Stranger to History Page 4

  ‘Do you feel you have to do it some service?’ I asked, surprised at the new firmness of his tone.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘What do you have in mind?’

  ‘There is a conflict between the world and our ideas, our beliefs, our culture . . .’ Suddenly he was embarrassed at his exclusive conversation with me in English and asked if Oskan could participate. I was happy for him to do so, but wanted Abdullah to continue in English. Oskan seemed to understand better than he could speak, and Eyup agreed to translate where necessary. Abdullah returned to the question: ‘We have to understand the conditions we are living in today. This world is a very different world from that of our religion, our history and our background. The first thing we have to do is grasp that, to take the point of what is going on in the world and to understand the political, philosophical and historical root of this system. Of course, we also have to study and practise our own beliefs and culture. It is not easy to take in the culture as a whole because it is a huge culture of more than a thousand years.’

  I was forced to stop him; he was losing me in his separations. ‘Do you mean Turkish culture or Islamic culture?’

  ‘Islamic,’ he replied, ‘because we are part of that big culture. For example, Arabic language, there are lots of people who have studied it, Arabs, Turks, Persians. It is a big tradition, hard to grasp as a whole, but we have to do what we can. Then we need to create a response, an answer to this world, and try to solve the problem between the reality around us and our own beliefs and ideals.’ It was at this point that I realised that when Abdullah spoke of the ‘world’, he didn’t mean the rest of the world or his world, but something alien, which he later described as a ‘world system’, shorthand for the modern world.

  ‘What is this conflict?’

  Oskan, who had been listening watchfully until now, said, ‘The conflict starts with information. All knowledge orders and determines things. It makes the systems of the world. For example, Western civilisation, which is at the centre of the system, is trying to control others. It is getting the knowledge in its hand and trying to control others with it. Once it has, we find that in our practice we no longer think as the early Muslims thought.’

  I sensed that I would have to be vigilant about abstraction and the traps of philosophy and theology. ‘Do you find that this is something that Western civilisation is trying to do or has successfully done? Do you consider yourself out of the “world system”?’

  ‘I don’t mean we are out of the system,’ Abdullah answered. ‘We are living in it. We are just thinking about what is going on, trying to understand what is being done to us. We are becoming more and more a part of this system, but if you ask me, “Is that OK?” of course the answer is no. For example, Islam says you should live in a particular way, but in today’s world system, if you try to follow the orders of your religion, it is really hard to stand up in a capitalist economy.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Interest, for example, is such a big problem. This is one of the ingredients of conflict.’ I must have looked a little baffled at how the Islamic injunction against usury could make so much difference to Abdullah’s life because he added, ‘Another example is of some American people I know. One of them said to me last month that he has a son. He is trying to make him fulfil his religious obligations, but is finding it really hard.’

  ‘They’re American Muslims?’

  ‘Yes, and his father is trying to make him do his obligations, but the system is working against him. It is stealing your child from you.’

  His description of the system as something encircling him, and yet alien, puzzled me. I was part of the system he described, but couldn’t think of myself in any other way, couldn’t peel away the system. I was curious as to how the other system, the Islamic system, could even remain active within him as something distinct. ‘I can see why you describe the system as founded on Western values. I also see why you feel the need for your own system, but why do you think Islam, founded so long ago, would have answers for today?’

  ‘To be a person,’ Abdullah answered, ‘to be a human being, is one thing, but I have a mode of being. It is to be a Muslim. It is a unique mode of being because it does not change in any time or in any place. Islam is not something man-made. It was given to us. That means it is above history, above man and above culture, but we are only now beginning to get relevant to it, trying to practise it.’

  Abdullah’s tone had changed and become tighter. I was worried that the curtain of faith had come down early on our conversation. The certainties of faith had obstructed other discussions I had had, but I was sure that I could find common vocabulary with Abdullah. After all, it was him who brought up this term, the ‘world system’, which, even though he had never left Turkey, was common to us both. It could mean anything from mobile phones, to air travel, to modern education, but perhaps its most significant component was the exposure to the culture and values of Europe and America that ran like a live wire through Istiklal.

  ‘What is it about the modern experience that is problematic?’

  ‘It is that today’s system is putting man at the centre. It is anthrocentric. Our system is theocentric. Western civilisation says we are able to do what we want, that we don’t need a God to make a cultural or religious system. That is the difference and it is a big one. This modern system is different from all other traditional systems, not just Islamic but Christian and Judaic systems too.’ Man instead of God, progress instead of the afterlife, reason instead of faith: these were the transfers Abdullah felt he was being forced to make, and yet my own feeling was that his regret came not from the prospect of having to make them but from already having done so.

  ‘The modern system has a great power,’ Oskan started, ‘which is not just against Islam but against Chinese culture too, and other traditional cultures. It’s just that any response from another culture may be used by the modern system and made into an empty box, a consumer product. It can’t do that to Islam because Islam is a religion that is interested in this world and the other world.’

  ‘What is the difference in the way Islam treats the physical world?’

