The subject of the Revolution and Islamist politics

For those accustomed to looking for a "button effect" in everything that happens, it may be hard to accept that even what is happening in Tunisia and Egypt consists of events that occurred spontaneously. Because according to these approaches, social events always have higher planners. However far or deep visible causal explanations may point, and even if these hidden hands cannot be seen at all in this visible field, the "faith" in that powerful hand that determines everything "in the last instance" does not disappear.

That this faith is sometimes expressed not by those who worship the power of the US or of certain centers but, on the contrary, in an anti-American and anti-imperialist language, makes up the tragicomic side of the matter. It is not even noticed that the discourses resorted to in order to express how satanic and how powerful this power is, conversely, imagine an omnipotent power that can never be defeated, can never be overcome, invincible, unbending, inflexible. To put it in an Islamic language, this kind of conception of "evil" is no different from associating partners with God. This idea of shirk also has a harm that directly touches the person himself. A fatalistic submission to the enemy imagined in this way seeps beneath the surface into one's consciousness and personality.

On the other hand, it must be said again that saying these Revolutions have no planner or distinct subject does not mean that the political stances of the actors taking part in this process have no meaning or effect. The waves of revolution, with their unforeseeable and unpredictable aspects, give human beings a deep lesson that they cannot control everything. This uncontrollable process also places entirely new tests before human beings. Thus serious warnings also make themselves felt against thinking that everything has reached its end with a revolution or that everything can be put right.

In his column yesterday, Ali Bulaç expressed the nature of this subjectless process, which he described as the "Daughter of the Nile, Cairo!", with an excellent analogy. When the Prophet, at the end of the Hijra, entered Medina, faced with different offers, he set the place where his camel would stop as a sign to decide on the house where he would stay. If the camel that has stood up in place of a revolution stops "not in front of the house of Abdullah ibn Ubayy ibn Salul, the chief of the hypocrites, but in front of the house of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari, who had nothing but his faith and loyalty, then know that Cairo, through the manifestation of God's name 'Qahhar', will subdue the tyrants, murderers, thieves and the arrogance of the earth."

There will be, and there already are, many who will try to claim ownership of this process, whose subject is not clear in the scientific sense, from now on. The process is also extremely fragile. The masses that have risen and cannot be attributed to a single social segment may be caught off guard by the representation games of petty leaders who join in front of them and may have to be content with merely changing Mubarak's name. Whether this will be so will be determined in part by how insistent and persevering the revolutionaries are in their demands.

Meanwhile it must be kept in mind that, despite everything said, neither the Brotherhood nor the Islamists are the masters and determiners of the process. But the revolution process may from now on write separate roles and duties for them, and whether they can play that role properly is up to them. The revolution process also contains serious lessons about the Brotherhood's or the Islamists' healthy reading of the demands in society. It is a fact that they are the most organized structure in society, but it is also a fact that all of these organized structures have so far not been enough, on their own, to set a revolution in motion.

However, the timidity the Brotherhood has shown so far in claiming the process is the product of an extremely mature and conscious politics appreciated by most of the demonstrators. Their claims and causes aside, they are very well aware that the global perception about them, and also that this process began and continues outside of them. The only reason for their timidity is not outside perception; also decisive is the concern, beyond the ugly opportunism that claiming this revolutionary wave coming from the depth of society could involve, that this opportunism could endanger the movement's harmony and fate.

As can be seen, Islamist politics is not, as in some people's clichés, a movement that tries to impose the package program in its hands on people at every opportunity, but is realized as the politics of life itself. What is being written and said these days about the Brotherhood and the Islamism it represents in politics is truly not surprising, but, to put it mildly, it reveals a very deep strangeness.

It needs to be known that the Brotherhood, which has representations in 18 different countries, has a very broad horizon and experience of globalization and multiculturalism. It has a special interest in, and archival record of, the social and political experiences of each of the 18 countries. Moreover, they have long thought about the possibilities of being "both a good Muslim and a good citizen" in European countries, and of taking part politically as a good citizen. They have accumulated an extremely broad literature on this.

Because of these searches, the Turkish and AK Parti experience has recently been by no means a subject of simple admiration but a subject of serious interest as an experience that is possible and can be made use of with a little modification. This points to a very different level of Islamist politics that has not been sufficiently appreciated, which is open to much more debate.