An anthropology that leads from a wedding to post-Islamism

The marriage ceremony of the couple Sümeyye Erdoğan and Selçuk Bayraktar was probably the simplest, most unostentatious, most waste-free marriage ceremony ever held for anyone of that standing. It was only a ceremony; there was no wedding feast, no flowers or food, no alcohol. Guests were offered only water. There was no music or entertainment; in return there was a magnificent Qur'anic feast of verses from Surah Rum and Surah An'am, selected appropriately for the meaning and importance of the day.

Those who wanted to send flowers to the marriage ceremony were warned beforehand in the invitation and asked instead to make donations to the Mehmetçik Foundation and to the families of police and martyrs. There were no gold gifts.

Those who had brought gold gifts with them just in case had to take them back. There were only thousands of invited participants who had come running just to witness this beautiful ceremony. Some of these participants were foreign heads of state. From Pakistan Nawaz Sharif, and from Bosnia and Herzegovina Bakir Izetbegović, whose country had been entrusted by his father to Sümeyye's father, for example, were there.

If anything is to be said about the marriage ceremony, it is only this extreme simplicity and modesty, to which great care was given. So in fact it was unnecessary to write anything about this marriage ceremony. However, despite this modesty and simplicity, what some people wrote and said about this marriage drew far more attention than the marriage itself.

From those who compared it with the wedding Ahmet Necdet Sezer held for his son at the Çankaya mansion, to those who raged at the Chief of the General Staff's attending this "wedding" while there were martyrs...

Is that even something?

Even the famous wedding of Hazrat Ali and Fatima was recalled on this occasion, so that Sümeyye and Selçuk might learn a lesson. And where? In Cumhuriyet Newspaper. My God, it could not restrain its momentum; the article even brought in the life "Imam Khomeini" lived after the Iranian Islamic Revolution, and recommended it to the President of the Republic of Turkey.

Had the article titled "Fatıma'dan Sümeyye'ye" (From Fatima to Sümeyye) been written by another Cumhuriyet Newspaper writer I would have paid it no attention and passed by without reading. But the article was written by my colleague Prof. Tayfun Atay, whom I know from his anthropology studies.

Do not misunderstand, as is often done, I am not going to subject a political stance or view to an academic criterion. People may hold whatever political views they wish and their academic titles do not prevent this. But when the analysis made is closely related to academic accumulation, it deserves more than astonishment.

Through Sümeyye's marriage, Atay has buried the whole of Islamism in the graveyard of Post-Islamism.

Where is Fatima's wedding, attended by only 700 people, held in a mosque, at which only dates, honey sherbet, rose water and a dish made of strained yogurt were served as refreshments?

Where is Sümeyye's lavish wedding, which, in his words, "from head to toe is the very showpiece of post-Islamism," that emerged "as a result of Islam meeting and embracing capitalism, capital, wealth, pomp, luxury and splendor"?

What are you doing, Professor Tayfun? Are you making fantasy?

Which wedding are you talking about?

You end your article with "That is how the wedding of the Chosroes is!.." — was a wedding held for the couple Sümeyye and Selçuk apart from the marriage ceremony that we do not know of?

As we said, there is no wedding or anything, there is only the marriage ceremony.

As we said, if we are to make a comparison, the refreshment offered at the wedding of Hazrat Fatima is more than the refreshment offered at Sümeyye's wedding, where nothing but water was served.

Of course it is lawful and good, a wedding may also be held, but if you have undertaken this comparison your data should also be sound. Shouldn't you recall, to some small degree, those deep anthropological analyses you resort to when you say "religion leaves life" in the face of this situation, and put them into play differently?

Or is the secret of the matter precisely in this word fantasy?

When you say "That is how the wedding of the Chosroes is," are you watching the tricks of mind that the narrow circle in which you have entirely closed yourselves is playing on you?

Unfortunately, even this wedding incident alone offers us a perfect example of showing that no lived reality is able to change the perceptions of a segment in Turkey about realities.

No reality that would disturb the ideological comfort in which some people have closed themselves in exists, or can exist.

Especially for scientists, intellectuals, academics, a serious world of ideas, a wounded consciousness world, takes shape. What goes on in this wounded consciousness world is relatively autonomous from reality. The perception of reality has been formed before reality. For this reason, for Sümeyye's wedding, there is a pre-prepared mold in the minds of people like Atay. The phrase "That is how the wedding of the Chosroes is" in fact gives away this mold in all its rawness.

As a methodological principle, the first problem that Atay, a professor of anthropology, should deal with is in fact this problem of "prejudices."

But even Atay, because of this wounded consciousness state in which he has been caught, has put into writing, without seeing or living the event, the mold of "the Chosroes' wedding" that he had fitted in his mind to Sümeyye's wedding.

Yet weddings, because of the dense symbolism they contain, their ceremonial character, social intimacy, kinship relations established and social hierarchies, are extremely important cases for anthropology.

Sümeyye's marriage ceremony, in precisely this respect, can only create a disappointment, to a degree that gives no opportunity to pour out the ready-made "post-Islamism" wishes for Islamism.

Because in this ceremony, precisely as Islamists imagine, there was neither waste, nor ostentation, neither sin nor detachment from society. On the contrary there was the Qur'an, there was a magnificent atmosphere in which the poor or the families of martyrs were remembered, in which people's brotherhood was remembered. A good anthropological interest would have seen these on that scene.

Yet this article, which was evidently written before seeing the marriage ceremony, had evidently resolved from the very start to look upon our young couple with an evil eye.

May God protect our brother and sister Sümeyye and Selçuk from every evil eye, nazar, envy.

IN MEMORY OF MY TEACHER ORHAN AKŞİT

During the marriage ceremony, I received the news that my esteemed teacher Orhan Akşit, from Siirt Imam-Hatip High School between 1981 and 1985, had died as a result of a traffic accident he had in Sakarya. From the marriage to the funeral, with the very nature of life... Orhan Hodja was returning at night from a tafsir talk. Just as I have always known him, always remembered him. A life dedicated to the Qur'an, to Islam, was concluded as it was lived, in the direction in which it was lived. May God receive him with His mercy; I offer condolences to his relatives and loved ones, and pray for beautiful patience.