The change of times

The change of times, and human beings' dependence on time, that is, their temporality, is an unavoidable, fundamental dimension of human existence. The human being is a creature shaped by the flowing of time. It is in the nature of time to change people's language, custom, and ways of thinking and living. As human beings, we encounter a word, a message, a text, a discourse on the horizon of our own time; we meet it in our own time. Every encounter spontaneously sets in motion a process of understanding and interpretation.

This interpretation inevitably takes place within the limits of our own time, culture and language. It is not possible for us to understand a text by going to the environment in which it was issued, written, or, if it is a revelation, revealed. Whatever we do, we are afflicted by the comprehension of our own age.

This encounter, which comes from a history and takes place by finding us in our own history, is in fact a far more intricate matter than is supposed.

On the one hand, within the same period of time one witnesses very different ways of thinking and living in different geographical regions, countries or cities. On the other hand, there is the danger of inculcating a conservative submission, without any resistance, before this sacred power attributed to time. The things we find wrong, and the things we object to and want changed, are all things brought before us in the flow of time, and our humanity in fact begins precisely there. The attitude we display toward the things time brings before us that are incompatible with our principles, our faith or our ideals becomes our test.

There is no room for hesitation in the heart of any believer that Islam is a universal religion and that its Book is an absolute book revealed by God. However, that the Book is an absolute, revealed book does not mean that every reflection of it in human reason and comprehension is also absolute. There the effect of time makes itself felt most clearly.

Even if revelation is absolute, the comprehension of no human being who understands it, other than the Prophet, is absolute. Everyone addresses it, and is affected by it, with a comprehension shaped by his own history and his own surroundings. All Muslims in fact know this, but even though it is known, the error of equating what people in history understood from Islam with Islam itself, and identifying what they understood from the Qur'an with the Qur'an itself, is one of the most widespread errors. Thus the error of perceiving an objection made to themselves as if it were an objection made to the holy book, and virtually pushing the objector outside the religion, is also a frequently made mistake.

When criticisms of Islamism were made, there was something we said against a tendency that moved to defend in the name of Islamism. The more divine a religion Islam is, the more human an understanding Islamism is. This of course does not lower its value. Islamism is an interpretation of Islam that tries to understand Islam, which has its errors and its merits, with the comprehension of its own age and to take part. For that reason there is no necessity to perceive every criticism of Islamism as a criticism of Islam. Criticizing one interpretation of Islam does not always mean criticizing Islam itself.

When Mehmet Akif Ersoy said, "Taking inspiration directly from the Qur'an, we must make Islam speak to the comprehension of the age," some intellectuals who displayed sensitivity in the name of Islam criticized him for giving the comprehension of the age more credit than necessary, even for thereby being a reformist. Yet every generation, every age, and up to a point every individual has his own mortal comprehension, and the Qur'an in the end addresses this mortal comprehension. In the end it is declared in the Qur'an that a messenger was sent to "every people in the language of that people," telling the truth. This does not mean that this truth or the word of truth is changed; it means that, within that language and comprehension, too, the equivalent of that word is expressed in the most suitable language.

When this share of change is not known, the human interpretations of the word of truth in one period are sanctified for other times and made to take its place. The need for "updating" mentioned by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, or what is known in the Islamic literature as "tajdid," also based on a hadith of our Prophet, is an operation of cleansing.

There may be ijtihads made about Islam in one period that may be valid for their time but will lose their validity in later times. When people judged that Imam Shafi'i had abandoned his view when, in Egypt, he made other ijtihads on the same matter in place of some ijtihads he had made while in Kufa, he said "The fatwa I gave in Kufa is still valid for Kufa; this is the fiqh of Cairo," thereby showing that he took as the basis for the change of some ijtihads not only the change of time (ezman) but also the change of place. That is why this situation is formulated in the Mecelle as "the change of rulings with the change of times cannot be denied." In every period there are, have been, and will be scholars and pioneers who will carry out this updating, this tajdid.

In doing so there are two important things to be known, one of which is that the original state of things is permissibility. The areas not explicitly forbidden are far more numerous than is supposed. Therefore there is an extremely wide field for putting forward strong models for an Islamic practice. For this, it is necessary to refrain from counting the forms that emerge in the custom and tradition of a period as Islam itself.

In fact, the moment one gets out of the error of seeing the molds formed by traditions as the origin of Islam, even though the original state of things is permissibility, an important reform takes place in the field of Islamic thought. In the case of Turkey, the intellectual and practical infrastructure of this reform is sufficiently present. What has been put forward in practice has already, quietly, shaped a model that is now looked upon with envy in every part of the Islamic world.

Turkey, as in every field, is already experiencing a revolution of mentality in this field too. The debates we are experiencing are only the aftershocks of that revolution.