İkinci Meşrutiyetten Cumhuriyete Türk Basınında Muasır Medeniyet Tartışmaları, İslâm Modernizmi ve Mehmet Âkif
Nuri Sağlamİkinci Meşrutiyetin ilanından sonraki süreçte Hristiyan Avrupa karşısında ardı ardına yaşadığımız büyük felaketler, Türk basınında özellikle “din” ve “medeniyet” kavramları etrafında gittikçe hararetlenen uzun soluklu tartışmalara yol açtı. Bütün bu medeniyet tartışmalarının ağırlık noktasını hem sürekli bir İslâmlık-Hristiyanlık mukayesesi yahut karşıtlığı hem de İslâmlıkla Protestanlık arasında ilkesel bir özdeşlik kurma söylemleri oluşturmaktadır. Dolayısıyla bu makalede, öncelikle başta Ziya Gökalp ve Celal Nuri İleri olmak üzere muasır medeniyet ölçütü olarak salt Protestan Avrupa toplumlarını referans alan kimi aydınların İslâmda “Lutheryen” bir reform yapılması gerektiği yönündeki söylemleri ana hatlarıyla özetlenmektedir. Makalenin devamında dini bizatihi kendi şahsî konforları için siyasî bir âlet yahut toplumsal baskı aracı olarak kullanagelen bazı İslâm ulemasının bütün bu reformist söylemlere haklı bir gerekçe oluşturan itikadî ve amelî fetvalarından birkaç örnek verilmektedir. Son olarak Müslüman Türk milleti nezdinde hiç kuşkusuz mümtaz bir mevkie sahip olan Mehmet Âkif’in “İslâm modernizmi” içindeki özgün yerine ve bu münasebetle de kimi Batıcı liberal aydınların yine Âkif’in “medeniyet” kavramıyla ilgili bazı ifadelerini çarpıtarak onu “medeniyet düşmanı” ilan eden söylemlerinin sadece semantik değil sentaktik açıdan da herhangi bir rasyonel dayanağı bulunmadığına dikkat çekilmektedir.
Contemporary Civilization Debates, Islamic Modernism and Mehmet Akif in the Turkish Press from the Second Constitutional Era to the Republic
Nuri SağlamAfter the declaration of the Second Constitutional Monarchy, the great disasters Türkiye experienced one after the other in the face of Christian Europe led to long-term increasingly heated debates in the Turkish press, especially around the concepts of religion and civilization. The focus of all these civilizational debates involved constant comparisons and contrasts between Islam and Christianity and discourses on how to establish a principal consubstantiality between Islam and Protestantism. Therefore, this article outlines the discourses of certain intellectuals, namely Ziya Gökalp and Celal Nuri İleri, who referred only to Protestant European societies as a criterion of contemporary civilization, stating that a Lutheran reform should be made in Islam. The following sections present a few examples of the theological and practical fatwas of certain Islamic scholars who used religion as a political tool or a tool of social pressure for their own personal comfort, justifying all these reformist discourses. Finally, the article mentions the unique place of Mehmet Akif, who undoubtedly holds a distinguished position in the heart of the Muslim Turkish nation with regard to Islamic modernism. In connection to this, the work also mentions how certain discourses of Western liberal intellectuals who distorted some of Akif’s statements about the concept of civilization and declared him to be an “enemy of civilization” lacked any rational basis, not only in terms of semantics but also syntactics.
The Ottoman intellectuals who had gained some superficial information about Western civilization up to the Tanzimat, generally through various embassy reports and books, had the opportunity to get to know Western civilization more closely during the modernization that followed the Tanzimat. In this process, they realized that Western civilization had developed in a way that could not be compared to Ottoman civilization. They believed that, in order to reach the level of progress of European societies, very radical reforms should first be made in political and social life.
Therefore, they engaged in voluminous long-term activities aimed at simultaneously changing both the political regime and the social mentality. Their primary goal was to break the domination over individual and social life by various interest groups who were profiting from the current conditions in both political and social life and who constantly abused Islam for their own interests. To do this, the government system first needed to be secularized, separating religion from the state.
Hence, one can say a religious project was underway in the minds of Ottoman intellectuals and statesmen during the modernization period, no matter to which school of thought they belonged. Still, to think that this project was more of a civilization project rather than a purely absolute religious project would be more accurate. In addition, the main basis of civilization involves religion, and both concepts have been used for a long time to convey practically the same meanings. Taking this situation into account would make seeing the consolidation of any reformist thought toward the institutional or religious structure of Islam more accurate through Islamic references as a necessary condition for a new civilization conception rather than as a policy for gaining political legitimacy. As Menapirzade Nuri and Ahmet Midhat Efendi in particular emphasized, this was because those who claimed Islam as also being opposed to civilization had based their claim on the semantic similarity between the words civilization and progress and on those who were against the concept of progress. Moreover, some ignorant scholars were found to try to portray this claim as a religious ruling. In addition, Western Orientalists who claimed that Islam prevented progress were encountered. Finally, Western states also used the concept of civilization as an exploitative political instrument and used the discourse of bringing civilization to the entire Islamic geography. Many compelling internal and external factors similar to these also occurred.
Therefore, despite their different worldviews, Ottoman intellectuals who admired the Europe’s level of development had to consider the concepts of civilization and progress alongside the religion of Islam as a result of all these political and social reasons. In other words, they had to undertake the defense of Islam against both ignorant Islamic scholars as well as Orientalists who claimed Islam to prevent progress. According to Engelhardt, however, the main goal of this process of social change that was conceptualized through such terms as Westernizing, Europeanizing, contemporizing, and modernizing, was to bring Muslim Ottoman society closer to the Christian European society in all aspects. To do this, both the government and society first needed to be saved from the domination of religion as it had in Europe and be given a secular structure.
As a matter of fact, the environment of relative freedom created by the Second Constitutional Monarchy and the great disasters Türkiye experienced against Western states in the following period led to the emergence of extremely radical discourses around the issues of religion, civilization, and European civilization. Western intellectuals’ contemporary civilizational conceptualizations had initially envisaged a Lutheran reform in Islam that caused intense long-lasting debates in the Turkish press.
Hence, this article will first summarize the discourses of certain Ottoman intellectuals, namely Ziya Gökalp and Celal Nuri İleri, who referred to Protestant European societies only as a criterion of contemporary civilization and stated that a Lutheran reform should take place in Islam. Then the study demonstrates a few examples of the fatwas of some Islamic scholars who had used religion as a means of political or social pressure for their personal comfort, which resultantly justified all these reformist discourses. The article’s second section will touch upon Mehmet Akif’s original place in Islamic modernism. The final section will attempt to draw attention to the lack of any rational basis in the discourses that had declared Akif to be an enemy of civilization by distorting some of his statements on the concept of civilization, not only in terms of semantics but also in terms of syntax.
