The sources of secularization

To see secularization, at whatever level, as a stage of historical evolution or as a world culture corresponding to the end of history is a pride of modernist ideology. Pride, that is, delusion. The pride a person falls into when he forgets his own createdness and begins to think that he is the beginning and sole measure of everything is nothing but a delusion. And when he begins to boastfully declare what he is capable of, looking at the material civilization he has produced, what he has sunk into, in addition to all the performance of science and civilization, is nothing but ignorance.

The ignorance he displays by calling this, on top of it all, Enlightenment is the result of this pride, this delusion

. A jahiliyya, that is, which cannot be removed by schooling and which, on the contrary, increases further together with schooling.

What puts a person into this state of self-sufficiency is what he has accomplished in the world. As the material successes and products of civilization increase, it becomes far more usual for people to be seized by this feeling, but of course this relationship is not necessary. Human history has witnessed those who erected towers reaching toward the sky in order to defy God. The interest in the elixir that would, through research, solve the secret of humanity and ultimately make man immortal has likewise gone in parallel with the wish to be rid of God completely.

Here it can be recommended to travel the earth and take lessons from what befell those who passed before.

All the factors that keep a person from knowing God and appreciating Him as He deserves in fact alienate the person from himself as well. The further the human being moves from God, the further he moves from himself, becomes a stranger to himself, and ends up wronging himself.

The balance between knowing God and knowing oneself makes itself felt at every moment, of course to the one who hears, sees, knows, feels…

The feelings that distance one from God are at the same time the feelings that drive a person out of his humanity, set man against man, make man the servant of man, and have man crushed by man.

Secularization is at the same time a process of distancing, of forgetting, of indifference. It is also called worldliness.

Yet in fact worldliness is a process in which the world too is not given its due and the world's rights too are trampled.

When the world is not seen as a field for the Hereafter, it can bear the oppression of those who live on it only through the strength and endurance God gives it, but it bears witness to everything.

Worldliness is, at its core, a fall, but it does not correspond, as is supposed, to an evolutionary stage covering the whole world. Thank God, it is not so. In the world, at the same time and in the same place, there can coexist those who roam the lowest limits of worldliness and those who realize their humanity at the most honorable ranks of humanity, that is, those who have been freed from servitude to man and serve God alone. This coexistence is of course a tense coexistence, a disputed, contentious, confrontational coexistence.

Secularization is not a historical stage but a human condition. The source of this condition is the person's own will, his own choice.

Worldliness, that is, a person's immersion in the world and deviation from the mission the Creator has written for the human being, can in fact take different forms, and interestingly, among these roles an appearance of intense religiosity can also be found.

Where we are to place the pious feelings contained in a fetishized secularism is at this point a matter of serious debate.

For many secularists or laicists, secularism (laiklik) is not merely a function of the state, a regulatory principle ensuring that people live together in peace; it is tantamount to an alternative religion with its own rituals and fetish objects.

Truly, at a level where it is perceived this way, a debate on secularism cannot serve religious peace or peace among citizens. Nor can anyone who perceives secularism as a rival to his own religion, and moreover as a tyrannical ruling ideology, expect any good from it.

That secularism in Turkey has such a perception among religious people is related to concrete lived experiences.

Nevertheless, it is also clear that during the AK Parti government secularism was redefined as a regulatory principle, as a citizenship practice that guarantees freedom of religion, and that this definition has gained far wider acceptance than the former one. So much so that today there is no serious debate around secularism. The hysterical understanding of secularism that yesterday saw the presence of the headscarf in any sphere as a threat has today given way to an understanding of secularism lived as freedom of religion and conscience, and thus the debate on secularism as a regime has dropped from the agenda.

In essence, at the level of a regulatory principle, this practice has no negative reflection on the world of meaning of Islam or of the Muslim individual. For Muslims there is in any case no compulsion in religion, and everyone's religion is his own. What remains is what feeling and motivation guides one's intention to participate in the area when the common space in the world shared with other people is organized with everyone's consent.

In the end, for everyone this feeling is still his own world of belief and meaning, and these worlds of meaning, even though they differ from one another, can quite well bring a common space, a public sphere, into being in security and peace.

This space can accommodate together those with a secular perception of the world and those who see their world as a field for the Hereafter and live accordingly.

However, a distinction must be made between secularism (laiklik) as a regulatory principle and secularization as a way of perceiving life, man, the world and God. While dwelling on the psychological and sociological sources of this secularization, which is seen as a level of consciousness of historical evolution, we will not be able to pass by, as psychological or sociological conditions,

liberalism, conservatism, or traditionalism

without touching on them.