years in Ankara, I wasn't aware of the existence of such an ethnic group in Turkey. The first time I heard two men speaking Kurdish in Istanbul, I thought that they must have been tourists from some Middle Eastern country.
It was impossible for most of our Kurdish citizens to avoid being traumatized by this repression. So there is a justification for their distrust towards the traditional establishment and its official ideology. But a democratic and free Turkey is also possible and we have been moving toward that direction for quite some time. Restrictions on the Kurdish identity have been eliminated gradually since the 90s. Under the incumbent AKP, and thanks to the EU process, Kurdish citizens have gained virtually every legal right that they had been dreaming of. The economic situation in the predominantly Kurdish southeast is also improving. So, there is light at the end of the tunnel, and it has become pretty close.
But the PKK, which claims to stand for Kurdish rights, still carries out attacks and kills people at this hopeful moment. Why?
The answer brings me to the second root cause I have mentioned above: Ethnic Kurdish nationalism. Like all late nationalisms, the Kurdish one is romantic, irrational and furious. Its believers want not to live under a free and democratic Turkey, but to form a whole brand new country called “Kurdistan.” The formation of that state will be a bloody and messy affair, and it is even impossible for the foreseeable future, but these realistic troubles do not matter for the surrealist nationalist.
Inserting A Wedge
The PKK is driven to irrationalism because not only of this ideology, but also of the megalomania of its leader. Abdulllah Öcalan has speeches in which he compares himself to Jesus Christ and Prophet Muhammed. “When Jesus died, people cried for him only for three days,” he once said, “but I when I was captured, hundreds of Kurdish sons and daughters burnt themselves alive.” So, he can well continue to order them to burn themselves — and the whole country — alive.
In the face of all that, Turkey should realize what its strategy should be. Since the problem is not Kurdish identity but Kurdish nationalism and especially its militant form, we should be very careful to distinguish between the two. The whole strategy indeed should be directed at wining the Kurdish citizens and marginalizing the Kurdish nationalists. All the policies should be directed at inserting a wedge between the two.
As for the Kurds in north Iraq, we should have no problem with them, too, as far as they don't support the PKK. The existence of a Kurdish entity in Iraq doesn't necessarily threaten us, if we can manage to make our own Kurds happy and satisfied.
The bottom line is that our enemy is not the Kurds or “Kurdishness.” The only enemy is the PKK and we can defeat it only by winning more and more Kurds on our side — whether that be in Turkey or in Iraq.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
Dawkins' 'Delusion' Should Be Free
Richard Dawkins is probably the world's most famous atheist evangelist. In his numerous books, the Oxford zoologist argues that modern science, and in particular the Darwinian theory of evolution, has disproved God. He is a gifted writer, and his recent volume, The God Delusion, has become a global bestseller. Some call him “the Harry Potter of non-fiction.”
More recently Dr. Dawkins made the news in Turkey, too, yet not by his arguments. As the Turkish Daily News reported on Nov. 29, following a complaint by a Turkish reader that some passages in the The God Delusion were an assault on "sacred values," an Istanbul prosecutor has opened an official investigation on the book's Turkish version. Its publisher, Erol Karaaslan, is said be “questioned” soon.
Probably nothing will come out from that, and Dawkins' book will continue to show up on Turkish bookshelves. And I think it should be so. And here is why.
Sleights of Hand
Followers of this column might have easily guessed that I would not be among the greatest fans of Dr. Dawkins. Yes, I am not. And the reason is not his atheism, but the way he uses sleights of hand while promoting his views.
Just look at the back cover of his book, which mentions, “the grievous harm religion has inflicted on society, from the Crusades to 9/11.” Ah, how impressive… Yet some other writer could also rant about, “the grievous harm atheism has inflicted on society, from Stalin to Pol Pot.” And that writer would be using the same trick with Dr. Dawkins: Cherry-picking the worst representatives of the worldview that you want to bash. It is a way of propaganda, not analysis.
Further tricks are hidden in Dr. Dawkins' efforts to “disprove” the existence of God by referring to Darwin's theory of evolution. First of all, Darwinian theory has serious problems. Evolution, I think, is a solid fact, and Darwin has given us important insights on the mechanisms of this colossal process. But whether every step of this process can really be explained through random and purposeless mechanisms as Darwin had suggested is a hotly debated question. The scientists who defend the “Intelligent Design” (ID) theory, such as biochemist Michael Behe, point out to the extremely complex “machinery” that exists in the living cell, whose origins have not been adequately explained by the proponents of Darwinism.
Most mainstream scientists disagree with ID and argue that naturalistic explanations for all natural phenomena will be found at some point. Fair enough. But that's a presumption, not a proven conclusion.
Darwin Reconsidered
Yet let's go with mainstream science and accept that Darwinian theory is an adequate explanation of biological origins. But even then Dawkins' atheism is not vindicated. There are in fact many Darwinists who think that this theory is perfectly compatible with belief in God. Some of these scientists actually think that the whole drama of life points to a Creator, who gave nature built-in mechanisms (aka natural laws) that are designed to support the emergence of life. One of the world's prominent paleontologists (scientists who study fossils), Simon Conway Morris, is one such “theistic evolutionist.” I listened to several lectures of him where he teaches at, The University of Cambridge, and the philosophical conclusions he drew from evolution was just the opposite of Dawkins'.
Another scientist who not only disagrees with Dawkins but also counters his arguments is Alister McGrath, both a theologian and a molecular biophysicist, who teaches at Oxford University. In The Dawkins Delusion?, the 2007 book he co-authored with his wife, Joanna Collicutt McGrath, he shows why Dawkins' inferences from science in favor of atheism are flawed. According to Publishers Weekly "The McGraths expeditiously plow into the flank of Dawkins's fundamentalist atheism... and run him from the battlefield.” The same comment adds, “The book works partly because they are so much more gracious to Dawkins than Dawkins is to believers.”
A Great Idea
And I think that is the correct theistic attitude to take vis-à-vis Dawkins and other preachers of atheism. A faith's strength comes from not its fervor to silence critics, but its ability to refute them. If Muslim believers in Turkey are annoyed by Dawkins' book, then they should bring counter-arguments to his theses, instead of asking for censorship by prosecutors.
It would be naïve for them to fear that theism would lose from such intellectual encounters with atheism – and especially of the kind promoted by Dr. Dawkins. That would be giving him too much credit.
Ah, by the way, fellow TDN columnist Sylvia Tiryaki made a good suggestion on this topic in her piece last Monday. “What we should do at this stage,” she wrote, “is to invite Mr. Dawkins to Turkey to discuss his views here publicly.” Great idea. Let me know if you hear that he decides to come, and, perhaps, if he needs a challenger to debate with. It would be my pleasure to discuss with him who is really deluded about God — and who is not.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
More recently Dr. Dawkins made the news in Turkey, too, yet not by his arguments. As the Turkish Daily News reported on Nov. 29, following a complaint by a Turkish reader that some passages in the The God Delusion were an assault on "sacred values," an Istanbul prosecutor has opened an official investigation on the book's Turkish version. Its publisher, Erol Karaaslan, is said be “questioned” soon.
Probably nothing will come out from that, and Dawkins' book will continue to show up on Turkish bookshelves. And I think it should be so. And here is why.
Sleights of Hand
Followers of this column might have easily guessed that I would not be among the greatest fans of Dr. Dawkins. Yes, I am not. And the reason is not his atheism, but the way he uses sleights of hand while promoting his views.
Just look at the back cover of his book, which mentions, “the grievous harm religion has inflicted on society, from the Crusades to 9/11.” Ah, how impressive… Yet some other writer could also rant about, “the grievous harm atheism has inflicted on society, from Stalin to Pol Pot.” And that writer would be using the same trick with Dr. Dawkins: Cherry-picking the worst representatives of the worldview that you want to bash. It is a way of propaganda, not analysis.
Further tricks are hidden in Dr. Dawkins' efforts to “disprove” the existence of God by referring to Darwin's theory of evolution. First of all, Darwinian theory has serious problems. Evolution, I think, is a solid fact, and Darwin has given us important insights on the mechanisms of this colossal process. But whether every step of this process can really be explained through random and purposeless mechanisms as Darwin had suggested is a hotly debated question. The scientists who defend the “Intelligent Design” (ID) theory, such as biochemist Michael Behe, point out to the extremely complex “machinery” that exists in the living cell, whose origins have not been adequately explained by the proponents of Darwinism.
Most mainstream scientists disagree with ID and argue that naturalistic explanations for all natural phenomena will be found at some point. Fair enough. But that's a presumption, not a proven conclusion.
Darwin Reconsidered
Yet let's go with mainstream science and accept that Darwinian theory is an adequate explanation of biological origins. But even then Dawkins' atheism is not vindicated. There are in fact many Darwinists who think that this theory is perfectly compatible with belief in God. Some of these scientists actually think that the whole drama of life points to a Creator, who gave nature built-in mechanisms (aka natural laws) that are designed to support the emergence of life. One of the world's prominent paleontologists (scientists who study fossils), Simon Conway Morris, is one such “theistic evolutionist.” I listened to several lectures of him where he teaches at, The University of Cambridge, and the philosophical conclusions he drew from evolution was just the opposite of Dawkins'.
Another scientist who not only disagrees with Dawkins but also counters his arguments is Alister McGrath, both a theologian and a molecular biophysicist, who teaches at Oxford University. In The Dawkins Delusion?, the 2007 book he co-authored with his wife, Joanna Collicutt McGrath, he shows why Dawkins' inferences from science in favor of atheism are flawed. According to Publishers Weekly "The McGraths expeditiously plow into the flank of Dawkins's fundamentalist atheism... and run him from the battlefield.” The same comment adds, “The book works partly because they are so much more gracious to Dawkins than Dawkins is to believers.”
A Great Idea
And I think that is the correct theistic attitude to take vis-à-vis Dawkins and other preachers of atheism. A faith's strength comes from not its fervor to silence critics, but its ability to refute them. If Muslim believers in Turkey are annoyed by Dawkins' book, then they should bring counter-arguments to his theses, instead of asking for censorship by prosecutors.
It would be naïve for them to fear that theism would lose from such intellectual encounters with atheism – and especially of the kind promoted by Dr. Dawkins. That would be giving him too much credit.
Ah, by the way, fellow TDN columnist Sylvia Tiryaki made a good suggestion on this topic in her piece last Monday. “What we should do at this stage,” she wrote, “is to invite Mr. Dawkins to Turkey to discuss his views here publicly.” Great idea. Let me know if you hear that he decides to come, and, perhaps, if he needs a challenger to debate with. It would be my pleasure to discuss with him who is really deluded about God — and who is not.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
Secular Apartheid at Work
"Injustice anywhere," said Martin Luther King, "is a threat to justice everywhere." Therefore the world should learn and care about the story of Tevhide Kütük, the 17-year-old Turkish schoolgirl who just became the latest victim of Turkey's self-styled apartheid.
It all started several months ago in Kozan, a municipality in the southern city of Adana. The young and bright Tevhide, a student of the state-sponsored quasi-religious "Imam-Hatip" schools, heard about the essay contest that the Education Ministry launched to celebrate the annual Teacher's Day. She wrote a fine piece on the virtues of teaching, and submitted it to the organizing committee. Soon the jury decided that she was the best writer among all the other students in her hometown, and thus she deserved to win the award, which was a very modest present by all standards, but a very inspiring reward for a modest teenager.
VIP apparatchiks
On Nov. 28, Teacher's day, Tehvide, along with other winners in poetry and painting, was invited to a ceremony at the town hall. She, of course, accepted the invitation and showed up on that day with all her enthusiasm. After some boring speeches by the usual dignitaries, the winners of the contests were called to the stage. With joyful music playing in the background, Tevhide cheerfully climbed the steps and exuberantly lined up with other kids in order to be congratulated and applauded.
Yet things were not destined to go right. In the VIP seats, there were a bunch of sinister men whose loyalty to tyrannical state principles exceeded their respect and care for human beings. The moment they saw Tevhide, they were shocked and abhorred. Because the little girl was wearing the Islamic headscarf! In official Turkey, that symbol only belongs to the untouchables, those who pollute the sacred soil of the secular republic with their offensive religious presence. Especially army commander, Major Hüseyin Çopur, and local governor, Aydın Tetikoğlu, were deeply affronted by this little girl who dared to break the rules of the caste system. The outlaw had to be punished, and law and order had to be restored.
So, after less than a minute that little Tevhide took stage, these two men – one in uniform, the other in unimind – took a quick measure to save the secular republic from her. "Take her down," they told their aides. And a man in a black suit approached Tevhide to whisper into her ear that she had to leave the stage immediately. She was shocked for a few seconds, and then rapidly moved away while bursting into tears.
Local TV cameras were shooting the whole event. Somewhere at the back, Tevhide cried for minutes and minutes, while her parents and friends tried to calm her down. But she neither calmed down nor decided to give up. She walked again toward the front seats, in order to speak to the VIP men. She stood right in front of the national education director. "Why don't you give me my award, my teacher," she asked. "This is a great injustice."
The "teacher" – a man with a thick mustache and apparently a thin conscience – just looked at her with a humiliating face. “No,” he ordered, “just get back to your seat!” There was nothing he could do, actually. As a loyal apparatchik, he was only following orders.
Tevhide, who was still crying, left the hall along with her family and many other people who reacted against this official injustice. Days have passed since that episode and the family says that the young girl is still very sad and they fear that she might get into depression. Even if she doesn't, she will probably remember this trauma for the rest of her life. And not just her, but millions of others in this country who cover their heads because their beliefs will continue to feel insulted and humiliated.
Shame, not happiness
The weekly humor magazine “Leman” has a great cover this week, with the title “The tears of a young girl” and a cartoon that shows the poor Tevhide being kicked by a huge army boot. (Leman is a secular magazine, by the way. It is just non-fascist.) I think this caricature is a very accurate depiction of not just Tevhide's drama, but also the whole apartheid regime in this country, which is, despite all our democratic achievements, still intact.
This has to end. Now is the time for freedom for all Turkish citizens, whatever their creed, langue and way of life may be. The unelected and self-appointed VIP's of Turkey have to accept a “freedom chart” similar to the one that their ilk in South Africa had to concede in the ‘90s. Enough is enough.
If they insist on preserving this system of organized injustice, then they will be undermining the very foundation of this country: The consent of the citizens. I have to admit that I am already shaky in that regard. I love Turkey with all its history, people, and culture, but I can't find a way to sympathize with its authoritarian state. It really doesn't help much to reiterate Atatürk's motto, “How happy is the one who says I am a Turk.” I do say that I am a Turk, but that hardly gives me happiness. In fact, when I see all the cruelties done in this country to its people by its sovereigns, it even gives me shame.
Writer: Mustafa Akyol
It all started several months ago in Kozan, a municipality in the southern city of Adana. The young and bright Tevhide, a student of the state-sponsored quasi-religious "Imam-Hatip" schools, heard about the essay contest that the Education Ministry launched to celebrate the annual Teacher's Day. She wrote a fine piece on the virtues of teaching, and submitted it to the organizing committee. Soon the jury decided that she was the best writer among all the other students in her hometown, and thus she deserved to win the award, which was a very modest present by all standards, but a very inspiring reward for a modest teenager.
VIP apparatchiks
On Nov. 28, Teacher's day, Tehvide, along with other winners in poetry and painting, was invited to a ceremony at the town hall. She, of course, accepted the invitation and showed up on that day with all her enthusiasm. After some boring speeches by the usual dignitaries, the winners of the contests were called to the stage. With joyful music playing in the background, Tevhide cheerfully climbed the steps and exuberantly lined up with other kids in order to be congratulated and applauded.
Yet things were not destined to go right. In the VIP seats, there were a bunch of sinister men whose loyalty to tyrannical state principles exceeded their respect and care for human beings. The moment they saw Tevhide, they were shocked and abhorred. Because the little girl was wearing the Islamic headscarf! In official Turkey, that symbol only belongs to the untouchables, those who pollute the sacred soil of the secular republic with their offensive religious presence. Especially army commander, Major Hüseyin Çopur, and local governor, Aydın Tetikoğlu, were deeply affronted by this little girl who dared to break the rules of the caste system. The outlaw had to be punished, and law and order had to be restored.
So, after less than a minute that little Tevhide took stage, these two men – one in uniform, the other in unimind – took a quick measure to save the secular republic from her. "Take her down," they told their aides. And a man in a black suit approached Tevhide to whisper into her ear that she had to leave the stage immediately. She was shocked for a few seconds, and then rapidly moved away while bursting into tears.
Local TV cameras were shooting the whole event. Somewhere at the back, Tevhide cried for minutes and minutes, while her parents and friends tried to calm her down. But she neither calmed down nor decided to give up. She walked again toward the front seats, in order to speak to the VIP men. She stood right in front of the national education director. "Why don't you give me my award, my teacher," she asked. "This is a great injustice."
The "teacher" – a man with a thick mustache and apparently a thin conscience – just looked at her with a humiliating face. “No,” he ordered, “just get back to your seat!” There was nothing he could do, actually. As a loyal apparatchik, he was only following orders.
