Religion is a path offered to free people

That there is nothing Islamic about forcing people to wear the headscarf or to carry out any religious rule is established well enough by the Qur'anic verse "there is no compulsion in religion." However, we do not overlook that there is a traditional interpretation of this verse to the effect that "there can be no compulsion in entering the religion, but once one has entered the religion, the rules of the religion must be obeyed."

In my view, it is precisely this interpretation itself that constitutes the real problem in today's world. The wording of the verse's text in fact leaves no room for such a commentary. Therefore, that there shall be no compulsion in religion is a general rule. Those who append this commentary of the tradition to the very clear text of the verse are unaware of the sociology, the history and, in my view, the fiqh of the matter as well.

There is a problem that stems from thinking of fiqh as an unchanging and closed text of fatwas formed in certain periods. Yet fiqh, rather than being a closed collection of texts, is a mode of reasoning, a way of comprehension, a politics and consciousness of daily life. Fiqh is a faculty that reflects the believing person's or community's awareness, insight and discernment of what is for and against itself. From those who have absorbed this faculty, this political consciousness, excellent Islamic model practices emerge in different times and places.

The fiqh formed in traditional societies, as those who know the field very well are aware, did not draw its inspiration only from the Qur'an and the Sunnah. It drew to some extent from custom, from public interest and from historical conditions as well. To offer to the present day, as they are, some fatwas or opinions that formed under those conditions and may well be considered reasonable for their period, by disregarding these aspects and turning them into nass (scriptural texts), runs first of all against the aspect of fiqh that requires discernment and insight.

Let it not be misunderstood: what I am talking about is not the historicity of revelation, an idea to which I never give credit, but the historicity of fatwas, which I hope will be easily understood and appreciated. We must admit that today we are in a place very different from the world of entirely traditional, closed religious communities in which those fatwas, that fiqh, took shape. The fundamental rule of this world, as open as it can be, is freedoms.

Even before the revolution made in the name of Islam in Iran, the most important goal of the Islamic movement in the world had not been the forced Islamization of people. Even Sayyid Qutb, regarded as the most radical interpreter of Islamism, described fiqh as far from being a ready-made political model that is closed and to be applied in the same way everywhere, rather as an open-ended practice whose content takes shape in interaction with reality. And he wrote that the aim of Islamic jihad is not to Islamize people but only to liberate them.

Freedom, the formation of an environment worthy of human dignity, has been the most important goal of the Islamic movement. The Iranian model has led to a serious distortion both of the discourse and of the direction of the Islamic movement. Indeed, the deviations that the idea of a religious oligarchy, which the Islamic movement never came near, could cause were seen from the very beginning. Contrary to what is supposed, a theocratic rule carried out by a religious oligarchy does not give God more say or power in this world; on the contrary, its effect of distancing people further from God, a secularizing effect, becomes unavoidable.

Freedom is the essence of the matter, and the Turkish practice in fact puts forth a quite inspiring model for the Islamic world. This model, in all its dimensions, is at present an important agenda item in Arab intellectual debates, academic circles and media.

A COMMUNICATION ACCIDENT THAT AN INFATUATION WITH FREEDOM OPENED THE WAY FOR

On this occasion let me also recount, with all the irony it contains, a communication accident that befell me on an Arab television channel where the Turkish model was being discussed. The host of Mukammilin TV, to whose program I was a guest, Muhammed Nasır, said that what a conservative government in Türkiye had achieved was being followed with great admiration throughout the Arab world. He said they appreciated that the AK Party was engaged in a struggle against a strong secularist deep state, and he asked whether that was why, for example, it still had not banned alcohol and "some things." Of course these "some things" were what I understood them to be. I probably did not know the word he used, but I heard it as another word that I knew in my head and was ready to hear in the flow of speech.

First of all, I immediately began explaining that our basic stance and philosophy is freedom. I tried to explain that when we become a little stronger we never think, and cannot think, of doing things we do not do today. What is essential is freedom, and just as people do not have to be Muslims, I explained that in today's world we cannot pressure those who are Muslims to fulfill all the conditions of Islam either.

Therefore I said that we never think of interfering with those who drink alcohol, that of course we follow a policy, grounded in the Constitution, against alcoholism and for protecting young people from alcohol, but that this would never amount to a ban. I also added that we have no goal such as forcibly imposing the headscarf on anyone. Yet the word that Nasır asked me about and that I did not understand was "diara," the Arabic for the word "brothel," and because I did not know this word at all, I had heard it as the word "eraya," which I knew as the equivalent of nudity.

Such translations happen in the workings of language. A person does not always understand what he hears; sometimes he hears what he understands. Of course, I had understood from this that what he meant was women wearing the headscarf, though the word I thought he used had not actually struck me as very suitable even as an expression of this situation. As it turned out, both the word he used and what he meant were different. To tell the truth, thank God, because I have never been interested in it, I had never learned the Arabic of that word, nor heard it. And because I did not know it, I distorted the word spoken in my ear and heard it as being without the headscarf or nudity.

That excerpt from that program has been used against me for years by Arab racists as a picture of our contradictions and with disgusting insinuations, but the truth of the matter is that it is a communication accident stemming solely from my not knowing the word "brothel."

Nevertheless, what I said there and everywhere is that the most important value that should be at the center of any political model of Islam today is freedom. I had said that no moral virtue can be expected from one who is not free. One who is not free has no religion either. Religion is a path offered to free people who can also object to it.