L.

SANCAK

THE ISLAMISM OF ABDULHAMID AND ITS OPPOSITION IN

THE LAST PERIOD OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

LÜTFULLAH SANCAK
METU
2019

SEPTEMBER 2019
THE ISLAMISM OF ABDULHAMID AND ITS OPPOSITION IN THE LAST
PERIOD OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

A THESIS SUBMITTED TO
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
OF
MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY

BY

LÜTFULLAH SANCAK

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

FOR
THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE
IN
THE DEPARTMENT OF MIDDLE EAST STUDIES

SEPTEMBER 2019
PLAGIARISM

I hereby declare that all information in this document has been obtained and
presented in accordance with academic rules and ethical conduct. I also declare
that, as required by these rules and conduct, I have fully cited and referenced all
material and results that are not original to this work.

Name, Last Name : Lütfullah Sancak

Signature :

iii
 ABSTRACT

THE ISLAMISM OF ABDULHAMID AND ITS OPPOSITION IN THE LAST

PERIOD OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

Sancak, Lütfullah
M.S. Department of Middle East Studies
Supervisor: Assist. Prof. Dr. Derya Göçer Akder

September 2019, 145 pages

Islamism is a concept that has occupied a central place in the political and
intellectual life of the Muslim World since the 1860s. With different actors and
varying methodologies and objectives, Islamism as a political movement has been
practiced in various formations. This multiplicity has led to several conflicts among
different Islamist actors. The conflict between Abdulhamid II and the Ottoman
Islamist intellectuals is one of the central conflicts in Islamist political thought.
Although both sides were Islamist, this commonality did not lead to cooperation
among these actors. This thesis explores the commonalities and divergences between
the Islamism of Abdulhamid and that of the intellectuals, through the examination of
the regional and international conditions, actors, and discourse of each Islamist group.
The last part of the thesis analyzes what changed in the context of Islamism from the
time of the Ottoman Empire to the post-Ottoman Middle East.

Key words: Abdulhamid II, Islamism, pan-Islamism, Revivalism, Middle East,

iv
 ÖZ

OSMANLI SON DÖNEMİNDE ABDÜLHAMİD VE MUHALEFETİN

İSLAMCILIĞI

Sancak, Lütfullah
Yüksek Lisans, Ortadoğu Araştırmaları
Tez Yöneticisi: Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Derya Göçer Akder

Eylül 2019, 145 sayfa

İslamcılık 1860’dan beri İslam dünyasının siyasi ve entelektüel yaşamının

merkezinde olan bir kavramdır. Farklı aktörler ve değişen metotlarla İslamcılık, siyasi
bir hareket olarak birçok farklı formatta karşımıza çıkmaktadır. Bu çeşitlilik farklı
İslamcı aktörler arasında bazen çatışmaya da yol açmıştır. Abdülhamid ve Osmanlı
son dönemi İslamcıları arasındaki halen önemini koruyan çatışma da buna bir
örnektir. Her iki taraf İslamcı olsa da, kavramsal ortaklık pratikte ortak hareketi
getirmemiştir. Bu tezde Abdülhamid’in İslamcılığı ile ona muhalif olan İslamcılar
arasındaki benzerlikler ve farklılıklar ele alınacaktır. Bu konu bölgesel ve uluslararası
şartlar, farklı aktörler ve söylemler alt başlıklarında incelenecektir. Tezin son
kısmında ise Osmanlı son döneminden çağdaş Ortadoğu’ya geçişte İslamcı
hareketlerdeki değişim ve devamlılıklar incelenecektir.

