Faith versus tradition in Islam Mustafa Akyol

a few weeks ago I have a chance to go to

Saudi Arabia and the first thing I want

to do as a Muslim was to go to Mecca and

visit the Kaaba the holiest shrine of

Islam and I did that I put on my

ritualistic dress I went to the Holy

Mosque I did my prayers I observed all

the rituals and meanwhile besides all

the spirituality there was one mundane

detail in the Kaaba that was pretty

interesting for me there was no

separation of sexes in other words man

and woman were worshipping altogether

they were together while doing the table

off the circular walk around the Kaaba

they were together while praying and if

you wonder why this is interesting at

all you have to see the rest of Saudi

Arabia because this is a country which

is strictly divided between the sexes in

other words as men your are not simply

supposed to be in the same physical

space with woman and I noticed this in a

very funny way I left the Kaaba to eat

something in downtown Mecca I headed to

the nearest Burger King restaurant and I

went there I noticed that there’s a mail

section which is carefully separated

from the female section and I had to pay

order and eat at the mail section it’s

funny I said to myself you can mingle

with the opposite sex at the holy Kaba

but not at the Burger King quite quite

ironic ironic and it’s also I think

quite telling because the Kaaba and the

rituals around it are relics from the

earliest phase of Islam that of Prophet

Muhammad and if there was a big emphasis

at the time to separate men from woman

the rituals around the Kaaba could have

designed accordingly but apparently that

was not an issue at the time so the

rituals came that way this is also I

think confirmed by the fact that the

seclusion of woman and creating a

divided society is something that you

also do not find in the Quran the very

core of Islam the divine core of Islam

that all Muslims and including myself

believe and I think it’s not an accident

that you know you don’t find this idea

in the very

of Islam because many scholars who study

the history of Islamic thought Muslim

scholars or Westerners think that

actually the practice of dividing men

and women physically there came as a

later development in Islam as Muslims

adopted some pre-existing cultures and

traditions of the Middle East seclusion

of women was actually a Byzantine and

Persian practice and Muslims adopted

that and made that a part of the

religion and actually this is just one

example of a much larger phenomenon what

we call today Islamic law and especially

Islamic culture and there are many

Islamic cultures actually the one in

Saudi Arabia is much different from

where I come from Istanbul or Turkey but

still I mean if you’re gonna speak about

a Muslim culture this has a core the

divine message which began the religion

but then many traditions perceptions

many practices were added on top of it

and these were traditions of the Middle

East medieval traditions and there are

two important messages I think or two

lessons to take from that you know

reality first of all Muslims pious

conservative believing Muslims who want

to be loyal to their religion should not

cling on to everything in their culture

thinking that that’s demilo mandated

maybe some things are about traditions

and they need to be changed on the other

hand the Westerners who look at Islamic

culture and see some troubling aspects

should not readily conclude that this is

what Islam ordains

maybe it’s a it’s just a Middle Eastern

culture that became confused with Islam

there is a practice called female

circumcision it’s something terrible

horrible it is basically an operation to

deprive woman from sexual pleasure and

Westerners Europeans or Americans who

didn’t know about this before face this

practice within some of the Muslim

communities who migrated from North

Africa and they’ve thought oh what a

horrible religion that is which

ordained something like that but

actually when you look at female

circumcision you see that it has nothing

to do with Islam it’s just a North

African practice which predates Islam it

was there four thousand eight years and

quite tellingly

some Muslims do practice that the

Muslims

North Africa not in other places but

also the non-muslim communities or both

North Africa the Animists even some

Christians and even a Jewish tribe in

North Africa is known to practice female

circumcision so what might look like a

problem with an Islamic faith might turn

out to be a tradition that Muslims have

subscribed to the same thing can be said

for honor killings which is a recurrent

theme in the Western media and which is

of course a horrible tradition and we

see thoroughly in in some Muslim

communities that tradition but in the

non-muslim communities of the Middle

East such as some Christian communities

Eastern Christians you see the same

practice we had a tragic case of an

honor killing em within Turkey’s

Armenian community just a few months ago

now these are things about general

culture but I’m also very much

interested in political culture and

whether Liberty and democracy is

appreciated or whether you there’s an

authoritarian political called culture

in which the state is supposed to impose

things on the citizens and it is no

secret that many Islamic movements in

the Middle East tend to be authoritarian

and some of the so-called Islamic

regimes such as Saudi Arabia Iran and

the worst case was a Taliban you know in

Afghanistan they are pretty old

territorial no doubt about that for

