Islamism between its claims and its achievements

The central question of Yetkin Düşünce journal, which is opening Islamism to discussion around new or recurring questions, is the difference between Islamism's claims and what it has realized. With this it is trying to keep an account, calling those who hold Islamist claims to account, and perhaps trying to give an account itself. In this context, with the kind permission of the journal's esteemed editors, I would like to leave you alone with one more excerpt on the subject from the lengthy interview they conducted with me.

What possibility and weakness does Islamism contain within it in Turkey?

Of course, within such a picture, Islamism positioned itself for many years in Turkey as an oppositional movement. But when we say Islamism, there is no monolithic movement, discourse or organization we can speak about. We can speak of a whole of discourses whose distance from the state and from itself is uncertain, but there is no authority by which we could measure the consistency of this whole of discourses or complain of its inconsistency. This can be seen as an important weakness of Islamism, but in one respect it is also one of its most important advantages. Islamism has no church, and therefore has no taboos fixed once and for all times that would bind it against the developments of the age. From the outside, this leads us to see political and social articulations and expressions that can adapt rapidly to developments, and that can be observed from the outside as a kind of pragmatism. But in one respect, as a kind of weak theology, in the wide field it opens to human freedom, creativity and ijtihad, Islamism always keeps open the possibilities and the hope regarding the coming human being and what the coming human being will say. Islamism is an inexhaustible potential, because every day it manifests itself in the most basic acts such as prayer, fasting, hajj, sacrifice, martyrdom and zakat. Even if no political discourse were developed on these acts, their spontaneous philosophy suffices to reproduce the Islamist feeling, will and stance again and again.

Who represents Islamism in politics? How can we evaluate the success of this representation?

In one respect all Muslims represent Islamism, and in another respect no one does. This is perhaps a situation specific to the age we live in. Until 1924 there was in the world an Ottoman state that represented Islamism at the level of the state, at the level of the political body. The political responsibility of Islam rested officially on the shoulders of the caliph. Before the Ottomans, the other caliphs, regardless of whether they represented it well or badly, represented the political body of Islam. As a body it was sometimes full of life, fresh, effective, but sometimes it also grew tired, aged, and had difficulty keeping pace with the age, but it had a vitality.

The Islamist will was coming to life in a body, but a human body. The point of saying this is to remind that its existence in this world was not innocent of error, that not everything the Islamist political body did might be right. Islamism is of course not Islam itself. In every analysis one must be aware of the distance between the Islam that all Muslims seek as an ideal and Islamism, which inevitably emerged as a practice of interpretation as a result of these quests.

In post-caliphate conditions, however, the representation of Islamism has become an entirely different matter. Islamism has become a once-upon-a-time legend. It has turned into a serious hermeneutic problem. There is no representation of it as a political body respected by all Muslims all over the world, of which they feel themselves to be an organ. On the other hand, it has made its name heard as though it had always existed and had an effect everywhere. Sometimes as a ghost-revenant, sometimes as a coming savior. But in whose flesh and bone has it been clothed?

There is an imagined existence of the ummah, and despite the absence of a body, there is a universal ummah existence to which all Muslims feel they belong. It is inevitable that this existence, constantly reproduced in the mind, heart and worship of all Muslims, will seek ways of passing from the level of imaginedness to flesh and bone. Even if it is not subject to a program managed from a particular focus, a particular center, the politicality inherent in Muslims' most basic acts of worship flows spontaneously toward this telos.

In the end, Islam, which as an oppositional feeling does not have a harsh organizational structure, continued to exert influence with its social presence within the religious practices of believers. Even with its existence minding its own business, without meddling with anyone, it has frightened those who had buried it alive, those who were actually in power. Can we speak of a success in this sense? We can. But as to which organization's, which party's, which community's success this is, one must stop right there and think a little more about what I am saying.

In that case, what difference and relation do you see between Islamism's fundamental claims and its realizations from the past to the present?

Which Islamists? There is a political discourse of an Islam that is interpreted continually, but it has no organization aimed at realizing this discourse. Those who have acquired an organization, on the other hand, are obliged to put distance between themselves and Islamism's political discourse. Indeed, let me say more: those categorized as Islamists begin their words by saying they are not Islamists, and they even make a special effort to keep the label of Islamist from sticking to the political programs they have undertaken. This of course makes tracing Islamism difficult. Islamism is a discourse that no one claims, yet a phenomenon, an effect, whose existence everyone feels. The total political effect of Muslims is a whole of politicalities that they have put forth by interpreting what they encounter in life with what they understand from Islam.

In the end, this is what we are talking about.