Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty (5 page)

The generals argued that they had launched the coup to “end the era of anarchy and terror” that beset Turkey in the late 1970s as a result of armed clashes between Marxist and nationalist militants. That was not untrue, but the terror the junta unleashed proved to be far greater. Besides, it sowed the seeds of future violence. The Kurdish inmates, who suffered the worst forms of torture in the infamous military prison in Diyarbakır, craved revenge after their release, and some of them, under the banner of the armed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), launched a terrorist campaign that would hit Turkey in the decades to come.

Notably, all this cruelty took place in Turkey, a Muslim-majority country, but it had almost nothing to do with Islam. The Marxists were against Islam, and while the nationalists respected it, their main motivation was patriotism. (These two opposing camps regarded the Islamic-minded youth, who remained pacifist, as sissies.) And the most brutal of all camps, the military, followed the doctrine of none other than Atatürk—one of the most secularist leaders the Muslim world has ever seen.

In other words, on that cold winter day at Mamak Prison, I, as a Muslim kid, faced tyranny not in the name of Islam—as some Westerners would have readily expected these days—but in the name of a secular state. As I grew up, I observed even more examples of the same trouble. Instead of “religious police” forcing women to cover their heads, for example, I saw “secularism police” forcing women to uncover their heads.
⁸

That’s why, I think, when I saw “Islamic” dictatorships in other countries—such as Iran, Sudan, and Afghanistan—I did not assume an inherent connection between Islam and authoritarianism. Rather, I realized that the authoritarian Muslims in the Middle East and the authoritarian secularists in Turkey shared a similar mindset, and that this illiberal mindset, rather than religion or secularity as such, is the problem. I also found it quite telling that the same problem has haunted non-Muslim countries in Asia, such as Russia and China.

So, I asked myself, could the authoritarian regimes in the Muslim world stem not from Islam but from the deep-seated political cultures and social structures in this part of the world, on which Islam is just a topping?

In other words, could authoritarian Muslims be just authoritarians who happen to be Muslim?

F
ROM
M
ECCA TO
I
STANBUL

Those are some of the questions that I will explore in this book, while presenting a more liberal-minded understanding of Islam—in a long argument divided into three main parts.

In Part I, I will go to the very genesis of this religion and show how its core message of monotheism—with implications such as the individual’s responsibility before God—transformed the Arabs and then the whole Middle East in remarkable ways. We will see how rationalist and even liberal ideas emerged in those earliest centuries of Islam, and why they failed to become definitive in the long run. We will also examine the distinction between the eternal message of the Qur’an and its temporal implications, even including some of the political and military acts of the Prophet Muhammad.

Part II deals with more recent history. First, there is a chapter on the Ottoman Empire, the Muslim superpower from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. I will particularly focus on how the Ottoman elite imported liberal ideas and institutions from the West and, most important, reconciled them with Islam. This is a story largely forgotten both in the West and the East, but also a very important one for both.

Then we will examine the anomaly of the twentieth century, which gave us oppression, militancy, and even terrorism in the name of Islam: Islamism. As we shall see, this modern ideology, which is different from the fourteen-century-old religion to which it refers, is quite misguided in itself but also very much mishandled by its foes, including the West.

The last chapter of Part II focuses on Islam in modern-day Turkey. The reason for this is not only that I am a part of that story, and thus know it well. It is also that the exceptional story of Turkey, which is largely unnoticed in the West, represents a growing synthesis of Islam and liberalism. The Ottoman legacy certainly plays a role here, along with the lessons Turkey’s Muslims have learned from their interaction with the country’s secular forces. In addition, Turkey has recently become the stage for an experiment unprecedented in the history of “Islamdom”: the rise of a Muslim middle class that has begun to reinterpret religion with a more modern mindset. For centuries, Islam has been mainly a religion of peasants, landlords, soldiers, and bureaucrats, but in Turkey, since the “free-market revolution” of the 1980s, it has also become the religion of urban entrepreneurs and professionals. These emerging “Islamic Calvinists,” as a Western think tank referred to them—alluding to sociologist Max Weber’s famous thesis on the “spirit of capitalism”—strongly support democracy and the free-market economy.
⁹
Furthermore, they are far more individualistic than their forefathers. Consequently, as a Turkish observer recently put it, they want to hear about “the Qur’an and freedom,” rather than “the Qur’an and obedience.”
¹⁰

Yet these more modern-minded Muslims, and the millions of their co-religionists throughout the world who are concerned about the authoritarian elements within their tradition, still need an accessible synthesis of the liberal ideas they find appealing and the faith they uphold—which, despite all the appearances to the contrary, might actually be compatible.

They need, in other words, a genuinely Muslim case for liberty—something Part III provides, with religious arguments for “freedom from the state,” “freedom to sin,” and “freedom from Islam.”

T
HIS IS THE BRIEF STORY
of why and how this book came to be. It is the fruit of an intellectual and spiritual journey that began in my grandfather’s house thirty years ago and has continued uninterrupted to date. I went to modern, English-language schools, which taught me a great deal about the liberal tradition of the West, but meanwhile I retained my passion to learn, discover, and experience more about my religion. Hence, since the early 1990s, I have engaged with various Islamic groups and have seen firsthand their virtues as well as their flaws. In the end, I decided to subscribe to none of those groups, but I have learned from the ways of each of them.

One trait I have developed over the years is an instinctive aversion to tyranny. I had seen it first as the eight-year-old kid behind barbed wire, looking down the barrel of secular guns. But as I studied the Middle East, first in college and then in my job as a journalist, I came to realize that the barrels of Islamic guns are no better. Despots acting in the name of “the nation” or “the state” obviously were terrible—and so were despots acting in the name of God.