Tevhide, who was still crying, left the hall along with her family and many other people who reacted against this official injustice. Days have passed since that episode and the family says that the young girl is still very sad and they fear that she might get into depression. Even if she doesn't, she will probably remember this trauma for the rest of her life. And not just her, but millions of others in this country who cover their heads because their beliefs will continue to feel insulted and humiliated.
Shame, not happiness
The weekly humor magazine “Leman” has a great cover this week, with the title “The tears of a young girl” and a cartoon that shows the poor Tevhide being kicked by a huge army boot. (Leman is a secular magazine, by the way. It is just non-fascist.) I think this caricature is a very accurate depiction of not just Tevhide's drama, but also the whole apartheid regime in this country, which is, despite all our democratic achievements, still intact.
This has to end. Now is the time for freedom for all Turkish citizens, whatever their creed, langue and way of life may be. The unelected and self-appointed VIP's of Turkey have to accept a “freedom chart” similar to the one that their ilk in South Africa had to concede in the ‘90s. Enough is enough.
If they insist on preserving this system of organized injustice, then they will be undermining the very foundation of this country: The consent of the citizens. I have to admit that I am already shaky in that regard. I love Turkey with all its history, people, and culture, but I can't find a way to sympathize with its authoritarian state. It really doesn't help much to reiterate Atatürk's motto, “How happy is the one who says I am a Turk.” I do say that I am a Turk, but that hardly gives me happiness. In fact, when I see all the cruelties done in this country to its people by its sovereigns, it even gives me shame.
Writer: Mustafa Akyol
Turkey's Veiled Democracy [A Must-Read Article]
This article, published in the November/December issue of The American Interest magazine, is available here online (but in full only for subcribers), and here in full as a PDF file
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
The Scandal of The Kemalist Mind
I, unluckily, made a lot of people upset with my piece in last weekend's edition of the Turkish Daily News, “The gospel according to Atatürk.” A few dozen readers sent fuming emails, which rebuked me for daring to criticize the level of veneration shown in Turkey to its founder.
If you have been reading the “Letters to the editor” section, you might have come across two of these reactions, which came from two Turkish readers living in the United States. The one from New Jersey noted that he was “shocked” by my piece, and added, “someone should tell Akyol that he is dead wrong.” The other one, a lady, expressed “anguish” at me and my “very naive look.” I, she also argued, “cannot be a Turk.”
In response, I am sincerely thankful to such critics, because they present nice case studies of what I have been talking about. I said that there is a popular “cult of Atatürk” in Turkey, whose followers have a “strict mental blueprint” that leads them to “detachment from reality.” And that's precisely what you can find in these annoyed comments.
Cognitive dissonance
Let me show you one example. The first reader, besides bashing me, argued that “dialogue among all people in Turkey should be improved so that no one should be afraid of saying ‘I am proud to be a Turk.'” It is really hard to understand how “dialogue among all people in Turkey” will make everybody proud of being a Turk, but that's the minor issue. The real gem is the presumption that some people in Turkey are afraid of saying, “I am proud to be a Turk.” In fact, in this country, it has never been a problem to say that, and it is in fact an officially sanctioned mantra. The real problem has always been to say that you are proud of being something other than a Turk — such as a Kurd, an Armenian, a Christian, and even a supranational Muslim. (For the record, in 1982, politician Şerafettin Elçi was imprisoned for simply saying, “I am a Kurd and there are Kurds in Turkey.”)
So it is really mind-boggling that our Kemalist reader thinks that “Turkishness” is suppressed in Turkey, while the fact is that Turkishness is the only identity which is not suppressed at all.
If you would like to see more detachment-from-reality in action then take a look at the second reader. She criticized me for criticizing the “I am watching you” motto put on some Atatürk flags. But she got it totally wrong by writing: “It simply means for anyone that understands English language ‘We are following your steps.'” Because the motto I criticized did not mean that Turks follow Atatürk. It rather meant Atatürk watches over the Turks. It was plain clear for anyone who has a grasp of either the English or the Turkish language.
Neither publish nor perish
I won't point out every case of cognitive dissonance in the writings of Kemalist readers. For most unbiased observers, it should be obvious that Kemalism has turned into a dogmatic ideology and its adherents present a pitiable intellectual poverty. The latter phenomenon is visible almost in every field. In the Turkish media, for example, die-hard Kemalist commentators are among the least sophisticated ones. Their columns are full of either dry clichés or angry polemics. In the academia, scholars or faculties who are famed to be devout Kemalists hardly produce anything that would get into international academic literature. (Alas, they neither publish nor perish!) Actually the handful of globally acclaimed Turkish scholars are detested by their Kemalist colleagues at home. Şerif Mardin, who is probably the most prominent Turkish sociologist ever, was boycotted by the all-Kemalist Turkish Sciences Academy (TÜBA), simply for that he is too lenient on religion. Actually in the field of social sciences, Turkey seems to be divided among the fruitful and articulate academics, and the rest, which includes almost all Kemalists.
In literature, the situation is no different: Turkey's globally successful novelists, such as the recent Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk or Elif Şafak, are the ones who have the ability to think outside of the Kemalist box. No wonder they are abhorred by the Kemalists, who explain their achievements by conspiracy theories. They think Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize, for example, because the “imperialists” decided to promote him for “insulting Turkishness.”
For quite some time, I have been pondering what makes the Kemalist mind so shallow. This cannot be related to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk himself, because he was a smart, well-educated and cultured statesman who vigorously promoted science and learning. I believe the problem is in the way he is perceived by his devotees. Since they see him and his period as the source all the wisdom they need, they don't have an urge to understand the world. They think the Supreme Leader already understood it perfectly and all we Turks need to is walk on his righteous path.
The evangelical mind
This line of thinking creates intellectual poverty within any paradigm. Religious fundamentalism is the most obvious example. Indeed religion can be a driving force for intellectual enterprise if it is interpreted in a dynamic way — and that's what gave rise to towering figures such as Averroes (Ibn Rushd) or Newton. But religion would be a mind stopper if its believers think that all they need to study is the life of a holy man and the scripture he brought.
In his famous book "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind," American historian Mark Noll suggests that most evangelical Christians in his country suffer from that misconception. He shows that evangelicals have failed to engage in "the whole spectrum of modern learning, including economics and political science, literary criticism and imaginative writing, historical inquiry and philosophical studies, linguistics and the history of science, social theory and the arts." “The scandal of the evangelical mind,” he concludes, "is that there is not much of an evangelical mind."
I am not an expert on American Christianity, and can't tell whether Noll is right or wrong. But I do know about Kemalism, and this ideology suffers from the same problem he points out. Yes, Kemalism has a “scandal” of its own, too, and it is that that there is not much of a Kemalist mind.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
If you have been reading the “Letters to the editor” section, you might have come across two of these reactions, which came from two Turkish readers living in the United States. The one from New Jersey noted that he was “shocked” by my piece, and added, “someone should tell Akyol that he is dead wrong.” The other one, a lady, expressed “anguish” at me and my “very naive look.” I, she also argued, “cannot be a Turk.”
In response, I am sincerely thankful to such critics, because they present nice case studies of what I have been talking about. I said that there is a popular “cult of Atatürk” in Turkey, whose followers have a “strict mental blueprint” that leads them to “detachment from reality.” And that's precisely what you can find in these annoyed comments.
Cognitive dissonance
Let me show you one example. The first reader, besides bashing me, argued that “dialogue among all people in Turkey should be improved so that no one should be afraid of saying ‘I am proud to be a Turk.'” It is really hard to understand how “dialogue among all people in Turkey” will make everybody proud of being a Turk, but that's the minor issue. The real gem is the presumption that some people in Turkey are afraid of saying, “I am proud to be a Turk.” In fact, in this country, it has never been a problem to say that, and it is in fact an officially sanctioned mantra. The real problem has always been to say that you are proud of being something other than a Turk — such as a Kurd, an Armenian, a Christian, and even a supranational Muslim. (For the record, in 1982, politician Şerafettin Elçi was imprisoned for simply saying, “I am a Kurd and there are Kurds in Turkey.”)
So it is really mind-boggling that our Kemalist reader thinks that “Turkishness” is suppressed in Turkey, while the fact is that Turkishness is the only identity which is not suppressed at all.
If you would like to see more detachment-from-reality in action then take a look at the second reader. She criticized me for criticizing the “I am watching you” motto put on some Atatürk flags. But she got it totally wrong by writing: “It simply means for anyone that understands English language ‘We are following your steps.'” Because the motto I criticized did not mean that Turks follow Atatürk. It rather meant Atatürk watches over the Turks. It was plain clear for anyone who has a grasp of either the English or the Turkish language.
Neither publish nor perish
I won't point out every case of cognitive dissonance in the writings of Kemalist readers. For most unbiased observers, it should be obvious that Kemalism has turned into a dogmatic ideology and its adherents present a pitiable intellectual poverty. The latter phenomenon is visible almost in every field. In the Turkish media, for example, die-hard Kemalist commentators are among the least sophisticated ones. Their columns are full of either dry clichés or angry polemics. In the academia, scholars or faculties who are famed to be devout Kemalists hardly produce anything that would get into international academic literature. (Alas, they neither publish nor perish!) Actually the handful of globally acclaimed Turkish scholars are detested by their Kemalist colleagues at home. Şerif Mardin, who is probably the most prominent Turkish sociologist ever, was boycotted by the all-Kemalist Turkish Sciences Academy (TÜBA), simply for that he is too lenient on religion. Actually in the field of social sciences, Turkey seems to be divided among the fruitful and articulate academics, and the rest, which includes almost all Kemalists.
In literature, the situation is no different: Turkey's globally successful novelists, such as the recent Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk or Elif Şafak, are the ones who have the ability to think outside of the Kemalist box. No wonder they are abhorred by the Kemalists, who explain their achievements by conspiracy theories. They think Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize, for example, because the “imperialists” decided to promote him for “insulting Turkishness.”
For quite some time, I have been pondering what makes the Kemalist mind so shallow. This cannot be related to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk himself, because he was a smart, well-educated and cultured statesman who vigorously promoted science and learning. I believe the problem is in the way he is perceived by his devotees. Since they see him and his period as the source all the wisdom they need, they don't have an urge to understand the world. They think the Supreme Leader already understood it perfectly and all we Turks need to is walk on his righteous path.
The evangelical mind
This line of thinking creates intellectual poverty within any paradigm. Religious fundamentalism is the most obvious example. Indeed religion can be a driving force for intellectual enterprise if it is interpreted in a dynamic way — and that's what gave rise to towering figures such as Averroes (Ibn Rushd) or Newton. But religion would be a mind stopper if its believers think that all they need to study is the life of a holy man and the scripture he brought.
In his famous book "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind," American historian Mark Noll suggests that most evangelical Christians in his country suffer from that misconception. He shows that evangelicals have failed to engage in "the whole spectrum of modern learning, including economics and political science, literary criticism and imaginative writing, historical inquiry and philosophical studies, linguistics and the history of science, social theory and the arts." “The scandal of the evangelical mind,” he concludes, "is that there is not much of an evangelical mind."
I am not an expert on American Christianity, and can't tell whether Noll is right or wrong. But I do know about Kemalism, and this ideology suffers from the same problem he points out. Yes, Kemalism has a “scandal” of its own, too, and it is that that there is not much of a Kemalist mind.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
The Islamic Case for a Secular State -I-
One reason why Turkey's secularist elite is so obsessed with religious practice is their concern about the secularity of the state. If a society becomes more religious, they believe, then the secular system will be less secure. If more Turks follow God's orders in daily life, they ask themselves, why shouldn't they impose them on others using state power?
There is, to be frank, some justification for this worry. There are religious tyrannies in the Muslim world which impose their narrow interpretation of Islam to their citizens. Moreover, there have been groups and individuals in Turkey who talk about doing the same thing.
But there is another crucial fact that most secularists are missing: A pretty valid Islamic argument for a secular state exists, and it is gaining ground in Turkey.
The state of the Prophet
First let me summarize what the argument is. It has become an oft-repeated dictum to say that Islam is a religion which defines not only the heavenly matters but also the earthly ones, and thus it is impossible to reconcile it with a secular system. But this is a half-truth. Yes, Islam defines earthly matters for the individual Muslim and the community of the faithful — but not necessarily for the state.
The distinction goes back to none other than the first Muslim. In the first 13 years of his ministry in Mecca, Prophet Muhammad was only a spiritual guide who relentlessly preached faith in God. Yet when he migrated to Medina, in the face of persecution with fellow believers in 622 AD, he also became a political leader. In the city, there were two distinct groups besides the Muslims: Jews and the polytheists. Soon Prophet Muhammad prepared a document which the other two groups accepted to sign. The charter, known as the “Medina Constitution,” recognized the separate communities in the city and guaranteed everybody a life according to his or her faith. Jewish tribes were "one community with the believers," the document emphasized, while they "have their religion and the Muslims have theirs."
What is striking is that the Prophet of Islam founded not an Islamic polity but a pluralistic one. Under that charter, three faiths existed in the city-state of Medina, but Medina itself did not possess a faith. It was, to risk being a bit anachronistic, a secular state.
The Pax Medina did not last long because the Jews chose to ally with the Meccan pagans who were willing to annihilate the Muslims, and wars broke loose. But the founding idea, at least partly, remained. That's why under Islamic states such as the Ottoman Empire, faiths other than Islam were recognized and given their own space. The shariah (Islamic law) was not the law of the land; it was only the law of the Muslim community while others had their own.
An interesting point to note here is the deviation of contemporary Islamist states from this traditional pluralism of Islam. When Saudi Arabia or the Taliban's Afghanistan impose what they see as Islamic law to virtually anybody within their borders, including non-Muslims, they are imposing the shariah on those who don't accept it in the first place. They are in fact taking a “modern” position, but that's a modernity of a totalitarian kind. And, moreover, their version of shariah is so harsh, bigoted and misogynist that most Muslims find it simply disgusting.
The Ottoman origins of secularism
To see a better example, let's look at how the Ottomans adopted to modernity. Until the 19th century, they did well with the multiple legal systems. Muslim had their owns courts, Jew and Christians had theirs. But as the empire modernized, interaction between religious groups increased and it became very impractical to keep multiple legal codes. What would happen when a Muslim sued a Christian or vice versa? This was a rare event in the 16th century perhaps, but a growingly common one with the rise of modern economy. Moreover Christians of the empire were being influenced by the novel ideas of equality and liberty.
That's why the Ottoman state founded the secular “nizamiye” courts and introduced a new law that would appeal equally to all Ottoman citizens regardless of their faith. Under the auspices of the Sultan/Caliph Abdulhamid II, Ahmet Cevdet Paşa, an Islamic scholar and a top bureaucrat, prepared the Mecelle, which was a civil code that included some Islamic elements, especially in family code, but also was secular to quite an extent. Cevdet Paşa referred to the juristic rule, “as time changes, laws should change, too” in order to update Islamic codes and bring in modern elements. Turkey abandoned Mecelle in 1926, but it remained in practice in many post-Ottoman states — even in Israel, at least formally, until 1984.
What the Ottomans did with Mecelle was to create a law for all citizens regardless of their creed. Yet they did this not by extending the sphere of Islamic law to non-Muslims, but rather by minimizing that sphere and extending that of the secular one. That's why Italian legalist Rossella Bottoni regards it as an important step in her article on “The Origins of Secularism in Turkey.”
What is striking is that these Ottoman origins of secularity were also Islamically justified ones. Neither Ahmet Cevdet Paşa nor other Ottoman reformers were bringing in secular law because they had a problem with Islam. They are just faithful Muslims who were adapting to temporal realities. But there were other people who did have a problem with Islam, or with any religion, because of their commitment to philosophical materialism. And their secularism would be quite different from the secularity of the believers.
COMING NEXT: How the idea of secularity flourished among Turkey's Muslim intellectuals.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
There is, to be frank, some justification for this worry. There are religious tyrannies in the Muslim world which impose their narrow interpretation of Islam to their citizens. Moreover, there have been groups and individuals in Turkey who talk about doing the same thing.
But there is another crucial fact that most secularists are missing: A pretty valid Islamic argument for a secular state exists, and it is gaining ground in Turkey.
The state of the Prophet
First let me summarize what the argument is. It has become an oft-repeated dictum to say that Islam is a religion which defines not only the heavenly matters but also the earthly ones, and thus it is impossible to reconcile it with a secular system. But this is a half-truth. Yes, Islam defines earthly matters for the individual Muslim and the community of the faithful — but not necessarily for the state.
The distinction goes back to none other than the first Muslim. In the first 13 years of his ministry in Mecca, Prophet Muhammad was only a spiritual guide who relentlessly preached faith in God. Yet when he migrated to Medina, in the face of persecution with fellow believers in 622 AD, he also became a political leader. In the city, there were two distinct groups besides the Muslims: Jews and the polytheists. Soon Prophet Muhammad prepared a document which the other two groups accepted to sign. The charter, known as the “Medina Constitution,” recognized the separate communities in the city and guaranteed everybody a life according to his or her faith. Jewish tribes were "one community with the believers," the document emphasized, while they "have their religion and the Muslims have theirs."
