Europe's discovery of secularism as a value

Wrapping humanity's values in a new package and selling them to the world as "European Values" is a feature of the period described as post-colonial. In this period, through a Eurocentric approach, an impression is even given that the past of non-Western humanity was devoid of almost every kind of human value. There is nothing worthy of note in the past of the non-Western world either. There are no human rights, no science, no rationality, no democracy, no civil society, no multiculturalism, nor anything else good.

Yet every society has, in one way or another, its own experience concerning all these values, institutions and social characteristics, but they lack the Western packaging they need in order to prove that they exist. We briefly touched, for example, on the history of the Islamic world with respect to multiculturalism and on the comparative history of Europe.

In Europe, until recently, in an age when two denominations of the same religion could not tolerate each other, the Islamic world was keeping 72 nations living together, but this magnificent balance had no fancy package called "multiculturalism."

Europe's own civil wars and internal massacres had led it to secularism as a formula for a solution. What was initially aimed at with secularism was the establishment of social peace and the assurance that religions could live together without establishing superiority over one another. The conditions of the day in Europe called for such an organization of politics, and the adherents of religions who had to accept this condition were in fact in a position to see no objection to it in terms of their own religious consistency. Because the basic priority was now surviving in a stable and secure environment.

In this case secularism was not a departure from religion but a solution, itself religious, produced by a kind of ijtihad that took place within each religion. Indeed, secularism, having been accepted as a political arrangement, did not require the religious to move away from religion, nor pressure on the religious.

The secularism that France would later adopt was an exception. There, although secularism emerged precisely as a result of this search, it slipped out of the picture like an alternative religion itself and turned into an approach that holds all other religions under pressure with its own philosophy and its own beliefs.

In contrast, in the other European societies, secularism, developed as a political solution, secured peace both among religions and within them, by the joint decision of the religions as well. In this respect, Europe's political secularism needs to be considered independently of the secularization at the societal level.

Yet the secularization of politics in Turkey has a very different development.

There was no search or demand in society for secularism; on the contrary, secularism entered as an imposition from outside, as a colonial ideology, and was designed to completely suppress, change and render invisible the existing religion. Subsequently, secularism began to be lived like an alternative religious identity with its own philosophy, creed and rituals. Moreover, this identity performed the function of a religion that was exclusionary, discriminatory and oppressive toward others.

In this form, political secularism in Turkey, quite unlike that in Europe, rather than a role of establishing peace, law and order among religions, operated especially to control Islam and Muslims, and therefore produced an effect not of peace but of unrest. This experience has played a determining role in how secularism is understood and perceived in Turkey.

Today secularism has come to a place much different from the definition and role it was loaded with at its first entry into Turkey. Both in definition and in practice.

In particular, the AK Parti's intervention in its definition and practice transformed secularism from an ideology oppressive over religion into a state principle that truly guarantees freedom of religion and conscience. In this form, secularism may well be considered a possible (not the only) way, even within a Muslim society, of observing the state's neutrality among different religions or different denominations or understandings of Islam and of guaranteeing every kind of religious freedom.

Moreover, such a way has also stood out as one of the possible ways of Islamic politics. In today's world, it is necessary to find a way to let the extremely diversified and differentiated understandings of religion live in complete religious freedom and to establish public law and politics without falling into a denialist, exclusionary and oppressive practice of one side over the others. Finding this way is one of the most important agenda items of an Islamic politics in today's world as well.

Even if Muslims, or a segment of Muslims with a particular understanding of Islam, are in power, if there is a social contract previously established and actually functioning within society, recognizing this contract and remaining faithful to it is a requirement of Islamic political jurisprudence. Of course, this is not a requirement that excludes political struggle for changing the elements in a previously established contract that are unjust and that prescribe pressure on and denial of beliefs.

An important lesson that symbolic interactionism teaches us is that our perceptions of certain concepts or things are greatly influenced by what we have lived through with regard to those concepts.

That is why what this society has lived through regarding secularism inevitably determines all its perceptions of that concept.

But one more thing symbolic interactionism teaches us is that the meaning and content of concepts are redefined and filled anew with changing experiences. Our experience with secularism continues, and this concept in its present form may have acquired a much different meaning.

As for Europe, whatever packaging it sells Turkey or others secularism in, and whatever "value" it produces from it, the motive that today determines its politics against Turkey, against Erdoğan, against the upcoming referendum process is not secular but a religious motive to the very core.