Gelisim News

Prof. Dr. Şenol Durgun: After 1980 Islamists tried to Islamize modernity

In the series of conferences organized by the European Islamic University centralized in Rotterdam/Holland, Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Istanbul Gelişim University Dr. Şenol Durgun gave speeches in the Insbruck Austria and Germany in Munich city on "The Changing Run of Islamism in Turkey". Professor Dr. Durgun said "After 1980, the Islamists tried to Islamize modernity" stating that the developments in the post-1980 global scale and domestic politics were alive. Many people from outside the university participated in the conference, which was attended by many universities.

Prof.Dr. Dr. Şenol Durgun from IGU participated as a speaker to the series of conferences organized by the European Islamic University. Durgun referred to the emergence of Islamism in his speech in Insburg and Munich and pointed out that it started as a political and social movement in the process of modernization that began in the last period of the Ottoman State, that is, as the result of encounter with the West and as an alternative search movement in the Islamic world against Modernity.

Durgun said: "This feature of Islamism began to become widespread on the global scale, especially in the 1980s. In Turkey also continued a strong and very effective way until the years of implementing the neo-liberal politics. However, Islamism did not continue in the same course until the 1980s. Some internal and external political developments, both in the late Ottoman period and in the Republican period, have periodically differentiated the Islamist movement claiming to be an alternative to the West. Nevertheless, he did not give up the Islamist movement because of its claim to be an alternative to the West ".
 
"UNTIL OUR DAYS THERE HAS BEEN SOME BREAKING POINTS IN ISLAMIZM”

Prof. Dr. Durgun said that there were some breaking points for Islamism from the past to the present days. Durgun stating that until the 1960s traditional religious understanding was the main reference point for the revolutions and the alternative to the West, said that " after 1950 together with Cold War years, "new" religious interpretations translated from Arabic artifacts  evolving with increasing independence movements in the colonial Muslim geographies have influenced Islamist movements in Turkey and have moved them away from tradition and historical experience, were even drag them to an opposing stance against this accumulation".

Another point of breaking point is the fact that in the 1980s some western intellectuals chose Islam as a religion, and that the works of these people were the reference source for the Islamic segment. Dr. Durgun stated that "These intellectuals have been a strong reference for Islamists seeking an alternative to the West because they knew their Western thought and world very well".

Dr. Durgun stating that the main development in breking from past accumulation inside the Islamicismvis were the developments experienced in the global scale and domestic politics after 1980. "By this time in Turkey Islamists seeking "public alternative", first required "visibility in the public sphere ";  then they began to express their wish to "take part in the public". This led Islamısm  to seek from search of the alternative to modernity to an attitude towards the Islamization of modernity. With the change that began with the application of neo-liberal politics, Islamists have gradually moved away from politics, focusing on economics instead of alternative political projects, and have made a transition from collectivist attitude to individualistic attitude. With postmodernism, statement "Now there is only one truth, and that is Islam" was left, and a sense of respect for everybody's truth was settled and this situation was a big break from the past Islamic understanding. An important development that fosters this attitude is the nutrition resources of Islamism at this time. For the Islamists, the field of nourishment was not the Islamic intellectuals but the Western intellectuals. "- Dr. Durgun added.

Professor emphasizing that Islamism is in a sense "Islamless Islamism" in our days, said: "Islamism in Turkey today mostly has been broken from tradition and lore and excessively politicizated".