Turkey, Pakistan and Secularism

[Riaz Haq]

As the Turkish Supreme Court prepares to decide on a petition to ban AKP, the ruling party in Turkey, is it reasonable to compare the secular zeal in Turkey with the religious zeal in Pakistan? It probably is. However, the situation in Pakistan is the mirror image of that in Turkey. Just as the religious orthodoxy in Pakistan is strong but limited to a small but vocal, radical minority of Pakistanis, it seems that the secular orthodoxy in Turkey is just as powerful but shared by a small, radical and vociferous minority of Turks.

While Turkish military and the Ataturk Thought Association act as zealous guardians of the secular creed that guides Turkey, the majority of the Turks have long been voting for AKP party, and its predecessors, with "Islamist" leanings. I am using the word "Islamist" rather loosely here, because AKP would be considered a very moderate middle-of-the-road party, like the Muslim League, in a country like Pakistan.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Ataturk's Thought Association's chairman, a retired four-star general, is now in jail. Its offices -- plastered with portraits of modern Turkey's founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk -- have been raided by police. Several of its computer hard drives have been seized by investigators. They're hunting for evidence of plots by hard-line secularists to topple Turkey's mildly Islamic government, according to the Journal.

The hard core secularists in Turkey have been concerned about the demise of Ataturk's legacy almost since he died 70 years ago. A relentless modernizer, big drinker and fan of the fox trot, Mustapha Kemal Pasha, the father of the Turkish Republic had issues with Islam. He closed Islamic schools, banned Islamic dress and opened a German brewery in his new capital, Ankara. It was obviously not the path of least resistance in a country that is 99% Muslim, once ruled Mecca and was for centuries home to the Islamic Caliphate. Yet Ataturk's legacy prevailed for decades.

Pakistan's founder, Quaid-e-Azam Mohamed Ali Jinnah, was also of secular persuasion. However, his idea of secularism was very different from that of the Ataturk.

While Ataturk subordinated Islam under the state, Quaid-e-Azam believed in separation of state and religion. Here is an excerpt from Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah's most important speech laying out his vision for Pakistan: "You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State." Quaid-e-Azam M.A. Jinnah in address to first constituent assembly, Aug 11, 1947

The Quaid-e-Azam was not just secular, he was a secular democrat who believed in freedom of religion and personal choice. For example, he never advocated either requiring or banning the wearing of the scarf, which seems to be where the battle lines are drawn today between Islamists and Secularists in Turkey.

Unlike the Ataturk Thought Association and the Turkish military who are strong defenders of Ataturk's legacy in Turkey, however inflexible and flawed it may be, there has not been a similar effort in Pakistan to defend the legacy of the Quaid-e-Azam. Not only has Quaid-e-Azam's idea of separation of mosque and state been set aside, there have been active attempts by the religeous parties to hijack the national agenda and the country's constitution in favor of a theocratic state based on their extreme interpretation of the Shariah laws. The efforts of the religious parties, a minority in parliament, began with forcing the adoption of the 22-point objectives resolution just a few years after the death of Quaid-e-Azam. The religious elements completely whitewashed the vision of the father of the nation and declared Islam as the ideology of Pakistan. Fortunately, though, the recent Pakistani elections have shown that the vast majority of Pakistanis reject the extreme agenda of the religious parties in Pakistan.

For the Ataturk Thought Association, a bastion of Turkey's secularism, the key Ataturk speech is a 230-word address to Turkish youth. It warns against "malevolent people at home and abroad," and urges ceaseless struggle against any "traitors" who worm themselves into power. According to the secularists, that dark fear has taken shape in the form of the AK Party.

Ataturk's secularism is not a simple formula. Unlike America's founding fathers, who separated church and state, Ataturk did not so much separate Islam from the state as make it subservient to the state. He abolished the position of the Caliph and put all mosques and imams under a government ministry. At the same time, he purged religious influences from other state agencies.

If, as expected, the hostile Turkish Constitutional court rules to ban AKP, it will not mean the end of its government. The AKP legislators will most likely reconstitute themselves into a new party by a different name that would easily win the vote of confidence in Turkish parliament. Turkey will continue to move in the direction of a moderate Muslim state with modern ideas of democracy and personal freedoms that it shares with its European neighbors. Based on the results of recent elections in Turkey, the vast majority of Turks clearly endorses this direction and rejects the Ataturk version of secularism which is incompatible with democracy.

