Islamist body politics: from power to opposition, from the Ottomans to the Republic

Since Islamic Union was at the same time an unavoidable way of preserving the integrity of the Ottoman political body, even the non-Islamist elements of the Committee of Union and Progress, which claimed to stand for union, were not far from this theme. However, we said that they differed over the scope and ideals of this union or the political practices applied. In particular, the Turkist elements within the Committee of Union and Progress were already at these stages persuaded that the Ottoman state, instead of representing all Muslims, should withdraw into its own shell and content itself with representing only the Turks, and indeed only the Turks in Anatolia, and that this would be the only way to preserve this political body.

The thought that later suggested saving the children of the homeland from being wasted away in the Arab deserts actually envisaged shrinking for survival. The idea of remaining in existence by shrinking and withdrawing, since resisting the threat to which the body was exposed would not be possible with this bulk, entered the Turkist current as early as these times. But even the Committee of Union and Progress did not consist only of Turkists. Within itself it was open to the rivalry of those who proposed different treatment programs for the recovery and survival of the political body. For the Islamists, as much as the external attacks threatening the union, the internal problems, diseases and infections that were exposed to these threats or could not resist them were problems to be dealt with: innovations (bid'ah), superstitions, non-Islamic traditions, ignorance, bigotry, intellectual stagnation, sloth and laziness, and, perhaps the most important politically, despotism (istibdat).

That is why the sole emphasis and sensitivity of the thought and politics that emerged as Islamism was not only defense against the foreign enemy but also a reform, a renewal (tajdid) against corruption within Islam. In the works of Mehmet Akif, perhaps stronger than the hostile discourse against Western imperialism is his discourse against the innovations and superstitions that gnaw at Islam from within. Inspiration was to be taken directly from the Qur'an, and Islam was to be made to speak to the comprehension of the age.

This meant that Islamism, as much as it was a defensive reaction against imperialism, also required a program of reform and renewal against degeneration and distortion internally. Viewed from this dimension, Islamism displays a continuity with all the revival movements that have emerged throughout history. This is a very important and strong reality against reducing Islamism, as many of its definitions do, to a parvenu ideological movement that emerged only in the nineteenth century. The movement that emerged as Islamism is in a sense a process of becoming aware of oneself. Perhaps as in Marxism's distinction between class-for-itself and class-in-itself, Islamism emerges as a characteristic that can be attributed to a person who is conscious of being a Muslim.

In this period, we can say that the common emphasis that emerged in the name of Islamic politics, both in the circles of Sebilürreşad and of Beyanü'l-Hak, was Islamic Union. But it should also be noted that the other important emphasis was on a return to the authentic understanding of Islam, on scripturalism, reason, knowledge, will, work and consultation (shura). These values are the most distinctive features of Islamism, which can be seen within a historical continuity.

However, we must also note that among these values, the fact that one of Islamism's most important emphases brought consultation and ijtihad to the fore against despotism contains a distinct historical importance and a tragic paradox. The emphasis on consultation, on the shura, also contained, in the period, a criticism directed at the office of the Caliphate and sultanate that Abdülhamid II represented. This also shows that, although Islamists cared about Islamic Union, it did not keep them from being critical of the existing practice. The idea that the Caliphate was being used in the Ottoman state for pragmatic political purposes and was being used by Abdülhamid II as a tool of his despotism, an idea that was also much favored by Islamists, produced a significant literature.

However, without doubt, these criticisms demanded not the abolition of the Caliphate but at most its reform, pulling it onto the line of consultation, or, in the worst case, were in a direction inviting it to be structured differently. It was very tragic that some of the arguments voiced in these criticisms were later torn from their contexts and used as a pretext in the abolition of the Caliphate.

That part of the legacy transferred from this Islamist politics of the Ottomans to the Republic was used by Westernist politics in secularization, in the abolition of the Caliphate, and in the war against all of Islam in the name of struggling against a degenerate religion, is a continuation of this tragedy.

With the abolition of the Caliphate in the Republican period, not only the Muslims of Turkey but the Muslims of the whole world were left headless and bodiless. This was a situation experienced for the first time in Islamic history. Therefore the Islamist themes inherited from the Ottomans that survived in this headless-bodiless state, deprived of a totality, of a political representation, remained entirely at the level of civil popular movements.

The idea of the ummah continues to bind the Muslims of the whole world to one another in a spiritual and religious sense, immanent in all the meanings of every prayer performed even at the most minimal level. Perhaps the most fundamental difference between Ottoman Islamism and post-Ottoman Islamism, to put it in the language of body politics, is that in the first, Islamism is the politics of a body trying to survive and seeking ways of coping with threats for this purpose; in the second, Islamism is the struggle of resurrection of a murdered political body trying to come alive again, to gain life, among the peoples (who these peoples are, how they are formed, where they take shape, requires separate discussion). That is, in the former it is in a sense a reflex of power, whereas the latter is entirely a civil popular opposition movement.

It should be noted that the abolition of the Caliphate and the post-Caliphate situation is at the same time a situation of occupation and colonialism to which Muslims have been exposed and whose effects in fact still continue. Today we are still face to face with the reality that the effect of this occupation and colonialism continues in all the states established with the abolition of the Caliphate. That is why the most important emphasis of the movements that emerged as Islamism in the Republican period, not only in Turkey but in the whole world, has been and is a resistance or opposition to direct or indirect occupation and colonialism. But this movement has also inherited from Ottoman or earlier Islamism values such as rationality, scripturalism, knowledge, will and consultation. In fact, these values are the indispensable values of these revival movements within a historical continuity.

With the abolition of the Caliphate in the Republican period, the Islamic political body was dissolved, and another Westernist, Kemalist political body was organized over the organs in which it lived. For this body to establish its existence, it tried to show it through symbolic presences on individual bodies. The hat became the most important symbol showing this new embodiment. The Islamic meaning of the resistance shown against wearing it cannot be belittled. Four different forms of resistance displayed against the domination of this political body are exemplified in four different symbolic names coming from the Ottomans: İskilipli Atıf Hoca, Mehmet Akif Ersoy, Elmalılı Hamdi Yazır and Said Nursi. When one dwells on the distinct form of action and political existence of each of these examples, the subsequent political diversification can also be better understood.