  ‘Islam has many rules about this world,’ Abdullah said. ‘We believe that for a person who is a Muslim the religion will have something to say to him in every second of his life. This is what we try to do in fiqh. We try to place value on what a man does. We have a scale and whatever you do must be within that scale. You cannot go out of it. It begins with farz, obligation, and ends with haram, what is forbidden. There are many levels between these two parameters, but there is no way out of the scale. Other religions don’t have these kinds of orders and permissions, but Islam has this unity. It is a whole system for this world and the other world.’ Islam offered an enclosed world of prescriptive and forbidden action, which was more detailed than most other religions, but in the end could only cover those things that were common to the world of today and the Prophet’s world in Arabia. Within decades of the thousand-year history that Abdullah had spoken of earlier, the Prophet’s example was abandoned for the ways of the new worlds of Persia, Syria and Egypt that the early Muslims had gained. But now, in Turkey, that great Islamic past, which had absorbed so much, could not be seen to continue and, with Abdullah, I felt both the nearness and sadness of its end; just the other day, it seemed.

  ‘You think the West is trying to impose its way of life on the rest of the world,’ I said. ‘Have you ever thought that in the seventh century when Islam was a conquering religion, the Arabs imposed their way of life on the people they conquered?’

  Both Oskan and Abdullah choked with laughter and, I thought, some degree of amazement. ‘No one has ever asked me that before,’ Abdullah said good-humouredly. ‘Good question, good question.’

  And, although it was as blasphemous a thing as I could have said – that history was a golden history; those Arabs were the bringers of the faith – Oskan fielded it: ‘Islam is an organising reli
gion, but these others are destroying . . .’

  Abdullah, recovering from his shock, said, ‘For example, the Europeans went to America. They found many people living there, but today we don’t find many of its original inhabitants living there. But the Ottoman state controlled the Balkans for many hundreds of years, and if you go there, you still find churches.’

  The conversation was heading in a dangerous direction: churches destroyed or not in lands Muslims conquered versus mosques destroyed or not in retaliation. I wanted to avoid it, hoping to reach beyond the sanctity with which Muslims viewed their past, a historical perfection held up in contrast to the errors of others.

  ‘If what you’re saying,’ I said, ‘is that there is something in Islam that orders and preserves while there is something in the West that destroys, I want to know what that ordering is.’

  Abdullah returned to mosque, temple and church destruction. ‘I may say,’ he began, ‘that if a Muslim has destroyed temples in India, acting as a Muslim, then we can say that that is not OK.’

  ‘Not OK?’

  ‘Yes, definitely without any doubt.’

  ‘Even if he was destroying idols?’

  Abdullah smiled. A discussion began between him and Oskan. Arabic verses were traded back forth. At last Abdullah, as if reading the jury’s verdict said, ‘Our Prophet destroyed idols by his own hand so of course worshipping idols is not OK.’ Still smiling, he made a smooth transition to People of the Book. ‘But we call all Christians and Jews People of the Book and respect them. If someone who is a Person of the Book cuts an animal, a Muslim may eat it.’

  ‘Tell me one thing: is it possible for someone who is a Person of the Book to follow his own religion, not accepting Islam and Muhammad, and still go to heaven?’

  They began to laugh again and traded more verses. ‘There are different points of view on that,’ Abdullah said, ‘but the major and central opinion is that, no, it’s impossible.’

  My thoughts were on neither theology nor the afterlife. What interested me was Abdullah’s mention of an almost biological sense of being Muslim. Perhaps that was why Muslims always wanted to establish – and it had started as soon as I arrived in Turkey – whether or not I was Muslim, and it didn’t seem to matter what kind of Muslim I was.

  ‘You have a pan-Islamic idea of the world, yet the Muslim world has been so divided.’

  ‘Sunni and Shia?’

  ‘Yes, but also within countries. Turkey has its eyes one way, Iran another. What gives you hope that Muslims will overcome their differences?’

  ‘Maybe political views will not come together,’ Abdullah said, ‘but the people . . . You may say there are two levels. The ones at the top care about the political system, but there is something under that. And so if you look at those people in Muslim countries, they are not very different from each other. There might be differences in political structures – and even these are related to the West – but not in people’s lives.’

  Abdullah had never been to a Muslim country other than Turkey, but he was sure of his brotherhood with Muslims beyond any national or political difference. This was also an aspect of the faith: looking upon governments and political classes as corrupt, in foreign hands, and the average Muslim as inherently good and of one mind. My father later spoke to me of this brotherhood, and what I wondered again and again was what his admission into this brotherhood was based on. And why was I so definitely shut out of it where he was concerned?

  ‘When you go to a country and you see two groups of people,’ Abdullah said, ‘you can easily tell who is a Muslim and who is not because to be a Muslim requires many things. For example when the time for prayer is called, he goes to prayer. Another example, a Muslim doesn’t lie—’

  ‘Oh, come on, that’s nonsense. You might be talking about good Muslims, but good Christians don’t lie either. Half the Islamic world is filled with bad Muslims.’

  Abdullah laughed. I had heard this talk a lot already. Muslims couldn’t kill other Muslims. So what was happening in Iraq? Israelis. Muslims would never have dropped the atomic bomb, and so on.

