A hermeneutic inquiry on the occasion of my books published in Arabic

On Friday, at the initiative of Arab journalists and television organizations in Istanbul, above all Mukemmilin TV, a launch event was held for my five books that have been translated into Arabic or published in Arabic for the first time. Yet the event went far beyond a simple book launch: it became an occasion to take up many of the problems of the Islamic world and, in particular, to reflect on and discuss the repercussions of Turkish-Islamic thought in the Arab world.

In fact, this awareness is something the Arabs have felt more strongly of late than we have, and they are trying to act on it. Turkey is the country of the Islamic world that is most wondered about, most closely watched, and most influential through what it does, a country that gives the oppressors cause for worry and the oppressed cause for hope. It is a country that stands out and distinguishes itself through its political stance and the positions it takes against the international order on humanitarian and Islamic questions. Turkey is a country with which the Arab world is rapidly growing closer, through its leader and through its people. This process in fact reached an important juncture with the Arab Spring, but the counter-revolutions that intervened, and what followed, left those who tried to destroy Turkey's popularity with their hopes dashed. Under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey has taken its most precious place within an extremely wide geography of the heart.

This expansion comes about perhaps through Turkey's political stance, its popular culture, what it produces, its television series, and the history it calls to mind. But the intellectual dimension in particular has been lacking for some time. There is a very rich cultural and intellectual production in Turkey, and its reflection in Arabic is not as great as the reflection of Arabic intellectual production in Turkey. This is a deficiency that must be identified and made up.

Indeed, the translation support that the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Turkey has recently provided, especially from Turkish into other languages, has created a compensation incomparable to what existed before. Thanks to this, many Turkish works are being translated and published in many languages, above all Arabic.

On the other hand, another side of the matter is that translations from the Arab world into Turkish have been far more numerous and more rapid. Translations into Turkish from other languages have made the externally nourished side of Turkish thought very strong. Perhaps in a debate about nativeness this could be presented as a problem. But as someone who has always believed that people have a great deal to learn from one another, I have never given any credit to that view.

After all, the ties of translated ideas to the lands from which they emerged are not fixed. Ideas that are translated and read in another language can have a quite different effect there. Very valuable ideas that cannot be sufficiently appreciated in their own lands can find a home in other lands. Countless examples of this could be found. Indeed, one of my books translated into Arabic, "Sayyid Qutb: Political Theology, Historicity and Fiqh," was a serious hermeneutic inquiry into how, and by whom, Qutb has been understood, fifty years after his execution, in Egypt above all but everywhere in the world and of course in Turkey as well. After all, which one of these readings can be attributed directly to Qutb?

This is a question that deserves attention, but there is one fact: Qutb was neither a person to whom innocence could be attributed, nor one whose thoughts could be ascribed perfection; and as someone who could give rise to such a diversity of thought, his text should be regarded as very rich and as always deserving of interpretation. Of course, by whom, how, and how much he is read in Turkish should also be a separate subject of assessment.

At the launch event, alongside this most recently published book of mine, the following books of mine were presented: "Islam and the Sources of Secularization," in which I address secularization and laicism in their political and cultural dimensions and criticize the historical perspective that tries to see secularization as a stage of a historical evolution; "Neye Himmet Neye Hizmet," which I published right after 17-25 December and in which I address the FETÖ reality in its sociological, philosophical and of course other dimensions; "Karizma Zamanları," in which, from the standpoint of the sociology of charisma, I approach Turkish politics as it has tried to rid itself of the coup-plotting tutelage regime since 28 February; and finally "The Land of Canaan: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Egypt," first published in Arabic, in which I evaluate what followed the coup carried out in Egypt in 2013, simultaneously with and with the same focus as the Gezi events in Turkey, in particular in light of its links with Turkish and world politics.

The launch program began with a broad summary by Muhammed Nasır, the very successful presenter of the Mükemmilin Channel, on whose program I have been a guest many times. The extremely valuable discussions of the book contents by Prof. Seyfeddin Abdülfettah, the renowned political scientist and intellectual of Cairo University, and by the Mauritanian M. Muhtar el-Şankıti, whose books have also been translated into Turkish, were truly horizon-opening and provocative of new thoughts. Şankıti's remark, that "for an author a book is like a child who can outlive a person's lifetime; here we are witnessing the birth of five children at once," was repeated by S. Abdülfettah as well.

The interest and curiosity that the Arab world, of which Turkey is in effect already a part, felt about the thought behind the Turkish model, as seen through my own books, was expressed sufficiently by the hall being packed to capacity and a considerable crowd spilling outside.

Of course, for the part of this goodwill that concerns me personally, I thank very much, first of all, the valued producers of the MükemmilinKanalı who proposed the idea of this event and took on all of its burden, Ahmet el-Şennaf, Ahmet Subhi and Hamza Zouba; the Kuwaiti publisher who published the books, Khaleel İbrahim Mousa; all the friends, above all Şankıti, Abdülfettah and Nasır, who devoted their wholehearted efforts to organizing the program flawlessly; and the esteemed ambassadors who came especially for this launch from Turkey and from abroad, and everyone.