What is striking is that the Prophet of Islam founded not an Islamic polity but a pluralistic one. Under that charter, three faiths existed in the city-state of Medina, but Medina itself did not possess a faith. It was, to risk being a bit anachronistic, a secular state.
The Pax Medina did not last long because the Jews chose to ally with the Meccan pagans who were willing to annihilate the Muslims, and wars broke loose. But the founding idea, at least partly, remained. That's why under Islamic states such as the Ottoman Empire, faiths other than Islam were recognized and given their own space. The shariah (Islamic law) was not the law of the land; it was only the law of the Muslim community while others had their own.
An interesting point to note here is the deviation of contemporary Islamist states from this traditional pluralism of Islam. When Saudi Arabia or the Taliban's Afghanistan impose what they see as Islamic law to virtually anybody within their borders, including non-Muslims, they are imposing the shariah on those who don't accept it in the first place. They are in fact taking a “modern” position, but that's a modernity of a totalitarian kind. And, moreover, their version of shariah is so harsh, bigoted and misogynist that most Muslims find it simply disgusting.
The Ottoman origins of secularism
To see a better example, let's look at how the Ottomans adopted to modernity. Until the 19th century, they did well with the multiple legal systems. Muslim had their owns courts, Jew and Christians had theirs. But as the empire modernized, interaction between religious groups increased and it became very impractical to keep multiple legal codes. What would happen when a Muslim sued a Christian or vice versa? This was a rare event in the 16th century perhaps, but a growingly common one with the rise of modern economy. Moreover Christians of the empire were being influenced by the novel ideas of equality and liberty.
That's why the Ottoman state founded the secular “nizamiye” courts and introduced a new law that would appeal equally to all Ottoman citizens regardless of their faith. Under the auspices of the Sultan/Caliph Abdulhamid II, Ahmet Cevdet Paşa, an Islamic scholar and a top bureaucrat, prepared the Mecelle, which was a civil code that included some Islamic elements, especially in family code, but also was secular to quite an extent. Cevdet Paşa referred to the juristic rule, “as time changes, laws should change, too” in order to update Islamic codes and bring in modern elements. Turkey abandoned Mecelle in 1926, but it remained in practice in many post-Ottoman states — even in Israel, at least formally, until 1984.
What the Ottomans did with Mecelle was to create a law for all citizens regardless of their creed. Yet they did this not by extending the sphere of Islamic law to non-Muslims, but rather by minimizing that sphere and extending that of the secular one. That's why Italian legalist Rossella Bottoni regards it as an important step in her article on “The Origins of Secularism in Turkey.”
What is striking is that these Ottoman origins of secularity were also Islamically justified ones. Neither Ahmet Cevdet Paşa nor other Ottoman reformers were bringing in secular law because they had a problem with Islam. They are just faithful Muslims who were adapting to temporal realities. But there were other people who did have a problem with Islam, or with any religion, because of their commitment to philosophical materialism. And their secularism would be quite different from the secularity of the believers.
COMING NEXT: How the idea of secularity flourished among Turkey's Muslim intellectuals.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
Call It 'Mis-Islamic Terrorism'
According to a Reuters news story, "The European Union is reviewing the language it uses to describe terrorists who claim to act in the name of Islam. "Certainly 'Islamic terrorism' is something we will not use", an EU official is reported to have said, "we talk about 'terrorists who abusively invoke Islam'."
That's a fair approach. Terrorists ? those who attack civilian targets ? certainly misuse Islam for their political causes. Islam has the tradition of a just war, to be sure, but never allows violence against noncombatants. As I have explained in my previous writings, (see, Terror's Roots Not in Islam, Still Standing For Islam - and Against Terrorism, and Bolshevism in a Headdress) what the term "Islamic terrorism" suggests ? that Islam is the root of the terrorisms at hand ? is massively wrong.
So, since we need better term, consider "mis-Islamic terrorism." Its semantics would acknowledge the fact that what Al Qaeda and its ilk are doing has something to do with Islam, but in a distorted way. And the cure would be to save Islam from this distortion and define it as what it really is: A path to God and a call for peace.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
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Etiketler: Fundamentalism (Islamic)
The Koran and Non-Muslims—Facts Versus Myths
Many years ago, I came across a book, which claimed to explain “Israeli terrorism” in the light of the Hebrew Scriptures. It was full of photos showing Israeli soldiers attacking and harassing Palestinians, and presented huge captions that included verses from the Old Testament, and especially the Book of Joshua. If the Israelis were breaking the bones of a Palestinian youngster — a globally notorious scene from the ‘80s — then the caption would include a verse with something like “Thou shall break their bones.” The book's argument was blunt and simple: The Israelis were torturing a nation because that was what their religion ordered them to do.
The more I learned about the Old Testament and the politics of the Middle East, the more I realized that what the book presented was not analysis but anti-Semitic propaganda. It is true that Israel's 40-year-long occupation is a pretty brutal one, and that the Old Testament included some belligerent passages, but the reality was much more complex. I noticed that Jewish religious sources also include many words of wisdom and compassion, and that there are so many Jews who are willing to have peace with their Arab neighbors. Indeed the militants who advocate and even practice violence in the name of Judaism — as CNN's Christian Amanpour recently exposed in her superb documentary, “God's Warriors” — are pretty marginal. Moreover, the source of their hatred is actually not the confrontational passages of the Torah, but the political and social situation that they are in.
In other words, they go angry and violent not because they read their religious texts, but because they focus on the harsher parts of those texts since they are already angry and violent for a myriad of reasons.
The Sloganization of Scripture
In recent years, I often recall my experience with that anti-Semitic book and the way it misread the Hebrew Scriptures, because I see that more and more people are doing the same thing with the Koran. When Islamic terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda bomb innocents, or when some fringe imam in a radical mosque preaches hatred toward non-Muslims, these greenhorn “Islam experts” find some passages in the Koran, which apparently justify such extremists. No wonder that these extremists themselves refer to similar passages in the Koran or other Islamic sources. The situation is very similar to the strange agreement between the anti-Semites and the Jewish terrorists on the wrong notion that Judaism justifies carnage.
One common problem in all such misreading of the scriptures is the “sloganization” of certain verses or passages. This is done by taking a part of the holy text out of its textual and historical context, and turning into a slogan that will justify a mundane political agenda. For example, some Islamic revolutionaries, especially the ones who are inspired by the Iranian Revolution of 1979, used to find a political message in this verse: “Those who do wrong will come to know by what a great reverse they will be overturned!” (26:227) But in fact the verse speaks about the punishment that God will hand down to unbelievers on judgment day.
The crucial mistake here is to overlook Islam's scholarly tradition called “tafseer,” which is the study of the meaning of the Koran. Tafseer has a basic rule: A single verse or passage can't be understood in itself; it has to be evaluated according to the other parts of the Koran, the general goals and principles of the holy text, and the way it was implemented by the prophet. Yet most radicals — whether they be Islamist or anti-Islamist — don't have the time to waste with tafseer. They rather copy-paste the divine words to make powerful slogans.
Enter non-Muslims
All of these came to my mind when I read the latest piece by fellow columnist Burak Bekdil. He was expressing his suspicions about the AKP government, and Turkey's “intellectual Muslims,” and the way that they have become friends with the West. This was weird, and perhaps “a tactical cooperation with the condemned,” according to Mr. Bekdil, because he was pretty sure that the Koran condemned non-Muslims. He confidently quoted some verses such as the one, which read, “O (Muslim) believers! Don't make friends with the Jews or Christians.” (5:51)
Interestingly some marginal anti-EU Islamic groups in Turkey — such as the one led by “Professor” Haydar Baş — use the same verses to make the case for an anti-Western Muslim agenda. Yet, like Mr. Bekdil, they overlook the traditional tools of tafseer, and especially other passages of the Koran, such as this crucial one:
“(Muslims!) God does not forbid you from being good to those who have not fought you in religion or driven you from your homes, or from being just towards them. God loves those who are just. God merely forbids you from taking as friends those who have fought you in religion and driven you from your homes and who supported your expulsion. Any who take them as friends are wrongdoers.” (60:8-9)
One should also note the Koranic verse which tells that “all who have faith in God and the Last Day and act rightly” including “those who are Jews, and the Christians” will be rewarded by God in afterlife. (2:62) In other words, the Koran does not denounce Jewish and Christians an “unbelievers,” as it is often thought. It actually says that the existence of different religions on earth is in accordance with the divine will: “Had God willed,” the Koran reminds, “He could have made you one community.” (5:48)
That's why Mr. Bekdil doesn't need to suspect the authenticity of the friendship between Turkey's Muslims and non-Muslims including the Christians. Although the EU process and the westward-looking policy of the AKP is mostly an issue of political, social and economic realities, it does not bear the theological inconsistency he presumes.
Nor the religious militants have the theological justification they presume that they have. But to expose that, we need to go beyond slogans and try to understand what God has really said — whether His words be in Hebrew, Greek or Arabic.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
That's a fair approach. Terrorists ? those who attack civilian targets ? certainly misuse Islam for their political causes. Islam has the tradition of a just war, to be sure, but never allows violence against noncombatants. As I have explained in my previous writings, (see, Terror's Roots Not in Islam, Still Standing For Islam - and Against Terrorism, and Bolshevism in a Headdress) what the term "Islamic terrorism" suggests ? that Islam is the root of the terrorisms at hand ? is massively wrong.
So, since we need better term, consider "mis-Islamic terrorism." Its semantics would acknowledge the fact that what Al Qaeda and its ilk are doing has something to do with Islam, but in a distorted way. And the cure would be to save Islam from this distortion and define it as what it really is: A path to God and a call for peace.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
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Etiketler: Fundamentalism (Islamic)
The Koran and Non-Muslims—Facts Versus Myths
Many years ago, I came across a book, which claimed to explain “Israeli terrorism” in the light of the Hebrew Scriptures. It was full of photos showing Israeli soldiers attacking and harassing Palestinians, and presented huge captions that included verses from the Old Testament, and especially the Book of Joshua. If the Israelis were breaking the bones of a Palestinian youngster — a globally notorious scene from the ‘80s — then the caption would include a verse with something like “Thou shall break their bones.” The book's argument was blunt and simple: The Israelis were torturing a nation because that was what their religion ordered them to do.
The more I learned about the Old Testament and the politics of the Middle East, the more I realized that what the book presented was not analysis but anti-Semitic propaganda. It is true that Israel's 40-year-long occupation is a pretty brutal one, and that the Old Testament included some belligerent passages, but the reality was much more complex. I noticed that Jewish religious sources also include many words of wisdom and compassion, and that there are so many Jews who are willing to have peace with their Arab neighbors. Indeed the militants who advocate and even practice violence in the name of Judaism — as CNN's Christian Amanpour recently exposed in her superb documentary, “God's Warriors” — are pretty marginal. Moreover, the source of their hatred is actually not the confrontational passages of the Torah, but the political and social situation that they are in.
In other words, they go angry and violent not because they read their religious texts, but because they focus on the harsher parts of those texts since they are already angry and violent for a myriad of reasons.
The Sloganization of Scripture
In recent years, I often recall my experience with that anti-Semitic book and the way it misread the Hebrew Scriptures, because I see that more and more people are doing the same thing with the Koran. When Islamic terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda bomb innocents, or when some fringe imam in a radical mosque preaches hatred toward non-Muslims, these greenhorn “Islam experts” find some passages in the Koran, which apparently justify such extremists. No wonder that these extremists themselves refer to similar passages in the Koran or other Islamic sources. The situation is very similar to the strange agreement between the anti-Semites and the Jewish terrorists on the wrong notion that Judaism justifies carnage.
One common problem in all such misreading of the scriptures is the “sloganization” of certain verses or passages. This is done by taking a part of the holy text out of its textual and historical context, and turning into a slogan that will justify a mundane political agenda. For example, some Islamic revolutionaries, especially the ones who are inspired by the Iranian Revolution of 1979, used to find a political message in this verse: “Those who do wrong will come to know by what a great reverse they will be overturned!” (26:227) But in fact the verse speaks about the punishment that God will hand down to unbelievers on judgment day.
The crucial mistake here is to overlook Islam's scholarly tradition called “tafseer,” which is the study of the meaning of the Koran. Tafseer has a basic rule: A single verse or passage can't be understood in itself; it has to be evaluated according to the other parts of the Koran, the general goals and principles of the holy text, and the way it was implemented by the prophet. Yet most radicals — whether they be Islamist or anti-Islamist — don't have the time to waste with tafseer. They rather copy-paste the divine words to make powerful slogans.
Enter non-Muslims
All of these came to my mind when I read the latest piece by fellow columnist Burak Bekdil. He was expressing his suspicions about the AKP government, and Turkey's “intellectual Muslims,” and the way that they have become friends with the West. This was weird, and perhaps “a tactical cooperation with the condemned,” according to Mr. Bekdil, because he was pretty sure that the Koran condemned non-Muslims. He confidently quoted some verses such as the one, which read, “O (Muslim) believers! Don't make friends with the Jews or Christians.” (5:51)
Interestingly some marginal anti-EU Islamic groups in Turkey — such as the one led by “Professor” Haydar Baş — use the same verses to make the case for an anti-Western Muslim agenda. Yet, like Mr. Bekdil, they overlook the traditional tools of tafseer, and especially other passages of the Koran, such as this crucial one:
“(Muslims!) God does not forbid you from being good to those who have not fought you in religion or driven you from your homes, or from being just towards them. God loves those who are just. God merely forbids you from taking as friends those who have fought you in religion and driven you from your homes and who supported your expulsion. Any who take them as friends are wrongdoers.” (60:8-9)
One should also note the Koranic verse which tells that “all who have faith in God and the Last Day and act rightly” including “those who are Jews, and the Christians” will be rewarded by God in afterlife. (2:62) In other words, the Koran does not denounce Jewish and Christians an “unbelievers,” as it is often thought. It actually says that the existence of different religions on earth is in accordance with the divine will: “Had God willed,” the Koran reminds, “He could have made you one community.” (5:48)
That's why Mr. Bekdil doesn't need to suspect the authenticity of the friendship between Turkey's Muslims and non-Muslims including the Christians. Although the EU process and the westward-looking policy of the AKP is mostly an issue of political, social and economic realities, it does not bear the theological inconsistency he presumes.
Nor the religious militants have the theological justification they presume that they have. But to expose that, we need to go beyond slogans and try to understand what God has really said — whether His words be in Hebrew, Greek or Arabic.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
A Muslim Manifesto—Against Violence & Tyranny in the Name of Islam
[Co-authored with Zeyno Baran and originally published in National Review Online and Der Spiegel; also see The Muslim Manifesto website]
"Who are the moderate Muslims, and why do they not speak up?" After being asked this question over and over again since 9/11, particularly after the Danish cartoon crisis, we decided to propose the following Muslim Manifesto:
Recently, the disrespectful cartoons about Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) published in Jyllands-Posten resulted in an extreme reaction among many Muslims worldwide. While we understand the feelings of our co-religionists, we strongly urge them to refrain from rage and violence.
A zeal for Allah is rightful only when it is expressed in an enlightened manner, since Allah himself has ordained a restrained response. When the early Muslims were mocked by their pagan contemporaries, the Koran ordered not a violent backlash, but rather a civilized disapproval: "When you hear Allah's verses being rejected and mocked at by people, you must not sit with them till they start talking of other things." (Koran 4:140) The Koran also describes Muslims as "those who control their rage and pardon other people, [because] Allah loves the good-doers." (3:134) Therefore all demonstrations against the mockery of Islam should be peaceful. All critiques of Islam should be countered not by threats and violence, but by rational counter-argument.
We also believe that terrorist acts can never be justified or excused. None of the challenges Muslims face, such as oppression or military occupation, can justify attacks against non-combatants. In the Holy Koran, Allah orders Muslims to "never let hatred of anyone lead you into the sin of deviating from justice." (5:8) The true Islamic sense of justice is well-established in the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh); even in time of war � let alone peace � Muslim soldiers should never "kill the old, the infant, the child, or the woman." Those who do so are not martyrs, but cold-blooded murderers.
Supported by the Koran's affirmation that "there is no compulsion in religion" (2:256), we cherish religious liberty. Every human has the right to believe or not to believe in Islam or in any other religion All Muslims furthermore have the right to reject and change their religion if desired. No state, community or individual has a right to impose Islam on others. People should accept and practice Islam not because they are forced to do so, but because they believe in its teachings.
We support and cherish democracy � not because we reject the sovereignty of the Almighty over people, but because we believe that this sovereignty is manifested in the general will of people in a democratic and pluralistic society. We do not accept theocratic rule-not because we do not wish to obey Allah, but because theocratic rule inevitably becomes rule by fallible (and sometimes corrupt and misguided) humans in the name of the infallible God.
We accept the legitimacy of the secular state and the secular law. Islamic law, or sharia, was developed at a time when Muslims were living in homogenous communities. In the modern world, virtually all societies are pluralistic, consisting of different faiths and of different perceptions of each faith, including Islam. In this pluralistic setting, a legal system based on a particular version of a single religion cannot be imposed on all citizens. Thus, a single secular law, open to all religions but based on none, is strongly needed.
