The transcendental West and Islam


Concrete religious belief collapsed in Europe in the third quarter of the 19th century, with Britain and France, in particular, no longer taking religion seriously. With this religious decadence, liberals, social democrats and socialist intellectuals realized that they remained baseless in a groundless world. This, at the same time, meant deprivation of a moral ground as the God, who would normally define a single morality and impose it on people to obey, was dead. Therefore, a state of a "lack of obligation" dominated all moral issues. Although this phenomenon was blessed as "freedom" on an individual level, governing a state entailed a common morality. Consequently, the 19th century intellectuals assumed an unnamed prophetic mission and decided that this morality would be created by an elite stratum through Neo-Kantianism and it would be imposed on society. They strived to bridge this moral gap with "utilitarianism." Then, it reached such an extreme level that Antonio Gramsci even suggested the Church would be replaced by the communist party.Even though Edward Said deconstructed this matter in a post-colonial context, the Muslim model of analyzing the West through the Palestine question remained problematic. Because, while deconstructing the Western paradigm, victimization always stayed at the center and the West was described as a "perfect evil," which corresponded to the devil in religion. When the overwhelming superiority of the West was more clearly seen in Said's further analyses, it was not very difficult for Muslims to adjust to believing the West as a perfect evil. All in all, the devil was the "legitimate other" in the religious paradigm and he had an unquestionable role. In this sense, the West increasingly evolved into a transcendental figure for the East. Thus, the root of the problems that Muslims faced in this world was attributed to an excessive evil, while the play was considered within the intellectual sphere of the West and within the framework of the rules set by the West. To be honest, the belief that the world would be a more livable place for Muslims when such kinds of organizations as al-Qaida were eliminated was rather poor, as they did not go beyond escalating anger and triggering more radical inclination. Al-Qaida was a form of resistance that was based on such a misunderstanding. Its major motivator was coming into play in the areas where Muslims resisted and bearded the devil in its den. The moving spirit of al-Qaida was siding with ummah on a global scale. However, it was never ever dominated by such targets as establishing institutions, settling in a country or forming a country. But, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) is rather different. The high negative energy accumulated in the suppressed Islamic world could no longer be wasted in a baseless movement,. Because politics was closed to Muslims, and Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood were lynched, it opened the floodgates for ISIS, which was nourished by the discrimination that the immigrants faced in the West.In any case, ISIS, as an organization which holds on to an irrational idea just like al-Qaida, will be rooted out in the region, however, no one else but Muslims will suffer while this is done. This will not go beyond a makeshift alleviation for passionate Muslim young immigrants, and romantic Islamists; it will rather make the West more transcendental by glorifying it. As the West is misunderstood, a religious role is attributed to it. The West runs with quite a simple mentality based on profit and national interests rather than human interests. Therefore they colonize any society regardless of their identity and religion or eliminate them. It sometimes can be a Palestinian, a Rwandan, John Kennedy or Yasser Arafat. They are all one and the same to the West.Turkey, as a union of both Eastern and Western communities, settles on a unique narrative. The problems in Turkey are solved through diplomacy as it was in the case of recent operation to save Turkish hostages captured by ISIS. The remedies we find either by contemplation or by mistake encapsulate neither Western nor Eastern radicalism and I see this as a great opportunity. Turkey points in an important direction by introducing a new morality to the world's realpolitik. We are again speaking of morality and as long as this morality is established on the most pluralistic ground possible, it will be genuine and problem-solving. This morality will include God, all religions and secular values as they are overall characteristics of society.