What if we looked at the Islamists through the window of wisdom?

"You cannot see Mevlânâ among the reference points of the Turkish political Islamist movement, you cannot see Yunus Emre... This is in fact a new way of thinking and has not been tried. It began to be tried from the 1920s with the Muslim Brotherhood movement. If truth be told, Hasan al-Banna himself was a Shadhili dervish. Structurally, too, it was in fact a socialized version of the Shadhili order model. Those who followed could not sustain this conduct and became Salafized. Then more radical currents that accused them of passivity left the Brothers. They reached more extreme points. Today the peak that vein has reached is al-Qaeda."

A quotation like this came into my message box among the holiday greetings. The sentences I read in a row struck me as an interesting but equally generalizing, clichéd and hastily put-together description of Turkish Islamism. Still, these inferences must surely rest on a certain observation, a certain sampling, even if generalizing.

At first I asked myself, which Islamists is he talking about? As far as I know, under the heading of the Turkish Islamists, of the political Islamist movement of Türkiye, there are people, communities and literature of every variety. Very, very few fail to know Mevlânâ and Yunus Emre like this, or take an attitude of a kind of exclusion toward them. For example, Sezai Karakoç, one of the most important reference points of the Turkish political Islamist movement, whom I described as the Second Teacher of the Islamists in the compilation book on Islamism that I prepared for İletişim Yayınları, wrote, in the nature of a handbook, a book on Yunus Emre and a book on Mevlânâ. Each has gone through dozens of printings and been read. At the very least, these Islamists are not strangers to these two names, if only through Sezai Karakoç; they are not that distant from these two names.

It is understood from the following sentences, of course, that what is meant is the movement of translation from international Islamism inspired by Hasan al-Banna. Here too, an inference made in great haste, which does not do full justice to the information given in the sentence, draws attention at first. Hasan al-Banna, himself a Shadhili, did not make any school of Islam obligatory on the Ikhwan community he led the founding of. This means that he embraced everyone under Islamic brotherhood. Those who came later (who, all of them or only some, or people who had already split from them?) did not continue this, became Salafized... and the peak that vein reached today is al-Qaeda.

Story summaries often tell stories much different from the story itself. For instance, very rapid causal relations are established between unrelated events. In the story extending to al-Qaeda, between what and what is the causal relation established, for instance?

If what is at issue is a causality between a text or a certain religious understanding and al-Qaeda, why has this causality not produced the same result for the whole Ikhwan community, for instance? Why is it that, although all Jews read the same Torah, some turn into terrorist-genocidal-savage-barbarian Zionists while others can be quite moderate and anti-Zionist, for instance? Why is it that, although all Christians read the same Gospel, some remain venerable, humane People of the Book while others can become bigoted Evangelicals or Crusaders, for instance? Why is it that some of the people who read the Qur'an become ISIS members while some become Sufis, for instance? If we can say that the real effect and the whole effect is entirely from the Qur'an, why can this effect manifest in different ways?

Of course some sociological assessments will come into play as well. For years the Turkish Islam that felt a privilege by saying that its own Islam, being Maturidi and Hanafi, was different from (and therefore superior to) Taliban Islam: should it experience a small-scale enlightenment or a disappointment when it learns that the Taliban are also both Maturidi and Hanafi?

Here a mentality that wants to produce a privilege for itself in every case has not stayed idle in the matter of religion either. A logic no more complicated than "my religious interpretation is better than his; therefore I am superior to him." A universal negativity that, however you look at it, we can encounter everywhere.

When I went to the link that had dropped into my message box with a small quotation, I found an interview published in Yeni Şafak with our valued friend Prof. Dr. Mahmut Erol Kılıç.

Frankly, I was not surprised. What I encountered was an example of the typical "Islamist othering" that I have witnessed on almost every ground on which we have met with Erol Hoca. This othering can sometimes carry the "Salafi" stamp as well. On this occasion, trusting in his tolerance, I need to relay here the exchange I have had with him face to face many times.

As far as I know, Islamists in Türkiye are both of all kinds and none of them is where they started. That is, most of them are not where Erol Hoca first saw them and got to know them and took their photographs. They have been through very important experiences, lived through many things, seen many things, read, and been affected by what they read. But of course, perhaps it was those translated books that first awakened the most important Islamist sentiment in them. Turkish Islamism learned a great deal from them, was greatly nourished by them, took what it needed, of course did not take everything, could not have.

We try to remind, on every occasion, that those translated books also come, after all, from a place not very far from this geography, this country. Egypt, Syria, Pakistan, Tunisia, Jordan, Palestine are not far from or foreign to this geography. Only a hundred years ago, not much more, they were all together under the same umbrella: the Ottoman Caliphate umbrella. Because that umbrella has been abolished in our lands today, those Muslims have not given up on Türkiye or put distance between themselves and Türkiye. But with these attitudes and descriptions of ours, we are putting quite a distance between ourselves and them.

I address the Muslims meant by this stereotyping from every part of the Islamic world. In all of them there is an incredibly well-intentioned longing for, envy of and affection for the Ottomans. I have never seen even one of them so far make Ottoman or Turkish Islam an "other." But among us, unfortunately, such othering is seen as a most ordinary attitude. The ethnocentric exclusivism and approach of those who claim to follow the path of Mevlânâ, who says "Whoever you are, come," is of course a separate question. Moreover, when Mevlânâ himself came from Balkh and wrote both his Mathnawi and all his other works in Persian.

The dynamism that Erol Hoca should now see in the Islamists is that they stand closer to a more embracing, more understanding and wiser conduct. The wisdom of staying away from attitudes and debates that would damage the unity of the ummah. This is precisely the wisdom that has been inherent from the beginning in the attitude of Hasan al-Banna and the movement he began, and that makes him reasonable and acceptable today all over the world.