The Islamic Renaissance, as the expression of the resurrection of the Islamic world, requires first and foremost a “revolution of mentality”. This is because it is impossible to achieve a reconstruction and revitalization initiative with a mindset shaped by the psychology of collapse, a sense of inferiority, and the alienation process perpetuated by domestic occupiers. While a reactive and conservative mood emerged in the Islamic lands that experienced actual occupation, a patchy and confused mood emerged in central lands such as Anatolia, which did not experience the trauma of actual occupation for a long time. However, an act of renewal and revival must be based on a rational function marked by tranquility, clarity, and depth.
The most distinctive feature of our Renaissance, which started in the eighth century, is the schools of science, art, literature and morality that flourished all over the Islamic geography. Architectural masterpieces symbolizing vitality and dynamism, discussions that are examples of brilliant intelligence and logic, moral teachings with philosophical depth, and literary and musical products that developed in harmony with all these qualities, captured the universality of the period and became signs of civilization that would set an example for humanity.
Europeans, who built a similar process on ‘our’ Renaissance through the Andalusian heritage, also went through a multifaceted training of renewal whose impact extends to this day.
Both the Islamic and Christian worlds experienced this process as an interconnected historical evolution based on the discovery of the laws of phenomena and the reproduction of the Mesopotamian-Mediterranean civilization legacy. The difference between them was their attitude towards the divine, that is, their position in the plane of values. Muslims were subject to the Qur’an, Christians were subject to the Greco-Latin tradition.
We destroyed our own Renaissance through military empires dependent on agriculture, and they are just beginning to exhaust theirs through self-interested capitalism. Moreover, without neglecting to usurp and distort and destroy not only their own traditions, but also the accumulation of all humanity in hasty and robber’s ways!
Now, not only “we” but all of humanity is in need of a new light and breath in both the realm of values and the realm of phenomena. In terms of values, we are tasked with being witnesses to Tawhid—the unity of all intellectual, moral, justice, and freedom-based values that make the sub-human creatures, human. In terms of phenomena, it is possible for us to set an example by building a civilization based on justice and freedom that will transcend capitalism and re-educate the human.
The initial step required is to spark a revolution of mentality by overcoming the effects of the 150-year trauma and achieving mental clarity and tranquility. However, for such a mental revolution, our existing mental structure must get rid of the habits and orientalist illusions inherited from the agricultural ages and the colonial period.
First and foremost, issues such as the East-West dichotomy, East-West conflict, modernity-tradition, and culture-civilization contradictions, along with all problems rooted in Third World perspectives, must be removed from the agenda. Because these all “templates” themselves are products of an orientalist perspective. The issue of the “Orient” reflects a mental habit developed by the European colonial powers with the Barbarian myth for non-Euroean, and crusader spirit and completely expressing their exploitative logic. In other words, all the exaggerated emphasis on the natural differences between the East and the West is ultimately the product of the Eurocentric perspective of orientalism, and the reactive third worldist, Easternist perspective developed against it represents the reverse registration and reproduction of the same logic.
Defeat and collapse have led to the production of illusions in all “Eastern” intellectuals, and for this reason no positive contribution has been made from the “East” to the collective mind of mankind for one hundred and fifty years.
The similarity between the definitions of the East and the West of the fascist and arrogant intellectuals of the Europe, who explain the point they have reached entirely through their own efforts, and the Euroean intellectuals, who emphasize difference of the rest of the world from the West in their search for salvation and alternatives, is interesting. The only difference is that what one sees as positive, the other deems negative.
The starting point for Muslim intellectuals at this point is to learn to think outside of this orientalist illusion, that is, outside of any kind of template based on “East and West”. Because neither the East nor the West is a basin of values and phenomena that will revive us. Because; both the East and the West carry traces of ‘our’ values in the context of values and stand equally close to us as the addressees of these values. In terms of phenomena, all human discoveries that serve the good of humanity belong to us as well as to all of humanity. In other words, in all areas such as science, technology, literature, art, architecture, politics, economy, etc., ‘we’ have the ability and authority to “choose” and “receive” what is good, right and beautiful.
Because the West and Westernization, modernity and modernization are not the same as Europeanization. Just as the East and Orientalism, the East and Asia, the East and Despotism, metaphysics, tradition, wisdom, revelation, backwardness, underdevelopment and similar “generalizations” are not the same thing. All of these are unreal and misleading illusionary lies that are the product of the orientalist perspective. Those who reproduce the East-West conflict as a modernity-tradition conflict must think again, considering the consequences of their efforts and taking the future into account.
“We”, that is, Muslims, are in a position to be neither eastern or easternist nor western or westernist, as witnesses to the natural messages that transcend time and space in terms of values. In terms of phenomena, we have to embrace all the accumulation of human beings, grasp the universal development moment correctly, and strive to internalize the various forms of categories such as science, technology, politics and economics, which currently serve capitalism, within the context of our own values. Because just as there is no eastern or western for Tawhid and Idolatrousness, truth and falsehood, justice and oppression, there is no geography for science, production, consumption, capital, labor, state, society, reason and irrationality. Certain facts under certain circumstances produce the same results. The dialectics of contradictions and conflicts operate in the same way all over the world, and in history there are no reversals, but struggles between good and evil taking on “new” forms.
In short, we have to purify our minds from the illusions of a hundred and fifty years and accustom them to think more calmly, universally and holistically. In particular, our primary effort should be to purify ourselves from the Eastern and Eastern romanticism and to start thinking with a central-focus perspective.
First Publication: Weekly, Haftaya Bakış Magazine, 1998
