Does a Qur'an translation lead a person astray?

Is the spread of atheism, deism or secularism in Turkey driven by dynamics different from those behind the spread of these currents elsewhere in the world? Let us add a historical dimension and ask again: did the spread of atheism, deism and secularism in our time have dynamics different from those behind the spread of these currents in earlier times?

Judging by some anxious rhetoric, one might think that some of what we are living through today is very particular to us and can be seen as the signs of a decay without precedent in history. Of course, from the standpoint of these currents themselves, this course of events is not bad at all. The more society gives weight to scientific reason, the more secular it becomes, according to them, and that is not a bad thing either.

Regardless of who approaches the matter with what feeling of joy or grief, we must say that even the feeling or thought that what we are living through is peculiar to us is an approach that places ourselves far too much at the center. Yet in these matters, comparing past experiences with today's, as Ibn Khaldun formulated it, always brings us to firmer ground. "The past resembles the present more than water resembles water," said Ibn Khaldun. Especially in matters concerning human nature, nothing changes in a radical sense in people's relations with their emotions, their reason, religion, this world, the other world, other people and the opposite sex. The past resembles the present more than water resembles water.

We hear some concerns that we are on a rapid "and dangerous" course toward secularization. We can see the same story being welcomed with great enthusiasm, by those with an emotional attachment to secularization, as an evolutionary stage of development in human history. Yet nothing is happening that differs from what has taken place in human history. Throughout history, humanity has moved back and forth between piety and worldliness.

Meanwhile, let us recall that only very recently we witnessed quite different perceptions and feelings among secular circles, among the "anxious moderns," and that we dropped everything to try to soothe their worries. Turkey is not in fact secularizing; it is becoming more conservative, even sliding, under the pressure of neighborhood policing, into the vise of an ever more bigoted religiosity.

Which picture is correct? Let the social research with participant observation, interviews and surveys come, let the newspaper reports and television debates go. How much can the reality determined at this level really measure people's relations with God or with the other world?

The tone of anxiety in the discourse about deism spreading especially among young people is very interesting. What is it based on, and if it really exists, who can know its cause, and how well? Of course sociology will have much to do on this subject, but how much of these findings is really based on the results of sound sociological research? As far as I can see, what triggers everyone's anxiety is nothing but one or two examples from their surroundings, or something they have heard happened, a rumor that, through being talked about again and again, has become more widespread than the event itself.

So if we really do have a deism problem, developing, unlike at any other time, as a more dominant discourse or culture among young people, what are its causes?

In a letter sent by Prof. Dr. Cağfer Karadaş, a member of the Higher Council of Religious Affairs, to our esteemed teacher Prof. Faruk Beşer, "reading meals" (Quran translations) was given as one of the reasons for this. Let us not misstate it. This is exactly what he said: "...the main arguments of atheists and deists are currently formed not so much on philosophy as on Quran translations. A meal translation cannot provide the context fully. I think a joint effort by the Diyanet and the faculties of theology would be most fitting and would turn the wind around. Religious culture teachers request free meals from the Diyanet and distribute them to students. When the students begin to read and have trouble making sense of it, they become confused, and that is how they can turn to these currents..."

Our teacher Faruk Beşer also assesses this finding of Karadaş as "a very accurate finding." This is, in my view, one of the most interesting factors identified so far regarding the spread of deism or atheism: becoming a deist or an atheist by reading a Quran meal.

In fact, let alone reading a meal, we know that there are people who understood the Quran very well in its Arabic, in its deepest structures of meaning, in its semantics, its tafsir and its ta'wil, and still went astray. That is, even if we made the Quran available through a near-perfect meal, as our teachers suggest, would that be a guarantee that people would understand the Quran correctly? Moreover, even knowing Arabic, with no dependence on a meal at all, or understanding the language of the Quran perfectly, would that constitute a guarantee of guidance?

Does not the Holy Quran itself say, "This book guides some and leads others astray"? What is the factor that leads astray here, and what is the factor that guides? I think we have reached the point where we must question this seriously.

But before moving on to this questioning, we also need to know how the causal relationship between young people reading meals and turning to deism or atheism was established. For in sociology, the coexistence of two events does not always, or even often, suffice to establish a causal relationship between them. The establishment of a causal relationship is in essence a kind of relation that the whole of Enlightenment thought, and before it Imam Ghazali, radically questioned, even tying it to an epistemological impossibility.

Still, let us not go that far. For if we tie the causal relationship to such impossibility, we would have to question the whole of scientific activity.

So let us continue on the meanings and functions of the Quran meal. Later, of course.