Westernist universalism works by rendering its own historical locality invisible

Muslims in Turkey used to be merely victims as an element of the periphery; now they also speak, produce concepts, interpret history, and try to build a conception of the world. Precisely at this point the tone of the critical texts against them is changing in parallel. At times the criticism ceases to be theoretical and slides into a mildly mocking "you too?" psychology.

Of course, it would not be right here to ignore the criticisms that fall to our own neighborhood either. Yes, postcolonial theory is at times turned into slogans. Yes, every issue can easily be explained with the concept of "colonialism." Yes, the language of victimhood can sometimes turn into a romantic psychology of superiority. These are real risks. But the existence of these risks does not make it legitimate to ignore lived historical experience.

Because the matter is not only theory; it is that societies that were for a long time forced to speak in the language of others have now begun to speak on behalf of their own historical memory. The discomfort that emerges at this point is not unexpected either.

Another criticism is that Islamists produce an inverted Islamic essentialism against Western essentialism. This criticism may seem reasonable at first glance; but on careful look it carries a serious contradiction within itself. Because today everyone who uses concepts such as "civilization," "indigeneity," "Islamic epistemology," and "decolonization" is automatically declared an essentialist. Thus any attempt to develop a non-Western historical consciousness is condemned from the start. This is precisely the reproduction, in another form, of the epistemological hierarchy that Said criticized. Yet here one must ask this question: Are liberalism, secularism, modern individualism, or the nation-state really ahistorical and neutral categories? Are these not also products of particular European historical experiences? If so, why is the West's locality counted as "universal," while the forms of thought that Muslim societies develop starting from their own historical experiences are stigmatized as "essentialism"?

In fact, the problem begins precisely here. Because modern secular universality works by rendering its own historical locality invisible. Europe's historical experience is presented as the norm of humanity. This is exactly what decolonial thought objects to. That is why decolonial critique is not a wholesale rejection of universality; it is an objection to the West's monopoly over universality.

But some criticisms deliberately distort the matter, presenting it thus: "If you criticize Western-centric universality, all that remains is indigenous authoritarianism." This is a thoroughly false dilemma, and a colonial one from whichever side you look at it. Of course objecting to Eurocentric epistemology does not mean rejecting human rights, justice, or human dignity. On the contrary, it is objecting to the reduction of these values to the West's historical translation alone.

Indeed, Islamic thought itself has throughout history carried a strong claim to universality. But this universality is not a homogenizing universality that turns its own historical experience into humanity's sole norm, as European modernity did. The universality of Islam is a moral call grounded in the ontological equality of the human being. And it has incorporated into the sum of Islamic civilization all the knowledge, experience, and human accumulation it found in the lands it conquered, leaving them as they were with very little intervention. For this reason the relationship Muslims have with decolonial theory today cannot be explained merely by a psychology of victimhood. Here there is a much deeper critique of modernity and of the conception of the human being.

Moreover, those who, using the criticisms of decolonialism I made earlier, reach the conclusion "look, even Yasin Aktay says these are theoretically problematic," overlook two important things: First, that we in fact already had serious awareness of this matter from the very start. Second, that what I criticized is not decolonial thought itself but its occasional sloganization and superficialization. Because every theory can be instrumentalized. Marxism was instrumentalized, so were liberalism and feminism. But no serious thinker throws away the entire epistemological contribution of a theory because of these instrumentalizations.

The same applies to postcolonial theory.

Today Talal Asad's critique of secularity, Wael Hallaq's analyses of the modern state, Salman Sayyid's thoughts on Muslim subjectivation, or Mignolo's analyses of epistemic colonialism are not merely a matter of saying "the West misunderstood us." These are extremely serious theoretical interventions that question modernity's regime of knowledge, its conception of the subject, and its claim to truth. To read them merely as an "Islamist discourse of victimhood" is, to put it in the mildest terms, either a great theoretical superficiality or a deliberate reductionism.

Of course the real problem that has by now become evident to everyone is this: The circles in Turkey that are self-styled critics cannot tolerate the critique of the West crossing a certain threshold. When that threshold is crossed, accusations of "authoritarianism," "nativism," "civilizationism," and "identitarianism" immediately come into play. Because questioning the epistemological centrality of the West is not only a theoretical matter; it also shakes relations of cultural power.

Yet what humanity needs today is neither to demonize the West nor to regard the West as humanity's necessary destiny. What is really needed is a pluralist intellectual horizon that accepts that the different historical experiences of humanity have equal epistemological legitimacy.

If decolonial thought finds a response in the Muslim world today, the reason is not political opportunism but that the regimes of knowledge established by the modern world have still left deep wounds in the memory of millions of people. And these wounds are not wounds that will vanish with a few academic accusations.