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| Dialogue with Orthodox Islam |
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What those who call for the reformation of Islam for the whole Muslim world are attempting is without precedent. Arguably one of the most influential contemporary advocates of the radical idea to reform Islam is the Middle East expert Bernard Lewis. His fifty years of study and scholarship led him to the conclusion that the West-which used to be known as Christendom-is now in the last stages of a centuries-old struggle for dominance and prestige with Islamic civilisation. It was Bernard Lewis who coined the phrase the "Clash of Civilisations" in a September 1990 Atlantic Monthly article on "The Roots of Muslim Rage" in which he painted Islam as engaged in a fourteen century long war against Christianity. This was three years before Samuel Huntington published his famous article on the "Clash of Civilizations" in Foreign Affairs. Ian Buruma summarised Lewis' argument in an article in the New Yorker as the following:
"…The clash between Christendom and Islam has been going on since the Muslims conquered Syria, North Africa, and Spain. Muslims, at the height of their glory, in tenth-century Cairo, thirteenth-century Tehran, or sixteenth-century Istanbul, thought of themselves as far superior to the Christians and Jews among them, who were tolerated as second-class citizens. Since then, however, as Lewis puts it, 'the Muslim has suffered successive stages of defeat'. Turks reached Vienna in 1683 but got no farther. When the rampant West expanded its empires, European ideas penetrated, dominated, and dislocated the Muslim world. It was deeply humiliating for Muslims to be humbled by inferior Christians and Jews ("Crusaders" and "Zionists" in modern parlance). Traditional ways, which had produced so much glory in the past, were eroded and often destroyed by ill-considered experiments with Marxism, fascism, and national socialism. Out of political and cultural failure came this Muslim rage, directed against the West, the historical source of humiliation, and out of this rage came the violent attempts to establish a new caliphate through religious revolution."
In relation to the attacks of September 11th 2001 on the US, Lewis has said: "I have no doubt that September 11th was the opening salvo of the final battle…" Arguably, the thinking of Lewis has been influential on the current US administration and his ideas have to a large extent shaped how the administration views the Muslim world. He is known to be close to Vice President Dick Cheney and has been invited by President Bush's advisor Karl Rove to speak at the White House. His best-selling book entitled "What Went Wrong?" examines the decline of Muslim civilisation and is regarded in some circles as a kind of handbook in the war against Islamic terrorism.
The model of Muslim society that appeals to Lewis and his followers is that of Turkey. In this country Mustafa Kemal seized control of the Ottoman Caliphate in the 1920s and imposed his vision of a secular western society upon the people, irrespective of the people's wishes. Religious schools were closed, the wearing of the Hijab was forbidden in government offices and universities, many religious scholars were imprisoned or killed and the Arabic language was replaced with Turkish. Mustafa Kemal was not a believer in "government of the people, by the people, for the people…" but was more influenced by fascism of the 1920s and followed a style of ruling characterised in his own words as "government for the people - despite the people". He felt that he knew best and could force everyone to follow his opinion.
Lewis' argument falls down on a number of points. It is still not clear whether it is possible to make a success out of forcible secularisation of a Muslim society. Undoubtedly, in Turkey there are groups of people who are European in their behaviour, attitudes and values and do not see themselves as Muslim other than in their names; but they represent a small minority of that society. In the same cities where there are very secular Muslims, there are also many more traditional and conservative Islamic communities, and in much of rural Turkey, the values and attitudes of people have not changed much in the last two hundred years. Today, the political party that enjoys the clear support of the majority of the Turkish population is the Islamic Justice and Development Party. Its leader, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was once banned from public service after reciting a poem that said "the mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets, and the faithful our soldiers". It is the institution of the Turkish army that prevents the government from re-adopting Islam politically or publicly which many in Erdogan's party call for - the army stands ready to do a coup if it sees any threat to the political model that Mustafa Kemal established.
It follows that Turkey is not really a moderate Muslim society in the way that Lewis, Bush and Wolfowitz understand the term "moderate". Rather it represents the failure to replace by force a culture that was home grown and present for several centuries with a foreign one. As a military supported ruler Mustafa Kemal had no legal limits in what he could do to rid Turkey of its Islamic heritage; many Islamic scholars were killed or imprisoned, religious schools were closed down and people were forced to behave in accordance with western values and so on. Yet even after eighty years of Kemalism, Islamic traditionalism is increasing in strength and gaining influence in the society. The force that prevents Islam from coming to power is the secular army that feels duty bound to defend Kemalism.
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