We believe that women have the same inalienable rights as men. We strongly denounce laws and attitudes in some Islamic societies that exclude women from society by denying them the rights of education, political participation and the individual pursuit of happiness. Like men, women should have the right to decide how they will live, dress, travel, marry and divorce; if they do not enjoy these rights, they are clearly second-class citizens.
We believe that there is no contradiction between religious and national identities. Any Muslim should be able to embrace the citizenship of any modern secular state while maintaining feelings of spiritual solidarity with the umma, the global Muslim community.
We regard Christianity and Judaism as sister faiths in the common family of Abrahamic monotheism. We strongly denounce anti-Semitism, which has been alien to Islam for many centuries but which unfortunately has gained popularity among some Muslims in recent decades. We accept Israel's right to exist, as well as the justified aspiration of the Palestinian people for a sovereign state and hope that a just two-state solution in Israel/Palestine will bring peace to the Holy Land.
In short, we strongly disagree with and condemn those who promote or practice tyranny and violence in the name of Islam. We hope that their misguided deeds will not blacken our noble religion � which is indeed a path to God and a call for peace.
We encourage Muslim political, social, community and business leaders to contact us at info@muslimmanifesto.org to sign onto the Manifesto so that the authentic peaceful and civilized message of Islam will be heard.
Mustafa Akyol is a writer and journalist based in Turkey; Zeyno Baran is director of International Security and Energy Programs at The Nixon Center.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
"Who are the moderate Muslims, and why do they not speak up?" After being asked this question over and over again since 9/11, particularly after the Danish cartoon crisis, we decided to propose the following Muslim Manifesto:
Recently, the disrespectful cartoons about Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) published in Jyllands-Posten resulted in an extreme reaction among many Muslims worldwide. While we understand the feelings of our co-religionists, we strongly urge them to refrain from rage and violence.
A zeal for Allah is rightful only when it is expressed in an enlightened manner, since Allah himself has ordained a restrained response. When the early Muslims were mocked by their pagan contemporaries, the Koran ordered not a violent backlash, but rather a civilized disapproval: "When you hear Allah's verses being rejected and mocked at by people, you must not sit with them till they start talking of other things." (Koran 4:140) The Koran also describes Muslims as "those who control their rage and pardon other people, [because] Allah loves the good-doers." (3:134) Therefore all demonstrations against the mockery of Islam should be peaceful. All critiques of Islam should be countered not by threats and violence, but by rational counter-argument.
We also believe that terrorist acts can never be justified or excused. None of the challenges Muslims face, such as oppression or military occupation, can justify attacks against non-combatants. In the Holy Koran, Allah orders Muslims to "never let hatred of anyone lead you into the sin of deviating from justice." (5:8) The true Islamic sense of justice is well-established in the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh); even in time of war � let alone peace � Muslim soldiers should never "kill the old, the infant, the child, or the woman." Those who do so are not martyrs, but cold-blooded murderers.
Supported by the Koran's affirmation that "there is no compulsion in religion" (2:256), we cherish religious liberty. Every human has the right to believe or not to believe in Islam or in any other religion All Muslims furthermore have the right to reject and change their religion if desired. No state, community or individual has a right to impose Islam on others. People should accept and practice Islam not because they are forced to do so, but because they believe in its teachings.
We support and cherish democracy � not because we reject the sovereignty of the Almighty over people, but because we believe that this sovereignty is manifested in the general will of people in a democratic and pluralistic society. We do not accept theocratic rule-not because we do not wish to obey Allah, but because theocratic rule inevitably becomes rule by fallible (and sometimes corrupt and misguided) humans in the name of the infallible God.
We accept the legitimacy of the secular state and the secular law. Islamic law, or sharia, was developed at a time when Muslims were living in homogenous communities. In the modern world, virtually all societies are pluralistic, consisting of different faiths and of different perceptions of each faith, including Islam. In this pluralistic setting, a legal system based on a particular version of a single religion cannot be imposed on all citizens. Thus, a single secular law, open to all religions but based on none, is strongly needed.
We believe that women have the same inalienable rights as men. We strongly denounce laws and attitudes in some Islamic societies that exclude women from society by denying them the rights of education, political participation and the individual pursuit of happiness. Like men, women should have the right to decide how they will live, dress, travel, marry and divorce; if they do not enjoy these rights, they are clearly second-class citizens.
We believe that there is no contradiction between religious and national identities. Any Muslim should be able to embrace the citizenship of any modern secular state while maintaining feelings of spiritual solidarity with the umma, the global Muslim community.
We regard Christianity and Judaism as sister faiths in the common family of Abrahamic monotheism. We strongly denounce anti-Semitism, which has been alien to Islam for many centuries but which unfortunately has gained popularity among some Muslims in recent decades. We accept Israel's right to exist, as well as the justified aspiration of the Palestinian people for a sovereign state and hope that a just two-state solution in Israel/Palestine will bring peace to the Holy Land.
In short, we strongly disagree with and condemn those who promote or practice tyranny and violence in the name of Islam. We hope that their misguided deeds will not blacken our noble religion � which is indeed a path to God and a call for peace.
We encourage Muslim political, social, community and business leaders to contact us at info@muslimmanifesto.org to sign onto the Manifesto so that the authentic peaceful and civilized message of Islam will be heard.
Mustafa Akyol is a writer and journalist based in Turkey; Zeyno Baran is director of International Security and Energy Programs at The Nixon Center.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
What Would the Caliph Do?
Al Qaeda?s stated goal?to reestablish the caliphate, the political leadership of worldwide Islam embodied first in the successors of the Prophet Mohammed and most recently in the four-century rule of the Ottoman dynasty?is pure, ahistorical fantasy. One way to appreciate this is to revisit the 33-year reign of the most remarkable modern caliph, Sultan Abdulhamid II (1876-1909). An ally neither of bigoted Islamists nor of the radical secularists who ultimately deposed him, Abdulhamid was an Islamic modernizer?and, interestingly, a friend of the United States.
Abdulhamid emphasized the role of Islam inside the Ottoman Empire, and he emerged as the protector of Muslims around the world, from India to sub-Saharan Africa. He pressed for a new railway to the holy places of Mecca and Medina and sent emissaries to distant countries preaching Islam. Because of these policies, once called ?pan-Islamism,? he is still revered among conservative Muslims.
His principal political opponents were the Young Turks, inspired by the fashionable European and especially French ideas of the time. They portrayed the caliph as a despot, and the description stuck. While it is true that Abdulhamid suspended the constitution of 1876 for decades, he did so not out of any contempt for democracy, but out of justified fear of the Young Turks? autocratic ambitions. Although they espoused the rhetoric of Libert鬠Egalit鬠Fraternit鼯em>, they had strong authoritarian tendencies. As Princeton historian Sukru Hanioglu explains, their worldview was based on ?biological materialism, positivism, Social Darwinism and Gustave Le Bon?s elitism,? all of which led them to regard egalitarianism as ?unscientific.?
Another Princeton scholar, the dean of Middle Eastern history, Bernard Lewis, writes that ?Abdulhamid was far from being the blind, uncompromising, complete reactionary of the historical legend; on the contrary, he was a willing and active modernizer.? In areas such as education, commerce, finance, diplomacy, central government administration, journalism, translation, and even theater, he accomplished significant reforms. He founded the first archaeology museum, public library, faculty of medicine, academy of fine arts, and schools of finance and agriculture. He endowed the empire with the telegraph, railroads, and factories, and during his reign, Constantinople flourished as a world capital.
Unlike subsequent modernizers, however, Abdulhamid developed an Islamicly legitimate way forward. Personally observant, he practiced Sufism, the mystical tradition of Islam. Yet he also had Western tastes; he loved playing the piano, and arranged piano lessons for his daughter. He enjoyed opera, too, and had the famous Belgian soprano Blanche Arral perform for him.
With some notable exceptions?such as the harsh repression of Armenian insurgents by irregular forces authorized by the sultan in 1895-6?Abdulhamid was on good terms with his non-Muslim subjects, of whom a record number entered government service. Ahmet Midhat, who has been called a sort of Turkish Edmund Burke, was Abdulhamid?s favorite intellectual. Midhat argued that Islam respects Christianity and Judaism, emphasizing how the empire welcomed the Jews expelled from Catholic Spain in 1492. And he defended the emancipation and education of women.
Abdulhamid?s attempt to marry Islam and modernity was cut short by the Young Turks in 1909. Although secular in outlook, they proved willing to exploit Islamic concepts for political ends. Abdulhamid never waged a jihad; the Young Turks, on the advice of their new allies, the Germans, launched a global jihad in 1915 against Britain and its allies. Alas, the dethroned and interned caliph had warned them that they should align the empire with Britain, which controlled the seas and so would inevitably triumph. Britain did triumph, and this brought the Ottoman Empire to an end.
Abdulhamid?s relationship with the United States as a Caliph further demolishes the notion that contemporary Islamist terrorists are on the path of the Caliphate. In contrast with the aggressively secularist Westernizers who believed that the only hope for progress was to get rid of religion entirely, Abdulhamid saw that the West was not monolithic. In particular, as Kemal Karpat, Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin explains, he studied the American separation of church and state, which he regarded as consistent with Islamic principles. (The Ottoman Empire was not a theocracy in the sense of being governed by clerics; indeed, it developed a de facto separation between the religious and temporal authorities.)
At the very beginning of his reign, Abdulhamid observed the centennial of American independence by sending a large number of Ottoman books to be exhibited at Philadelphia and subsequently donated to New York University. Later, he was the first foreign head of state to receive an invitation to the Columbian Exposition of 1893, held in Chicago, to honor the four-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America. Although he did not personally attend, a total of one thousand people from Jerusalem alone visited the exposition. The World Parliament of Religions held its inaugural meeting in Chicago at the same time, and the sultan?s representatives exhibited a large number of Ottoman wares and built a miniature mosque.
Because Abdulhamid believed that American prosperity had resulted partly from a good accounting of the population and efficient management of national resources, he asked Samuel Sullivan Cox, the American ambassador in Constantinople and the organizer of the first modern U.S. census, to introduce the Turks to the study of statistics, one of the first of the exact sciences to be established in the Ottoman Empire.
Beyond such cultural exchanges, actual Ottoman-American cooperation in foreign policy took place in the face of the Muslim insurgency in the U.S.-occupied Philippines. The American ambassador to Turkey Oscar S. Straus (a Jewish diplomat, incidentally, who was welcomed by the Abdulhamid regime at a time when his colleague, A. M. Keiley, was declared persona non grata by the Austro-Hungarian authorities simply for ?being of Jewish parenthood?) received a letter from Secretary of State John Hay in the spring of 1899. Secretary Hay wondered whether ?the Sultan under the circumstances might be prevailed upon to instruct the Mohammedans of the Philippines, who had always resisted Spain, to come willingly under our control.? Straus then paid a visit to the sultan and showed him Article 21 of a treaty between Tripoli and the United States which read:
As the government of the United States of America . . . has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility of Musselmans; and as the said states never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the partners that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony between the two countries.
Pleased with the article, Abdulhamid stated, in regard to the Philippines, that the ?Mohammedans in question recognized him as Caliph of the Moslems and he felt sure they would follow his advice.? Two Sulu chiefs who were in Mecca at the time were informed that the caliph and the American ambassador had reached a definite understanding that the Muslims ?would not be disturbed in the practice of their religion if they would promptly place themselves under the control of the American army.? Subsequently, Ambassador Straus wrote, the ?Sulu Mohammedans . . . refused to join the insurrectionists and had placed themselves under the control of our army, thereby recognizing American sovereignty.?
This account is supported by an article written by Lt. Col. John P. Finley (who had been the American governor of Zamboanga Province in the Philippines for ten years) and published in the April 1915 issue of the Journal of Race Development. Finley wrote:
At the beginning of the war with Spain the United States Government was not aware of the existence of any Mohammedans in the Philippines. When this fact was discovered and communicated to our ambassador in Turkey, Oscar S. Straus, of New York, he at once saw the possibilities which lay before us of a holy war. . . . [H]e sought and gained an audience with the Sultan, Abdul Hamid, and requested him as Caliph of the Moslem religion to act in behalf of the followers of Islam in the Philippines. . . . The Sultan as Caliph caused a message to be sent to the Mohammedans of the Philippine Islands forbidding them to enter into any hostilities against the Americans, inasmuch as no interference with their religion would be allowed under American rule.
Later, President McKinley sent a personal letter of thanks to Ambassador Straus for his excellent work, declaring that it had saved the United States ?at least twenty-thousand troops in the field.? All thanks to the caliph, Abdulhamid II.
Such acts of statesmanship make painfully obvious that if there are any religious leaders in the Muslim world today who walk in the footsteps of the great caliph, they are not the terrorist leaders of al Qaeda, but rather the peace-makers such as Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who have been trying to defuse the violence in Iraq by cooperating with coalition forces and calming fellow Muslims. When terrorists like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his big brother Osama bin Laden portray themselves as warriors for the caliphate, they totally misrepresent the historical meaning and function of this Islamic institution. What they do is ?hijack? the caliphate?to borrow a term from President Bush?as much as the faith it represents.
The caliphate was abolished in March 1924 by that supreme secularizer Mustafa Kemal, the Young Turk hero of World War I and of the Turkish war of liberation. Despite strong opposition in the Turkish National Parliament, Kemal dethroned and expelled the last caliph, Abdulmecid Efendi, a cousin of Abdulhamid, and outlawed all Islamic institutions including the Sufi orders. The 1,300-year-old leadership of Islam was destroyed overnight.
Today many Turks see this act as a great leap forward in Turkey?s modernization. Yet it also had terrible side effects. The religious Kurds, who had been loyal to the Ottoman state for centuries, mainly out of Islamic brotherhood, were shaken. In 1925, a group of them revolted against secular Turkey with the aim of reestablishing the caliphate. They were crushed, and this trauma was the genesis of Turkey?s never-ending Kurdish question.
Indeed, the excesses of the Kemalist revolution poisoned the very notion of modernization for many devout Muslims all over the world. Reza Shah Pahlevi of Iran, inspired by Kemal, became an even more enthusiastic secularizer and tried to de-Islamicize his society by force?ordering police, for example, to rip the veils off women in the streets. The response, in the long run, would be Ayatollah Khomeini.
And in the Sunni Arab world, the end of the caliphate left a vacuum of authority that was filled by myriad radical, revolutionary, or fundamentalist movements. The worst was Wahhabism, the product of a revolt against the Ottoman Empire in the 18th century which the caliphs suppressed. In the post-caliphate disorder, Wahhabism found fertile ground for spreading its antimodern and inhumane distortion of Islam.
One antidote to that violent heresy is to recover the spirit of Islamic modernity personified by the piano-playing Sufi, Abdulhamid II. There really is a third way between the spurning of all faith and militant Islamism, and that is what the Islamic world needs today.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
Abdulhamid emphasized the role of Islam inside the Ottoman Empire, and he emerged as the protector of Muslims around the world, from India to sub-Saharan Africa. He pressed for a new railway to the holy places of Mecca and Medina and sent emissaries to distant countries preaching Islam. Because of these policies, once called ?pan-Islamism,? he is still revered among conservative Muslims.
His principal political opponents were the Young Turks, inspired by the fashionable European and especially French ideas of the time. They portrayed the caliph as a despot, and the description stuck. While it is true that Abdulhamid suspended the constitution of 1876 for decades, he did so not out of any contempt for democracy, but out of justified fear of the Young Turks? autocratic ambitions. Although they espoused the rhetoric of Libert鬠Egalit鬠Fraternit鼯em>, they had strong authoritarian tendencies. As Princeton historian Sukru Hanioglu explains, their worldview was based on ?biological materialism, positivism, Social Darwinism and Gustave Le Bon?s elitism,? all of which led them to regard egalitarianism as ?unscientific.?
Another Princeton scholar, the dean of Middle Eastern history, Bernard Lewis, writes that ?Abdulhamid was far from being the blind, uncompromising, complete reactionary of the historical legend; on the contrary, he was a willing and active modernizer.? In areas such as education, commerce, finance, diplomacy, central government administration, journalism, translation, and even theater, he accomplished significant reforms. He founded the first archaeology museum, public library, faculty of medicine, academy of fine arts, and schools of finance and agriculture. He endowed the empire with the telegraph, railroads, and factories, and during his reign, Constantinople flourished as a world capital.
Unlike subsequent modernizers, however, Abdulhamid developed an Islamicly legitimate way forward. Personally observant, he practiced Sufism, the mystical tradition of Islam. Yet he also had Western tastes; he loved playing the piano, and arranged piano lessons for his daughter. He enjoyed opera, too, and had the famous Belgian soprano Blanche Arral perform for him.
With some notable exceptions?such as the harsh repression of Armenian insurgents by irregular forces authorized by the sultan in 1895-6?Abdulhamid was on good terms with his non-Muslim subjects, of whom a record number entered government service. Ahmet Midhat, who has been called a sort of Turkish Edmund Burke, was Abdulhamid?s favorite intellectual. Midhat argued that Islam respects Christianity and Judaism, emphasizing how the empire welcomed the Jews expelled from Catholic Spain in 1492. And he defended the emancipation and education of women.
