Whose times are we in, or the paradox of historicism

When we enter by way of the subject of the change of times, we inevitably and always have to face this question: Whose time? Because the foremost condition on when and in what manner the rulings of Islam are to become the subject of an ijtihad is that the subject of this ijtihad exist as a political body that is pure, clean and qualified, and that this process of interpretation and ijtihad look after the benefit and interest of Muslims. After all, we surely cannot expect non-Muslims to exercise ijtihad for Muslims.

The importance of saying this at the very outset comes from the following. Especially for the last two hundred years Muslims have lost the integrity of their political body, and as a result rarely live while feeling their own time. If a community has lost the integrity of its political body, is not a subject of the life it lives, and above all if its homeland has been trampled, it has been made a pariah in its own country, and its will has been taken from its hands, it also experiences serious problems with feeling its own time. It may fall into the error of perceiving the history of other nations, civilizations and political bodies as its own history, its own time. Supposing that the reality imposed on it is a fate, it may bring its rulings into line with that fate.

Truly, the state of the post-colonial Islamic world is largely this, and in this environment the question of an ijtihad suited to changing times has often been less a question produced by Muslims themselves than a question put by the forces that have established power over Muslims.

Those who could not bend Muslims with their own hands, could not force them into the mold they wanted, turn somewhat to seeking help from the Muslims' Book, from their fiqh. But they begin to think that they can obtain this benefit from this Book not with its present interpretation but with an interpretation of their wanting. The concept of Islamic reform, or the policies on this subject, were therefore developed and brought forth not by sincere Muslims who know themselves, but to answer a demand for the kind of Islam that colonialists wanted. That is, the ijtihads that were wanted and sought looked after the interest not of Muslims but of the colonial powers.

Among the individual or group efforts Muslims displayed in the colonial periods, there were of course those who appreciated the existing situation and put forward strong interpretations that sought precisely the interest of Muslims, not of the colonialists, and suited to it. But they had no central recognition. In a sense, in a vastly broad civil environment, there always existed an activity of interpretation open to many influences. Moreover, this field has expanded far more recently and has been the scene of more activity. Indeed, one reason for the chaotic appearance in the field of religious interpretation is this. Although in post-colonial conditions they have not been able to form a political body in its integrity, the efforts of each part of Muslims, who form a fragmented existence, to produce a fiqh suited to their own interests from their own subjective time have brought about an entirely new situation.

In fact, Turkey's stance, which is becoming increasingly independent in world politics and puts the benefit of Muslims first in everything, effectively places it in a special position in terms of being able to produce an Islamic fiqh. What Turkey does both in the field of politics and in the field of social practices is recorded, in terms of Islamic fiqh, as undeclared ijtihads, or perhaps more correctly, from the standpoint of "fields and possibilities of permissibility that can be evaluated."

Today in Turkey, and perhaps through the Turkish experience all over the world, Muslims have begun to feel their own time. To feel time, that is, to exist, is also the beginning of perceiving "what is for one's benefit and against one's harm." Is not the definition of fiqh, in the words of Imam Abu Hanifa the Greatest, precisely this: the consciousness of what is for one's benefit and against one's harm? Or ilm al-hal (ilmihal). The person, that is, the believer, being aware of the state he lives in, that is, of time and place, the knowledge of what this state imposes for and against him.

For years there was not even a subject to evaluate how much of what was demanded of Muslims in the name of reform and historicism would be to Muslims' benefit or harm. Today we can say that this subject now exists. This subject approaches the matter with the highest degree of sincerity toward God, His Messenger, His Book and all the believers, and is seeking not to make God's Book subject to itself but itself to listen to that Book and follow it, to fulfill what it sincerely understands.

The problem of historicism and of reformist-modernist thought is, in the end, that instead of taking the Qur'an as a command of God and following it, it makes the Qur'an passive as a text and subjects it, within the prevailing perception of history and time, to human whims and desires.

Even this approach alone, when looked at, is a human condition that has not changed since Hz. Adam, that recurs in every period, and therefore has no historical character.

Let this too be recorded as the paradox of historicist thought.