Does a Muslim practise racism?

"That people belonging to other religions and civilizations practice racism of course concerns and disturbs us too, but Muslims practicing racism is devastating. Moreover, that this disease has infected so-called devout people as well is all the more grave."

Which Muslim who knows himself would object to this statement? Which Muslim would not see the racism of some so-called devout people either as a complete return to jahiliyyah, as a deviation, or, in fact, as not yet having become Muslim? When Abu Dharr (RA) said something that would hurt Bilal the Abyssinian about his black skin, the Prophet's answer, which has become a rule, was: "There is still a trace of jahiliyyah in you." Of course this is not takfir, but it concerns some branches of faith not yet having entered a person's heart.

TODAY IN TÜRKİYE, FOR A CENTURY, THE CHILDREN OF MUSLIMS HAVE BEEN GOING THROUGH A RACIST EDUCATION. Islam later finds the people whom this racist education has distorted and disciplined, and reforms those who are willing by putting them through a second education. Through the communities, perhaps through dergahs, student houses, mosque talks, sermons, conferences. This is an education that in the end is not as effective as the brains washed by formal education. Of course racism remains in those who go through this secondary education.

But when I heard the statement above, frankly it seemed to me too unfair. It is like the typical words of those who use a true word in the wrong place. It is something that cannot be attributed to any Muslim who knows himself. Websites, taking these words of our esteemed friend Hüseyin Çelik, with whom we did politics together for years under the AK Party roof and who has served as minister of both National Education and Culture, from the point where he said them, have of course frothed them up further, in order to hit Islamists, the devout and Muslims even harder.

Because after these true words Hüseyin Çelik makes the following unjust criticisms:

"The Islamic communities and the devout circles, who react, show solidarity, and even give serious material aid when there is trouble for Muslims in lands such as Somalia, Sudan, Egypt, Arakan, Myanmar and the Philippines, stood by silently as spectators in their own country to the unsolved murders of the 90s, to disappearances in custody, to village evacuations, to every kind of ill-treatment of the Kurds by the state.

Did not the policies that burned the whole village because a small minority in the village supported the PKK and provided aid and shelter, burning the green along with the dry, deserve a reaction from the faithful and conscientious non-Kurdish Muslim citizens of the Republic of Türkiye? To be concerned for Muslims at the other ends of the world while being indifferent toward the Kurdish Muslims in one's own country and in Northern Syria is a situation that must be answered for religiously and morally. If a considerable number of Kurds in Türkiye and in Northern Syria today sympathize with the PKK, this approach has a very serious share in it.

That in Türkiye it was always the leftists (not the Kemalist leftists) who championed the rights of the Kurds, while the rightists and conservatives were indifferent, is a situation that must be dwelt upon. It is well known that if an injustice done to you hurts you, you are alive; but if an injustice done to another hurts you, then you are human."

It is impossible not to agree with all that Hüseyin Çelik says about Muslims being unable to practice racism, but, as I said, it is just as certain that he has said true words in the wrong place.

THIS OUTBURST REMINDED ME OF A SIMILAR DEBATE EXACTLY 15 YEARS AGO, NOT MORE. A manager of the Journalists and Writers Foundation one day made a statement to the effect that "we Islamists wronged our Kurdish brothers in the Kurdish question, we ignored their troubles," and likewise he was treated as a "confessor," and his words were polished up. His words were soon perceived by the discourse of Kurdish nationalism, which like all nationalisms is ultimately arrogant and self-sufficient, as a confession that justified it. What is interesting is that the person who said those words, and the entire FETÖ community in general, in contrast to all their distant attitudes toward the concept of Islamism throughout their lives, did not hesitate that day, when they sought to take on a crime, to hang the label of Islamism on themselves. For the first time in their lives they said they were Islamists, and that only to assume a crime.

WHAT THEY SAID WAS IN FACT TRUE ON BEHALF OF THEIR OWN COMMUNITY. The Fetoists and the circles that generally refrain from calling themselves Islamists were people who generally had no objection to that racist education of National Education, who themselves embraced and reinforced that racism, in part through empty rhetoric such as glorious history, national history and identity. But fairness, conscience. Was the Islamist camp like that? Was Erbakan like that? Is Recep Tayyip Erdoğan like that?