Abdulhamid?s attempt to marry Islam and modernity was cut short by the Young Turks in 1909. Although secular in outlook, they proved willing to exploit Islamic concepts for political ends. Abdulhamid never waged a jihad; the Young Turks, on the advice of their new allies, the Germans, launched a global jihad in 1915 against Britain and its allies. Alas, the dethroned and interned caliph had warned them that they should align the empire with Britain, which controlled the seas and so would inevitably triumph. Britain did triumph, and this brought the Ottoman Empire to an end.
Abdulhamid?s relationship with the United States as a Caliph further demolishes the notion that contemporary Islamist terrorists are on the path of the Caliphate. In contrast with the aggressively secularist Westernizers who believed that the only hope for progress was to get rid of religion entirely, Abdulhamid saw that the West was not monolithic. In particular, as Kemal Karpat, Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin explains, he studied the American separation of church and state, which he regarded as consistent with Islamic principles. (The Ottoman Empire was not a theocracy in the sense of being governed by clerics; indeed, it developed a de facto separation between the religious and temporal authorities.)
At the very beginning of his reign, Abdulhamid observed the centennial of American independence by sending a large number of Ottoman books to be exhibited at Philadelphia and subsequently donated to New York University. Later, he was the first foreign head of state to receive an invitation to the Columbian Exposition of 1893, held in Chicago, to honor the four-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America. Although he did not personally attend, a total of one thousand people from Jerusalem alone visited the exposition. The World Parliament of Religions held its inaugural meeting in Chicago at the same time, and the sultan?s representatives exhibited a large number of Ottoman wares and built a miniature mosque.
Because Abdulhamid believed that American prosperity had resulted partly from a good accounting of the population and efficient management of national resources, he asked Samuel Sullivan Cox, the American ambassador in Constantinople and the organizer of the first modern U.S. census, to introduce the Turks to the study of statistics, one of the first of the exact sciences to be established in the Ottoman Empire.
Beyond such cultural exchanges, actual Ottoman-American cooperation in foreign policy took place in the face of the Muslim insurgency in the U.S.-occupied Philippines. The American ambassador to Turkey Oscar S. Straus (a Jewish diplomat, incidentally, who was welcomed by the Abdulhamid regime at a time when his colleague, A. M. Keiley, was declared persona non grata by the Austro-Hungarian authorities simply for ?being of Jewish parenthood?) received a letter from Secretary of State John Hay in the spring of 1899. Secretary Hay wondered whether ?the Sultan under the circumstances might be prevailed upon to instruct the Mohammedans of the Philippines, who had always resisted Spain, to come willingly under our control.? Straus then paid a visit to the sultan and showed him Article 21 of a treaty between Tripoli and the United States which read:
As the government of the United States of America . . . has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility of Musselmans; and as the said states never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the partners that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony between the two countries.
Pleased with the article, Abdulhamid stated, in regard to the Philippines, that the ?Mohammedans in question recognized him as Caliph of the Moslems and he felt sure they would follow his advice.? Two Sulu chiefs who were in Mecca at the time were informed that the caliph and the American ambassador had reached a definite understanding that the Muslims ?would not be disturbed in the practice of their religion if they would promptly place themselves under the control of the American army.? Subsequently, Ambassador Straus wrote, the ?Sulu Mohammedans . . . refused to join the insurrectionists and had placed themselves under the control of our army, thereby recognizing American sovereignty.?
This account is supported by an article written by Lt. Col. John P. Finley (who had been the American governor of Zamboanga Province in the Philippines for ten years) and published in the April 1915 issue of the Journal of Race Development. Finley wrote:
At the beginning of the war with Spain the United States Government was not aware of the existence of any Mohammedans in the Philippines. When this fact was discovered and communicated to our ambassador in Turkey, Oscar S. Straus, of New York, he at once saw the possibilities which lay before us of a holy war. . . . [H]e sought and gained an audience with the Sultan, Abdul Hamid, and requested him as Caliph of the Moslem religion to act in behalf of the followers of Islam in the Philippines. . . . The Sultan as Caliph caused a message to be sent to the Mohammedans of the Philippine Islands forbidding them to enter into any hostilities against the Americans, inasmuch as no interference with their religion would be allowed under American rule.
Later, President McKinley sent a personal letter of thanks to Ambassador Straus for his excellent work, declaring that it had saved the United States ?at least twenty-thousand troops in the field.? All thanks to the caliph, Abdulhamid II.
Such acts of statesmanship make painfully obvious that if there are any religious leaders in the Muslim world today who walk in the footsteps of the great caliph, they are not the terrorist leaders of al Qaeda, but rather the peace-makers such as Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who have been trying to defuse the violence in Iraq by cooperating with coalition forces and calming fellow Muslims. When terrorists like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his big brother Osama bin Laden portray themselves as warriors for the caliphate, they totally misrepresent the historical meaning and function of this Islamic institution. What they do is ?hijack? the caliphate?to borrow a term from President Bush?as much as the faith it represents.
The caliphate was abolished in March 1924 by that supreme secularizer Mustafa Kemal, the Young Turk hero of World War I and of the Turkish war of liberation. Despite strong opposition in the Turkish National Parliament, Kemal dethroned and expelled the last caliph, Abdulmecid Efendi, a cousin of Abdulhamid, and outlawed all Islamic institutions including the Sufi orders. The 1,300-year-old leadership of Islam was destroyed overnight.
Today many Turks see this act as a great leap forward in Turkey?s modernization. Yet it also had terrible side effects. The religious Kurds, who had been loyal to the Ottoman state for centuries, mainly out of Islamic brotherhood, were shaken. In 1925, a group of them revolted against secular Turkey with the aim of reestablishing the caliphate. They were crushed, and this trauma was the genesis of Turkey?s never-ending Kurdish question.
Indeed, the excesses of the Kemalist revolution poisoned the very notion of modernization for many devout Muslims all over the world. Reza Shah Pahlevi of Iran, inspired by Kemal, became an even more enthusiastic secularizer and tried to de-Islamicize his society by force?ordering police, for example, to rip the veils off women in the streets. The response, in the long run, would be Ayatollah Khomeini.
And in the Sunni Arab world, the end of the caliphate left a vacuum of authority that was filled by myriad radical, revolutionary, or fundamentalist movements. The worst was Wahhabism, the product of a revolt against the Ottoman Empire in the 18th century which the caliphs suppressed. In the post-caliphate disorder, Wahhabism found fertile ground for spreading its antimodern and inhumane distortion of Islam.
One antidote to that violent heresy is to recover the spirit of Islamic modernity personified by the piano-playing Sufi, Abdulhamid II. There really is a third way between the spurning of all faith and militant Islamism, and that is what the Islamic world needs today.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
Islamic Case Against Islamic Radicalism
About three years ago, in Birmingham, England, I lectured a large Muslim audience on the topic "The Evidence for God." My lecture focused on the modern scientific discoveries that support the idea of a fine-tuned universe and an intelligently designed life. The audience consisted mostly of very interested Muslim students.
Yet there was a small, dissatisfied group. During the question-and-answer session, one rose and passionately objected to the conference's whole idea. "Why are we wasting time with all this useless philosophical and scientific sophistry?" he demanded. "Shouldn't we concentrate on establishing the worldwide Islamic state that will save us from all evils?"
Later I learned this angry young man was a member of the radical group Hizb-ut Tahrir, firmly dedicated to establishing a global Islamic state. I am sure he and his comrades saw themselves as pious Muslims. Yet something was terribly wrong with their faith, a defect that left them much more interested in the case against "capitalism" than in the case for God.
This extreme politicization is not peculiar to Hizb-ut Tahrir but a common trait among groups and individuals who advocate Islamic radicalism. They actually seem motivated by hatred of the West, expressed in Islamic terminology. Antoine Sfeir, a French scholar studying Islamic radicalism in Europe, characterizes the movement as "a kind of combat against the rich [and] powerful by the poor men of the planet."
It is thus not surprising to see former Marxists join the ranks of Islamic radicals — including figures like Carlos the Jackal, who recently penned a book titled "Revolutionary Islam." This brand of Islam, Carlos argues, "attacks the ruling classes" and stands against "the enslavement of nations."
This is a deviation from Islam proper. Radicals see Islam as a force to lead "enslaved" nations against "ruling" ones. The Koran, however, presents Islam as a way to lead all humans to God's path. From a purely Koranic point of view, non-Muslims are potential brothers to whom Islam should be presented "with wisdom and fair admonition ... in the kindest way." (16/125) Moreover, Jews and Christians are already under divine guidance; the Koran calls them People of the Book and orders Muslims to agree with them on the basis of monotheism. (3/64) But from the radical point of view, all non-Muslims, especially Westerners, are dehumanized enemies to be insulted, attacked and murdered.
The big difference between these two perspectives comes from their motives. The starting point of Islam is submission to God, whereas the starting point of Islamic radicalism is rebellion against the West. When people begin from such markedly different premises, even if they refer to the same texts they arrive at very different conclusions.
Islam has produced a magnificent civilization, beautiful mosques, tolerant Sufis and law-abiding citizens; Islamic radicalism produces suicide bombers and coldblooded killers. It is a worldview much closer to Bolshevism than any theism.
Yet isn't Islamic theism involved, one might ask? Aren't there any traditional Islamic teachings the radicals use to justify their hatred and violence?
The answer is yes. There are some traditional Islamic teachings that give confidence to a militant perspective. The good news is they can be ameliorated by a critical — yet faithful — evaluation of traditional Islamic sources and a modern exegesis of the Koran.
Here is the catch: The majority of contemporary Muslims rely uncritically on religious schools formulated more than a millennium ago. Those schools' founders were pious Muslims, but they lived in a medieval world and interpreted the Koran within that milieu. There was then no democracy, pluralism or international rule of law, and their political doctrine assumed a perpetual conflict between "us" and "them" — the "house of Islam" versus the "house of war."
Yet times have changed. We Muslims don't ride camels anymore. We drive cars. Similarly, we can't apply a medieval political doctrine to the 21st century.
There is a modern phenomenon called the open society, in which all Muslims are free to practice and evangelize their faith. We should embrace it and develop intellectual tools that will let us boldly stand for our values while respecting others'. This will not depart from our faith but provide a great service to it.
And as a first step, we Muslims should rid ourselves of animosity toward the West, because it perverts our religion's very essence. Islam is not about avenging our failures, justifying our hatreds and establishing repressive political systems. It is true it has principles that will guide the political sphere, too; but it does not start there. It starts with faith in God and the moral values He has decreed.
I wish the young militant in Birmingham, along with the radical group he represented, could realize this.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
Yet there was a small, dissatisfied group. During the question-and-answer session, one rose and passionately objected to the conference's whole idea. "Why are we wasting time with all this useless philosophical and scientific sophistry?" he demanded. "Shouldn't we concentrate on establishing the worldwide Islamic state that will save us from all evils?"
Later I learned this angry young man was a member of the radical group Hizb-ut Tahrir, firmly dedicated to establishing a global Islamic state. I am sure he and his comrades saw themselves as pious Muslims. Yet something was terribly wrong with their faith, a defect that left them much more interested in the case against "capitalism" than in the case for God.
This extreme politicization is not peculiar to Hizb-ut Tahrir but a common trait among groups and individuals who advocate Islamic radicalism. They actually seem motivated by hatred of the West, expressed in Islamic terminology. Antoine Sfeir, a French scholar studying Islamic radicalism in Europe, characterizes the movement as "a kind of combat against the rich [and] powerful by the poor men of the planet."
It is thus not surprising to see former Marxists join the ranks of Islamic radicals — including figures like Carlos the Jackal, who recently penned a book titled "Revolutionary Islam." This brand of Islam, Carlos argues, "attacks the ruling classes" and stands against "the enslavement of nations."
This is a deviation from Islam proper. Radicals see Islam as a force to lead "enslaved" nations against "ruling" ones. The Koran, however, presents Islam as a way to lead all humans to God's path. From a purely Koranic point of view, non-Muslims are potential brothers to whom Islam should be presented "with wisdom and fair admonition ... in the kindest way." (16/125) Moreover, Jews and Christians are already under divine guidance; the Koran calls them People of the Book and orders Muslims to agree with them on the basis of monotheism. (3/64) But from the radical point of view, all non-Muslims, especially Westerners, are dehumanized enemies to be insulted, attacked and murdered.
The big difference between these two perspectives comes from their motives. The starting point of Islam is submission to God, whereas the starting point of Islamic radicalism is rebellion against the West. When people begin from such markedly different premises, even if they refer to the same texts they arrive at very different conclusions.
Islam has produced a magnificent civilization, beautiful mosques, tolerant Sufis and law-abiding citizens; Islamic radicalism produces suicide bombers and coldblooded killers. It is a worldview much closer to Bolshevism than any theism.
Yet isn't Islamic theism involved, one might ask? Aren't there any traditional Islamic teachings the radicals use to justify their hatred and violence?
The answer is yes. There are some traditional Islamic teachings that give confidence to a militant perspective. The good news is they can be ameliorated by a critical — yet faithful — evaluation of traditional Islamic sources and a modern exegesis of the Koran.
Here is the catch: The majority of contemporary Muslims rely uncritically on religious schools formulated more than a millennium ago. Those schools' founders were pious Muslims, but they lived in a medieval world and interpreted the Koran within that milieu. There was then no democracy, pluralism or international rule of law, and their political doctrine assumed a perpetual conflict between "us" and "them" — the "house of Islam" versus the "house of war."
Yet times have changed. We Muslims don't ride camels anymore. We drive cars. Similarly, we can't apply a medieval political doctrine to the 21st century.
There is a modern phenomenon called the open society, in which all Muslims are free to practice and evangelize their faith. We should embrace it and develop intellectual tools that will let us boldly stand for our values while respecting others'. This will not depart from our faith but provide a great service to it.
And as a first step, we Muslims should rid ourselves of animosity toward the West, because it perverts our religion's very essence. Islam is not about avenging our failures, justifying our hatreds and establishing repressive political systems. It is true it has principles that will guide the political sphere, too; but it does not start there. It starts with faith in God and the moral values He has decreed.
I wish the young militant in Birmingham, along with the radical group he represented, could realize this.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
European Muslims and the Cult of Jihadism
Since Sept. 11, 2001 European Muslims have been seen as a potential base for a radical, anti-Western ideology founded on a crude misinterpretation of Islam that delights in killing innocents under the banner of "Jihad." The attack in London on July 7 was just one episode in the chain of violence perpetrated by this death cult.
Of course, the overwhelming majority of the 13 million or more Muslims living in Europe are law-abiding citizens who abhor this barbarism in the name of their faith. Yet, there is a considerable minority that sympathizes with terrorism. In a previous poll taken in the UK, supporters of bin Laden among Muslims numbered 13 percent. I was personally shocked, two years ago at a seminar I gave in London, to meet two modern-looking Muslim youngsters who saw bin Laden as the "Mahdi" — the awaited redeemer of Islam.
What is the problem here?
Some in the West think the problem is Islam itself. They are mistaken. The truth is that the radicalization of young European Muslims is the outcome of many social, political and historical factors that have led to the misinterpretation of Islam.
Strangers in a strange land
Unlike Muslims in the United States, who largely belong to the middle class, most European Muslims are economically disadvantaged, poorly integrated and tend to cluster in closed communities. They are predominantly post-World War II immigrants who arrived as manual laborers. They migrated from poor countries and were among the poorest even in their native societies. Turkish workers in Germany, for example, came from the least-developed areas of Turkey and experienced an enormous cultural shock when faced with a highly modernized, secular German society. The resulting deep cultural isolation is even stronger among many Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in the United Kingdom, North Africans in France and Spain, and Muslims from the Middle East throughout Europe. This cultural and linguistic isolation is further deepened by racial differences.
Many immigrants tend to accept this separation. Older people try to maintain their traditional lifestyles in a foreign land. Many of their children adopt Western ways, but even they live with a peculiar sense of double alienation: neither the lands of their fathers nor the new countries of residence seem a true home to them. They are, as the French political scientist Oliver Roy says, "culturally uprooted."
Lack of modern interpretation of Islam
Another reason for this sense of homelessness is that these young European Muslims lack an interpretation of Islam that would be compatible with modern life. Many of them find a middle ground between Islamic traditions and Western lifestyles, but since those attempts do not have a doctrinal basis, they create a sense of guilt in people living at cultural crossroads. This guilt leads some of them to embrace the most radical interpretations — or rather, misinterpretations — of Islam peddled by itinerant imams from Saudi-funded madrassas. Most of the 9/11 conspirators in Europe were such born-again "neo-fundamentalists," to use a term introduced by Roy. Similarly, the terrorists who attacked London on 7/7 turned out to be such "modern youngsters."
Roy emphasizes the difference between neo-fundamentalism and what is usually called "traditional" Islam. He points out that neo-fundamentalism (or Jihadism) is based on political slogans, not theological arguments, and defies many established Islamic laws. Traditional Islam, for example, is very outspoken on the need to assure the safety of non-combatants in warfare. Acts of terror against civilians are a clear violation of this principle.
