Muslim and Western intellectuals debated current issues during a panel discussion organized prior to the summit, which brought together political leaders. Subjects that were discussed mainly centered on Islam, human rights and violence because the event was organized just a few months after the Sept. 11 disaster. One of the speakers was Professor Bernard Lewis, who became known for his fairly biased views on Islam and the Middle East in the midst of the post-Sept. 11 atmosphere. Despite the amount of time that has passed by, an analysis he made remains in my mind. Lewis, who assessed the experiences of different civilizations on coexisting together, compared the Muslim world to the modern West. According to him, the model presented by Islamic civilization had reached its best form during the Ottoman Empire. The essence of the formula was the group rights granted to different religious societies. Muslims may have been first class citizens, but the Ottoman national system granted other religious groups autonomy and bestowed upon them important rights. Prayer, houses of worship, cemeteries, languages, customs and traditions of Jews and various Christian sects were protected. They were even allowed to decide on many issues related to civil law. Lewis admitted that the formula used back that was the best model in the world at the time.But, according to him, the modern Western citizenship model outperformed the Ottoman model. The citizenship model did not discriminate against any religion because it was based on secularism and extended all rights that were granted to religious group in the previous model to all citizens. He reckoned the cause of the crisis in the Muslim world stemmed from the inability to renew the model that was once the most progressive in the world but that fell behind the model produced by the West.
The banning of minarets in a referendum in Switzerland, where the Western model was implemented at a very advanced level, has crippled the model of the West, which Lewis claimed was more progressive. With this decision Switzerland has prohibited one of the most basic rights of 350,000 Muslims citizens, most of which were born inside the country. The ezan (call to prayer) was already banned in this country and now it is banning minarets. Maybe mosques are next in line. Certainly the decision in Switzerland does not represent the views of all Swiss and the entire West. After all, there is an avalanche of reactions from both within Switzerland and the West.
However, the ban, introduced by the religious right and approved by 57 percent of the people, in a country such as Switzerland, which is considered the most Western of the West, the defense of this ban by President Nicolas Sarkozy in France, which is the homeland of the concept of citizenship, the last minute prevention of a similar attempt in the Netherlands and the examples of discrimination that different people in Europe have been experiencing for years reveal that the progressive Western modern that Lewis defended is facing a serious crisis.
Iranian intellectual Abdolkarim Soroush, known for initially supporting the Iranian revolution and then directing harsh criticism at it, links the regression in the West to the major crisis secularism is experiencing. Soroush, who believes secularism has turned into a religion and, instead of treating all religious groups equally, started to fight against them, described the major crisis in these words thus:
“Secularism was expected to assimilate religions, not start a war against religions by becoming a religion itself. Wasn’t the main reason behind objecting to religion, for example, Islam’s unfair treatment of Christians and Jews and its denial of some rights which it gave to Muslims? If secularism is starting to act the same way and banning those who are not secular from certain rights, then it’s back to where we started.”
The Switzerland example and developments such as religious-centered opposition in Europe against Turkey suggest that either the Western model which Professor Lewis praised was a utopia from the beginning or the West is taking a step back from its equal rights citizenship system. Lewis and others like him had called the al-Qaeda case, which carries out acts of terror in the name of religion, “Islam’s crisis.” In this case, we need to call the Switzerland phenomenon, which bans minarets in the name of secularism, the “West’s crisis” and reconsider our own outdated proclaimed model of coexistence.
