Islamism, pluralism and secularization

The differing states of Islamism before power, opposition and life in general inevitably bring with them the problem of the differentiation and diversification of Islamism. Just as the subject had come to the question of the pluralization of Islamism, Etyen Mahcupyan entered the matter with an apt question: "Where will you place those Muslims who say they are not Islamists, the religious people who do not read Islam's main reference sources in this way? If such religious people increase in number and reach the point of defining Islam, what will you do?"

Indeed, on a ground where it is assumed that "the name Muslim contains an Islamist will" or that "every Muslim is necessarily an Islamist," the formation of different Islamisms is also inevitable. For on the one hand the political is a level open to every kind of division, and on the other hand, given the fact that Islamism is not Islam itself but an interpretation of Islam by Muslims at particular points in history, it will not be possible for everyone to understand the same thing from Islam. According to Mahcupyan, this situation inevitably leads to relativism and from there to secularity, because the political inevitably brings this relativization with it.

First of all, let us begin by recalling that this situation is not new at all, and that since the earliest times this pluralization among Muslims has been one of the most natural states of Muslims. Second, Mahcupyan here depicts secularity not as a separate front against Islamism but as a development within Islamism itself, and I personally think this is a more concrete, more tangible approach to secularization. Looking at it this way, just like Islamism, secularization as worldliness will also have to be acknowledged as not being something of today.

We are familiar with approaches that take secularization generally as a systematic attempt at destruction that has affected Muslims in the modern age, imposed on Muslims from outside the Muslims. That is in fact all there is to the fashionable approach. In contrast, Mahcupyan's approach to secularization makes us pay attention to an aspect of it that occurs depending on Muslims' own actions or preferences.

However, third, the source of this secularization may be, not a politicization arising from pluralization or relativization as Mahcupyan thinks, but on the contrary a tendency arising from depoliticization. The inference that pluralization or politicization necessarily brings secularization is, in my view, a hasty inference. As Ali Bulac also pointed out, throughout history there have been many divisions within Islam, and there are today; it cannot be said that these divisions have made the groups more secularized or will do so. On the contrary, a plural debate over religion keeps religion more on the agenda, and the competition of more claims over religious truth further consolidates the authority of religious discourse. On this subject some sociological studies as well (such as those of Rodney Stark, Roger Finke and Massimo Introvigne) record that in places where pluralism is greater, the level of religiosity and religious organization are much stronger.

Fourth, the alternative to secularization is not, as Mahcupyan thinks, a patriarchal communal union in which the whole of society is organized in a monolithic hierarchy. Just as there is no guarantee that such a union would be more religious, more otherworldly, it also comes across as odd that religious structures are expected to bring about such a union, and even more so that doing so is presented as the sole condition of their existence. Proceeding from this, Mahcupyan in his next article almost completely closes the road of politics to the religious person. For according to him, because the religious person or Islamist proceeds from absolute truths on which there is no debate, it is almost impossible for him to exist, while preserving his religiosity, in politics, which by its nature requires negotiation. An important conclusion we can draw from this is that the field of politics is determined by people who have no principles, who have no indispensable line.

Is this the political that Mahcupyan has in mind? Or does politics really work like this in practice? Is the field of politics not, whether it is stated or not, whether reference is made or not, a negotiation among people who already in some way have red lines? Whether it is the EU process or world politics in which Israel is at the center of the international agenda, can he show a political field abstracted from religion? Perhaps he is already criticizing this, in which case he would be maintaining a line consistent with himself, but the facts that the real world as we have known it so far consists of this are not facts that can be ignored, and it is certainly not possible to make inferences about the relations between secularization and politics that slide to the normative level from this non-existent reality.

True, nearly all Islamist movements have, as a virtually common discourse, desires for ittihad-i Islam (Islamic unity), unity (wahda), the firmest handle (urwat al-wuthqa). Pluralization may also include the struggle of each faction for this unity to be realized under its own banner, and from time to time some groups, on the condition that it rests on a high respect for the religious pluralism of society, achieve at least political unity and in the process can launch great breakthroughs. The conquest of Jerusalem, which began with Imaduddin and Nureddin Zengi and was realized in the period of Saladin, for example, was realized by activating this common value and desire in an Islamic community that had been divided and fragmented entirely into sects, principalities and groups. The unity later achieved by the Ottomans across the whole Islamic world and lasting six centuries was also such a unity, but no Islamic political practice of unity has ever thought of eliminating the pluralism within Muslim society.

In general, while the competition contained in pluralism ends up continuing as each faction's effort to prove that it is more committed to religion, in total a decline occurs in secularization and an increase in the power of Islam. The difference and pluralization that take place in the meantime do not in themselves create a situation that works against Islamism and in favor of secularization.

From here we need to return to the second point. That is, as a contribution to Mahcupyan's definition of secularization, to a tendency toward secularization that runs side by side with the history of Islamism and has always stood somewhere in the lives of Muslims as a door, as a road, as their choice.

We will continue.