Islamism, power and the state

First, a clarification: Mumtazer Turkone has drawn from the proverb I gave the very last meaning that could be drawn from it (that is, in fact a meaning that could never be drawn). True, he said he did not take it personally, but I would rather give up writing altogether than make an insinuation of an insult to Turkone or anyone else with this remark. Both Turkone and Ali Bulac are two valuable thinkers whom I hold in great esteem and whose writings I always read with great interest and from which I learn a great deal. This does not mean agreeing with everything they say. While answering the debate they opened and invited others to, "in the spirit of a younger brother's sincerity," I gave a proverb to "portray" their positions in the debate. The proverb was important in fact only for its dimension pointing to a communication problem; in place of the "ox" in it something else (a lion, a cat, a house) could have served the purpose too, but since I saw no possibility of such an insinuation, it did not even occur to me to distort the form in which I had heard and learned it. If the aim was to explain the disagreement over the concepts being spoken about, even this situation, at the cost of making me very sad, confirmed it. From now on I will withdraw the proverb I gave and continue speaking as far as possible without metaphors. May God not let our tongues slip, and may He not make this debate, which we began hoping for good, into another trial (fitna) for us.

* * *

To Turkone, who asks why the attribute Muslim is not enough, we said, also agreeing with a proposition of Ali Bulac, that Islamism points to an attribute of the Muslim. In the Qur'an God chose the name "Muslim" as an identity for Muslims and commanded them not to die upon any other identity, but this Muslim's other dimensions, such as believer (mu'min), doer of good (muhsin), sincere (mukhlis), monotheist (muwahhid), are also mentioned where appropriate. The Muslim's "Islamist" attribute is in fact related to his political dimension and is, in this dimension, an inseparable attribute of his. Because the political is something that is in the essence of the human being in general, and of course of the Muslim in particular.

The political is, even without having very large projects, at the most basic level about taking sides. From the very beginning all the discourses of Islam compel the Muslim to take a side. Starting from the story of the creation of Adam, the Qur'an invites the Muslim to stand with God against Satan and his friends among human beings. This is the most basic definition of the political, and it is something that determines the Muslim's political nature even before having this or that project. Tawhid, which is the essence of Islam, is from beginning to end about determining this side. To reject other gods, to begin the work with a rejection, and to recognize God as the sole authority to be obeyed first and last.

Since one cannot be a Muslim without displaying a stance of rejection toward the powers that pose as gods over people, and since those who pose as gods exist in every period and context, the political is the most basic level of the Muslim's existence. Islamism points to this state of the Muslim, and this dimension of the Muslim can be described without any need for this naming. The Qur'an, for example, did not resort to this concept.

Needing a new concept is also partly about concepts being able to provide communication in society. The concept of Islamism came into play as a result of the narrowing of function in the concept of Muslim in certain contexts, and the emergence of the concept itself goes back much further than the 19th century. This very concept was resorted to in the early periods too. The famous work of Imam al-Ashari bears the title Maqalat al-Islamiyyin wa Ikhtilaf al-Musallin (The Sayings of the Islamists and the Differences of the Worshippers), where what is meant by Islamists is precisely those who understand and live Islam correctly and wage its struggle. Concepts that emerged from time to time, such as mujahid and murabit, also expressed in their periods the meanings that Islamism wanted to express.

The definition of the political that I said I find problematic in Turkone's articles is the approach that takes politics only at the level of projects. The definition of Islamism that he himself wrote in the Encyclopaedia of Islam 12 years ago, and on which he relies in this debate, describes a project of changing the world wholesale through a special effort of politics. According to this definition, Islamism is limited to a historical (19th century and after) and geographical (anti-Westernism) context and is a project of dominating life like other political ideologies. Looking at it this way, measuring and evaluating the success or failure of Islamism is very simple. Since the West's material and cultural superiority still continues and since it has not been able to make Islam dominate life, Islamism has still not succeeded, indeed, according to Turkone, has failed. But Turkone prefers at one point to explain this failure with these words: "Islamism was a project of power, it was realized and completed its lifespan." Now how are we to interpret this statement as a story of failure?

The simple question that immediately comes to mind is this: if Islamism has reached what it aimed at, why should we consider it a failure? Of course, Turkone is trying to say that the goal Islamism reached has nothing to do with its initial claims. Either he does not like the present state of those Islamists (which he is entitled to, to the fullest extent), or he attributes the performance of former Islamists in power not to their Islamism but again to the internal function of the state, and I think he displays his real paradigmatic stance here. The Islamists' reaching power and what they did in power are related not to their own performance but to their being assigned by the need felt by the State. That State had entered a legitimacy crisis, and it could solve that legitimacy crisis best with the Islamists. For that reason it had no better instrument than the Islamists.

Those Islamists' approach to the Kurdish problem while in power, their rolling back of the military tutelage order, their improvement of human rights, their raising of the level of prosperity, their social state practices, their increasing of relations among Muslim peoples in the international arena, have nothing to do with them and are related only to the demands of that exalted state. Even in Turkone's analysis of this specific example of Islamism (the AK Parti), the great constant, the substance, the essence is the state; the rest, like everyone else, the Islamists are accidents of this essence.

We know this state from somewhere, of course. A bit from Christian political philosophy, a bit from Hegel. Murat Guzel, in his article in Star-Acik Gorus titled "The role deemed suitable for Islamism: shrine-keeping," caught this point, I think, from a very good place and asked: "Well, in the meantime have those Islamists had no effect at all on the state? Have they not caused any change in it?" Have the Islamists had no existence or role of their own? Are we going to read what is happening this way?

Up to here, I have tried to explain that Turkone's narrow definition or perception of politics is not enough to evaluate Islamism, that he can evaluate as Islamism only specific projects that emerged under very special conditions and at special times. Frankly, such a definition of politics also has an aspect that negatively affects political consciousness in general. What kind of politics can those who cling to the idea that all human activities are determined by metapolitical actors such as the state, history, superpowers, the center, the system, produce?

Just as we were warming up, our space is running out, so we will continue.