Stranger to History (5 page)

But what was really meant by this reassertion of Islamic identity? What cultural wholeness had been lost and what would it take for the world to be whole again?

I don’t know what my time in Turkey would have been like had I not met Abdullah. Months later, when I recalled his agony, so difficult to match with his plump face and soft manner – I never forgot that before he gave himself to the faith, before he was penalised for being from a religious school, he was almost a business student. And though he studied Arabic and religion, unlike Beeston’s Islamists and religious students in other Muslim countries, he studied them as part of a larger, secular curriculum, and in the way someone in Britain might study divinity. He had not come off a radical hilltop, and though he might always have been a believer, his degree of self-realisation was new. He was like a symbol of the enforced absence of religion in Turkey and of what a conspicuous absence it was.

I had been a few times to the Islamic Cultural Centre on the Asian side of the Bosphorus. Eyup had taken me once to hear a visiting Saudi diplomat speak and then, in his irreligious way and with his Turkish disdain for Arabs, laughed out loud when the man appeared in traditional Arab dress. After the lecture, I had begun a conversation with a student of religion, and it was him who first told us about Abdullah. We tried on many occasions to arrange a meeting with him, but it was only days before I was due to leave Istanbul, when the December rain and wind were at their fiercest and traffic clogged Istanbul’s major arteries, that we managed to arrange a time. We took a small, shared bus along the Bosphorus’ steely waters and a taxi over a giant, slab-like bridge, entering Asia with an ease that never ceased to delight me.

At the Islamic Cultural Centre, the rain drove us out of the open courtyards into covered walkways that led to the cafeteria. It was a bare white room, with one corner churning out cups of tea. We sat round a Formica table which was too low for me to write on. Eyup went to get us tea and I started to test the language abilities of the two students who had just walked in. Abdullah was heavy-set, with a round face, thick lips and an auburn Islamic beard. He had a friendly, docile manner and spoke English slowly but precisely. Oskan was clean-shaven with an angular face and close-set eyes. He spoke little English and next to Abdullah’s smiles and gentle voice, there seemed something hard about his manner. Eyup returned with a round of plain tea, the sugar cubes crumbling at the bottom of the glasses.

‘This is something very hard to explain,’ Abdullah began, in response to my question about why he had entered the theology faculty. I thought he meant that language would pose a problem, but this was not the case; he was thinking of the actual complication of his decision. ‘The simple and basic reason for it is that I want to learn about my religion. I’m studying Arabic language actually, not theology, but as a general education I have studied the Islamic sciences such as
hadi
s [the sayings of the Prophet], and
fiqh
[jurisprudence].’ I was still under the impression that Eyup would have to translate from here on when Abdullah surprised me with his fluency.

‘You have to be a well-qualified and educated person,’ he said, picking his words carefully, ‘to represent your religion, culture and point of view in the world.’

‘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 religion, 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?’