Rethinking Occidentalism from the perspective of decolonization at Siirt University: overcoming the West or being imprisoned by it?

In my last piece I mentioned that I would be attending the 2nd International Occidentalism Symposium, held over the past two days with Siirt University as host. The symposium, which went on record as one of the most noteworthy intellectual gatherings held in Turkey in recent years, under the title "Western Studies in Islamic Civilization: 14th-19th Centuries," was, beyond being merely an academic meeting, an important station in the quest for decolonization developed against the epistemological crisis of the modern world.

I had proposed thinking the meaning of this symposium together with the World Decolonization Forum held in Istanbul two days earlier. While thinkers, academics, and intellectuals from all corners of the world discussed in Istanbul the colonial order of knowledge of the modern world, the symposium in Siirt took place, by coincidence, as a link that deepened and continued the historical and epistemological ground of that discussion. The fundamental question raised in Istanbul was this: Is the modern world truly a universal civilization, or is it a great epistemological hegemony through which the West imposes its own historical experience on all of humanity?

The Occidentalism symposium in Siirt, for its part, sought an answer to this question from within the historical memory of Islamic civilization. With some 120 academics presenting papers, from Malaysia to Bosnia-Herzegovina, from Saudi Arabia to Jordan, from Canada to Egypt, and from many provinces of Turkey, the symposium was also notable in terms of following the subject, its continuity, and its further deepening. Prof. Dr. İhsan Süreyya Sırma, who opened this path during his deanship, continued his contribution at this symposium too, both through the sessions he chaired and through his interventions in every session. I would like to congratulate the rector of Siirt University, Prof. Dr. Nihat Şındak, his deputy and former Dean of the Faculty of Theology, Prof. Dr. Cemalettin Erdemci, and the current dean, Prof. Dr. Fadıl Aygan, for the effort they have shown in this follow-up, continuity, and depth.

In fact, from the moment it was first put forward, the concept of "occidentalism" has had the misfortune of being reduced to a reactive discourse developed against the West. Yet the approach put forward by this symposium, organized for the second time at Siirt University, was far deeper than that: here occidentalism was treated not as a discourse demonizing the West but as an epistemological effort that historicizes and decenters the West.

As is well known, one of the greatest paradoxes of the modern world is that the West named the world before it colonized it. It redefined geographies, peoples, cultures, and even humanity's line of historical development. The East was not discovered by the West; rather, it was invented, even fabricated. The rise of decolonial (liberation from colonialism) thought today proceeds precisely from the idea that the issue is no longer merely political independence but epistemological independence.

One of the most striking aspects of the Siirt symposium was that it laid out the historical accumulation of knowledge about the West in Islamic civilization. In the program, the relationship with the West of a very wide intellectual heritage, from Ibn Khaldun to Tahtawi, from Ahmed Cevdet Pasha to Said Nursi, from Ibn Taymiyyah to Mustafa Sabri Efendi, was reconsidered in the context of Western studies (Occidentalism).

This approach was extremely important. For the modern academic narrative often assumes that Muslim societies merely observed the West passively. Yet the papers presented throughout the symposium showed, on the contrary, that Islamic civilization had observed, analyzed,

criticized, and passed the West through its own epistemological filter from very early periods.

For example, the perception of the West in Ibn Kathir's conception of history, Ibn Khaldun's assessments of Europe, the Europe letters of Ottoman thinkers, Andalusia-centered readings of the West, critiques of Christianity, and the epistemological reflexes developed against modern European thought in fact revealed that the Islamic world was never entirely silent or passive vis-à-vis the West.

Perhaps the symposium's most important contribution was that it brought occidentalism together with decolonialism.

For today it is no longer enough to criticize the West on its own. The real issue is to be able to question the epistemological order of the West, which presents itself as the natural center of humanity. The "arrogance of the zero point" emphasized in particular by Dr. Esra Albayrak at the Decolonization Forum in Istanbul described precisely this. Western modernity presented itself as an ahistorical, placeless, and neutral reason; it made its own historical experience the norm for all humanity.

The Siirt symposium deepened this debate with historical examples. Particularly notable were the alternative epistemological possibilities developed by Islamic thought against the way the West constructed the concepts of "universal man," "progress," "civilization," and "reason." Within this framework not only the classical period but also the critiques of the West by modern-era Muslim thinkers were reassessed. A broad line of thought extending from Jamal al-Din al-Afghani to Muhammad Abduh, from Said Nursi to Hassan Hanafi was treated as an effort to develop a critical and constructive, rather than defensive, perspective vis-à-vis the West.