The modern narrative of an archaic ideology: secularism

The title is from the dossier title of the latest issue of Tezkire magazine. Having completed its 30th year, Tezkire magazine has come out with its latest issue containing articles that discuss secularization at length, and reviews of recently published books on the subject.

In fact, secularization is a subject discussed by very broad circles that are not limited to the agenda of sociologists of religion, nor of general sociologists and political scientists. After all, it is a development that concerns everyone in one way or another. People either become religious or they do not. In both cases they have experienced a certain level of secularity.

An important part of our answer to the question of whether the world we live in is becoming more religious or moving away from religion is determined by our own personal preferences or inclinations. It is immediately noticeable that circles distant from religion greet news or analyses that the world is secularizing with a particular joy.

When this joy turns into a kind of declaration of victory, it is also noticeable that it has a particular provocative effect in religious circles, driving them instead to prove that religiosity in the world is increasing all the more.

Yet just as the world's secularizing takes nothing away from the truth of religion, the increase of religiosity in the world is not always something to rejoice at on behalf of a given religiosity. The Qur'an already says that most people are far from the truth, inclined toward the world, ignorant, and fall into heedlessness and error. That is, the truth that the Qur'an represents does not need the mass approval of people.

On the other hand, a simultaneous rise in religiosity from every part of the world also brings with it more violence in the world, and more religion-based conflicts. Because the religiosities of different religions often set off rages, grudges and hostilities toward one another.

In Europe, it can become inevitable that rising Christian religiosity also revives a Crusader fanaticism. Indeed it becomes the most important source feeding the rising Islamophobic violence and hate speech. And we see what kind of savage rage the increasing Hindu and Buddhist religiosity, reaching the degree of fanaticism, sets off against Muslims in India and Myanmar. We are not even getting to what the fanatic religiosity that gave birth to and sustains Israel has led to, or what kind of solidarity it has against Muslims with Evangelical fanaticism in the US.

Therefore the rising of religiosity all over the world has in itself nothing that supports the claims, for a religious Muslim, for example. But that is the case. Whether Muslims are religious or not, the religious-fanatic attacks of people belonging to different religions directed at them continue to increase.

Of course increasing religiosity is not the only cause of Islamophobic attacks. There is no objective criterion, acceptable to everyone, by which to measure whether religiosity is truly genuine religiosity. In the Holy Qur'an, Christian or Jewish men of religion who are truly devout, who base their devoutness on a relationship of friendship with God, are spoken of favorably. The measure pointed to there is truly a measure of sincerity based on the deeds of the heart: you see their hearts tremble in awe when God's name is mentioned. You also see that, without distinction of religion, they never betray anyone's trust. No harm comes to anyone from such people. Moreover, while a recommendation is made to Muslims through them, it is also recommended that grudge and enmity not be harbored toward anyone merely because of his religion, with a fanatical, essentialist and generalizing approach. It is commanded that anger at a people cannot justify an unjust approach toward everyone from that people.

Of course very different forms of religiosity may also emerge, and some of them may in fact be a means of taking much deeper root in the world. That is, things that are apparently religiosity may in fact be signs of much more worldliness, that is, secularity.

There is also a general tendency inclined to see outwardly religious secularity, or secularity with no religious appearance or claim, as a stage of humanity's development. The articles in Tezkire generally try to show, in answer to this claim, that secularism is the world's most archaic ideology. For the human being to see himself as self-sufficient in this world by forgetting his Creator, ignoring Him or behaving as though He did not exist, as independence from need (istiğna), is not a virtue but heedlessness, and this heedlessness is one of humanity's most archaic attitudes.

To grant secularization the title of a modern-times invention and to see it as a sign of the level of knowledge and consciousness that humanity has reached is also a new manifestation of the human being's oldest and most archaic pride, his delusion. That this is a pride/delusion is already plainly evident in the face of the fact that the claim of secularization is not valid at all.

In the issue in question of Tezkire, Mustafa Kemal Şan examines "the reality of Türkiye in the face of secularization," Hüseyin Tutar examines "the Spirit of the American University," explaining how a culture passes through religion "from Protestant foundation to institutionalized unbelief." Büşra Nur Topal examines a kind of religiosity formed in the digital world as an important medium of our time, touching on interesting subjects with "Digital Churches: A Look at Lifestyle Discourse in YouTube Confession Channels." Yasin Yılmaz tests Peter Berger's understanding of secularism, which deeply shook the secularization thesis, alongside observations on Türkiye. Şükrü Macun deals with conservative consumption advertisements in the context of emotional appeal. Gamze Şenyayla sociologically evaluates the "Post-secular elements" she found in the series Bir Başkadır, which was much on the agenda some time ago.

The magazine also includes free-form evaluations by Mazhar Bağlı, Necdet Subaşı, Kamil Ergenç, Salman Sayyid and Şevki Bakırcı on secularization and the forms of religiosity specific to Türkiye and our time.

For those who want to approach secularization beyond rote notions, with theoretical depth and with follow-up, it is altogether a fine dossier, under the signature of Tezkire's editor-in-chief Yunus Badem and the issue's editor Faruk Karaaslan.