Anahtar Kelimeler: II. Abdülhamid, İslamcılık, İttihad-ı İslam, Ortadoğu, İhya

Hareketleri

v
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

PLAGIARISM ....................................................................................................... iii

ABSTRACT........................................................................................................... iv

ÖZ .......................................................................................................................... v

TABLE OF CONTENTS ....................................................................................... vi

CHAPTER

INTRODUCTION................................................................................................... 1

1.1. Significance of the Topic .............................................................................. 1

1.2. Research Question ........................................................................................ 2

1.3. Methodology ................................................................................................ 2

1.4. Thesis Plan ................................................................................................... 4

1.5. Literature Review ......................................................................................... 6

1.6. What is Islamism and who is an Islamist? ................................................... 11

THE ISLAMISM OF INTELLECTUALS ............................................................. 18

2.1. International and Regional Context ............................................................. 18

2.1.1. Discussion of “Civilization” ................................................................. 22

2.2. Actors ......................................................................................................... 27

2.2.1. The Young Ottomans ........................................................................... 28
2.2.2. Revivalist Movements.......................................................................... 32
2.2.3 Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani ....................................................................... 37
2.2.4. Islamists of the Second Constitutional Period Gathered around the
Journals of Sırat-ı Mustakim, Sebil’ür-Reşad, Volkan, and Beyan’ül Hak....... 42

vi
 2.3. The Discourse of Intellectual Islamism ........................................................ 46

2.4. Conclusion of the Second Chapter ............................................................... 54

HAMIDIAN STATE-CENTERED ISLAMISM (1876-1909) ................................ 57

3.1. International and Regional Context ............................................................. 57

3.1.1. The Rise of the Caliphate ..................................................................... 57
3.1.2. The Effects of Hamidian Rule (1876-1909) on Intellectual Life ............ 59
3.1.3. The Young Turks and the Emergence of the Constitutional Period ....... 61

3.2. Actors ......................................................................................................... 66

3.2.1. Abdulhamid II ...................................................................................... 67
3.2.2. Other Actors ......................................................................................... 75

3.3. Abdulhamid’s Islamist Discourse ................................................................ 79

3.4. Conclusion of Chapter Three ....................................................................... 82

WHAT CHANGED IN THE CONTEMPORARY MIDDLE EAST? .................... 84

4.1. Regional and International Context ............................................................. 85

4.1.1. Turkey.................................................................................................. 86
4.1.2. The Arab World ................................................................................... 91
4.1.3. Indian Muslims and the Khilafat Movement (1918-1924) ..................... 94

4.2. Actors ......................................................................................................... 98

4.2.1. Muhammed Abduh (1849-1905)........................................................... 98
4.2.2. Said Nursi (1877-1960) ...................................................................... 102
4.2.3. Hasan El-Benna (1906-1949) ............................................................. 107
4.2.4. Sayyid Abu al-A’la Mawdudi (1903-1979) ......................................... 110

4.3. The Discourse of Contemporary Islamists ................................................. 114

4.4. Conclusion of the Fourth Chapter .............................................................. 119

CONCLUSION ................................................................................................... 120

REFERENCES .................................................................................................... 128

APPENDICES

vii
A. TURKISH SUMMARY/ TÜRKÇE ÖZET .............................................. 136

B. TEZ İZİN FORMU / THESIS PERMISSION FORM .............................. 145

viii
 CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1. Significance of the Topic

In this thesis, I will analyze the relations between Abdulhamid II and different
actors of Islamism in the last period of the Ottoman Empire. Furthermore, I will also
look at Islamism after the removal of the caliphate in 1924, mainly in comparison with
the previous period.
Islamism has been one of the most important ideologies in the Middle East of
the last 150 years. From its emergence in the 1860s until the liberal environment of
the Second Constitutional Revolution in 1908, it was the dominant ideology in the
Ottoman Empire and it was directly adopted as the state ideology by Abdulhamid II
(1876-1909). However, the preference for Islamism in the state apparatus and among
intellectuals did not always bring cooperation among different Islamist actors; indeed,
in the case of Abdulhamid and his contemporaries, there was strong confrontation,
even hatred. This animosity reached such a level that it still antagonizes some of
today’s Islamist actors in Turkey, when some Islamists try to delegitimize Said Nursi,
Mehmet Akif Ersoy, and many other Islamists due to their opposition to Abdulhamid.
Furthermore, after the foundation of the Turkish Republic, both Abdulhamid and
these intellectuals became very influential over some Islamist communities. While
Abdulhamid became a symbol of Islamism, the intellectuals that were against the
Hamidian regime became the ideologues of Islamism in the Republican period.
However, the dynamics of such relations are unclear.
My main argument is that Islamism is a broad concept that covers a long
period, a broad geography, and a long list of intellectuals with different, sometimes
conflicting, motivations. Sometimes those who were accepted as Islamists did not fit
the definition of Islamism, and sometimes even those who were important Islamist
actors might not show Islamist characters in each of their action.
1
 The denomination of those actors as Islamists is an a posteriori process.
Therefore, the Islamism of those actors, the role of complementary ideological
motivations, and the influence of social and political conditions on their preferences
need to be examined.
On the other hand, many of the analyses of contemporary Islamist movements
trace the emergence of Islamist movements to the 1920s. Although there is a great
rupture in Islamism from the Ottoman Empire to the contemporary Middle East, this
rupture does not make these two periods incomparable. As mentioned above, Islamists
of the Ottoman time are still influential on today’s Islamist movements. Therefore,
analyzing the changes and continuities of the Islamist movements in terms of the
dynamics of the Ottoman period, is crucial in order to better understand the evolution
of Islamism in the contemporary Middle East.

