Muslims and "visions of the future"

The 13th of the Anatolia Meetings, which the Anatolia Platform has made traditional, was held this year in Afyonkarahisar under the title "The Islamic World: A Model of Togetherness and a Perspective on the Future."

At the symposium, which lasted six days and took place with the participation of many speakers and audience members from at home and abroad, the leader of Tunisia's Nahda Movement, Rached Ghannouchi, also gave a very fruitful talk, beginning his words with "I have brought you greetings from your Tunisian brothers."

- Since the day it was born, Islam has been a religion of freedom. Freedom always opens space for goodness, and therefore for Islam. There is nothing that requires Muslims to fear freedom. For the proofs of the Qur'an are strong and clear. Nowhere can be reached by exerting pressure on others. If democracy is forbidden, does dictatorship become permitted? The greatest enemy of Islamic movements is dictatorship. Islam's proof, evidence and call are strong. The Qur'an issues a challenge; it says "bring your proofs." Freedom can also open the door to bad things, but in the end our people know the forbidden from the permitted. they hallow the permitted and flee from the forbidden. For that reason, regardless of what it leads to, we should always stand on the side of freedom as a matter of principle.

-The Muslim Arabs did not have a state. Islam made them a state in Medina. Medina is the first state established in the Hijaz. The Medina Charter was in the nature of a constitution and for the first time regulated living together with other people on the basis of a constitution. Istanbul too was the center of the Islamic caliphate. For it was pluralistic.

-The history of this religion is at the same time the history of culture, politics and civilization. Umar did not become caliph by the will of Abu Bakr. He became caliph by general consensus. Likewise Ali too…

-In our civilization the divinity of kings was not accepted. There have been revolutions. Islam did not confine rule to any race. Muslims are brothers. The ummah is one and unique. It granted the right for power to change hands among peoples.

-The Ottomans ruled peoples for about 500 years. For this achievement in history we greet the Turks with great affection.

An invitation to construct a "vision of the future" in the name of the "Islamic World," or to speak about such visions, seems to have become one of the duties incumbent to be fulfilled these days. With whom will Muslims live in the world of the future? In what kind of world will they be living? What will the condition of Muslims in general be in the future?

Undoubtedly, the fact that Muslims have today come to a point of asking these questions is one matter. Perhaps in the past, dreams and utopias about the future were being built without these questions being asked. How the situation reached today corresponds to those dreams built in the past is another matter.

Perhaps, in the first place, comparisons need to be made between the dreams or utopias built in the past and the situation Muslims have reached today. Probably many people do not even feel any need for this confrontation. Many people who do feel the need for this confrontation and dare to undertake it will see serious distances between the situation reached and the dreams they built in their youth in the name of their Islamic ideals.

Do these distances constitute a deviation, a renunciation, a departure, or is a feeling that everything is on track being spread by reinterpreting the great texts that were the source of those dreams in the light of what life has newly taught? If this is happening, is it merely providing a simple escape from oneself that serves to justify the mistakes made, or is it truly developing a healthier balance between text and interpretation?

An inquiry in which all these questions are present invites us. By opening the situation of Muslims in the world of the future to discussion, the Anatolia Platform was also making this invitation. We too, responding to this invitation, tried to discuss and think.

With whom, and in what kind of life, will Muslims live in the world of the future? This is undoubtedly not a question that can be answered without asking with whom and in what kind of life Muslims lived in the past. In the past Muslims lived with everyone. Generally, under Muslim administration, non-Muslims lived freely, fulfilling the requirements of their own religions as well and preserving their identities. It is a known fact that all the cities Muslims founded in the past had such a cosmopolitan character. Cosmopolitanism, as Ghannouchi also put it, is a pluralistic, multicultural social environment that emerged thanks to the stance Muslims have always taken in favor of freedom, as an expression of the self-confidence Muslims have in themselves. Today Muslims continue to live with others again, but this time in environments they cannot always control themselves.

In these environments they cannot control, it is also a frequently experienced situation that they are exposed to the pressure, exclusion and persecution of other cultures.

On the other hand, in the world of the future, Muslims must not forget that they are not and never will be the sole actor of the world they want to build or at least to influence the building of. For one of the matters on which those who build perspectives on the future err most is failing to take into account that there are other actors in the field too, and that whatever they themselves do, these actors or factors can also be decisive through actions that will either neutralize what they do or force them to revise all their plans..

In fact, there is much to be said about experiences of "perspectives on the future." About their harmful, fascistic results lived through in the age of great ideologies, or about the immense effects of the great world religions, which have turned into arrows shot from three thousand years ago to the present, and of course about the perspectives Islam opens onto the "future"…

God willing, we will continue from here….