A strange takfirism in the name of Ahl al-Sunna

It was years ago, the mid-nineties. While I was sitting at home, a phone call I received first congratulated me on the talk I had given and the paper I had presented at the Fazlur Rahman Symposium I had attended a few days earlier, and then, describing how much he suffered from Fazlur Rahman's "admirers," the caller coolly explained that they wanted to organize a symposium on Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and that in this paper they actually wanted to reveal his true face and show what kind of "secret enemy of Islam" he was, and invited me to this symposium too.

I actually knew this language very well: a strange takfirist language that, in the name of a Sunnism with neither beginning nor end and no connection whatsoever to the original, condemns many Islamic scholars who served Islam for years with their blood, their lives, their whole existence as "deviant," "without a school of law," "the deviant branch of the right path," "outside Ahl al-Sunnah."

Perhaps it does not use the takfirist jargon we have become familiar with recently, but it was a language even more exclusionary, more judgmental and condemning than the takfirists'. All they understand by Ahl al-Sunnah is reduced to a word whose authority derives from themselves, with no basis in either the Qur'an or the Sunnah, sanctified with the stale innovations and superstitions of the centuries. As the Holy Qur'an says, "you worship names that you yourselves have named."

They attribute sanctity to the name Ahl al-Sunnah, but they have no connection, near or far, with the Messenger's sunnah, his morals, his walaya and his enmities. They have not the slightest connection with loving, sincere, friendly walaya toward the believers, which is a condition of the Sunnah. They have no Muslims whom they love. Especially if that Muslim is somewhat of a scholar, if he has a little effort, striving, jihad, if he has a little positive influence on people, the only feelings they display are hatred and annihilation. The more tragicomic side of the matter is that all the great figures they put outside Ahl al-Sunnah by their excommunications are counted as the most obvious, most living names of Ahl al-Sunnah in the entire Islamic world.

I try to explain to the person who called that "I may have criticized Fazlur Rahman, even very sharply, but at the same time I love him, I admire him greatly, I find his thoughts worth discussing, and that this is how it should be." As Muslims, especially in our age, one of the things we most need is to think, to debate, to converse with one another, to reach sound, horizon-opening thoughts. Our culture of debating together, thinking, saying different things, and on that basis catching the flash of truth through the clash of opinions is very weak. Even though we have named it so poetically...

Moreover, as believers we are obliged to love one another and to be friends with one another. If we can grasp the spirit of believerly friendship, walaya and loyalty, if we know how to love one another for God's sake, we understand very well that differences of thought cannot, beyond a certain point, even be a matter between us. All differences of thought are ways to reach the truth, and everyone shares his own way with his friend anyway. If it is wrong, he corrects it. If friends have entered the path of destroying one another because of wrong views, then their friend is neither truth nor God, the Owner of truth, heaven forbid...

Fazlur Rahman may have wrong ideas in my view, as he certainly does; who does not? But this does not prevent me from sensing in all his effort a heart that beats for God's sake. In the paper I presented at that symposium under the title "The Techno-Logical Interests of the Modernist Interpretation," I had, so to speak, beaten him from pillar to post, but I never thought of declaring him an unbeliever or of laying claim, over him, to a more absolute truth for myself. On the contrary, I even felt gratitude to him for having occasioned the starting of many debates. How could I explain this to the person opposite me? The person opposite me was after satisfying an insatiable desire for takfir. I was sure that they had never tried to make a single servant of God love Islam; I have never seen them in such an effort. All their jihads were against Muslims who think differently from them. I have not seen, nor met anyone who has seen, a stance or an effort of theirs against non-Muslims, against open enemies of Islam.

When I saw what the historian Ahmet Şimşirgil wrote about the retired Presidents of Religious Affairs, Prof. Mehmet Görmez and Prof. Ali Bardakoğlu, I was lost in this event I experienced and the general scene in which that event took place, in our state of full-blown grief. The centers where both professors carry on their work after retirement today produce very brilliant, very valuable, honorable works in the name of Islamic thought in Turkey. Some ideas that can be debated may also find a way of expression there. Exactly as it should be. Every idea that is excluded without being debated, pushed under the rug or excommunicated only reveals the limits, weakness, cowardice and lack of self-confidence of a mind.

Neither Islam nor the line of Ahl al-Sunnah is protected by the hooliganism of "don't hit, kill; don't let them speak, silence them." In fact, the most important attitude that brought forth and crystallized Ahl al-Sunnah in history was precisely the breadth that embraces the ummah with all its diversity, the tolerance, the breadth, Imam al-Ghazali's attitude that "the people of the qibla cannot be declared unbelievers."

Incidentally, to be able to remove Görmez from the circle of Ahl al-Sunnah, one must first have obtained an entry visa to that circle. One must ask whoever questions his "Sunnism": when did you become Ahl al-Sunnah? What share have you received of our Prophet's sunnah, of that lofty morality?

The last thing Ahl al-Sunnah needs is a watchman brandishing the weapon of excommunication. The best theft is done in the guise of a watchman; this too is a well-known cliché. Something has been stolen from the total symbolic and spiritual value of Ahl al-Sunnah.

"Who is making Görmez shine?" he asks. There is only one meaning to a person full of love for Muslims being disturbed by a scholar's shining or being made to shine; I will not say it, but I will not pass without saying this. Görmez Hoca has no brilliance to gain from a screen; perhaps it is the more real possibility that he makes a screen shine. Among the World Islamic Scholars, whom I personally follow very well and each of whom I know one by one and have drawn grace from, all of whom are the living summits of the Ahl al-Sunnah ulema, Mehmet Hoca is one of the few scholars most taken seriously on behalf of Turkey, whose word is listened to with respect and attention. To question his Ahl al-Sunnah line is beyond absurd, it is impudence. I would consider it even a humiliation to say that, like everyone, his views can be debated, can be wrong, can be right. Of course so. Whose word other than the Prophet's can be on a par with revelation? We are all human. But the one who will debate his views will debate them too within the circle of the etiquette of Ahl al-Sunnah, with respect, good faith and courtesy.

Although the Qur'an is an absolute source of knowledge, our knowledge of it cannot be absolute. Although revelation is fixed, our understanding of it is not, cannot be, free of interpretation and hence of error. The honored companions realized this bitter truth as soon as our Prophet passed away (in meaning): "Among us there was the Prophet and he was receiving revelation; now from the Book revealed to him and from what he understood, we will find a way for our own time, for the new cases we will live through, from what we understand."

The first stages were very painful. As Muslims tried to find this correct way/these correct ways they also differed with one another. The honored companions differed with one another, they even fought one another because of these differences. We are not even counting the later differences. But from the totality of all of them, from Muslims' sincerity toward one another, their love, their friendship, their striving and effort, their common sense, a middle way formed. This path of common sense was called the Path of Ahl al-Sunnah.

We say middle way, but it turns out our understanding of this middle way is not one either. Some take their own innovations and superstitions to be Ahl al-Sunnah, suppose they can make people adopt them by force, and declare as unbelievers those who do not believe in them.

And then there are those who, among the thorns, stones and rubble strewn by this ignorance, are truly on the path of knowledge, with love of knowledge and truth, with love of God and the believers, without forgetting the reality that they are servants, trying to find guidance on the line of the straight path. May God grant patience and fortitude.