So as not to be imprisoned in the East–West opposition…

Edward Said's book "Orientalism," published in 1979, quickly had an important impact that determined all the debates on the subject in both Western and Eastern academic worlds. This impact provided an important motivation and an entirely new perspective on the way of looking at the subject, particularly for intellectual inquiries into postcolonialism. Since then, studies on the subject could be carried out only by adopting the new conceptual store, the problematics and the outlook he put forth. Let us mention in passing that not only the East-West question, but feminism and gender studies as well were influenced by the book Orientalism to the same degree.

One of the most important problematics of Orientalism is the opening it makes on knowledge or consciousness regarding the theme of "self" and "other." At this point, from the standpoint of Islamic society, it is not a problem to create an "other," to have an other. What matters is how we see the "other," how we treat it. Accepting the other as other, that is, not defining it according to ourselves, that is, leaving it as other, as absolute other, not establishing a discursive hegemony over it by defining it…

It can be said that this has anyway been the model that the whole of Muslim civilizational practice has displayed most successfully throughout history. When I define the Other as my opposite, or place it somewhere with my own concepts, my own categories and classifications, it will no longer exist as other, but will have become a part of my own horizon of identity and being.

The transcendentalist (tenzihçi) performance displayed by Islamic civilization in leaving the Other as absolute other is important. In the Holy Qur'an, the boundaries of the life Muslims live are depicted, even if as a design that has been practiced and can always be practiced, as a world that also contains Jews, Christians, Magians, Sabians and adherents of other faiths. Muslims are not made to dream, in the end, of eliminating these differences. One must pay close attention to this. There is no other book of principles that can do this.

What makes us see Orientalism as a problem at this point is that the East is defined by Westerners and is not left as other, that the otherness of the East has been destroyed. That is, in the eyes of Westerners the East is reflected in discourse as a product of the Western mind, and no independent, other existence of its own remains. The definition of a fast, mobile, explorer, male, knowledgeable, curious, active, hardworking, open West is completed by an image of an East that is slow, static, mysterious, feminine, emotional, unmotivated, passive, lazy and esoteric.

Since Orientalism is criticized for treating knowledge as a means of domination, emulating it in the name of Occidentalism actually means, in essence, not being against domination, but on the contrary longing to become a greater dominator one day. Yet Occidentalism cannot be the alternative to Orientalism. In truth, all power relations produce their own particular perspectives. In periods when Muslims were stronger, when they found something on the other side worth knowing and learning, they did not shrink from taking and learning it, did not try to destroy it in defining it; on the contrary, they internalized the foreign elements they took in, on the condition of soon leaving them as they were, that is, by observing the law of the absolute other.

There have also been regional or historical differences in Muslims' perception of the West. The Muslims who entered Europe from Andalusia displayed for seven hundred years an example of high culture and civilization that would be a source of inspiration, even at times a reference, for Europe's later Renaissance and Reformations. Andalusia is a civilization realized not only through the world of Islam or through what it carried from Islam's fundamental references, but, on the contrary, perhaps through the very aspect of it that, with the apt motivation and grounding of these fundamental references as well, kept one ear and one eye constantly open to foreign cultures. Of course, in this respect it is possible to evaluate all the philosophical movements that emerged in Andalusia (such as the Bayt al-Hikma) within the framework of the first experiences of Occidentalism as well.

In today's world, as Muslims, we need to say something new without remaining prisoners of the East-West axis. One cannot set out without accepting as a fact that the world we live in now bears entirely the stamp of Western civilization. There is no longer any point in making this a matter of complex. In a sense, the conflict is taking place within the Western world itself. There is no conflict of different civilizations or of East and West; rather, within a global geography and everywhere, between different social segments, there is a conflict between the wretched of this world and its oppressors, so that the world may move toward fairer and more humane limits.

In my view, Abu al-Hasan Nadwi's book on this subject is one of the earliest and very beautiful approaches brought to a world perception organized on an East-West axis. Nadwi's work is built around the question "What did the world lose with the decline of the Muslims?" This is a question far beyond, and very free of complex compared with, the question of why Muslims fell behind. The backwardness of Muslims is a given. It cannot be denied. Its causes can be dwelt upon separately. But one must look at what the world has actually lost through the decline of the Muslims.

Moreover, the advancement and strengthening of Muslims is not to the detriment of the rest of the world, for example the West. Of course it will be apparently to the detriment of the oppressors of the Western world, but in an absolute sense to the benefit of the Western peoples. For the message of Islam is a message that aims at the gaining of happiness for the benefit of all human beings.

Although the debates on Orientalism have undoubtedly been identified with Said's breakthrough and have advanced within the framework he systematized, they have not remained limited to him. In fact, Bryan S. Turner's book titled "Marx and the End of Orientalism," published in the same year, though it had arguments very parallel to his, could not become as popular, and moreover it was a critique of Orientalism from very much within. Salman Sayyid's Post-Orientalism article, published in Tezkire magazine, pointed to a limit of this debate. Wael B. Hallaq's "Rethinking Orientalism: A Critique of Modern Knowledge" (Ketebe Publications, 2020), recently published and rendered into Turkish in Ahmet Demirhan's successful translation, can also be said to sink the probe deeper from where Edward Said left off. Of course, when the subject is "otherness," it is worth recalling that İbrahim Kalın's book "Ben, Öteki ve Ötesi" is also an "Introduction to the History of Islam-West Relations."