The religion market between monopolism and pluralism: which is the Turkey model?

What does it mean for Islam in Türkiye to form a more authentic or more successful model for all Muslims?

I am aware that this is a question that plunges headlong into the subject. Moreover, there is not always a necessary relationship between being "authentic" and being "successful." An authentic understanding of Islam may not always have the opportunity to persuade the masses; depending on their sociological conditions, the masses may not be open to listening to a truthful message, and they may even have closed themselves off.

Authentic faith has its ebbs and flows, which also correspond to sociological conditions. In times of hardship, for instance, people's openness to religion increases, while in times of abundance, pleasures and worldly interests draw people away from religion. You can apply this to all social structures. A very different distribution emerges, though of course on condition that it is not taken as the only factor.

Therefore, in the conflict between religiosity and secularity, there is no linear, straight line of development in favor of either one. It is among the best-known facts of the history of the Prophets that many a prophet, in a struggle lasting many years, even centuries, in history, could not establish even a single community of believers.

Meanwhile, one way of doing nationalism on behalf of Türkiye through religion is by singing the praises of a supposed model called Turkish Islam. What is Türkiye's Islam? What is its definition, its content? Those who talk a great deal on this subject cannot go beyond inventing a new religion today, and indeed it could not be otherwise. Such modeling is no different from nation-building processes, and all building processes, together with a bit of history, a bit of ethnology and a bit of self-writing, are a new invention, a self-admiration, a self-exaltation and a self-propaganda.

The problem is that those who do this get terribly carried away by what they are doing and take what they have invented in their minds to be real. It is not easy to wake them from the sleep they have created out of their own delusions, and it is inevitable that they will react in an excessive and illogical way toward anyone who wants to wake them.

After this ordinary reflection, let us add the following: if Islamic life in Türkiye has a distinction compared with Islamic life in other Muslim countries, this does not stem, as is supposed, from the superiority of this or that Islamic understanding over other Islamic understandings. On the contrary, this distinction stems from the fact that all understandings of religion in history found a way of living with one another, or more plainly, from the fact that a long and deeply rooted experience of religious pluralism was realized.

One secret of the social order of the Ottomans, which lasted quite long even by the standards of Ibn Khaldun, lies in this: a pluralist religious and ethnic life realized under the protection and guarantee of the state. Everyone may have their own truth claim, but the point was to prevent these from turning into a mass violence that would threaten the social order and lead the parties to deny or exterminate one another.

Leaving aside the secure existence of other religions in this environment of religious pluralism, there was also diversity among Muslims themselves: Kadızadelis, Sivasis, Bektashis, Shiites, Sunnis, Hanafis, Shafi'is, Druze, Salafis, Sufis, Naqshbandis, Qadiris, and so on. All of them existed freely with others in this pluralist environment, debated with others, and developed themselves while debating. Moreover, the country we are speaking of was not confined within the borders of the Misak-ı Milli (National Pact). We are speaking of a higher ummah-mind that governed, from the Ottoman center, the diversity of the entire Muslim geography, from India to North Africa and the Balkans.

Since this mind was interrupted with the Republic, our inclination toward religious monopolism has continued in every matter. If there is anything today that gives hope to the world, even in the name of Islamic experience, it is nothing other than the revival of what remains of that interrupted model. Otherwise, unless we free ourselves from our monopolist understanding of religion, which in the Republican period first took shape as secularism, as an alternative to religion, and later, with subsequent openings, spread into every religious group, order and community, no model will emerge for either the Islamic world or the whole world.

Truly, what still makes Türkiye a source of hope today is precisely its disposition to rid itself of that monopolist understanding and to have a horizon and breadth capable of embracing the whole ummah.

Meanwhile, when one looks superficially at some of today's experiences, it is supposed that religious pluralism will bring a drift away from religion together with a serious sense of relativism. Yet many studies show that where religious pluralism is truly lived, people, far from losing their sense of truth, acquire it much more strongly and hold on to it better.

Conversely, in places where there is a kind of religious monopoly, people do not cling to religion more; because of the inevitable corruption of the power hierarchies that monopoly produces, the masses can grow even colder toward religion. For this reason, one can look at how high the level of secularization is in places where there is no pluralist understanding of religion. Moreover, secularization takes place despite the institutional presence and manifestations of the apparently dominant, monopoly religion. In Europe and in the Islamic world alike, this tendency moves in the same direction.

That is why, in an environment of religious pluralism where everyone holds on to their own truth claim as much as they wish, religious organizations are also obliged to prove their own quality in accordance with the conditions of a free competitive environment. And when the state attends to the conditions that will ensure this pluralism, and plays the role of referee instead of taking sides in the competition among religions or religious views, it becomes more possible for religions to develop themselves through their own internal debates.

The book Acts of Faith by Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, a religious economy approach that explains the competition of religious movements through a kind of economic market model, sets out these trends very well. The book's most important thesis is that the general level of religious commitment rises to the extent that religious groups are uncontrolled and competitive. In contrast, where there is a monopolist understanding of religion, the dominant religion, since it suppresses both competition and free debate and thought, sees no need to make any effort to raise its own quality. Because it has the power of the state or an influence that distorts market conditions behind it, it loses its persuasive power and causes a cooling among the public.