[Riaz Haq]

Read the following excerpt from a piece titled "The myth of religious violence" that historian Karen Armstrong wrote for the Guardian recently: 

If some Muslims today fight shy of secularism, it is not because they have been brainwashed by their faith but because they have often experienced efforts at secularisation in a particularly virulent form. Many regard the west’s devotion to the separation of religion and politics as incompatible with admired western ideals such as democracy and freedom. In 1992, a military coup in Algeria ousted a president who had promised democratic reforms, and imprisoned the leaders of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), which seemed certain to gain a majority in the forthcoming elections. Had the democratic process been thwarted in such an unconstitutional manner in Iran or Pakistan, there would have been worldwide outrage. But because an Islamic government had been blocked by the coup, there was jubilation in some quarters of the western press – as if this undemocratic action had instead made Algeria safe for democracy. In rather the same way, there was an almost audible sigh of relief in the west when the Muslim Brotherhood was ousted from power in Egypt last year. But there has been less attention to the violence of the secular military dictatorship that has replaced it, which has exceeded the abuses of the Mubarak regime.

After a bumpy beginning, secularism has undoubtedly been valuable to the west, but we would be wrong to regard it as a universal law. It emerged as a particular and unique feature of the historical process in Europe; it was an evolutionary adaptation to a very specific set of circumstances. In a different environment, modernity may well take other forms. Many secular thinkers now regard “religion” as inherently belligerent and intolerant, and an irrational, backward and violent “other” to the peaceable and humane liberal state – an attitude with an unfortunate echo of the colonialist view of indigenous peoples as hopelessly “primitive”, mired in their benighted religious beliefs. There are consequences to our failure to understand that our secularism, and its understanding of the role of religion, is exceptional. When secularisation has been applied by force, it has provoked a fundamentalist reaction – and history shows that fundamentalist movements which come under attack invariably grow even more extreme. The fruits of this error are on display across the Middle East: when we look with horror upon the travesty of Isis, we would be wise to acknowledge that its barbaric violence may be, at least in part, the offspring of policies guided by our disdain. •


http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/25/-sp-karen-armstrong-re...

[Riaz Haq]

Pan-Islamism,emerged as a modern political ideology in the 1860s and 1870s at the height of European colonialism, when Turkish intellectuals began discussing and writing about it as a way to save the Ottoman Empire from fragmentation. Became the favored state policy during the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II (r. 1876 – 1909 ).

Sultan Abdulhamid, the last meaningful Ottoman emperor and probably the only known world muslim leader of his time who countered the Great game of Britain and Russia by arming muslim rebels against them. For that he used his foreign policy of Pan-Islamism to gather support from Muslims and used it against the enemy in their own colonies.

However, little people know is of the role Abdul Hamid played in 1880s giving British-Indian clergy and politicians the suggestion of forming a `Muslims League' his continued projection of pan-islamism. It seems a coincidence that a party with a similar name just arose some years later to uphold the rights of muslims of the subcontinent.
The following excerpt is from an important document of history that was perhaps never taught in academia.

He coined the name during his two month stay in Bombay in 1883 when he was able to secure huge funds from wealthy local muslims.There then he also adopted the green Mughal Muslim flag for a variant of his Ottoman Coat of Arms, in which it was called the banner of caliphate.The flag was later used by the newly formed Muslims league in 1906.

In early 1900s a Jehad was already declared by the Sultan against British and there was a compliance to it in the Afghanistan as well as present-day Pakistan and India . One of the key men of of Sultan Abdul Hamid in the region were 'Jamal-ud-din Afghani', his point-man in Peshawar and 'Obaidullah Sindhi' who was proactive in raising jihad in Afghanistan against the British.Intriguingly Obaidullah, a sikh convert called himself Sindhi and not Hindhi.

Therefore, how could a Sultan that helped the resistance in subcontinent against British Imperialism, coin name of a political organization 'Muslim League' that worked within the British framework later for independence or was the name just a coincidence?? Was it Muslim league's way to do politics?

If anyone of you who can correct or contribute to my findings above please do so as this is part of history we were never taught in our classrooms.

https://books.google.com/books?id=s04pus5jBNwC&q=Muslim+League#...