On regarding Islamism as "dead"

In fact, if it will make him feel better, I have no wish at all to interfere with dear Mümtazer Türköne's regarding Islamism as "dead." Least of all, if something has "died" for him, would I ever want to prove to him that Islamism is in fact alive, even if that thing appeared to him as Islamism. This is not what I tried to do before, nor what I am trying to do now. Besides, what business of mine is it? Evidently, for Türköne some things have "died"; let him think so.

Shall I say that what has probably died is, in fact, his own dreams about Islamism? Truly, I am not very sure of that either, because he does not look much like one mourning the Islamism he says has died; that is, he never dreamed about that Islamism in the first place, and on the contrary always kept a distance from it. Even while studying Islamism as a thesis subject, he expected nothing from it and saw it as a kind of raw-dreamerism. Now he has seen the abandonment, by those who call themselves Islamists, of what he regarded as raw-dreamerism as the death of Islamism. (In fact, instead of characterizing Islamists' having moved beyond ideas he finds childish as an abandonment, a death, an end, he could characterize it as a maturation, an ijtihad, but he does not; he prefers not to.)

Therefore, apparently he has rejoiced at this death, because he thinks Islamism was a wrong thing anyway. Because Islamism, as he understands it, is an example of the age of ideologies, and like all other ideologies that did not bring happiness to humanity, it too has taken its place in the cemetery.

However, in time I cannot dismiss even the possibility of encountering Islamism again, even in the form of that ideology he depicted, which many Islamists in fact never accepted and rejected from the beginning. That is why, while there is still time, I advise him to be prepared now, lest he experience an illusion of a "ghost" in the future. For, at the very least, the assumption that ideologies are dead is itself an extremely naive late-modern (not even postmodern) ideology. There is a new ideology trying to make us believe that ideologies have died, that is all.

Those who know the nature of ideologies even a little know that human beings can never be free of ideologies, that our life, our knowledge, our perception, small and large, are afflicted with ideologies. What was not said, what, even about greater ideologies? Was nationalism not supposed to have died too? Marxism, socialism were supposed to have died.

Daniel Bell wrote the end of ideologies and everyone was seized by the feeling that a new era had been entered. Yet before even 20 years had passed since the date Bell wrote that book, a war of nationalisms had engulfed the world again. The collapsing socialist iron curtain regimes heralded not the end of ideologies but their replacement by far more archaic, racist, nationalist ideologies.

History once again wrong-footed us, and what was more primitive could reign historically later. Moreover, as if not seeing what was going on, Fukuyama was at the same time talking about the end of history. That is, Serbian and Croatian nationalism, which broke out in Bosnia only 2 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, could incite the greatest massacres and genocides recorded in Europe since the Second World War.

Take a look at today's world. Does the level reached by Christian Fundamentalism, Zionism, Russian, Chinese and Turkish nationalisms, Islamophobia, Kurdish and Arab nationalism within the Islamic world, and the Shia-Sunni axis of tension allow us to speak of the collapse of ideologies?

The collapse of ideologies in fact means the withdrawal of human beings from the stage altogether. A human life purified of ideologies has still not been possible, and personally I have no utopia that it will be possible in the future. Because, in the words of the Holy Qur'an, "man is ignorant." With the little knowledge given to him, he has the potential to pose as master over all creatures, and this is the picture of his never being able to escape wrestling in the vise of ideologies, that is, of conjectural knowledge.

When you pull out ideology, very little of the human being remains. Let us put it in an even more aphoristic way: ideology is one of the most fundamental levels of human existence.

The belief that ideology can be absolutely overcome only points to a completely different ideological level.

Even the "spontaneous philosophy of the scientist," which drove Louis Althusser mad, promises human beings no hope of deliverance from the prison of ideology.

The walls of the four dungeons that Ali Shariati witnessed for human existence are built precisely of those ideologies.

For Türköne, it seems, the collapse of ideology begins where a particular ideology creates disappointment in him. If Turkish nationalism fails to solve the Kurdish problem, it does not evaporate; on the contrary, it continues to exist precisely thanks to that problem. Did Turkish nationalism exist until now through its successes, that it should go on existing or not existing from now on by the measure of success? As the name itself says, is ideology not already a level of perception and emotion whose tie with reality is not easily established?

Muslims can engage in some forms of cooperation with a "non-Muslim," for one reason or another, in one content or another, to the extent that their own fiqh allows and permits. But for Türköne, the place where these relations begin is again the place where Islamism ends. Let us repeat: again, let him think so, by God we are not going to worry about it, but what is the source of this authority displayed in measuring and evaluating Islamists' Islamism? When they do which things do people cease to be Islamists? How does Türköne, who says he does not believe in Islamism anyway, decide this so easily?

Finally, Türköne told a doctor joke to explain that Islamism's being alive does not much resemble being alive. Yet the joke he told reminded me of another joke related to what he is doing: the one in which the person who was mistakenly taken to the morgue as dead and who reacts to the boiling water poured over him is hit on the head by the morgue attendant with the bowl in his hand, right? And as he beats him half to death, he also says this: Lie down and sleep, are you going to be the one who knows you are alive, or the doctor?