Other scholars have also noted the discrepancy between Jihadism and traditional Islam. Daniel Pipes, an expert on the issue, says: "Traditional Islam seeks to teach human beings how to live in accord with God's will; militant Islam aspires to create a new order."
The root causes of radicalism
Why the sudden appeal of Islamic neo-fundamentalism to some young Muslims? Three general answers are usually offered. The first one points to the widespread poverty and desolation of Muslims living in Europe and the Islamic world in general. That claim, however, requires some explanation because it has also been noted that most radicals and terrorists do not come from among the ignorant poor but from educated and prosperous classes. Yet the plight of the Islamic masses is an important factor in the ideological makeup of militant Islamism. Just as leftist intellectuals, who often came from bourgeois families, fought capitalism in the name of the "proletariat," well-off and educated Islamist militants believe they sacrifice themselves for the sake of the impoverished, oppressed umma, the worldwide Muslim community.
It should be noted that the creators of modern Jihadism — people like Sayyid Qutb, Ali Shariati and Mawdudi — were very much influenced by Marxism-Leninism. Like the communists, who believe in a global conspiracy of capitalist imperialists aided by native compradors, Jihadists think that the Islamic world's poverty and weakness are the result of a great conspiracy of the West and their local agents. According to this line of reasoning, to redeem the Islamic world one needs to strike at "the oppressors" rather than work to raise education levels, productivity or health standards in Muslim societies.
This quasi-Marxist worldview of the Jihadists might explain why their ideology appeals to die-hard communists like Carlos the Jackal.
A second source of Islamic radicalism is old and recent political mistakes made by the West. The most obvious root causes of anti-Western feelings are the English and French colonial past and the American backing of Middle Eastern dictatorships during the Cold War. The Palestinian tragedy is another major issue that will not be resolved unless there is a workable two-state solution.
The third explanation of the origins of Islamic militancy has to do with the cultural gap between traditionalist Islam and the modern world. The pre-modern lifestyle practiced by many Islamist traditionalists — and often seen by them as the essence of their faith — creates a perception of an inherent clash between Islam and modernity. The traditionalists themselves may be free of pro-terrorist sentiments, but Jihadists use this alleged incompatibility to fashion themselves as the vanguard in the Islamic struggle.
What is to be done?
The above suggests three important tasks for Muslim leaders and intellectuals in the immediate future:
First, de-legitimize the political ideology of militant Islamism by exposing its departures from the true teachings of Islam; refute its underlying conspiracy theories, its quasi-Marxist blueprint, and its misuse of traditional Islamic sources.
Second, help the Western powers formulate better policies to overcome centuries of distrust and antagonism.
Third, construct a new interpretation of Islam that will help Muslims break free from medieval traditions and develop modern attitudes compatible with the Islamic faith and morality.
This is necessary because some traditional Islamic concepts do not correspond to modern realities. Take, for example, the much-disputed concept of the division of the world into the "House of Islam" and the "House of War" formulated by Muslim jurists in the early centuries of Islam. At that time the world was ruled by empires that imposed their own faith on all subjects. A Muslim could not safely practice and proselytize Islam in foreign lands.
Yet times have changed. Today Muslims are free to practice and proselytize their faith throughout the world — especially in liberal Western democracies. They should embrace such open societies and present their faith by their own good example, by living Islam in the modern world and in peace with other creeds.
This is what reason demands. Moreover, it is what the Koran demands: The differences between people, says the Koran, were not created for conflict but for letting them know each other. (49:13)
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
Of course, the overwhelming majority of the 13 million or more Muslims living in Europe are law-abiding citizens who abhor this barbarism in the name of their faith. Yet, there is a considerable minority that sympathizes with terrorism. In a previous poll taken in the UK, supporters of bin Laden among Muslims numbered 13 percent. I was personally shocked, two years ago at a seminar I gave in London, to meet two modern-looking Muslim youngsters who saw bin Laden as the "Mahdi" — the awaited redeemer of Islam.
What is the problem here?
Some in the West think the problem is Islam itself. They are mistaken. The truth is that the radicalization of young European Muslims is the outcome of many social, political and historical factors that have led to the misinterpretation of Islam.
Strangers in a strange land
Unlike Muslims in the United States, who largely belong to the middle class, most European Muslims are economically disadvantaged, poorly integrated and tend to cluster in closed communities. They are predominantly post-World War II immigrants who arrived as manual laborers. They migrated from poor countries and were among the poorest even in their native societies. Turkish workers in Germany, for example, came from the least-developed areas of Turkey and experienced an enormous cultural shock when faced with a highly modernized, secular German society. The resulting deep cultural isolation is even stronger among many Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in the United Kingdom, North Africans in France and Spain, and Muslims from the Middle East throughout Europe. This cultural and linguistic isolation is further deepened by racial differences.
Many immigrants tend to accept this separation. Older people try to maintain their traditional lifestyles in a foreign land. Many of their children adopt Western ways, but even they live with a peculiar sense of double alienation: neither the lands of their fathers nor the new countries of residence seem a true home to them. They are, as the French political scientist Oliver Roy says, "culturally uprooted."
Lack of modern interpretation of Islam
Another reason for this sense of homelessness is that these young European Muslims lack an interpretation of Islam that would be compatible with modern life. Many of them find a middle ground between Islamic traditions and Western lifestyles, but since those attempts do not have a doctrinal basis, they create a sense of guilt in people living at cultural crossroads. This guilt leads some of them to embrace the most radical interpretations — or rather, misinterpretations — of Islam peddled by itinerant imams from Saudi-funded madrassas. Most of the 9/11 conspirators in Europe were such born-again "neo-fundamentalists," to use a term introduced by Roy. Similarly, the terrorists who attacked London on 7/7 turned out to be such "modern youngsters."
Roy emphasizes the difference between neo-fundamentalism and what is usually called "traditional" Islam. He points out that neo-fundamentalism (or Jihadism) is based on political slogans, not theological arguments, and defies many established Islamic laws. Traditional Islam, for example, is very outspoken on the need to assure the safety of non-combatants in warfare. Acts of terror against civilians are a clear violation of this principle.
Other scholars have also noted the discrepancy between Jihadism and traditional Islam. Daniel Pipes, an expert on the issue, says: "Traditional Islam seeks to teach human beings how to live in accord with God's will; militant Islam aspires to create a new order."
The root causes of radicalism
Why the sudden appeal of Islamic neo-fundamentalism to some young Muslims? Three general answers are usually offered. The first one points to the widespread poverty and desolation of Muslims living in Europe and the Islamic world in general. That claim, however, requires some explanation because it has also been noted that most radicals and terrorists do not come from among the ignorant poor but from educated and prosperous classes. Yet the plight of the Islamic masses is an important factor in the ideological makeup of militant Islamism. Just as leftist intellectuals, who often came from bourgeois families, fought capitalism in the name of the "proletariat," well-off and educated Islamist militants believe they sacrifice themselves for the sake of the impoverished, oppressed umma, the worldwide Muslim community.
It should be noted that the creators of modern Jihadism — people like Sayyid Qutb, Ali Shariati and Mawdudi — were very much influenced by Marxism-Leninism. Like the communists, who believe in a global conspiracy of capitalist imperialists aided by native compradors, Jihadists think that the Islamic world's poverty and weakness are the result of a great conspiracy of the West and their local agents. According to this line of reasoning, to redeem the Islamic world one needs to strike at "the oppressors" rather than work to raise education levels, productivity or health standards in Muslim societies.
This quasi-Marxist worldview of the Jihadists might explain why their ideology appeals to die-hard communists like Carlos the Jackal.
A second source of Islamic radicalism is old and recent political mistakes made by the West. The most obvious root causes of anti-Western feelings are the English and French colonial past and the American backing of Middle Eastern dictatorships during the Cold War. The Palestinian tragedy is another major issue that will not be resolved unless there is a workable two-state solution.
The third explanation of the origins of Islamic militancy has to do with the cultural gap between traditionalist Islam and the modern world. The pre-modern lifestyle practiced by many Islamist traditionalists — and often seen by them as the essence of their faith — creates a perception of an inherent clash between Islam and modernity. The traditionalists themselves may be free of pro-terrorist sentiments, but Jihadists use this alleged incompatibility to fashion themselves as the vanguard in the Islamic struggle.
What is to be done?
The above suggests three important tasks for Muslim leaders and intellectuals in the immediate future:
First, de-legitimize the political ideology of militant Islamism by exposing its departures from the true teachings of Islam; refute its underlying conspiracy theories, its quasi-Marxist blueprint, and its misuse of traditional Islamic sources.
Second, help the Western powers formulate better policies to overcome centuries of distrust and antagonism.
Third, construct a new interpretation of Islam that will help Muslims break free from medieval traditions and develop modern attitudes compatible with the Islamic faith and morality.
This is necessary because some traditional Islamic concepts do not correspond to modern realities. Take, for example, the much-disputed concept of the division of the world into the "House of Islam" and the "House of War" formulated by Muslim jurists in the early centuries of Islam. At that time the world was ruled by empires that imposed their own faith on all subjects. A Muslim could not safely practice and proselytize Islam in foreign lands.
Yet times have changed. Today Muslims are free to practice and proselytize their faith throughout the world — especially in liberal Western democracies. They should embrace such open societies and present their faith by their own good example, by living Islam in the modern world and in peace with other creeds.
This is what reason demands. Moreover, it is what the Koran demands: The differences between people, says the Koran, were not created for conflict but for letting them know each other. (49:13)
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
Bolshevism in a Headdress
Islamic fundamentalism has more to do with the hatred of the West than with faith
[Originally published in The American Enterprise magazine, also available in PDF]
In October of 2002 I spoke to a crowded Muslim audience in the British city of Birmingham on the topic, "The Evidence for God." My lecture focused on the modern scientific discoveries that support the idea of a designed, "fine-tuned" universe. The audience consisted mostly of Muslim students, and they were very interested in the presentation.
Yet there was a small dissatisfied group in the hall. During the question-and-answer session, one who seemed to be a spokesman for the group rose and, in a passionate voice, objected to the whole idea of the conference. "Why are we wasting time with all this useless philosophical and scientific sophistry?" he demanded. "Shouldn't we concentrate on establishing the worldwide Islamic state that will save us from all evils?
I explained that the Koran asks every Muslim to examine the natural world and witness God's signs in it, but there is no verse ordering an "Islamic state." The essence of Islam, I said, does not concern such political objectives, but rather faith in God and morality. If he wanted to exalt Islam he should focus on science, philosophy, or art, I suggested, because these are the underpinnings of a civilization.
The young man was furious. In my speech I had mentioned the fall of Marxism as a materialistic theory that claimed to be a true explanation of human societies. He questioned me for speaking only against Marxism, not against capitalism. I responded, "Well, if we were in a communist country, we could not have a seminar titled 'The Evidence for God.' We can have it freely in this capitalist country. Isn't this a reason enough to opt for the latter?"
Later, I learned that this angry young man was a member of the radical group Hizb-ut Tahrir, firmly dedicated to establishing a global Islamic state. I am sure he and his comrades saw themselves as pious Muslims. Yet there was something terribly wrong with their faith, a defect that left them much more interested in the case against "capitalism" than in the case for God.
Muslim Failure Breeds Radicalism
Most scholars who study radical Islam agree it is something peculiar to the twentieth century. For Muslims, the most important aspect of the last century can be captured in one word: Failure. Muslim nations became the poorest of the world, they were colonized by imperial powers, they lagged behind the West in all earthly standards, they were tyrannized by their own rulers.
In the early decades of Islam, Muslims had grown accustomed to triumph. They created a vast empire and gained military and political ascendancy over other civilizations for centuries. As Daniel Pipes, a scholar of Islam, notes: "To be a Muslim meant to belong to a winning civilization." Muslim cities like Baghdad or Cordoba were "ornaments of the world" as well as centers of science and philosophy. Historian Martin Kramer opines, "Had there been Nobel prizes in the year 1000, they would have gone almost exclusively to Muslims."
The might and sophistication of the Islamic world was severely shaken in the middle of the thirteenth century with the Mongol invasion. The "Mongol catastrophe," as it came to be known, resulted in the destruction of Muslim cities and the eclipse of the Arab civilization—which would never recover again. The Mongols slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Muslim inhabitants when they invaded Baghdad in 1258. Arab historian Ibn-i Kasir wrote that "such a tragedy has never been witnessed since God created the world."
The Mongol catastrophe devastated the Arabs, but Islam continued to shine under the Ottomans further north. Eventually, though, the Turks declined in relation to the modernizing West, and in World War I their empire was finally destroyed. Muslim nations of North Africa and the Middle East, previously subjects of the Muslim Ottomans, were colonized by European powers. Upcoming decades ushered in worse failures: socio-cultural backwardness, military defeats at the hands of Israel, the collapse of both socialism and Arab nationalism. There was trauma in the Muslim world, which triggered Islamic radicalism.
Europe has turned out to be a perfect petri dish for growing Islamic radicalism. Muslim communities there consist mostly of poor immigrants living in closed communities. Such a social situation is fertile ground for radicalism, and disenchanted European Muslims have easily been recruited by radical groups. Antoine Sfeir, a French scholar studying Islamic radicalism in Europe, characterizes it as "a kind of combat against the rich and powerful by the poor men of the planet." Oliver Roy, another French expert on Islamic movements, notes, "To convert to Islam today is a way for a European rebel to find a cause; it has little to do with theology." Not surprisingly, Lionel Dumont, an Algerian-born French national suspected of links to al-Qaeda, said that he joined Islam because "the Muslims are the only ones to fight the system."
This fight against "the system" links Islamic radicalism to the Marxist-Leninist radicalism that preceded it. Marxism had a considerable influence on Islamic radicals like Sayyid Qutb, Sayyid Mawdudi, and Ali Shariati—architect of the Iranian Revolution. Shariati thought that Islam presented a better ideology and system than Marxism-Leninism for Muslims to topple the "imperialists."
It is thus not surprising to see ex-Marxists join the ranks of Islamic radicals. A compelling example is the recent "conversion" to Islam of Carlos the Jackal, the notorious Marxist terrorist now imprisoned in France. From his prison cell he has penned a book titled Revolutionary Islam. This brand of Islam, he argues, "attacks the ruling classes in order to achieve a more equitable redistribution of wealth" and is the only "transnational force capable of standing up to the enslavement of nations."
Hatred and the West
It is imperative to note how radicals deviate from Islam proper. Radicalism uses Islam as a force to divide "us" from "them," to lead "enslaved" nations against "ruling" ones. The Koran, however, presents Islam as a way to lead all humans to the right path. From a purely Koranic point of view, Westerners are potential brothers to whom Islam should be presented "with wisdom and fair admonition...in the kindest way." From the radical point of view, Westerners are dehumanized enemies to be insulted, attacked, and murdered.
The starting point of Islam is faith in God, whereas the starting point of radicalism is hatred against the West. When people begin from such markedly different premises, even if they refer to the same texts, they arrive at very different conclusions. Islam has produced a magnificent civilization, beautiful mosques, tolerant Sufis, and law-abiding citizens; Islamic radicalism produces suicide bombers and cold-blooded killers.
The anti-Western hatred at the heart of Islamic radicalism is an import from alien sources. In fact, it is an ideology all of its own. Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, professors at Bard College and Hebrew University respectively, call this ideology "Occidentalism," and argue it was born in the West itself.
The first radicals to attack liberal democracies (especially the U.S.) as "rootless, cosmopolitan, superficial, trivial, materialistic, racially mixed, fashion addicted civilizations" were nineteenth-century European revolutionaries of both the left and right. Marxists and proto-fascists such as Martin Heidegger—a sworn enemy of America—constructed the basic criticisms. Others followed, like the fascist Japanese intellectuals of the early 1940s who defined the West as "a poisonous materialist civilization," or the communist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia who slaughtered the Westernized "enemies of the people"—identified as anyone with "soft hands," or who wore glasses.
The creators of Islamic radicalism borrow heavily from these predecessors. They also draw extensively from fiercely anti-American intellectuals in Europe, and other 1960s radicals. And they have incorporated much of the Marxist-Leninist literature into their political discourse.
The most influential Muslim Occidentalist was Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian ideologue regarded as the mastermind of Islamic radicalism and militancy. Qutb became a hater of the West after spending time in the U.S. between 1948 and 1950. Based on what he observed in New York City and Greeley, Colorado, he was persuaded that America was a soulless, decadent, corrupt civilization. He even hated the religiosity of Americans, calling it completely insincere. He regarded American Christians and Jews not as "the People of the Book"—a term of respect used in the Koran to describe Bible-believing monotheists—but as jahiliye, a society of ignorance and barbarism.
Qutb misjudged the U.S. Most Americans are deeply and passionately religious. Besides all the revealing polls and statistics, I have personally observed this during many visits to churches and religious communities in the U.S. I have met American Christians who left their comfortable houses and went to the poorest areas of Africa or Indochina as missionaries, solely for the sake of God. That is sincerity indeed.
