The states of Islamism in power and in opposition

The debate opened on Islamism is continuing rapidly and spreading. Meanwhile, many valuable names are joining the debate with their articles, and each is making contributions more horizon-opening than the last. That Islamism has become an object of debate, that it is reflecting on itself in particular, is a good omen. This may turn into a movement of self-reckoning. We badly need this reckoning. I will try to carry on my discussion along the line I determined earlier.

Mumtazer Turkone sees Islamism, for a certain period, as a political project developed starting from Islam that tried to compete in the same lane as Marxism or liberalism, and he explains that in this form, even though it came to power, it could not achieve its goals. Why? Because according to him the real place of Islamism is opposition, and therefore the fact that Islamism, which can be considered attractive as a discourse of opposition, has come to power can by itself be regarded as an indicator of its own failure.

To see power always as a position that Islamism others is, in my view, one of Turkone's main errors about Islamism.

1. Turkone puts this forward at times as "a normative principle," that is, in the sense of "if Islamism is to be authentic it must always exist as opposition," and at times as "a descriptive finding of what is."

First of all, if he is doing it as a statement of fact, we need to think well about from what position the 19th-century Islamism, which he worked on as his doctoral thesis, proceeded. "This ideology," which he says remained throughout its entire 150-year history an oppositional movement, was it an ideology of opposition in the time of Abdulhamid too? And what about that of Mehmet Akif and the early Sebilurresad circle?

Turkone says, "This powerful political current was systematically kept far from power. Islamism -including the Abdulhamid period- never received official protection and patronage at the level of the state." How could an ideology adopted by power itself, for this or that purpose, have been kept away from power? Wasn't the strategy of ittihad-i Islam (Islamic unity), inside and out, an understanding and stance that gave direction to the policies of those in power, Islamism itself? In this form, is there any need to think of its existence as a ruling ideology additionally within the framework of "patronage and protection"? Wasn't the statism of the discourse put forward in the name of Islamism in this period also the source of the right-wing conservative elements that later Islamist discourses could never manage to purge? In fact, much has been stressed about the different states of Islamism before and after the Republic in terms of the relation of power and opposition.

2. As for the assumption of opposition as a normative principle for Islamism, let us recall that Islam has no such principle. I do not think that a continuous and in all circumstances cynical glorification of opposition can be reconciled with a political philosophy that puts the responsibility of Islam to the fore. Theologies of opposition produced by those who objectively have no chance of power have nothing to do with Islam.

In fact, attributing only the role of opposition to Islamist politics is, in my view, again a matter of not evaluating its nature well enough. This subject is in fact also a distinguishing aspect of Islam's political theology. One feature that Ernest Gellner points out about Islam, in comparison with other religions, in his work Muslim Society (recently published by Kabalci Publishing House in the successful translation of Mufit Gunay) is that Islam is the only religion that achieved rapid success in the world and the integrity of its book. Christianity, because it remained weak, had to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and when it became strong it did not dare to claim it. The situation of Judaism is even more complicated. It is a community whose Prophet Moses, in his time, could not enter their promised land, which did not feel at ease even when they entered, never escaped exile, and could not realize its aims in the world. That the place reached by the continuous state of diaspora is Zionism is a political theology that made all humanity pay the price of Judaism.

Yet the Muslims, according to Gellner, after the heavy experience of 13 years in Mecca, emigrated to Medina, quickly established power there, their books and models of life were completed in practice, and they produced the theological discourse of this for all times.

If we take as a basis this comparison, adding to it the experience of Marxism, which could never bring its proletariat to where it wanted, Muslims are a community who lived through every political position possible in a life, and who, besides having the experience of producing an individual and social fiqh for every situation, were able to perceive life as a dynamic process and also to produce the political fiqh of it. We probably cannot say that this did not give them a very special quality. Between the transitions among different fiqhs a wholeness and consistency is undoubtedly sought. For the process is not detached from the destination.

We can say this much with ease: that political theologies are able to encompass the whole fiqh of the process has been granted only to Muslims among other religions and political ideologies. But here too, without letting go of the following margin of caution: that Islam is a religion "completed" in the world with all its dimensions and able to transfer its ideals to reality for a period does not mean that all Muslims have been able to establish this wholeness at all times.

For that reason the opposition of Muslims to the power of Muslims is both theoretically possible and we encounter countless historical examples of it. Today too there is no theoretical obstacle to this being so. That is, more plainly, opposing a power that also has Islamist characteristics does not essentially mean opposing Islam. This, whether it is named so or not, is only another sign of how hegemonic (in the Foucauldian sense of power) Islamism is.

Our space has run out but what we have to say has not. We will continue again.