Anatolian gnosis and the invention of Hanafi-Maturidism

In fact, nothing is more normal than for the interpretation and practice of Islam put forward in Turkey to display a difference from those in other countries. Of course, this difference is not peculiar to Turkey alone either. The Ottoman Islamists were sufficiently aware of the effects of these cultural differences on interpretations of religion. But the stance they took against desires to derive a cultural superiority from this also formed the limits of their discourse.

We have previously touched on Said Halim Pasha's views on this subject: "The life of any nation is nothing other than the succession of a number of social events that give a particular character to its religious beliefs, which form its customs and characters, and thereby develop its ideal. Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Protestantism in Christianity, and Sunnism and Shi'ism in Islam, came about in this way. This disagreement can arise even within the same church. Indeed, German Catholicism is very different from Spanish and Italian Catholicism. The situation is the same in Protestantism and Orthodoxy," the Pasha said. But in return he attributed a kind of jahiliyya to exalting this difference.

Claiming the superiority of one over another merely by reference to the ethnic or national identity of differences is first of all contrary to the basic norms of Islam.

Yet once it is settled on the superiority of Turkish Islam, the matter immediately comes to dwelling on the causes that provide this superiority. What are the basic characteristics, the constituent elements, the dimensions of Turkish Islam that make a difference from others?

For example, deriving a rank of superiority by referring to the gnostic ('irfani) understanding that has spread and been put into practice in Anatolia. But what is gnostic about it? These are perhaps somewhat too gnostic questions. The ironic side of the matter is that those who emphasize the difference most, who try to derive a rank for themselves from the difference, are again for the most part those who attribute themselves to the gnostic traditions.

Indeed, nationalism, which in the Republican period was started by the state in order to distinguish itself from other nations, is continued, this time extended to distinguishing one's own Islam from that of others and adopted to some extent by certain segments of society, even conservative segments. On the one hand there is a literary production that continues with the exaltation and extra sanctification of Anatolian culture and forms of religiosity. A form of religiosity whose miraculousness and validity are self-derived, or perhaps derived from its nativeness, without any account taken of its relation to, its conformity with, or its distance from or closeness to the basic sources of knowledge of Islam. Tolerance is presented as its most important feature, but all its presentations are made with an open exclusion and belittling of other forms of religiosity.

Let us come to the nativeness part of the matter later. But on the other hand there is also an emphasis on Maturidism and Hanafism as the feature that gives Turkish Islam its real merits of superiority. Perhaps there is also an interest in, or reference to, the fact that each of these two Islamic scholars was of Turkish origin.

If Islam in Turkey has a distinguishing feature, does it really come from affiliation to these two imams of schools? When one looks at the literature produced in this framework, emphases stand out that Hanafism and Maturidism are more suited to the values and understanding of the modern world with their more urban, more civilized, more tolerant sides that give more importance to reason and will.

At a conference, after a retired ambassador pointed to the merits of Turkish Islam by emphasizing precisely these features and distinguishing it from the Islam of other nations, for example from the Islam of the Taliban in Afghanistan, I asked a very simple question: did they know that Hanafism and Maturidism, which they thought made it possible to present Turkish Islam today as compatible with the values of the modern world, indeed as the representative of "moderate Islam," are also the school of the Taliban of Afghanistan?

In fact, a simple inquiry was enough to know this. But a lust for ideological invention and construction was so dominant that it prevented even the asking of such a basic question. If they were to learn which other nations, from whom we distinguish ourselves, also belong to Hanafism and Maturidism, I fear that this time they would give up both of them.

The fact that the Taliban and a Turkish Islam that makes an effort to distinguish itself from it ultimately have the same references of school; this alone constitutes the most perfect example of showing how different the interpretations to which the same schools, the same ideas, the same texts can be subjected in different societies. This example also shows perfectly how misleading it can be to establish blind and hasty causalist relationships between certain ideas and religions and certain sociological developments.

So this school had nothing that could prevent the formation of such a wide difference. In this case, whatever feature is attributed to Turkish Islam, how and to what extent can the effect of Maturidism and Hanafism in it be determined?

Without doubt the forms of religiosity that have emerged in Anatolia are not so uniform among themselves either. Throughout history, interpretations of Islam in Anatolia too have diversified in a way that can produce serious differences within themselves. Moreover, these differences have not been only in the form of differences between Alevism and Sunnism; at times, even among people belonging to the Hanafi school itself, these differences have emerged in ways that produced tensions and conflicts. The famous debate between the Sivasis and the Kadızadelis in Ottoman history is one of the typical examples on this subject. Both of these belong to the Hanafi school. It is also known that even Bektashism, which displays a conspicuous difference in Anatolian religiosity, as a Sufi order has Hanafi and Maturidi as its school in jurisprudence and creed.

In fact, right here there is another, crucial question: Was Ottoman Islam really Maturidi? Let us look at that later as well.