example in Saudi Arabia there is a

phenomenon called the religious police

and the religious police imposes the

supposed Islamic way of life on every

citizen by force like women are forced

to cover their heads wear a hijab the

Islamic now that is pretty alteration

and I am that’s something I’m very much

critical off but when I realize that the

non-muslim or the non Islamic minded

actors in the same geography sometimes

behave similarly I realize that the

problems may be like lies in the

political culture of the whole region

not just Islam let me give an example in

Turkey where I come from which is a

hyper secular republic until very

recently we used to have what I call

secularism police which would guard the

universities against Wales to the

students in other words they would force

students to uncover their heads and I

think forcing people to uncover their

head

is s tyrannical as forcing them to cover

it should be the citizens decision but

when I saw that I said I mean it’d be

the problem is it just a Rotarian

culture in the region and some Muslims

have been influenced by that but you

know the secular minded people can be

influenced by that maybe you’d say it’s

a problem about the political culture

and we have to see we have to think

about how to change that political

culture now these are some of the

questions I had in mind about a few

years ago when I sat down to write a

book I said well I will make a research

about how Islam actually came to be it

came to be but it today and what roles

were taken and what roads could have

been taken the name of the book is Islam

without extremes and Muslim case for

liberty and as as the subtitle suggests

I looked at Islamic tradition and the

history of Islamic thought from the

perspective of individual liberty and I

tried to find what are the strengths

with regards to individual liberty and

there are strengths in Islamic tradition

Islam actually as a monotheistic

religion which defined man as a

responsible agent by itself created the

idea of the individual in the Middle

East and saved it from the

communitarianism the collectivism of the

tribe

you can drive many ideas from that but

besides that I also saw problems with an

Islamic tradition but one thing was

curious most of those problems turn out

to be problems that emerged later not

from the very divine core of Islam the

Quran but from again traditions and

mentalities or the interpretations of

the Quran that Muslims made in the

Middle Ages the Quran for example

doesn’t condone stoning there is no

punishment on apostasy there is no

punishment on personal sins like

drinking these things which make Islamic

law the troubling aspects of Islamic law

were later developments and later

interpretations in Islam which means

that Muslims can today look at those

things and say well the core of our

religion is is here us to stay with us

it’s our fate and we will be loyal to it

but we can’t change how it was

interpreted because it was interpreted

according to the time and Emilia in the

Middle Ages now we are living in a

different world with different values

and different political systems that

interpretation is quite possible and

feasible

now if I were the only person thinking

that way but we would be in trouble but

that’s not the case at all actually from

the 19th century on there’s a whole

revisionist reformist

whatever-you-call-it

tradition a trend in Islamic thinking

and these were intellectuals or

statesmen of the 19th century and later

20th century which looked at Europe

basically and saw that the Europe has

many things to admire like science and

technology but not just that also

democracy Parliament the idea of

representation the idea of equal

citizenship these Muslim thinkers and

intellectuals and statesmen of the 19th

century looked at Europe saw these

things they said why we don’t have these

things and they looked back at Islamic

tradition they saw that there are

problems problematic aspects but they’re

not the core of religion so maybe they

can be Rihanna stood and the Quran can

be reread in the modern world that trend

is generally called as Islamic modernism

and it was advanced by intellectuals and

statesmen not just as an intellectual

idea though but also as a political

program and that’s why actually in the

19th century the Ottoman Empire which

then covered the whole Middle East made

very important reforms reforms like

giving Christians and Jews and equal

citizenship status accepting a

constitution accepting a representative

Parliament advancing the freedom idea of

freedom of religion and that’s why the

Ottoman Empire in its last actually

decades turned into a pro to democracy a

constitutional monarchy and freedom was

a very important political value at a

time similarly in the Arab world there

was what the great Arab historian Albert

Hourani defines as the liberal age he

has a book Arabic thought in the liberal

age and the liberal age he defines is

19th century and early 20th century

quite not ibly this was the dominant

trend in the early 20th century among

Islamic thinkers and statesmen and

theologians but there is a very curious

pattern in the rest of the 20th century

because we see a sharp decline in this

Islamic modernist line and in place of

that what happens

that Islamism grows as an ideology which

is authoritarian which is quite strident

which is quite anti Western and which

wants to shape society based on an

utopian vision so Islamism is the

problematic idea that that really

created a lot of problems in 20th

century Islamic world and even in the in