1.2. Research Question

In this thesis I will answer the questions: Who were the Islamist actors in the
Ottoman period and what were the commonalities and divergences between the
Islamism of those actors and Abdulhamid? What changed in the contemporary Middle
East in the context of Islamism?

1.3. Methodology

This thesis is designed as a qualitative research, and it is evaluated in an

interpretivist approach. Scholars approach the topic with their own definitions of
terms, and include different names and groups under the heading of Islamism in
accordance with their definitions. Therefore, before passing to the main body of the
thesis, I will start with a theoretical evaluation of Islamism and create definitions that
will be used in the whole work. Secondly, the intellectuals and Abdülhamid will be
analyzed in the context of regional and international conditions, the different actors
of each group, and their discourses. Thirdly, since there is a broad secondary literature
on each issue under discussion in this thesis, it deals mostly with secondary sources
on Islamism written in Turkish and English. Evaluation of the primary sources will

2
be limited. Throughout the thesis, I will use journal articles, academic books,
biographic studies of the Islamists, and encyclopedia articles.
In this thesis, I will try to create a map of Islamism in a period that covers one
hundred years from the emergence of Islamism as a modern phenomenon in 1860s
until the 1950s, which is the period in which most of the Islamist actors of today
emerged. While creating this map I will clarify several points concerning Islamism.
First of all, there are several studies on the relations between Ottoman
intellectuals and Abdulhamid. These studies have mostly examined this relation in the
context of the demand of oppositional intellectuals for the constitution and the
assembly. Furthermore, there are also studies focusing directly on the relations
between Islamist intellectuals and Abdulhamid. However, these works only include
the Islamists of the Second Constitutional Period. In this thesis these Islamists will be
taken as only one group among many others, such as Revivalists and non-Ottoman
Islamists. In other words, the evaluation of this group alone cannot give us the general
attitude of Islamist intellectuals. In addition, since these Islamists’ motivations were
not different from other intellectuals of the time, these studies give general
information about the general intellectual trend in the Ottoman Empire. Existing
studies on the relations of Ottoman intellectuals with Abdulhamid did not give
adequate explanation about many other aspects of the relations, specifically with the
Islamist intellectuals.
Secondly, while examining the Islamism of the Ottoman Empire, the problem
of the literature is the inclusion of many conflicting actors under the umbrella of the
same concept. However, until the end of the empire Islam played a central role in the
state apparatus and the society, so ignoring this role of Islam in Ottoman politics and
intellectual life leads to anachronism in the literature. Any actor that demonstrated
some aspects of Islamism is labeled an Islamist. However, although a secular
understanding started to emerge from the beginning of the Tanzimat period, the ethos
of that time showed Islamist characters. Therefore, I will look at the differences
among the so-called Islamist actors and reveal the role that they played in the context
of Islamism.
The third point that our approach would serve is to provide a connection about
the distinct Islamist actors of today. Today’s Islamist actors are distinguished by the