Ultimately, I have become convinced that a fundamental need for the contemporary Muslim world is to embrace liberty—the liberty of individuals and communities, Muslim and non-Muslims, believers and unbelievers, women and men, ideas and opinions, markets and entrepreneurs. Only by doing so can Muslim societies create and advance their own modernity, while also laying the groundwork for the flourishing of God-centered religiosity.

To explain why this is not as impossible as it might seem to some, I first need to go back fourteen centuries to explore how Islam unfolded in history—and, in the meantime, what happened to liberty.

PART I

The Beginnings

The period in which formative developments took place in Islam, and at the end of which Muslim orthodoxy crystallized and emerged, roughly covered a period of two centuries and a half.

—Fazlur Rahman (1911–1988), Muslim scholar

CHAPTER ONE

A Light unto Tribes

If it is true that each individual has such a destiny [beyond society], then he cannot be treated merely as a means to an end, but as an end in himself.

—Robert A. Sirico, Roman Catholic priest
¹

I
N THE YEAR 610 AD
, an Arab man from the small town of Mecca heard an extraordinary voice in a cave. “Recite,” the voice commanded him. “Recite in the name of your Lord who created man.”

And the world changed forever.

That man was Muhammad, a member of Banu Hashim, a prominent clan in Mecca. Although raised as an orphan, he lived a comfortable life, thanks to his prominent relatives. While still in his teens, he started accompanying his uncle, Abu Talib, on trading expeditions to Syria, so he could gain experience with commerce. Soon he would become a merchant himself, a successful and respected one. At the age of twenty-five, he married Khadija, a rich forty-year-old widow who was even more accomplished in business.

Trade was one of the two economic pillars of Mecca. The other one, related to the first, was polytheism. The cube-shaped building at the heart of the city, the Ka’ba, was a pantheon for some three hundred idols. Other Arabs visited Mecca every year in order to honor these gods, blessing the city not just with prestige but also with profits.

Years passed and Muhammad reached the age of forty. By all accounts, his marriage was a happy one. He was a highly respected member of society and considered a very moral man. People called him “the Trustworthy One” and asked him to settle disputes. He could have continued to lead a good life, making money and dying comfortably, but Muhammad was destined for more. Throughout his life, he had moral concerns about his society. The ruthless treatment of Mecca’s downtrodden—the poor, the slaves, and most women—deeply troubled him. He was also bothered by the core of his native culture: idolatry. How bizarre, he thought, for people to worship objects made by their own hands.

Muslim tradition tells us that Muhammad was illiterate. Some have disagreed, pointing out that, as a merchant, he must have been familiar with documents, but he surely was not a man of letters who would sit down and read literature. Yet he was a thinker, and he often would leave Mecca for a cave on a nearby mountain, seeking peace of mind. He would sit in that cave for hours and contemplate nature, society, and the meaning of life.

During one of these private meditations, he heard the commandment, “Recite.” This very first word of the revelation he received—
iqra
in Arabic—hinted at the name of the scripture it would ultimately form: the Qur’an, which means “recitation.”

Muhammad found the strange voice in the dark cave not just unexpected but also so terrifying that he climbed down the mountain and ran home. Trembling, he begged his wife: “Cover me, cover me.” He feared that evil spirits had possessed him. But Khadija turned out to be more confident. Holding her horrified husband in her arms, she said, as reported later by Muslim sources:

You are kind and considerate to your kin. You help the poor and forlorn and bear their burdens. You are striving to restore the high moral qualities that your people have lost. You honor the guest and go to the assistance of those in distress. This cannot be, my dear.
²

Khadija then suggested that they discuss this strange experience with her Christian cousin, Waraqa. Well-versed in theology and scripture, the latter did not hesitate to conclude that the spirit that touched Muhammad was indeed a good one. The voice in the cave, and the message, was quite reminiscent of the experiences of Moses and the Hebrew prophets. Waraqa exuberantly cried to Khadija: “Holy! Holy! Your husband is the prophet of his people!”

That conviction would shape the rest of Muhammad’s life. He continued to have doubts for a while but soon became fully persuaded that he was indeed chosen by God, the only one, to save his people from idolatry and moral corruption. “There is no god,” his credo declared, “but Allah.” That Arabic term was simply a derivative of the word
al-Ilah
, which meant “the God.”
³

The revelations would continue for twenty-three years, until Muhammad’s death on June 4, 632. These verses of the Qur’an, as they became known, would guide him and his gradually increasing flock of adherents throughout their astonishing journey. Some revelations would support and encourage Muhammad; others would warn and even admonish him. And, ultimately, they would turn him from a seventh-century Arab merchant to an eternal guide to billions of people.

A M
AN WITH A
M
ISSION

What was source of the revelations that the Prophet Muhammad received? Did he imagine a voice, or was there really a divine source that spoke to his mind? In other words, did the Prophet create the Qur’an or did the Qur’an create the Prophet?

All Muslims (including me) believe the latter. This belief is simply what makes someone a Muslim. It is of course an article of faith, which requires a leap of faith, but, arguably, it is also a credible one. The Qur’an itself, first of all, is very consistent with its claim of divine origin. It is written from the perspective of God and God alone. Verse after verse, chapter after chapter, it hits the reader with its most fundamental character: theocentricity—i.e., God-centeredness. So, unlike the New Testament, which speaks of the life of Jesus, the Qur’an does not speak
about
Muhammad. Rather, it speaks
to
him. Thus, it says almost nothing about his life story, which was written down only a century and a half later by Muslim biographers.