the very extreme forms of Islamism led

to terrorism in the name of Islam which

is actually practice that I’m I think is

against Islam but you know some some

obviously extremist did not think that

way but there’s a curious question if

Islamic modernism was so popular in the

19th and early 20th century why Islamism

became so popular in the rest of the

20th century and this is a question I

think which needs to be discussed

carefully and in my book I went to that

question as well and actually you don’t

need to be a rocket scientist to

understand that just you look at the

political history of the 20th century

and you see well things have changed a

lot the contexts have changed in the

19th century when Muslims were looking

at Europe as an example they were

independent they were more

self-confident in the early 20th century

with the fall of the Ottoman Empire the

whole Middle East was colonized and when

you have colonialization what you have

you have anti colonialization so Europe

is not just an example now to emulate

it’s an enemy to fight and to resist so

there’s a very sharp decline in liberal

ideas in the Muslim world and what you

see is more more of a defensive rigid

reactionary strain which led to Arab

socialism Arab Nationals been ultimately

the Islamist ideology and when the

colonial period ended what you had was

in in place of that was generally

secular dictators which say their

country but did not bring democracy to

the country and establish their own

dictatorship and I think the West at

least some powers in the West particular

United State made the mistake of

supporting those secular dictators

thinking that they are more you know

helpful for their interests but the fact

that those dictators suppressed

democracy in their country and suppress

Islamic groups in that country actually

made the islam is much more strident so

in the 20th century you had this

vicious cycle in the Arab world where

you have a dictatorship suppressing its

own people including the Islamic pious

and they’re reacting in reactionary ways

there was one country though which was

able to escape or stay away from that

vicious cycle and that’s the country

where coming from it that’s that’s

Turkey turkey has never been colonized

so it remained as an independent nation

after the fall of the Ottoman Empire

that’s one thing to remember it did not

share the same anti colonial hype that

you can find in some other countries in

the region secondly and most importantly

Turkey became a democracy earlier than

any of the countries we were talking

about in 1950 turkey had the first free

and fair elections which ended the more

autocratic secular regime which was in

the beginning of Turkey and Turkish the

pi’s Muslims in Turkey saw that they can

change the political system by voting

and they realized that democracy is

something that is compatible with Islam

compatible with their values and they’ve

been supportive of democracy that’s

that’s that’s an experience that not

every other Muslim nation in the Middle

East had until very recently secondly in

the past two decades thanks to

globalization thanks to the market

economy thanks to the rise of a middle

class we in Turkey see what I define as

a rebirth of Islamic modernism now

there’s a more urban middle class pious

Muslims who again look at their

tradition and see that there are some

problems in the tradition and the

understanding they need to be changed

and questioned and reformed and they

look at Europe and they see an example

again to follow they see an example at

least to take some inspiration from

that’s why the EU process turkey’s

effort to join the EU has been supported

inside turkey by the islamic pious while

some sacred nations were against that

well that process has been a little bit

blurred by the fact that not all

Europeans are that welcoming but that’s

another discussion but the pro EU

sentiment in Turkey in the past decade

has become almost an Islamic cause and

supported by the Islamic liberals and

the sacral as well of course and thanks

to that Turkey has been able to create

recently create a success story in which

Islam and the most pious

the standings of Islam have become a

part of the Democratic game and even

contributes to the democratic and

economic advance of the country and this

has been an inspiring example right now

for some of the Islamic movements are

some of the countries in the Arab world

you must have all seen the Arab Spring

which began in Tunis and in Egypt and

Arab masses just revolted against their

dictators they were asking for democracy

they were asking for freedom and they

were they did not turn out to be the

Islamist boogeyman that the dictators

were always fooling using to you know

justify their regime they said that we

want freedom we want democracy we are

Muslim believers but we want to be

living as free people in free societies

of course this is a long road it’s so

it’s it’s a democracy is not an

overnight achievement it’s a process but

there is promise this is a promising era

in the Muslim world and I believe that

the Islamic modernism which began in the

19th century but which had a setback in

the 20th century because of the

political troubles of the Muslim world

is having a rebirth and I think the

getaway message from that would be that

Islam despite some of the skeptics in

the West has the potential in itself to

create its own way to democracy creates

its own way to liberalism crazy its own

way to freedom they just should be

allowed to work for that thanks so much

you