3
regional and international differences which is not the case for the first Islamist
formations. I am well aware of the differences among Islamist groups in today’s
Muslim World, but not of the connections among them. When I analyze the changes
and continuities from the empire to the contemporary Middle East, I will show the
origins of different actors and also one dimension of the similarities of today’s distinct
Islamist actors.
Furthermore, there is also a deep rupture in the literature of Islamism
stemming from conceptual differences. Until the beginning of the twentieth century,
the concepts of Ittihad-ı Islam in Turkish literature and pan-Islamism were used to
denominate Islamism. Concerning contemporary Islamism, new concepts like
fundamentalism, political Islam, radical Islam, and moderate Islam have emerged and
created their own literature. Although these concepts allow us to understand different
parts of the broad concept of Islamism, they also prevent us from understanding the
changes and continuities in the evolution of Islamism since the 1860s. For example,
many studies concerning contemporary Islamism date its emergence to a series of
events in the 1920s. However, as will be shown in this thesis, most of the Islamists of
today, are parts of the same tradition. Therefore, through the creation of a map of
Islamism, I will reveal the origins of the many Islamist movements of today and the
similarities of seemingly distinct Islamist actors.

1.4. Thesis Plan

The first chapter of the thesis will be dedicated to the intellectual Islamism
that corresponds to the period from the 1860s to the end of the empire. This period
will be evaluated under three different titles: the regional and international context,
the actors, and discourse. These three titles will be preserved in all of the subsequent
chapters. Under the first title of the chapter I will depict the conditions that led to the
emergence of Islamism, and discuss the concept of universal Western “civilization”
which had an intense pressure on Islamists. In this chapter, although intellectual
Islamism had many different groups and many of the members of a group are worth
studying separately, because of the limitations of the thesis these actors will be
evaluated under four groupings: Young Ottomans, Revivalists, Jamal ad-Din al-

4
Afghani, and Islamists of the Second Constitutional period. The reason for analyzing
Afghani personally stems from his idiosyncratic attitude.
The second chapter will be dedicated to the evaluation of the Islamism of
Abdulhamid. Since the regional and international context of Abdulhamid’s Islamism
was not so different from the context of the intellectuals, it will suffice to mention the
specific points of Abdulhamid’s position. The actors of Abdulhamid’s Islamism, in
addition to his personality, relied on the post of the caliphate and the sultanate, the
Muslim masses inside and outside of the Empire, pro-state ulema and intellectuals.
The third chapter of the thesis analyzes what changed in the modern Middle
East in the context of Islamism. Since after World War I and the abolition of the
caliphate the Islamic World lost its seeming unity, in the first part of the third chapter
different parts of the Islamic World will be evaluated. Turkey, the Arab World, and
the Indian subcontinent are assessed separately. Parallel to that, four Islamist actors
are evaluated in this chapter: Muhammed Abduh (1849-1905) and Hasan El-Benna
(1906-1949) from the Arab world, Said Nursi (1878-1960) from Turkey, and Sayyid
Abu al-A’la Mawdudi (1903-1979) from India. Beside their regional distribution,
each of these Islamists had specific ideas in terms of Islamism. Although Abduh was
the contemporary of the Ottoman intellectuals, because of his role in the transition to
the contemporary Middle East and his effect on the methodologies of the post-
Ottoman Islamists, I will consider him in this part. Benna and Mawdudi are the two
most important Islamists of the two most important regions of the Islamic World.
They are also seen by several scholars as the beginning of modern Islamism. Finally,
Said Nursi is the most effective Islamist of Turkey, as most Islamists either reconciled
with the Kemalist regime or had to leave the country. His position and methodology
in this period and his place in the Revivalist tradition made him essential to be
examined. In general, while choosing these names, their position in the transition from
the Ottoman time to the modern era will also be considered. Therefore, the two other
important actors, Shi’a and Wahhabi Islamism, will not be considered as much as
these four actors. In terms of discourse, in addition to an overall evaluation, the main
concentration will be on the “Salafi” discourse, which is the dominant discourse of
twentieth century Islamism.

