Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Jan 8 2015

Je suis Charlie

GÃ`NAL KURÅ?UN
January 08, 2015, Thursday

It is not the time to say, `This is not real Islam’ or `You can not
generalize and judge 2 billion Muslims in the world because of the
actions of a few extremists.’ It is not a time to think about how `It
is not fair to link terror with Islam, Islam is a religion of peace.’
Terror can not be linked with Islam indeed, but it can be linked with
Islamists. And at the least, some of the Islamists see this attack as
being legitimate.

President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄ?an said after the attack on the office of
the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris that `terror doesn’t have a nation
or religion.’ I understood this explanation as a kind of defense,
saying, `Please do not put the responsibility on us.’ In my opinion,
it is not a time for defensive statements by way of all these
political clichés.

Firstly, Muslims must be the most active group in condemning the
Charlie Hebdo attack. Not only in the field of foreign policy, but
also in the daily life of Muslims living in the Western world, this
attack will have an effect, similar to that of Sept. 11. That is one
reason why we have to oppose and condemn all these attacks, but first
let us feel the pain and suffer for a minute in our hearts that
France’s most popular caricaturists, who visited Turkey many times,
have been violently killed. We have to be the most active group not
because we are in the position to defend the positions of Muslims
living in the Western world, but because we are humans, and humans
including Muslims are now suffering over this event. For those who
didn’t have this empathy before, let’s really suffer for the first
time after the events including the 1915 genocide of the Armenians,
the 1938 Thrace pogroms, the Sept. 6-7, 1955 events against Greeks in
Turkey and after Sept. 11 in the US.

After this, we have to confront our reality and we have to rethink
Islam. We have to think about why such extremists defend the most
violent ideas, including crashing planes into buildings that cost
thousands of innocent people their lives, beheading Christian
journalists or killing caricaturists who publish Muhammad caricatures.
Is this only a matter of misinterpretation of Islam, or is there
something else behind this `misinterpretation.’ Is it just a matter of
fiqh, i.e., Islamic jurisprudence, or is it time to think in another
revolutionary way about the reform of Islam. I’m not talking about
conspiracy theories which we will read in the coming days like
`CIA-organized/backed groups did this in order to legitimize a
possible war against Islam.’ This silly explanation does not help
anyone, as it didn’t help in Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria. We have to
start to look to the issue outside of Islam. Whatever we say inside
Islam will not explain the truth. If you are willing to say,
`Mainstream Islam is not this and mainstream Islam opposes these kind
of attacks,’ I may ask you what is mainstream Islam. The attackers see
themselves as part of mainstream Islam and they can behead me too just
because I don’t practice `good’ Islam. No matter that they represent
the minority, they see themselves as the mainstream, real Muslims, and
see their actions legitimate and in accordance with their
interpretation of fiqh. Since we did not close the doors of ijtihad,
meaning `independent reasoning’ in the 11th century, we have to find
another way to answer contemporary needs and build a new balance
between taqlid (following authority) and ijtihad. A reform not within
Islam but in Islamic thinking is needed, and Muslims must confront
their problems without any inferiority complex.

The great Pakistani poet Muahmmad Iqbal said, `A wrong concept
misleads [the people’s] understanding; a wrong deed degrades the whole
man, and may eventually destroy the structure of the human ego.’ Let
us feel again the pain of France and pray for the destroyed souls.