What is religion and what is sacredness? Is everything that is divine a religious thing? If a Muslim restricted his relationship with religion to the sacred, would he act Islamically? Many people are preoccupied with other issues that they cannot deal with these kinds of questions and likewise they don’t want to be bothered due to their brain comfort.

The modern world has sacramentals. The question is: Is it an Islamic thing to claim modern sacramentals? We know that since the Renaissance the religion that modern reason built has been reduced to a level of sacramentals and expelled from life. Now religion is a matter of conscience under the shade of ritual sacramentals. It is allowed to engage with life in as much as it is rationalized, and it is under the responsibility of the clergy and church.

What religion left blank was going to be refilled with modern sacramentals, and the secular world would fill it with its own sacramentals. There is no difference in content between the religion reduced to sacredness and the consecrated secular rituals.

The nation state has its own sacramentals: the banner, national anthem, national idols. Modern secular idols are artists, authors, politicians and media stars. They are like the saints of the medieval ages.

It is not a barrier for secular politics to be consecrated in place of the religion which withdrew from life. It is not surprising to see the modern sacredness go in hand with the ‘new religion’.

The participation of Muslims in secular politics may consecrate the political area. However, it does not religify the political area. While contemplating about these things, I couldn’t help remembering the topics which Martin Lings covered in his book ‘Ancient Beliefs and Modern Superstitions’. It is more suitable to identify the situation today ‘Ancient superstitions and modern sacramentals’.

In a country like Turkey, where the religion and political relationships are constantly problematic, my purpose is not to discuss the considerations regarding how politics is religious or should be. My attempt is simply to brainstorm on the consecration of the secular politics, because in the last term conservative politics appealed to itself and a language of politics in a benedictive manner which requires contemplating about the topic what is actually religious and what is actually a consecrated secular value.

Beyond the staunch ‘secular religious understanding’ as an esoteric structure which consecrates itself, to build a language of religion through the consecrated symbols in the political area lays out a problem of perception and understanding whereby the religion and the non religion is mixed up. Kemalism socialized the symbols through the secular sacramentals, procured immunity. The socialization of the modern state rituals reminded us of the pagan rituals that contradicted the beliefs of the nation which remained also limited.

The individual religious attitude, the beliefs of the conservative politicians and, as a result of their existence in the secular political field, the legitimization of the modern state’s existence and its principles through the discourse of sacredness, when compared to the language of the previous terms, obtains much more social reception.

In both cases, the situation is explained on account of the overlap and the retaining of their vitality through a different consecration.

However, the religion and religious thought excludes this kind of consecration. The essential problem is that while modern sacramentals are built in place of religion, the meaning of the religion is at risk of depletion.

In a secular system, a Muslim who is practicing politics for some reason does not guarantee his political acts to be religious because he is a Muslim. A secular state’s administrator, no matter what his or her religion is, cannot judge on religion.

This understanding of religion, which Germany and French propose as ‘Euro-Islam’ or their project for reforming religion, is an intervention into religion by the secular state. To intervene in religion through figures who are known originally as Muslims does not justify this interference and islamicizes such acts.

There is no need to say that there won’t be a door left open to the liberal political understanding. The important point is to realize that a modern secular state’s consecrated symbols cannot be islamicized.

Ýlgili YazýlarEnglish