5
1.5. Literature Review

During the early period of the Turkish Republic, since the mental
concentration of the state was on the formation of a new nation and there was strict
state ideology, academic circles abstained from discussing Islamism. However, in
English and French literature it has been studied continuously.1 In Turkish literature,
the first series of qualified academic works can be seen in the 1960s with İslamcılık
Cereyanı2 (the Movement of Islamism) by Tarık Zafer Tunaya, and, although they are
not directly focused on Islamism, Türkiye’de Çağdaş Düşünce Tarihi (History of
Contemporary Thought in Turkey) by Hilmi Ziya Ülken3 and the Development of
Secularism in Turkey by Niyazi Berkes4 both reserve an important part for Islamism.
However, as the scholars of the 1980s also criticized, in some of the works of
the previous period, the effect of the state ideology is highly visible. To demonstrate
this, Ismail Kara, in the preface of the published version of his Ph.D. thesis, criticizes
the usage of the term “irtica” (reactionism) for the 31 March Incident5 in an academic
work, and claims that such an evaluation inhibits to understand different dimensions
of the “Incident" in the context of Islamism. Kara sees the usage of this word as an

1
Dwight E Lee, “The Origins of Pan-Islamism,” The American Historical Review 47, no. 2 (Jan.,
1942): 278-287; Nikki Keddie, “Pan-Islam as Proto-Nationalism,” The Journal of Modern History 41,
no. 1 (Mar., 1969): 17-28; Rahman, Islam & Modernity.

2
Tunaya, İslamcılık Cereyanı.

3
Ülken, Türkiye’de Çağdaş Düşünce Tarihi.

4
Berkes, The Development of Secularism.

5
31 March Incident was an “insurrection against the domination of the Committee of Union and
Progress (CUP) that resulted in deposition of Abdulhamid II.” Selçuk Akşin Somel, Historical
Dictionary of the Ottoman Empire (Lanham, Maryland, and Oxford: The Scarecrow Press, 2003), 244.

6
ideological concept more than an academic term.6 Even though Kara does not mention
a name, through a review of the literature it is clear that Tarık Zafer Tunaya is the
addressee of this critic. In the preface of his Islamcılık Cereyanı, Tunaya glorifies the
Turkish revolution, and in the introduction, he pejoratively uses the term “irtica”
when referring to the 31 March Incident.7
The 1980s were the turning point for literature on Islamism. Starting in 1990,
a series of Ph.D. theses were defended in qualified universities, and today these theses
constitute a significant part of the literature on Islamism. The set of Ph.D. theses which
also form the major part of our research that were defended in the 1990s
chronologically starts with Mümtaz’er Türköne’s İslamcılığın Doğuşu (The Genesis
of Islamism) with the question of “when, where, by whom, and with which intentions
Islam is transformed into a mass ideology." He comes to the conclusion that “Islam is
transformed into an ideology between 1867-1873 by a group of Ottoman intellectuals
to oppose the challenge of the modern world.”8 The second thesis is Azmi Özcan’s
Indian Muslims and the Ottomans (1877-1914): A Study of Indo-Muslim Attitudes to
Pan-Islamism and Turkey, which is a reference book for the international dimension
of the Islamism and pan-Islamism of Abdulhamid II. 9 The third thesis is Cezmi
Eraslan’ II. Abdulhamid ve İslam Birliği10 (Abdulhamid II and Pan-Islamism) which
evaluates the Islamism of Abdulhamid on different levels. The fourth thesis is İsmail
11
Kara’s İslamcılara Göre Meşrutiyet İdaresi 1908-1914 (The Rule of the

6
Kara, İslamcıların Siyasi Görüşleri I, 7.

7
Tunaya, İslamcılık Cereyanı, VII and 3.

8
Türköne, İslamcılığın Doğuşu, 13.

9
Özcan, Pan-İslamism.