Jews, Islam, and Nazis
Another import of Islamic radicalism is anti-Semitism. Many Koranic verses harshly criticize Jews for not being submissive to God and His prophets, including Moses, John the Baptist, and Jesus Christ; but this is far from anti-Semitism. These verses criticize only Jews who disobey God. Other verses demand respect for the Jews as "People of the Book." In one chapter, after describing the sins committed by some Jews, the devout ones are praised:
They are not all alike; of the People of the Book there is an upright party; they recite God's communications in the nighttime and they adore (Him). They believe in God and the last day, and they enjoin what is right and forbid the wrong and they strive with one another in hastening to good deeds, and those are among the good.
So the Koran considers whether Jews are loyal to God in judging them. This is not much different from the view of the Old Testament, which includes some very harsh passages about Israelites gone astray.
Islamic radicals, however, hate all Jews. I have personally witnessed that they even suspect Jewish converts to Islam. They demonstrate a racial hatred of Jews, which is a characteristic of modern anti-Semitism. That hatred is often nurtured by the belief in a global Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world, a belief that has its foundation not in the Koran but in modern anti-Semitic literature such as the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Some Islamic radicals even feel sympathy for the Nazis, contending that they gave the Jews "what they deserved." Ex-friends of Mohammed Atta, the 9/11 mastermind, inform us that he had a kind of "Nazi weltanschauung." Such pro-Nazi Islamists are so far removed from a religious perspective they fail to remember that Muslims are also Semites ("children of Abraham"), and that the neo-pagan Nazi ideology was inherently hostile to all Semitic monotheisms.
An Islam Without Animosity
Islamic radicals do use many religious arguments, and those arguments are cited by some Western analysts as evidence that Islam itself is the real source of their militancy. But while there truly are some militant teachings within the Islamic tradition that radicals use to justify their positions, the pathological hatred of the West, the obsession with politics, and the indiscriminate murderousness of these radicals is something without precedent in mainstream Islam. It is a worldview much closer to Bolshevism than to any kind of theism.
As for the militant teachings within the Islamic tradition, they can be ameliorated by a critical evaluation of traditional Islamic sources and a modern exegesis of the Koran. This takes us to the greatest doctrinal problem within the contemporary Islamic world: The majority of Muslims rely uncritically on religious schools that date back to the Middle Ages. The founders of those schools were pious Muslims, but they lived in a medieval world and interpreted the Koran within that milieu. There was no modernity or democracy at that time, and their political doctrine assumed a perpetual conflict between "us" and "them"—"house of Islam" and "house of war."
Yet times have changed. We Muslims don't ride camels anymore; we drive cars. Similarly, we can't apply a medieval political doctrine to the twenty-first century. There is a modern phenomenon called the open society, in which all Muslims are free to practice and evangelize their faith. We should embrace it and question those traditional teachings that would forbid our doing so. We should build a "Muslim conservatism" through which we will stand for our values in a modern democratic society. This will not be a departure from our faith—it will be a great service to it.
Islam needs a doctrinal renewal. As a first step, we should rid ourselves of animosity toward the West, because it perverts the very essence of Islam. We Muslims must understand that Islam is not about avenging our failures, justifying our hatreds, and establishing repressive political systems. Yes, Islam has principles that will guide the political sphere, but our religion does not start there. It starts with faith in God and the moral values He has decreed.
I wish that the young militant in Birmingham, along with the radical group he represented, could realize this.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
[Originally published in The American Enterprise magazine, also available in PDF]
In October of 2002 I spoke to a crowded Muslim audience in the British city of Birmingham on the topic, "The Evidence for God." My lecture focused on the modern scientific discoveries that support the idea of a designed, "fine-tuned" universe. The audience consisted mostly of Muslim students, and they were very interested in the presentation.
Yet there was a small dissatisfied group in the hall. During the question-and-answer session, one who seemed to be a spokesman for the group rose and, in a passionate voice, objected to the whole idea of the conference. "Why are we wasting time with all this useless philosophical and scientific sophistry?" he demanded. "Shouldn't we concentrate on establishing the worldwide Islamic state that will save us from all evils?
I explained that the Koran asks every Muslim to examine the natural world and witness God's signs in it, but there is no verse ordering an "Islamic state." The essence of Islam, I said, does not concern such political objectives, but rather faith in God and morality. If he wanted to exalt Islam he should focus on science, philosophy, or art, I suggested, because these are the underpinnings of a civilization.
The young man was furious. In my speech I had mentioned the fall of Marxism as a materialistic theory that claimed to be a true explanation of human societies. He questioned me for speaking only against Marxism, not against capitalism. I responded, "Well, if we were in a communist country, we could not have a seminar titled 'The Evidence for God.' We can have it freely in this capitalist country. Isn't this a reason enough to opt for the latter?"
Later, I learned that this angry young man was a member of the radical group Hizb-ut Tahrir, firmly dedicated to establishing a global Islamic state. I am sure he and his comrades saw themselves as pious Muslims. Yet there was something terribly wrong with their faith, a defect that left them much more interested in the case against "capitalism" than in the case for God.
Muslim Failure Breeds Radicalism
Most scholars who study radical Islam agree it is something peculiar to the twentieth century. For Muslims, the most important aspect of the last century can be captured in one word: Failure. Muslim nations became the poorest of the world, they were colonized by imperial powers, they lagged behind the West in all earthly standards, they were tyrannized by their own rulers.
In the early decades of Islam, Muslims had grown accustomed to triumph. They created a vast empire and gained military and political ascendancy over other civilizations for centuries. As Daniel Pipes, a scholar of Islam, notes: "To be a Muslim meant to belong to a winning civilization." Muslim cities like Baghdad or Cordoba were "ornaments of the world" as well as centers of science and philosophy. Historian Martin Kramer opines, "Had there been Nobel prizes in the year 1000, they would have gone almost exclusively to Muslims."
The might and sophistication of the Islamic world was severely shaken in the middle of the thirteenth century with the Mongol invasion. The "Mongol catastrophe," as it came to be known, resulted in the destruction of Muslim cities and the eclipse of the Arab civilization—which would never recover again. The Mongols slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Muslim inhabitants when they invaded Baghdad in 1258. Arab historian Ibn-i Kasir wrote that "such a tragedy has never been witnessed since God created the world."
The Mongol catastrophe devastated the Arabs, but Islam continued to shine under the Ottomans further north. Eventually, though, the Turks declined in relation to the modernizing West, and in World War I their empire was finally destroyed. Muslim nations of North Africa and the Middle East, previously subjects of the Muslim Ottomans, were colonized by European powers. Upcoming decades ushered in worse failures: socio-cultural backwardness, military defeats at the hands of Israel, the collapse of both socialism and Arab nationalism. There was trauma in the Muslim world, which triggered Islamic radicalism.
Europe has turned out to be a perfect petri dish for growing Islamic radicalism. Muslim communities there consist mostly of poor immigrants living in closed communities. Such a social situation is fertile ground for radicalism, and disenchanted European Muslims have easily been recruited by radical groups. Antoine Sfeir, a French scholar studying Islamic radicalism in Europe, characterizes it as "a kind of combat against the rich and powerful by the poor men of the planet." Oliver Roy, another French expert on Islamic movements, notes, "To convert to Islam today is a way for a European rebel to find a cause; it has little to do with theology." Not surprisingly, Lionel Dumont, an Algerian-born French national suspected of links to al-Qaeda, said that he joined Islam because "the Muslims are the only ones to fight the system."
This fight against "the system" links Islamic radicalism to the Marxist-Leninist radicalism that preceded it. Marxism had a considerable influence on Islamic radicals like Sayyid Qutb, Sayyid Mawdudi, and Ali Shariati—architect of the Iranian Revolution. Shariati thought that Islam presented a better ideology and system than Marxism-Leninism for Muslims to topple the "imperialists."
It is thus not surprising to see ex-Marxists join the ranks of Islamic radicals. A compelling example is the recent "conversion" to Islam of Carlos the Jackal, the notorious Marxist terrorist now imprisoned in France. From his prison cell he has penned a book titled Revolutionary Islam. This brand of Islam, he argues, "attacks the ruling classes in order to achieve a more equitable redistribution of wealth" and is the only "transnational force capable of standing up to the enslavement of nations."
Hatred and the West
It is imperative to note how radicals deviate from Islam proper. Radicalism uses Islam as a force to divide "us" from "them," to lead "enslaved" nations against "ruling" ones. The Koran, however, presents Islam as a way to lead all humans to the right path. From a purely Koranic point of view, Westerners are potential brothers to whom Islam should be presented "with wisdom and fair admonition...in the kindest way." From the radical point of view, Westerners are dehumanized enemies to be insulted, attacked, and murdered.
The starting point of Islam is faith in God, whereas the starting point of radicalism is hatred against the West. When people begin from such markedly different premises, even if they refer to the same texts, they arrive at very different conclusions. Islam has produced a magnificent civilization, beautiful mosques, tolerant Sufis, and law-abiding citizens; Islamic radicalism produces suicide bombers and cold-blooded killers.
The anti-Western hatred at the heart of Islamic radicalism is an import from alien sources. In fact, it is an ideology all of its own. Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, professors at Bard College and Hebrew University respectively, call this ideology "Occidentalism," and argue it was born in the West itself.
The first radicals to attack liberal democracies (especially the U.S.) as "rootless, cosmopolitan, superficial, trivial, materialistic, racially mixed, fashion addicted civilizations" were nineteenth-century European revolutionaries of both the left and right. Marxists and proto-fascists such as Martin Heidegger—a sworn enemy of America—constructed the basic criticisms. Others followed, like the fascist Japanese intellectuals of the early 1940s who defined the West as "a poisonous materialist civilization," or the communist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia who slaughtered the Westernized "enemies of the people"—identified as anyone with "soft hands," or who wore glasses.
The creators of Islamic radicalism borrow heavily from these predecessors. They also draw extensively from fiercely anti-American intellectuals in Europe, and other 1960s radicals. And they have incorporated much of the Marxist-Leninist literature into their political discourse.
The most influential Muslim Occidentalist was Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian ideologue regarded as the mastermind of Islamic radicalism and militancy. Qutb became a hater of the West after spending time in the U.S. between 1948 and 1950. Based on what he observed in New York City and Greeley, Colorado, he was persuaded that America was a soulless, decadent, corrupt civilization. He even hated the religiosity of Americans, calling it completely insincere. He regarded American Christians and Jews not as "the People of the Book"—a term of respect used in the Koran to describe Bible-believing monotheists—but as jahiliye, a society of ignorance and barbarism.
Qutb misjudged the U.S. Most Americans are deeply and passionately religious. Besides all the revealing polls and statistics, I have personally observed this during many visits to churches and religious communities in the U.S. I have met American Christians who left their comfortable houses and went to the poorest areas of Africa or Indochina as missionaries, solely for the sake of God. That is sincerity indeed.
Jews, Islam, and Nazis
Another import of Islamic radicalism is anti-Semitism. Many Koranic verses harshly criticize Jews for not being submissive to God and His prophets, including Moses, John the Baptist, and Jesus Christ; but this is far from anti-Semitism. These verses criticize only Jews who disobey God. Other verses demand respect for the Jews as "People of the Book." In one chapter, after describing the sins committed by some Jews, the devout ones are praised:
They are not all alike; of the People of the Book there is an upright party; they recite God's communications in the nighttime and they adore (Him). They believe in God and the last day, and they enjoin what is right and forbid the wrong and they strive with one another in hastening to good deeds, and those are among the good.
So the Koran considers whether Jews are loyal to God in judging them. This is not much different from the view of the Old Testament, which includes some very harsh passages about Israelites gone astray.
Islamic radicals, however, hate all Jews. I have personally witnessed that they even suspect Jewish converts to Islam. They demonstrate a racial hatred of Jews, which is a characteristic of modern anti-Semitism. That hatred is often nurtured by the belief in a global Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world, a belief that has its foundation not in the Koran but in modern anti-Semitic literature such as the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Some Islamic radicals even feel sympathy for the Nazis, contending that they gave the Jews "what they deserved." Ex-friends of Mohammed Atta, the 9/11 mastermind, inform us that he had a kind of "Nazi weltanschauung." Such pro-Nazi Islamists are so far removed from a religious perspective they fail to remember that Muslims are also Semites ("children of Abraham"), and that the neo-pagan Nazi ideology was inherently hostile to all Semitic monotheisms.
An Islam Without Animosity
Islamic radicals do use many religious arguments, and those arguments are cited by some Western analysts as evidence that Islam itself is the real source of their militancy. But while there truly are some militant teachings within the Islamic tradition that radicals use to justify their positions, the pathological hatred of the West, the obsession with politics, and the indiscriminate murderousness of these radicals is something without precedent in mainstream Islam. It is a worldview much closer to Bolshevism than to any kind of theism.
As for the militant teachings within the Islamic tradition, they can be ameliorated by a critical evaluation of traditional Islamic sources and a modern exegesis of the Koran. This takes us to the greatest doctrinal problem within the contemporary Islamic world: The majority of Muslims rely uncritically on religious schools that date back to the Middle Ages. The founders of those schools were pious Muslims, but they lived in a medieval world and interpreted the Koran within that milieu. There was no modernity or democracy at that time, and their political doctrine assumed a perpetual conflict between "us" and "them"—"house of Islam" and "house of war."
Yet times have changed. We Muslims don't ride camels anymore; we drive cars. Similarly, we can't apply a medieval political doctrine to the twenty-first century. There is a modern phenomenon called the open society, in which all Muslims are free to practice and evangelize their faith. We should embrace it and question those traditional teachings that would forbid our doing so. We should build a "Muslim conservatism" through which we will stand for our values in a modern democratic society. This will not be a departure from our faith—it will be a great service to it.
Islam needs a doctrinal renewal. As a first step, we should rid ourselves of animosity toward the West, because it perverts the very essence of Islam. We Muslims must understand that Islam is not about avenging our failures, justifying our hatreds, and establishing repressive political systems. Yes, Islam has principles that will guide the political sphere, but our religion does not start there. It starts with faith in God and the moral values He has decreed.
I wish that the young militant in Birmingham, along with the radical group he represented, could realize this.
Writer : Mustafa Akyol
European Muslims and the Quest for the Soul of Islam
There are about thirteen million Muslims living in Europe, nearly all of them law-abiding citizens. Since September 11, 2001, however, European Muslims have been seen as a potential base for a radical, anti-Western ideology founded on a crude misinterpretation of Islam that has nothing to do with true Islamic faith and is rejected by the majority of Muslims worldwide. The contest between these two views of Islam may define the course of the 21st century.
Unlike Muslims in the United States, who belong largely to the middle class, most European Muslims are economically disadvantaged, poorly integrated and tend to cluster in closed communities. They are predominantly post-World War II immigrants who arrived as manual workers. They migrated from poor countries and were among the poorest even in their native societies.
Turkish workers in Germany, for example, came from the least-developed areas of Turkey, and they experienced an enormous cultural shock when faced with a highly modernized, secular German society. (They would have experienced a similar shock had they migrated to Istanbul instead of Berlin, Cologne or Hamburg.) When I was in Germany several years ago, I was surprised to learn that some of the immigrants that came there during the late '50s or early '60s are still unable to speak German. This underscores their deep cultural isolation, which is even stronger among many Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in the United Kingdom, North Africans in France and Spain, and Muslims from the Middle East throughout Europe. This cultural and linguistic isolation is further deepened by racial differences.
Many immigrants tend to accept this separation. Older people try to maintain their traditional lifestyles in a foreign land. Many of their children adopt Western ways, but even they live with a peculiar sense of double alienation: neither the lands of their fathers nor the new countries of residence seem a true home to them. They are, as the French political scientist Oliver Roy says, "culturally uprooted".
Another reason for this sense of homelessness is that these young European Muslims lack an interpretation of Islam that would be compatible with modern life. Many of them find a middle ground between Islamic traditions and Western lifestyles, but since those attempts do not have a doctrinal basis, they create a sense of guilt in people living at cultural crossroads. This guilt leads some of them to embrace the most radical interpretations — or rather misinterpretations — of Islam peddled by itinerant imams from Saudi-funded madrassas. Most of the 9/11 conspirators in Europe were just such born-again "neo-fundamentalists," to use the term introduced by Oliver Roy.
Roy emphasizes the difference between neo-fundamentalism and what is usually called "traditional" Islam. He points out that neo-fundamentalism (or Jihadism) is based on political slogans, not theological arguments, and defies many established Islamic laws. Traditional Islam, for example, is very outspoken on the need to assure the safety of non-combatants in warfare. Acts of terror against civilians are a clear violation of this principle. Bernard Lewis, one of the most prominent Western experts on Islam, says that the attacks of September 11 have "no justification in Islamic doctrine or law and no precedent in Islamic history."
Other scholars have also noted the discrepancy between Jihadism and traditional Islam. Daniel Pipes, one of the foremost experts on the issue, says: "Traditional Islam seeks to teach human beings how to live in accord with God's will; militant Islam aspires to create a new order."
