Pious generation, liberalism and "office-boy" communitarianism

Because of my impressions of Malaysia, I had to pause both the "pious generation" debate and the MİT debate on the agenda. Both debates are continuing at full speed. Yesterday, in his speech addressing the AK Parti Youth Branches Congress, the prime minister repeated, underlining it heavily, that he wants to raise a "pious generation." The MİT debate, meanwhile, was resolved as expected and in the best way possible once this crisis had been entered. The government, by answering most clearly the judiciary's attempt to interfere in politics, did not allow even the smallest parcel of the political sphere to be occupied.

Both debates had aspects concerning me personally. The first is on the subject of the pious generation. The debate on the role of the state in education is much more complicated than it appears. Indeed, it is worth stressing first that, contrary to what it evokes in Turkey, in the more liberal US, Britain, or many EU countries, the state acts far more openly, willingly and strategically in raising a "pious generation." For example, in the US and Canada, the state has an approach that generally encourages religious groups and communities in education, because it is expected that in this way the youth will be raised more religious. In this the state has no religious preference; since religion itself sets in motion a mechanism that makes a person control himself, it is regarded as a "social capital." A concept of "civil religion" has formed the US's general attitude toward religion since its founding.

In Germany too, the state cooperates with religious communities in order to reach a happy society. The German secularism's approach centered on "the happiness of society" is content to keep the way open for initiatives in raising a pious generation. By all appearances it is not as successful as in the US, but it cannot be said to be entirely disconnected from the goal of raising a pious generation.

In Turkey, it is quite natural for a political party to have a special interest in raising a pious generation; indeed, it would be odd for a political actor like the AK Parti not to have such an agenda. But the problem here concerns the law that the political party running state power must observe with regard to the diversity of citizens. Religious education or choice is a parental right, and one must always maintain a sensitivity about not extending to the limits where this right is violated.

The standards that prompt me to say these things are not some premium I pay to a liberal conception of the state, but entirely my sensitivity toward Islamic standards. Yet in the Star Newspaper's Açık Görüş supplement, my dear brother Edip Asaf Bekaroğlu attributed the objections from the conservative camp regarding the state's role in the "pious generation" debate entirely to our favor toward the liberal Zeitgeist. He attributed it wrongly.

Perhaps, since the way to freedom in education and society has never been so open in any period, the AK Parti's record of more than 9 years even makes such a warning unnecessary. To criticize the prime minister for this statement as if he will increase religious pressure would truly not be fair. But since the subject was opened from here, it may have been useful to make this warning, perhaps for the sake of letting third parties hear it. People's right not to receive education according to a religion they do not want, respect for this right, is not a "liberal value" (or perhaps liberals adopt it too); long before that it is an Islamic value.

Whether liberals adopt it too is frankly of no concern to me. I agree with all the criticisms Bekaroğlu directs at liberalism. But does he realize, in doing so, that he sometimes bestows on liberals a greater reserve of values than they deserve? This is a very common mistake. As if certain universal values stay in the hands of whoever grabs them, we begin to act as if, once liberals have claimed those values, keeping a distance from them is obligatory. Yet these values cannot be anyone's monopoly, nor can they be gifted exclusively to liberals. Indeed, when they claim these values, they do so by placing them within their own total vision.

We have seen many examples of this in the approaches to the recent Arab Spring revolutions too. The Egyptians asked for "freedom," "dignity" and "bread," did they not! These are, respectively, the discourses of liberals, nationalists and conservatives. "So there is no Islamism anywhere in this affair," many pundit political scientists immediately declared. Come on, who said that for an Islamist to be counted in the struggle for freedom he must be a liberal, in the struggle for dignity a nationalist, and in the struggle for bread a socialist? In the end, did it not become clear who waged the struggle for all these values, with the 74 percent of the vote they received in the election?

So what turned out? Islamism is not merely something that builds a political language on a fetishized word "Islam."

And what else? Islamism (or, for those who may not like the word, Islamic politics) does the politics of raising bread, dignity and freedom better than anyone. Just like the performance they have shown in offering a framework that will ensure the state's freedom of religion and conscience. This has no relation to the liberal zeitgeist; if Muslims had a little self-confidence, it is entirely something that comes from the rising Islam's conception of justice.

Of course, this can bear more words. Let me stop here to leave some space for the other subject.

Oda TV has made a simple ranking in the debate about the summoning of MİT officers to give statements. In this ranking, awarding the gold medal to Faruk Mercan and the bronze to Avni Özgürel, it has seen fit to give me the silver. However, this second place is not something to be accepted joyfully on the grounds that a medal is a medal. I frankly cannot believe they could have misunderstood this much, since for me to be understood otherwise only intent could be required. In the television programs I appeared on regarding this incident, they portrayed me as having defended the summoning of MİT officers to give statements, and the label they stuck on by doing so is clear: "cemaatçi" (communitarian).

Yet what I said on the television programs they cite was very clear: "This move by the prosecutors is an open interference in the political sphere. The government's resisting this interference is both its only remedy and the only thing it would do anyway."

Now, I am going to say I am not this, I am not that at all, but to whom shall I say it, and why?

They may have misinterpreted what they listened to, though (I have not heard anyone other than themselves understand me this way until now), but can they not read what I write in this column either? Astonishing!