Since Hüseyin Çelik says nothing different on this subject from what is said from time to time, so that we do not say anything different either, here are quotations from the article I wrote in those years:

When you read the history of the Islamists in Türkiye, you see that the story of Islamists with the Kurds is so intertwined that it cannot be separated. So much so that Islamists have not needed to concern themselves with the Kurdish problem separately. First of all, it is impossible to separate from Islamism the Kurdishness of both Saids, who hold a vital place in this history.

THERE ARE UNDOUBTEDLY ASPECTS OF ÇELİK'S WORDS THAT CAN BE CONSIDERED VALID FOR THE EXPERIENCES OF A CERTAIN SEGMENT OF THE DEVOUT. In particular, the view of the FETÖ community mentioned in the anecdote and of some (never all) Nurcu circles toward the Kurds has been very different from mainstream Islamism from the beginning. Moreover, one wing of Turkish Islamism has remained under the hegemonic influence of Turkish nationalism. This influence led them to regard the Kurds' problems too as insignificant and negligible, but even that wing was suffering no less from the same centers of oppression in the same period than the Kurds were.

Said Nursi, throughout his life, was made to suffer in courts, prisons and exile for even his simplest words because he was religious. The favor shown by Turks toward both Saids should be seen as a reaction against the state's exclusionary nationalist stance. In a place where religiosity itself is regarded as a crime, it is easy but not fair to criticize today the devout for avoiding carrying the burden of a second crime damned by the system, such as Kurdishness. Moreover, the burden of the movement we call devout, even Islamist, was for a long time carried again by Kurds. In this regard it is not so easy to distinguish Kurds from Islamists, or Islamists from Kurds.

It is worth remembering that Turkish Islamism was at times subjected, undeservedly, by the dominant nationalist discourse to a separate accusation of being "Kurdist." Islamists, of course, were not in an attitude that would deserve the label "Kurdist" either. But within the stance of the MNP-MSP-RP tradition against nationalism there has been a distinct interest in the Kurds. Erbakan's famous Bingöl speech is there. His words in that speech, "If you say 'Happy is he who says I am a Turk!', my Kurdish brother will say 'Happy is he who says I am a Kurd!'" became the subject of his party's closure case.

Associations like Mazlum-Der, founded in the early nineties, and Özgür-Der, founded in the late nineties, as the human rights organizations of Islamists, have been accused of dealing almost exclusively with rights violations arising from Kurdishness rather than those arising from religiosity. Likewise, in the important magazines of the Islamist discourse such as Girişim, which came out in the mid-eighties, and its successors Yeryüzü and Yeni Zemin, surely no one can speak of a lack of interest in the Kurds.

TRULY, THE ISLAMISTS' INTEREST IN THE KURDS CAN BE DEEMED INSUFFICIENT ONLY FROM A KURDISH NATIONALIST POINT OF VIEW. But Islamism's view of the Kurdish question has in any case never been the same as that of Kurdish nationalists, nor has it been concerned to be. The level taken as the baseline by those who see this interest of Islamists as insufficient today is, let us honestly name it, a nationalist level.

Yet Islamism's critiques of nationalism are not critiques that are valid only when Turks do it. When Kurds, Arabs or anyone else does it, the view against nationalism does not change.

MUSLIMS DO NOT OPPOSE NATIONALISM IN ORDER TO SUBSTITUTE ANOTHER NATIONALISM. They oppose every kind of nationalism. For when Muslims oppose idols, they do not do so in order to put in their place an idol of their own making. They oppose the very idea of the idol.

There is more to say, but we have run out of space; so we will continue.

Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un

My dear friend, my brother, the great man of letters Bülent Akyürek, whom we greeted in this column exactly two and a half months ago on the occasion of his new book, which came out after a long interval and which is magnificent, has completed his travail-filled journey in this world and departed to the Truth. Condolences to all his friends, his lovers, his readers. I pray for God's mercy upon him.