We are not paying sufficient attention to the resemblances between the historical background which serves as a reference for the recently revived debates on Islamism and the conditions of the period in which we find ourselves. Apart from what we must understand from the conceptualization of Islamism, there seems to be a strange correlation between the reduction of Islamism as a phenomenon into an object of the history of political thought, and the departure of Muslims from being subjects.

An Islamic union would perhaps be the main idea of a common foundation on which even the most opposite debates on Islamism could meet. Although Islamism may not be composed simply of an Islamic union, without the thesis of an Islamic union, there can be no common ground on which to discuss this issue.

During the period in which the Muslim world began to be colonized by Western colonizers and the Ottoman structure began to quake at its foundations, the cry which rose from South Africa to the island of Java, from Turkestan to the deserts of Libya, was a call echoed in the Bosphorus. It is clear that the idea of the Caliphate had a depth whose meaning for the world’s Muslims at the time cannot even be conceived today. While the degree to which the Muslim world affected the Ottoman Empire in practice may be debatable, it is necessary to consider this as a unique indigenous thought with universal scope which is ongoing today.

It would be an inaccurate reading to assert that the idea of an Islamic union was simply a political project adopted by Sultan Abdulhamid as a defense against external attacks, with the Muslims in the colonies being utilized as a threat, or bluff, against the imperialists. The Islamic union was also a politics developed in order to prevent conflict between the Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Empire. It should not be forgotten that it was a precaution on behalf of the Ottoman Caliphate against the Sunni-Shiite tension along the borders of current Iraq, especially Najaf and Basra,  and against the rapid spread of Shiism.

Against the discourse of “Islamism is dead,” we are currently undergoing an extremely important historical process in which Islamism must be rekindled and strengthened, at least around the idea of union. With the intervention of global hegemonies, the Middle East was initially turned into a bloodbath. In an environment reeking of occupation, looting, pain and blood, the codes for the region’s existence were tampered with, and the people of the region were alienated from the grounds of their own existence.

Afghanistan is a country ravaged by the Soviet invasion and the American intervention. The balances in Iraq have been ruined in such a way by the American embargo and invasion as if they were designed for the eruption of a sectarian war. Sophisticated methods have been developed in order to transform the differences with which the region was familiar into a foreign ethnic and sectarian war, and to provoke a blood feud between the people.

Now without an occupation, the civil war in Syria with its regional effects displays the potential to evolve into a sectarian conflict. Hundreds of Muslims are killing each other every day.

More than five hundred people died in Iraq over the last month. Amid this chaos, it is meaningless to ask who was killed by whom and why. A day does not pass in Baghdad without innocent people being blown apart by bombs in the marketplace or at mosques.

The violence taking place in Syria renders meaningless who is the oppressed and who is the oppressor. Hezbollah, which has gained a place in the hearts of all Sunni and Shiite Muslims due to its setting out with the emblem of rescuing Jerusalem, has formed a front against its Muslim brothers and sisters.

Countries which encourage the opposition in the name of freedom leave millions of unarmed people abandoned and helpless in the face of a brutal dictator’s missiles. Tyrants and sheikdoms who do not question their own rule and collaboration build their motivated strategies on the blood of tens of thousands and leave helpless innocent people at the mercy of rockets raining from the sky.

Iran, which has opposed the American strategy in the name of ruining imperialist projects, has preferred the spilling of blood to high strategic calculations. Both the countries and sheikdoms in the region and Iran are taking shelter in sectarian advocacy in order to render their bloody policies innocent. Zionist colonists are watching all these battles with pleasure. Eastern and Western powers are testing their global policies and competition in this pool of blood; from their self-glorifying positions, they are relishing in the old days by observing the plight of short-sighted, oblivious Muslims.

To depart from this painful state of humanity, there is need for a strong voice in the Muslim world which will shake up the people, nations and states… A powerful breath which, like Israfil’s horn on Judgment Day, will remind and caution people of the religion in which they believe… It is again time for the union of Islam. Rather than prioritizing intellectual concerns, it is time to call for brotherhood, hope and an Islamic union.

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