At the first glance the news seems interesting and quite innocent. German Prime Minister Merkel has stated that Muslims and Islamists should be distinguished from each other and added, “We are against Islamists, not Muslims.”
How consistent isn’t it?
It’s clear that in the West, the use of Islamism as a synonym to terror and violence is a conscious preference. As a thinking system, Islamism is between the targets of the West since the past century. Especially within the frame of colonialism, anti-imperialism and modernization, it was a trend, which West had to encounter and defeat. The media language, which used to present political and strategic targets with conceptualizations like radical Islam, political Islam and fundamentalist Islam, is now directly going for the Islamism-Muslimism differentiation.
Befittingly to the perception within the Western communities, the violence and terror had made settling accounts with Islamism useful. To put it better, the new usage of Islamism had turned into an argument, which made all the operations over the Islam world and Muslimism innocent and legitimate.
Despite living at a geography, where Islamism is the source, the “media intellectualism”, which had never pondered about basic questions like “what is Islamism history”, “what is the definition of Islamism”, “How it can be sorted out”, had directly jumped to the translated concept. Without needing any requirements that should be known for no matter which opinion or movement, like “what does Islamism suggest as an experience and envisagement”, you handle, and generalizations are being made.
Before, state’s ideological language used to show some kind of “delicacy” by referring to adjectives like reactionism, reactionist, obscurantism and bigotry. It would label any disliked Muslim with “reactionist” and any unwanted movement with “reactionism”, thus, imprison them. It used to be attentive to avoid making a direct reference to Islam and Muslimism like “Islamist”. Maybe the Westerns don’t have the necessity to be this much attentive.
Even, on the contrary, since the reactionism generalization will be including Jewish and Christian reactionists as addressees, they would have to abstain from that with caution. However, knowing that Islamism is the most radical accumulation against them in sense of consideration history and political history, the West is using this notion with care. It’s certain that, labeling the rootless formations and implementations that appear in Middle East with Islamism is politically quite useful.
In Turkey, arabesque squinting is dominant in this matter. On one hand, the shortcut of identifying the sectarian violence under the support of administrations like Suud, which are extremely against Islamism, as Islamism…. On the other hand, the educated community, which are making Islamism definition since they see it useful for their political discrepancies and ideological obsessions related with AK Party, which is on the right-conservative line….
Islamism, which they use as the reference of all evil, had turned into a notion that is being used without even thinking of the communal response of the etymological connotation between them and Muslimism and Islam. A rhetoric, which had been blunted by an ideological and political obsession that doesn’t even have the sensitivity of Merkel, is the point in question.
As a conscious usage from the point of the West, Islamism concerns the West, before everyone else, with its colonialism face. Islamism being the target of the West, which shows the tendency of returning to Middle East with armed power and get involved, is pointing out the consistent and historical continuity within itself. Certainly, before everything, Islamism represents the awakening of the Islam world against the Western colonialism and the resistance against it. It cannot be limited only with colonialism hostility; it is the equivalent of a religious point of view and movement known as “Islam Unity”.
Similar to how it is not independent from the political, communal consequences, ruins, hopes and salvation pursuits of the Islam world, separate trends had also been obliged to review their positions against Islamism.
When regarded as a whole, it could be said that “Islamism is the sum of the suggestions and envisagement of the religious thinking related to life and community”. In this sense, it is neither separate from religion, nor independent from it. Although, it is the interpretation of the religious thinking related to the life and people. Under these circumstances, the regimentations of Islamism comes into play.
Within this frame, we are the country of intellectuals, which doesn’t know the Islamism trends in the Islam world after caliphate or the Islamist opinion that had developed in Turkey after the Republic and even not aware of the meaning of Islam carries for these lands and which is disabled by arbitrary decisions. The Islamism arguments, which gets nowhere and imprisoned to news columns, had taken on the task of rubbing out Islamist thinking through the violence that had been plagued with blood and terror, and it could only be the matter of daily politics. You cannot expect this kind of delicacy, moral sensitivity, communal and cultural correspondence from the expert of this situation.
Every tradition and every thinking that had been separated from their roots and foundations, has the highest possibility of being manipulated. The sectarian violence in the name of Islam being encouraged and provoked via West hostility by the dictatorships, which has the closest relations with the West, is a matter that primarily concerns the Muslim intellectuals and opinion owners in the context of continuity and indigenousness.
