Islamism and modernity

We continue to talk about the human aspects of Islamism.

The importance of stressing the human aspects of Islamism stems from the need to say that it is not free from error, and therefore that there is no need for an emotional defense in the face of criticisms that are made. Islamism is not the whole of Islam or Islam itself; it is an interpretation about Islam, and of course in this respect it is a historical movement. As an interpretation, by its nature it can become plural, and can be represented by different views that compete with one another and even at times clash.

It is not surprising that Islamism in the 19th century, particularly troubled with, and almost expressed through, concern for the survival of the state, also took upon itself the quest for the renewals necessary for the well-being of the state, as well as the legitimacy of those paths.

Starting from this time it can of course be criticized, but with the difference of context taken into account. In this period, whatever "new" thing was deemed necessary for society and the state, its importation or invention was legitimized by the Islamists or the ulema themselves. For this reason Islamism in Turkey turned out in a way to be the threshold of all the currents that developed along with modernization. From socialism to liberalism, from nationalism to secularization, all tendencies sought ways of legitimizing themselves through Islam.

As much as the criterion of being indigenous, whether it is a modern or modernist movement is another of the criteria taken as a basis in the criticism of Islamism. I have always kept my distance from the critique of modernity. Because this axis of critique, by increasingly sticking the brand "modernity" on everything that happens at a given time, ends up doing nothing but raising the brand value of a modernist mentality.

When you call the most ordinary developments and changes of life "modernity," nothing remains that is not modern anyway. Gradually modernity turns into a universe that necessarily encompasses everything that has happened in the last two centuries. When it is conceived as a universe there is in fact no escape from it, but if you have taken on the burden of something like anti-modernity, all that remains is to incline toward absurd, utopian visions that have no connection with life. Because in any case everything you do or think will take place within that universe of modernity.

When you take on this burden in the name of Islam, you end up undertaking the representation of an image of religion that has no connection with life, that belongs to seventh-century Arabia, and that says nothing to this age. This is no different from loading a kind of "internalized Orientalism" onto Islam. Yet the claim of Islamism is that Islam is a religion of life, that it is a religion with reasonable, applicable, attainable goals, beliefs and practices to say to every age.

It is significant that the critiques of modernity in some Islamist circles, while ostensibly voicing a rigid anti-Westernism, rely on Western anti-modernity literature. One must be very careful when harvesting opportunities for Islam's quarrel with the West from the West's own inner discomforts, quarrels or criticisms. Muslims do not have to share all the criticisms that some Western intellectuals direct at their own tradition. Especially, trying to develop a fiqh on the basis of these criticisms can become very dangerous. Western intellectuals define secularism, for instance, as the "disenchantment of the world." The disenchantment of the world may be an occasion for tears for a Western intellectual who looks with nostalgic longing at Western pagan traditions, but which Muslim should be concerned about it? Strangely enough, some of the analyses of secularism that have influenced some Islamists are based on these discourses.

What we must remember is that the thing called modernity is, before anything else, nothing more than a conceptualization developed in imagining the world lived in. To evaluate this conceptualization, which was not made by Muslims at all, like a category of Islamic fiqh, without taking into account what concerns it is observing, leads to strange results.

Seen from this angle, Islamism is of course a modern movement. Its claim, after all, is the necessity for Islam to say new things for new times.

Is it in a break from traditions? That depends, of course, on how we understand the concept of tradition. In a sense, it comes from within a tradition anyway, and says what it has to say in interaction and reaction with that tradition. However critical it may be, it acquires meaning and context within that tradition. But the claim that new things need to be said is also decisive at its outset.

The efforts to brand Islamism as an upstart or foreigner bringing new customs to an old village in fact deserve a far more fundamental critique. The jargon of authenticity resorted to in these criticisms contains a self-appointed language of power, but this language is also capable of doing strange and by no means auspicious things at strange times. Yet, I don't know whether it needs saying, the chosen names within the supposedly (in fact) imagined tradition were also figures who said new things and made interpretations according to their own times.

How could it be otherwise? I wonder how Rumi's saying, "Whatever belongs to yesterday has become old, now it is necessary to say new things," is understood?

Therefore, it is inevitable that Islamism, as much as it says new things, is in a conflict or tension with certain styles and beliefs, with nativist ways of thinking. This tension has in fact always existed even in the most ancient times, and is not likely ever to disappear. The debate over whether this tension is more traditional, more ancient or more indigenous is simply unnecessary for Islamism; for if the matter were to be opened, what could be more traditional than a movement that makes its reference to the Prophet, to Abraham, even to Adam?