Once again a season for ending Islamism

One of the things we have to get used to in Turkey, and in fact have grown quite used to, is a discussion of Islamism (or political Islam) at certain intervals, and, in that discussion, the inevitable announcement of the end of Islamism.

Admittedly, it is largely these periodic death announcements that set off the debates. Another routine of these debates is that, with the announcement, many people join in and try to prove either that it has really died or that in fact it has not. Another routine is the objection to the word "Islamist" by those who are known as Islamists by everyone, or who are known as Islamists within the political camps and divisions. Through this objection they perhaps also object, in another way, to those who announce the end of Islamism.

That is how it goes, but why do we keep, at certain intervals, going round and round and living through this death, this end?

There is also an ironic side to the matter. Those who announce the end of Islamism withdraw from the stage after a while, that is, so to speak, they die, or politically their discourse and what they have to say run dry, yet Islamism, somehow, despite their diagnosis, goes on living for a while longer, so that it falls to others to make the next announcement. On one occasion we likened the matter to Nietzsche's declaration of the death of God. It was also written on a wall: "God is dead, signed: Nietzsche," and on the next line, "Nietzsche is dead, signed: God."

May God forgive me, I have always been preoccupied with explaining to those who say Islamism has died that this matter is not that simple, that Islamism is a will to exist inherent in the action of every Muslim. If I say that, as I came to notice the order of periodicity to which this business is subject, I realized what a futile task I was engaged in, I hope no one will count me too among those who have repented of Islamism.

What I see clearly is this: those who put forward these diagnoses or claims of diagnosis know nothing of the nature of Islam or of the nature of politics, and they have not the slightest command of the analysis of intent and mentality, of the political hermeneutics, of the political movements that have stood out as Islamism in general.

What do those who try to abstract politics from a religion whose opening sentence is Lā ilāha illā Allāh (the rejection of servitude to humans, the dedication of servitude to God alone), and who describe themselves as mere Muslims untouched by politics, imagine they understand of Islam? Do they imagine one can be a Muslim without resisting the counterfeit gods who every day and everywhere try to make man their servant, who in this pursuit plunge the earth into corruption and build their order on mischief-making, and without struggling against them and their bigoted, reckless servants?

We have said it before: in this respect Islamism is an inexhaustible potential, because every day it manifests itself in the most basic acts such as prayer, fasting, pilgrimage, sacrifice, martyrdom and zakat. Even if no political discourse were developed on these acts, their own spontaneous philosophy is enough to reproduce the Islamist feeling, will and stance again and again.

Politics is one of the most fundamental levels of human existence, a form of activity in which a human being realizes himself, a human mode of existence that stands out through the will to intervene in the world in line with one's own values and principles.

The rejection of servitude to humans is above all a stance, a process of struggle, and the sum of this also fills the content of Islamism. Meanwhile you may not call it Islamism. After all, Islamism is a naming. It can be said that the name Muslim amply contains what is meant by it. There may be those who object to the term Islamism without rejecting its substance, thinking that being a Muslim suffices to express it. Different sensitivities come into play, understandable sensitivities. However, the objection to the term can gradually turn into an objection to its substance as well. By resorting to the shallowest definition of politics, it can lead to a loss of direction that paralyzes the distinction between friend and enemy in the struggle against servitude to humans.

Yes. The friend-enemy distinction is at once one of the most valid definitions of politics and, for a Muslim too, one of the most constitutive distinctions.

Whose walī/friend are Muslims, and whose enemy? Are the unbelievers not each other's walī, friends? They will not be pleased with you until you follow their religion, until you join their political camps and sell out your own brothers. As long as this most fundamental political stance, inherent in the founding discourse of Islam, exists, who can bring political Islam to an end, and where? How could it be possible to see the end of political Islam without losing this stance, without preferring others to one's own friends and without siding with the enemy?

Those who tie the end of political Islam to a certain failure should look again at, and bear witness to, the fact that this political quality is not a reality that can prove itself through success or failure. For example, today no one can speak of the end of political Christianity, Judaism or Buddhism. Is it because these religious politicalities have offered great remedies to humanity? Never. On the contrary, a politicality does not necessarily exist by producing solutions for all humanity or by achieving a certain success. The existence of a politicality is realized through the struggles in which the whole body of its believers determine their identities, their friends and their enemies around it.

What kind of success, one wonders, were those who tie the end of political Islam to a failure expecting of it?

This is in fact the crucial question: by what criteria of fairness, and in what way, can success or failure be attributed to Muslims today, whose lands are under occupation all over the world, who suffer coups and every kind of oppression in their countries, who are both the nightmare of the world's arrogant powers and, because of that very fear, constantly their oppressed and wronged victims, and to the stance they represent?