Why the sudden appeal of Islamic neo-fundamentalism to some young Muslims? Three general answers are usually provided. The first one points to the widespread poverty and desolation of the Muslims living in Europe and the Islamic world in general. That claim, however, requires some explanation, because it has also been noted that most radicals and terrorists do not come from among the ignorant poor but from educated and prosperous classes. Daniel Pipes concludes, correctly, "poverty doesn't create terrorists." But he further notes that the plight of the Islamic masses is an important factor in the ideological make-up of militant Islamism. Just as leftist intellectuals, who often came from bourgeois families, fought capitalism in the name of "the proletariat," so well-off and -educated Islamist militants believe they sacrifice themselves for the sake of the impoverished, oppressed umma, the worldwide Muslim community.
It should be noted that the creators of modern Jihadism — people like Sayyid Qutb, Ali Shariati or Mawdudi — were very much influenced by Marxism-Leninism. Like the communists, who believe in a global conspiracy of capitalist imperialists aided by native compradors, Jihadists think that the Islamic world's poverty and weakness are the result of a great conspiracy of the West and their local agents. According to this line of reasoning, to redeem the Islamic world one needs to strike at "the oppressors" rather than work to raise education levels, productivity or health standards in Muslim societies.
A second source for Islamic radicalism are old and recent political mistakes made by the West. Bernard Lewis acknowledges that, "[t]here is some justice" to the charge that the United States and the West in general "apply different and lower standards" to Middle Easterners. The most obvious root causes of anti-Western feelings are the English and French colonial past and the American backing of Middle Eastern dictatorships during the Cold War. Perceived American support for the Israeli occupation is another major issue, which will not be resolved unless there is a workable two-state solution.
The third explanation of the origins of Islamic militancy has to do with the cultural gap between traditionalist Islam and the modern world. The pre-modern lifestyle practiced by many Islamist traditionalists — and often seen by them as the essence of their faith — creates a perception of an inherent clash between Islam and modernity. The traditionalists themselves may be free of pro-terrorist sentiments, but Jihadists use this alleged incompatibility to fashion themselves as the vanguard in the Islamic struggle.
The above suggests three important tasks for Muslim leaders and intellectuals in the immediate future:
First, de-legitimize the political ideology of militant Islamism by exposing its departures from true teachings of Islam; refute its underlying conspiracy theories, its quasi-Marxist blueprint, and its misuse of traditional Islamic sources.
Second, help the Western powers formulate better policies to overcome centuries of distrust and misunderstanding.
Third, construct a new interpretation of Islam that will help Muslims break free from medieval traditions and develop modern attitudes compatible with the Islamic faith and morality.
Luckily, there exist several Muslim voices trying to accomplish these tasks, especially the third and most important one. Since the 19th century enlightened Muslims have argued that a new reading of Islam is urgently needed. It was often noted, for example, that most tenets of traditionalist Islam do not have a Qur'anic basis. The Qur'an gives very few detailed rules and teaches mostly general ethical principles. The question of how those principles should be applied in daily life was answered by Muslim jurists in the early centuries of Islam, and their rulings were gradually transformed into unquestioned, sacrosanct laws.
The legal code known as the shariah is mostly the product of this process. A great many of shariah laws — like those which refer to the killing of apostates, the stoning of adulterers, the seclusion of women, compulsory prayer, required dress code, punishments for drinking or even possessing alcohol — have simply no basis in the Qur'an. The shariah, according to Bassam Tibi, a Syrian-born scholar at the University of Göttingen, is "a post-Qur'anic construction". As soon as we start questioning it, we will see that many requirements of traditionalist Islam that put Muslims in conflict with the modern world can simply be abandoned.
Take, for example, the much-disputed concept of the division of the world into the "House of Islam" and the "House of War". It was formulated by Muslim jurists in the early centuries of Islam. At that time the world was ruled by empires that imposed their own faith on all subjects. A Muslim could not safely practice and proselytise Islam in foreign lands. Thus, military conquest was seen as a pre-condition to "opening" a country, i.e. giving its inhabitants a chance to know Islam. After the "opening" there would be no forced conversions and non-Muslims would be allowed practice their faith, but the land would be made "safe" for Islam. Similarly, Ottomans justified their conquests on the principle of ila-yi kelimetullah, spreading the word of God, though they allowed free practice of Christianity and Judaism in conquered territories.
But times have changed. Today we already live in an "open" world, and Muslims are free to practice and proselytise their faith throughout the world — especially in Western liberal democracies. Because of that, Tariq Ramadan, one of the most prominent voices on behalf an Islamic reformation, argues that Europe is no longer the "House of War" but the "House of Witness" where Muslims have the duty to propagate their creed by their own good example — by living Islam in the modern world and in peace with other creeds.
Apart from the complex task of reforming our understanding of Islam, there are also other, more practical things that Muslims and Westerners can do together to prevent a "clash of civilizations."
First of all, we should destroy the myth of a monolithic "materialist West". The radical Islamist discourse tends to picture the whole Western civilization as a licentious, selfish, hedonistic world — a new Pompeii waiting to be buried under the ashes. This is a great distortion of the truth. Let us remember that the Judeo-Christian values of the Western civilization and the values of Islam share the same Abrahamic sources. Let us present to Muslim societies "the West of faith and morality," which they would find more appealing than the alleged "aggressive market materialism and intolerant secularism" of the "MacWorld" discussed by Benjamin Barber.
Further, we must help Muslim communities in Europe to better interact with and integrate into the societies among which they live. Help them see Europe as a true house of liberty. The French decision to ban Muslim girls' headscarves in public schools certainly does not help. It forces the veiled ones back into their cultural ghetto and instills in them aversion towards the French system.
As Zaki Badawi, the dean of the Muslim College in London suggests, we also need to help moderate Muslim institutions educate moderate imams. Extremism, which is being imported to Europe from the Middle East, can only be defeated by a legitimate Islamic model of tolerance.
For such a tolerant view we need keep in mind the Turkish example. Turkey has an Islamic heritage free of anti-Westernism and anti-Semitism and quite favorable to open society. Said Nursi, probably the most influential 20th century Turkish Muslim thinker, is known for his appeals for an alliance between Islam and Christianity against communism. Nursi's most prominent follower, Turkish Muslim scholar Fethullah Gulen, leads today a moderate Islamic movement known for its global advocacy of modern education and inter-faith dialogue.
The West should certainly support Turkey's entry into the European Union. This would blur the "civilizational" boundaries and create a model for other Muslim nations. Note that Turkey's efforts to join the EU — and to implement the required democratic reforms — are supported by most Islamic circles in the country and are being spearheaded by the ruling conservative Justice and Development Party, whose members are mostly devout Muslims. Help them succeed so that they could be a positive example to other Muslim countries.
Let us support inter-faith dialogue that will help both Muslims and Westerners see their common qualities. Joint charity programs and religious studies can be organized. A British Anglican priest, Rev. Donald Reeves, is working to re-build the Bosnian mosque of Farhadija destroyed by Serbian militias in 1993. Symbolic gestures like that can be most effective as a refutation of the "Islam vs. the West" scenario.
We need also to overcome Islamophobia in the West by explaining that the contemporary problems of the Islamic world stem not from the faith but from social and historical conditions. Let us present the splendor of the medieval Islamic civilization, help moderate Muslim voices reach Western audiences and let the Westerners see Muslims other than those burning American flags after their Friday prayers. Most of these goals will require a great deal of effort, but we simply can't afford to fail.
Unlike Muslims in the United States, who belong largely to the middle class, most European Muslims are economically disadvantaged, poorly integrated and tend to cluster in closed communities. They are predominantly post-World War II immigrants who arrived as manual workers. They migrated from poor countries and were among the poorest even in their native societies.
Turkish workers in Germany, for example, came from the least-developed areas of Turkey, and they experienced an enormous cultural shock when faced with a highly modernized, secular German society. (They would have experienced a similar shock had they migrated to Istanbul instead of Berlin, Cologne or Hamburg.) When I was in Germany several years ago, I was surprised to learn that some of the immigrants that came there during the late '50s or early '60s are still unable to speak German. This underscores their deep cultural isolation, which is even stronger among many Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in the United Kingdom, North Africans in France and Spain, and Muslims from the Middle East throughout Europe. This cultural and linguistic isolation is further deepened by racial differences.
Many immigrants tend to accept this separation. Older people try to maintain their traditional lifestyles in a foreign land. Many of their children adopt Western ways, but even they live with a peculiar sense of double alienation: neither the lands of their fathers nor the new countries of residence seem a true home to them. They are, as the French political scientist Oliver Roy says, "culturally uprooted".
Another reason for this sense of homelessness is that these young European Muslims lack an interpretation of Islam that would be compatible with modern life. Many of them find a middle ground between Islamic traditions and Western lifestyles, but since those attempts do not have a doctrinal basis, they create a sense of guilt in people living at cultural crossroads. This guilt leads some of them to embrace the most radical interpretations — or rather misinterpretations — of Islam peddled by itinerant imams from Saudi-funded madrassas. Most of the 9/11 conspirators in Europe were just such born-again "neo-fundamentalists," to use the term introduced by Oliver Roy.
Roy emphasizes the difference between neo-fundamentalism and what is usually called "traditional" Islam. He points out that neo-fundamentalism (or Jihadism) is based on political slogans, not theological arguments, and defies many established Islamic laws. Traditional Islam, for example, is very outspoken on the need to assure the safety of non-combatants in warfare. Acts of terror against civilians are a clear violation of this principle. Bernard Lewis, one of the most prominent Western experts on Islam, says that the attacks of September 11 have "no justification in Islamic doctrine or law and no precedent in Islamic history."
Other scholars have also noted the discrepancy between Jihadism and traditional Islam. Daniel Pipes, one of the foremost experts on the issue, says: "Traditional Islam seeks to teach human beings how to live in accord with God's will; militant Islam aspires to create a new order."
Why the sudden appeal of Islamic neo-fundamentalism to some young Muslims? Three general answers are usually provided. The first one points to the widespread poverty and desolation of the Muslims living in Europe and the Islamic world in general. That claim, however, requires some explanation, because it has also been noted that most radicals and terrorists do not come from among the ignorant poor but from educated and prosperous classes. Daniel Pipes concludes, correctly, "poverty doesn't create terrorists." But he further notes that the plight of the Islamic masses is an important factor in the ideological make-up of militant Islamism. Just as leftist intellectuals, who often came from bourgeois families, fought capitalism in the name of "the proletariat," so well-off and -educated Islamist militants believe they sacrifice themselves for the sake of the impoverished, oppressed umma, the worldwide Muslim community.
It should be noted that the creators of modern Jihadism — people like Sayyid Qutb, Ali Shariati or Mawdudi — were very much influenced by Marxism-Leninism. Like the communists, who believe in a global conspiracy of capitalist imperialists aided by native compradors, Jihadists think that the Islamic world's poverty and weakness are the result of a great conspiracy of the West and their local agents. According to this line of reasoning, to redeem the Islamic world one needs to strike at "the oppressors" rather than work to raise education levels, productivity or health standards in Muslim societies.
A second source for Islamic radicalism are old and recent political mistakes made by the West. Bernard Lewis acknowledges that, "[t]here is some justice" to the charge that the United States and the West in general "apply different and lower standards" to Middle Easterners. The most obvious root causes of anti-Western feelings are the English and French colonial past and the American backing of Middle Eastern dictatorships during the Cold War. Perceived American support for the Israeli occupation is another major issue, which will not be resolved unless there is a workable two-state solution.
The third explanation of the origins of Islamic militancy has to do with the cultural gap between traditionalist Islam and the modern world. The pre-modern lifestyle practiced by many Islamist traditionalists — and often seen by them as the essence of their faith — creates a perception of an inherent clash between Islam and modernity. The traditionalists themselves may be free of pro-terrorist sentiments, but Jihadists use this alleged incompatibility to fashion themselves as the vanguard in the Islamic struggle.
The above suggests three important tasks for Muslim leaders and intellectuals in the immediate future:
First, de-legitimize the political ideology of militant Islamism by exposing its departures from true teachings of Islam; refute its underlying conspiracy theories, its quasi-Marxist blueprint, and its misuse of traditional Islamic sources.
Second, help the Western powers formulate better policies to overcome centuries of distrust and misunderstanding.
Third, construct a new interpretation of Islam that will help Muslims break free from medieval traditions and develop modern attitudes compatible with the Islamic faith and morality.
Luckily, there exist several Muslim voices trying to accomplish these tasks, especially the third and most important one. Since the 19th century enlightened Muslims have argued that a new reading of Islam is urgently needed. It was often noted, for example, that most tenets of traditionalist Islam do not have a Qur'anic basis. The Qur'an gives very few detailed rules and teaches mostly general ethical principles. The question of how those principles should be applied in daily life was answered by Muslim jurists in the early centuries of Islam, and their rulings were gradually transformed into unquestioned, sacrosanct laws.
The legal code known as the shariah is mostly the product of this process. A great many of shariah laws — like those which refer to the killing of apostates, the stoning of adulterers, the seclusion of women, compulsory prayer, required dress code, punishments for drinking or even possessing alcohol — have simply no basis in the Qur'an. The shariah, according to Bassam Tibi, a Syrian-born scholar at the University of Göttingen, is "a post-Qur'anic construction". As soon as we start questioning it, we will see that many requirements of traditionalist Islam that put Muslims in conflict with the modern world can simply be abandoned.
Take, for example, the much-disputed concept of the division of the world into the "House of Islam" and the "House of War". It was formulated by Muslim jurists in the early centuries of Islam. At that time the world was ruled by empires that imposed their own faith on all subjects. A Muslim could not safely practice and proselytise Islam in foreign lands. Thus, military conquest was seen as a pre-condition to "opening" a country, i.e. giving its inhabitants a chance to know Islam. After the "opening" there would be no forced conversions and non-Muslims would be allowed practice their faith, but the land would be made "safe" for Islam. Similarly, Ottomans justified their conquests on the principle of ila-yi kelimetullah, spreading the word of God, though they allowed free practice of Christianity and Judaism in conquered territories.
But times have changed. Today we already live in an "open" world, and Muslims are free to practice and proselytise their faith throughout the world — especially in Western liberal democracies. Because of that, Tariq Ramadan, one of the most prominent voices on behalf an Islamic reformation, argues that Europe is no longer the "House of War" but the "House of Witness" where Muslims have the duty to propagate their creed by their own good example — by living Islam in the modern world and in peace with other creeds.
Apart from the complex task of reforming our understanding of Islam, there are also other, more practical things that Muslims and Westerners can do together to prevent a "clash of civilizations."
First of all, we should destroy the myth of a monolithic "materialist West". The radical Islamist discourse tends to picture the whole Western civilization as a licentious, selfish, hedonistic world — a new Pompeii waiting to be buried under the ashes. This is a great distortion of the truth. Let us remember that the Judeo-Christian values of the Western civilization and the values of Islam share the same Abrahamic sources. Let us present to Muslim societies "the West of faith and morality," which they would find more appealing than the alleged "aggressive market materialism and intolerant secularism" of the "MacWorld" discussed by Benjamin Barber.
Further, we must help Muslim communities in Europe to better interact with and integrate into the societies among which they live. Help them see Europe as a true house of liberty. The French decision to ban Muslim girls' headscarves in public schools certainly does not help. It forces the veiled ones back into their cultural ghetto and instills in them aversion towards the French system.
As Zaki Badawi, the dean of the Muslim College in London suggests, we also need to help moderate Muslim institutions educate moderate imams. Extremism, which is being imported to Europe from the Middle East, can only be defeated by a legitimate Islamic model of tolerance.
For such a tolerant view we need keep in mind the Turkish example. Turkey has an Islamic heritage free of anti-Westernism and anti-Semitism and quite favorable to open society. Said Nursi, probably the most influential 20th century Turkish Muslim thinker, is known for his appeals for an alliance between Islam and Christianity against communism. Nursi's most prominent follower, Turkish Muslim scholar Fethullah Gulen, leads today a moderate Islamic movement known for its global advocacy of modern education and inter-faith dialogue.
The West should certainly support Turkey's entry into the European Union. This would blur the "civilizational" boundaries and create a model for other Muslim nations. Note that Turkey's efforts to join the EU — and to implement the required democratic reforms — are supported by most Islamic circles in the country and are being spearheaded by the ruling conservative Justice and Development Party, whose members are mostly devout Muslims. Help them succeed so that they could be a positive example to other Muslim countries.
Let us support inter-faith dialogue that will help both Muslims and Westerners see their common qualities. Joint charity programs and religious studies can be organized. A British Anglican priest, Rev. Donald Reeves, is working to re-build the Bosnian mosque of Farhadija destroyed by Serbian militias in 1993. Symbolic gestures like that can be most effective as a refutation of the "Islam vs. the West" scenario.
We need also to overcome Islamophobia in the West by explaining that the contemporary problems of the Islamic world stem not from the faith but from social and historical conditions. Let us present the splendor of the medieval Islamic civilization, help moderate Muslim voices reach Western audiences and let the Westerners see Muslims other than those burning American flags after their Friday prayers. Most of these goals will require a great deal of effort, but we simply can't afford to fail.
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