The Generation of Âsım demands wisdom

"What does Asım's Generation seek in Berlin?" we had asked in our last article.

Of course it will seek wisdom, its lost property. If it will find this lost property in China, it will go there; if in Berlin, London or Cape Town, it will go there to take it.

The Western character of science has been much debated among Muslim intellectuals. One of the most important emphases of this debate is that we are self-sufficient, and that if we dive into the ocean of wisdom within our own possession we will need no one else at all.

Indeed, the astonishingly rejectionist stance put forward regarding taking anything from other nations and civilizations ultimately turns into a contradictory conservatism that cannot be sustained and that manifests itself in a chasm between action and discourse.

It cannot be sustained because it attributes a false and fixed address to wisdom. Wisdom can be lost. So says the Messenger of Glory. There is no guarantee that it will remain permanently in the possession of the believer. Because when heedlessness and misguidance flood into the believing heart or body, wisdom too flies off through the other door.

The believer claims possession of wisdom throughout his life as if inherited from his ancestors, but what you call wisdom is not a property that can be registered under title deed like that.

In essence, being a believer too is not a right or rank earned like that. It is a quality that requires claiming it in constant vigilance, being attuned and sensitive to it, and that can be held on to only by constant spiritual training.

Meanwhile this rejectionist stance is a contradictory conservatism, because what it discursively claims to preserve it cannot in practice preserve in any way. That is why such people appear as conservatives in creed and utterly revolutionary moderns in practice.

For years, in the discourse and practice of those who opposed Mehmet Akif in the name of traditionalism or of Ahl al-Sunnah-ism, you can watch the comical manifestations of this contradiction, whether you wish to be amused or to reflect and take warning. This contradiction also has a propensity to recur all the time, of course. As Akif said, "because no lesson is taken."

In the last days of 2018 it is worthwhile to continue to use the anniversary of Mehmet Akif's death as an occasion for reflection without devoting it to a single day (27 December).

The Safahat has many facets. In it Akif invites us to watch the various phases of life, of literature, of spiritual experience, of the nation's existence, its history and its struggle for survival, its dying and its resurrection. In different periods different facets of this safahat may come to the fore. In my opinion the most important phase that should come to the fore today, the one we need to dwell on, is Asım's Generation.

Akif's message is not to accept an existing generation as it is and to lavish praise on it. Let us concede this first. Akif of course knows and sees that there is a very sincere, very pure, very sound vein within the present youth, but he also sees a great Islamic civilization melting away before this generation's eyes. However heroic, however brave, however daring Asım's Generation may be, in its present state it does not have the equipment to save Islamic civilization and revive it. Yet to build this civilization, to be a remedy for the oppressed and for the afflicted, to revive a civilization over which the soil of the dead has been spread, there is no one else but Asım's Generation.

How will Asım's Generation be raised? What will its equipment be? How will it acquire the wisdom it needs? In which schools will it be raised and what character will it assume?

We have left 16 years of AK Parti rule behind. In this period the subject given the most importance was education. Truly, the fact that the education budget has been placed ahead of all other fields despite the growing volume of the budget, the infrastructure investments made in this field, the extension of the compulsory education period to 12 years, the increase in the number of universities from 77 to 206, and so on. All of these are clear numerical indicators of the sincere importance given to education.

On the other hand, it is a separate fact that our education is still searching for its philosophy and still has not found it. In this, of course, the fact that the cause of education has always been a field of ideological contention, conflict and tension has a share. But this situation is always an important problem of Turkey. It is nevertheless possible for us to rely on an encompassing philosophy that would embrace this tension too, take it into account and appreciate it, and we have not yet reached it.

There are those who love Asım's generation precisely as it was in the state that his father Köse İmam complained about. I fear that there is a level that we suffer from today, which is very far even from the level Akif described and which was the subject of Köse İmam's complaint.

A kind of lumpen conservatism or patriotism that is encouraged, even incited, in the political arena can knowingly steal the role from Asım's Generation. A generation that tolerates no debate, that judges people by headlines, that does not read books but has ready and heavy judgments about books, that can instantly recognize bad and harmful authors and books and give them the treatment they deserve, and that thinks that with this it fulfills the obligatory and even the supererogatory duties of its political stance. This, of course, is not Asım's Generation.

Many debates in recent times, especially in the intellectual sphere, unfortunately take place under the pressure and judgment of this kind of vandalism. Of course, when the vandal judgment comes, the debate does not take place, it vanishes. This judgment, which leaves those who know, even if they oppose, no strength to answer in a dignified manner, cuts everything short, and with each passing day consumes our generation's climate of reflection and drags the level down.

Debating with Prof. Mustafa Öztürk, with many of whose ideas or ways of expressing his ideas I disagree and object to a great deal, and with his ideas, is nevertheless good; it develops Islamic thought, whatever he says, even however he says it. It carries Asım's Generation to the horizons and depths it needs, it gives it more self-confidence. Without him, with whom would I debate my own ideas? What idea could frighten Asım's Generation that has grasped wisdom? What conservatism will save anyone who is far from wisdom?

For some reason, today the feelings I have about the treatment Mustafa Öztürk is subjected to piled on top of the feelings I was seized by while wanting to commemorate Akif in the context of Asım's Generation.

There must be some wisdom in this too.

Should we begin searching here for the wisdom we have lost, without going all the way to Berlin?