Secularism and Religion - 2

Another important point between the clash of Islam and Secularism in particular is that secularism rests on the Enlightenment ideals of Science and Reason, where the naming of "things" are the determining factors of our understanding and therefore domination of them. Underlying this idea is the claim that the universe is indeed graspable, comprehensible by man's reason. Islam, Sufism to be exact, on the other hand, claims that naming is important, because Adam was in the first place given the authority to name things in creation; not in order to dominate them or reduce them to things though, but because each name also includes in its essence the trace of God, and therefore each name is a variation of God's names. Thus very simply put, knowing the universe doesn't mean grasping it in parts but seeing that in each creature, there is an essence that will be forever unknown to man, which by the way, is a mystical doctrine that is very much at the heart of all mystical strains. In this sense, religious science aims at the revelation of the the godhood in everything, also implicating that all is sacred. When one considers today's environmental problems and how Man treats human nature, one can find all sorts of contemporary mystical writing from all religious thought, touching on the relocation of the sacred and how its absence leads to domination and anthropomorphic arrogance.

Secularism and Religion

These days in Turkey one argument reigns supreme... It permeates every level of high/low culture and finds an expression from the most sophisticated to the most vulgar of mouths, transcending all boundaries of caste, color and creed. It is an argument that has been the scourge of this nation ever since it has been formed: The relationship between religion and secularism is the argument, and the gist stems from the simple, misguided and misinterpreted formula of how these two concepts are completely exclusionary, meaning you either have one or the other. You're either a secularist, or you're deeply religious. There seems to be no compromise between these two camps and although a huge majority feels left out in the debate, the argument rages on in the same vein. To some extent this is understandable and in the following lines, I'll try to elucidate why.
Secularism in this country has always been a western import, and bears the mark of an evolution of Christianity more than anything. It may look like the rise of secularism happens to the expense of Christianity, but the coming of secularism is, in my opinion, for a part, due to the historical changes that Christianity has undergone since its inception. I turn to Gianni Vattimo's collaborative work with Richard Rorty, The Future of Religion (ed. Santiago Zabala, CUP: NY, 2005) in which Vattimo (a Catholic Scholar by the way, not an atheist) claims that "secularization...is the constitutive trait of authentic religious experience." (35) Whoa! From where I stand (Turkey, Middle East, Islam), this argument is blatantly blasphemous. How can the exclusion of religious rules (Sharia) from the public sphere be in anyway connected to religious experience. According to Vattimo though, the western postmodern conception of textuality and historicity has rendered the understanding that Nietszche's call to God's death is similar to the death of Christ on the cross. In both instances, religion is primarily taken out of the hands of God, or a supreme authority and has been placed under human responsibility. God has been killed by the Church by usurping the religious experience from the people, and Christ has died in order for humans to take control of their religious destiny, to carry the responsibility of the Gospel that God has given to them. This responsibility for Vattimo, or the only transcendental signified the Scriptures have to offer, is the notion of charity and love. The practice of this responsibility can only occur in a secular public sphere where different interpretations on the same text(s) have to be in constant interchange without degenerating into a power struggle. For this, we need a religiousness that is non-metaphysical says Vattimo. That is, one that accepts that each text is historically significant in its mode of creation but not exclusionary of others when measured up to a metaphysical Truth.
Now this is all nice and well, and Vattimo, I believe, demonstrates a very reasonable and sophisticated branch of postmodern thought, without falling into the mish-mash of culturally relativistic US counterparts. But just like his insistence on the historicity of Scripture and religion, Vattimo demonstrates an interpretation of religious thought that is deeply rooted in the western metaphysical and philosophical tradition that is, alas, quite absent in Turkey. Here is the problem. Secularism in the western sense does strike an Islamic scholar as blasphemous since the Qur'an's ontological basis of being God's direct Word, delivered through Mohammad is unchallengeable to begin with. Therefore all may be text but the Qur'an is simply not just a text. The second point is that Islam stresses the importance of the meaning in re-ligio (to be re-united) more as a private matter than Christianity does. Every creature wishes to be re-united with the sacred Source it has sprung from so by default, this world serves as an intermediary stage, a stage where the flow is seemingly suspended for the creature to relocate the Source and reconnect to it (Bataille expresses this in a most succinct manner by claiming that "religion is the search for a lost intimacy"). Thus the public sphere is an impediment in a way, and it has to be re-organized so the search for the Source can be facilitated. One may ask whether the Islamic republics of our day are achieving it, and most of us will respond as no; however, that doesn't necessarily cancel out the efficacy of Sharia, as many Muslim scholars will claim that the perfect Islamic state hasn't arrived yet, in a way pointing to an utopian strain.
Thus, Turkey is seemingly at a divide that at the moment looks unbridgeable, however, just the fact that we live this divide in our daily life, shows that some sort of discussion is present and hopefully will lead to a compromise on two sides as time goes on. In my opinion, religion is useful in its preserving and delivering of tradition in the form of metaphors that may change over time but that do point to an inherent human understanding of its relationship with the whole, whatever that whole may be, thus has to be preserved in some form or another. Neither banning it nor letting it roam rampant in the hands of ecclesiastical authorities (!) is the only solution.