  ‘You mentioned the conflict between Islamic countries,’ Abdullah said, his face growing serious, ‘but I’m trying to say that to be a Muslim is a very different experience from any other, no matter where you are. To be a Muslim is to be above history. It is a mode of being, an ideal, but the closer you get to that ideal, the better a Muslim you are.’

  To be a Muslim is to be above history. That formulation, like an echo of Gletkin in Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, saying ‘Truth is what is useful to humanity,’ explained so much about the faith’s intolerance of history that didn’t serve its needs.

  Familiar with Islamic logic, Abdullah explained, ‘Therefore Islamic countries have an advantage, and that advantage will not go. You say there are differences between them, we accept there are, but these are temporary differences. We can overlook them because we have something that never changes.’

  ‘What do you think the West wants from the Muslim world?’

  ‘That’s a big question,’ Abdullah said, leaning back a little.

  It was nearly dark outside and more glasses of tea arrived. ‘I think they realise,’ Abdullah said, ‘that Islam has an ideal system with the power to make their political and cultural system as a whole go back. Islam has that advantage. It is the unique system with that power. Other systems, Buddhism or Taoism, they don’t have that power because the world system can easily turn them into empty boxes. But Islam still has that power because you cannot change it. For example, if you want moderate Islam, you just make yourself far from Islam, but Islam is still there. You cannot do anything to it. If you obey its orders, you’re a good Muslim. If you leave it, it’s your choice, but you cannot change it.’

  For a moment I wondered if the unchanging aspect of Islam that Abdullah seemed so proud of was also the source of his frustrations. After all, it meant living in another still more complete system, the ‘world system’, that reached into so many aspects of his life and with which he could never be at ease as long as he believed in Islam the way he did. I was grateful for his formulation, ‘the world system’. It was like shared experience between us; Islam was his response.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘This “world system” that you and I are part of, many things come from it, your phone, for instance . . .’

  I was looking round the room for other things to mention when he stopped me. ‘Everything,’ he said, with fresh pain in his voice. ‘Everything.’

  ‘Right. Everything,’ I repeated, my eyes fixed on him. I felt I had to tread gently now. ‘Has anything of value come out of it?’

  They talked among themselves. I sensed they understood the question well, but were now picking their way through the rubble of our conversation.

  ‘Marlboro cigarettes,’ Oskan laughed, ‘and technology are OK.’

  Abdullah had thought harder about it. ‘No, actually,’ he said, ‘this is a big issue among Muslim intellectuals. There are many discussions on the subject and, no, it is not so easy to say that technology is OK. For example, let’s talk about cinema. The Persians have made many good films. Now, maybe that’s OK. By doing that we may stand up against the system by representing our ideals.’

  I was about to interrupt him, to say that most of the Iranian films he had spoken about actually stood against the Islamic regime, when he introduced a more interesting idea.

  ‘But some other people say we have to discuss the camera itself, not the films. Before making good films, we have to discuss the camera itself. Good or bad? We are not interested in the product, we are interested in the camera.’

  ‘What’s the problem with the camera?’

  ‘It’s something Western civilisation made. We have to discuss that camera. What does it represent?’

  His words chilled me. I thought I heard in them a desire to take the world apart, to have it sanctified in some way by the faith. At the same time, I admired his consistency, the wa
y in which he felt it was wrong to profit from the ‘world system’ while guarding yourself against its values. Few thought so hard about the issue or cared so much about falling into hypocrisy as Abdullah did, but I couldn’t imagine any closed completeness pure enough for him. The world couldn’t be put through an Islamic filter: that kind of recasting, like with Fatih Carsamba, could only ever be cosmetic.

  He must have seen my discomfort because he tried immediately to console me, supplanting the hate that had risen in him moments ago with reason. ‘There was a time in Turkey,’ he said, ‘when people could not wear turbans and fezes. They had to wear hats. At that time, we discussed whether it was OK to wear turbans or not. It’s a very important discussion. There are things that are a symbol of a culture, and if you partake in them, you give a picture of your cultural side.’

  ‘Why is this ownership so important? The West has borrowed from the East, things have gone back and forth. Why must you reinvent everything yourself ?’

  The irony in what he had said was that for centuries Islam absorbed a great deal that was outside the faith, from Greek medicine and philosophy to Persian architecture, but only at the end of our conversation did Abdullah explain why the faith today was saturated, its cultural circle closed, almost as if American culture, having taken in yoga and Italian food, was to say, ‘No more.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Yes, definitely. I don’t know what to do. OK? I don’t mean that we’re going to leave everything that comes from the West. That would be ridiculous. I don’t mean that. I’m saying that we have to think and discuss everything that we believe and have today because . . .’ The words failed him, ‘. . . because we didn’t do that till today,’ he finished a moment later, in a voice that almost broke.

  A long, silent moment passed between us. Then, recovering himself, he spoke again: ‘We need to discuss everything and maybe we’re going to create a new structure. I don’t know if we will, but what we need to do is to discuss everything from the beginning, from start to finish. We need to do that.’