Islam did not conflict with the modern world when it maintained contact with the world on a pragmatic and conceptual level as outlined by the Abbasids; there was no need for such a conflict. However, when we reduce modernity to individual, secularism and nation state and make reference to secularism as the “dominant” notion, Islam and other religions, including Christianity, are forced to conflict with modernity because they will either survive or submit to secularization’s actions, which will make them relative and marginal and take them to the private and passive sphere. However, we understand, relying on the experiences of the 20th century, that no other religion is willing to experience what Catholicism has gone through. They do not want to deal with what happened to the Catholics. To this end, they are in conflict with secularism. In the 21st century, Islam takes the lead in this struggle; for this reason, Islam has become the main target. The notion “East” is important when making a distinction between civilian and official modernization. Our modernization is not similar to the West; it is based on the idea of fighting our Eastern identity rather than rapprochement with the West. This anti-Eastern style and stance causes us to fight our very own existence and identity, and over time it becomes self-hatred. One basis of our official modernization is a hatred of the Eastern identity.
To this end, everything is made upside down and subjected to semantic interventions. For instance, the “women” issue is a typical example of this. In order to understand Muslim women and their attention to veiling and modesty, we have to first understand the image of “Eastern women” in the mind of Western people. A Westerner depicts an Eastern woman with reference to this image: the Eastern woman is mysterious, she has an exotic body behind the veils, but she is misfortunate because she is a sexual slave of a man of lust. She is waiting for rescue. The Western man will rescue the Eastern woman. Despite the fact that Western discourse has created feminism, it is actually masculine. In this discourse, the Eastern object is feminine. Therefore, the Western discourse on women seeks to liberate women from men, religion and tradition.
The struggle has been carried out over the symbols and apparent conflicts since Mahmud II. The West is not tolerant vis-à-vis the headscarf -- despite that intolerance breaching the fundamental provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights -- for two reasons. First, the woman was an object at the center of a war of symbols. For the first time, a woman with a headscarf became a “subject” in Turkey and the Islamic world. This was a first in history since the second half of the 20th century. The West subconsciously abstained from endorsing this. Second, the West does not support modesty and veiling because there is an ongoing tension between “personality” and “female attractiveness.” The image of the “Western woman” puts an emphasis on attractiveness.
The problem is not about the headscarf alone; the headscarf was reduced to a mere symbol. For instance, there is a serious problem if a female writer known for her Muslim identity pens the following sentence: “A man and a woman have a child when they decide to.” This is the same as what singer Fulden Uras said: “A child will arrive if the parents agree, and there is love between them.” This discourse ignores Allah’s intervention in life, nature, birth and the uterus. In fact, there is no significant difference between this Islamist writer and Fulden Uras on a rhetorical level. The modern is sweeping the intimate and turning an Islamist writer into Fulden Uras.
Because we cannot eliminate the modern -- and we do not have to -- it means that we will have to coexist with the modern and the intimate. Islam pays a great deal of attention to the intimate and implies that we could coexist with the modern. But the problem does not start and end with Islam. The crucial question is this: Will the intimate accept Islam as it is and want to coexist with it? This seems pretty unlikely.