10
Cezmi Eraslan, II. Abdulhamid ve İslam Birliği (İstanbul: Ötüken, 1992).

11
Kara, İslamcıların Siyasi Görüşleri I.

7
Constitutional Monarchy According to Islamists, 1908-1914), which concentrates on
the political views of the Islamists and also their relations with other power groups.
Beside these theses, the 1980s and 1990s was a fertile period for the study of
Islamism, and the Islamism of Abdulhamid II. Firstly, Ismail Kara’s Türkiye’de
Islamcılık Düşüncesi I,12 first published in 1986 with a second edition13 first published
in 1987, is an anthological work focusing on the writings of the Islamists of the late
Ottoman period, especially on political issues. Secondly, Jacob Landau’s The Politics
of Pan-Islam: Ideology and Organization published in 1990 covers the period from
the Hamidian era to the end of the 1980s.14 Besides these works, there are also studies
concentrating on the Islamism of the intellectuals, journalists, and bureaucrats. Şerif
Mardin’s Religion and Social Change in Modern Turkey: The Case of Bediuzzaman
Said Nursi, first published in 1989, is a sociological and historical analysis of the
conditions of the environment that Said Nursi raised. In this work, he also evaluates
the role of the tarikats, especially the Revivalist Nakshibendis, in society at that time,
and shows the link between Islamism and traditional Islam.15
In the 2000s, new works were added to the literature. The Politicization of
Islam: Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and Community in the Late Ottoman
State by Kemal Karpat concentrates “on the social, cultural, and political
modernization and ethnic transformation of the Ottoman state, and the role of Islam
and Sultan Abdulhamid II.”16 Like Şerif Mardin, Kemal Karpat concentrates on the
role of the revivalists. The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order
in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought by Cemil Aydın, is a comparative study that

12
Kara, İslamcılık Düşüncesi I.

13
İsmail Kara, Türkiye’de İslamcılık Düşüncesi II (İstanbul: Dergah Yayınları, 2017).

14
Jacob M. Landau, The Politics of Pan-Islam: Ideology and Organization (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1990).

15
Şerif Mardin, Bediüzzaman Said Nursi Olayı Modern Türkiye’de Din ve Toplumsal Değişim
(İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2002).

16
Karpat, The Politicization of Islam.

8
brought a new perspective to the study of Islamism, especially pan-Islamism, through
concentrating on the reactionary dimension of Islamism and its commonality with
other Pan-Asiatic reactions to imperialism.17
In the evaluation of the transition period from the Ottoman Empire to the
contemporary Middle East, the articles of Nikki Keddie18 are crucial. Especially in
“Pan-Islam as Proto-nationalism,” she analyzes the connections between the ideology
of Islamism and nationalism, which are the dominant ideologies in the contemporary
Middle East. Mehdi Mozaffari’s article “What is Islamism? History and Definition of
a Concept,”19 provides the broadest chronological evaluation of Islamism that I have
encountered. Even though it concentrates on the Arab intellectuals, Albert Hourani’s
Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age: 1798-193920 provides beneficial information on
Islamism especially before the 1920s. In addition to these works, the articles of the
21
TDV Encyclopedia about different actors and concepts provide compact
information prepared by qualified experts on related topics such as Azmi Özcan’s
article on “Islamcılık,” (Islamism), Mehmet Ali Büyükara’s “Vehhâbîlik”
(Wahhabism), and Sait Özervarlı’s “Muhammed Abduh.”
In the last ten years, Islamism has continued to be academically studied. In
addition to his book The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia published in the 2000s,

17
Cemil Aydın, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and
Pan-Asian Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).

18
Nikki R. Keddie, "Pan-Islam as Proto-Nationalism,” The Journal of Modern History 41, no. 1 (Mar.,
1969) 17-28; Nikki R. Keddie, “Intellectuals in the Modern Middle East: A Brief Historical
Consideration,” Daedalus 101, no. 3, Intellectuals and Change (Summer, 1972): 39-57; Nikki R.
Keddie, “The Revolt of Islam, 1700 to 1993: Comparative Considerations and Relations to
Imperialism,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 36, no. 3 (Jul., 1994): 463-487.

19
Mehdi Mozaffari “What is Islamism? History and Definition of a Concept”

20
Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age: 1798-1939 (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1983).

21
Mehmet Ali Büyükkara, “Vehhâbîlik,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi vol. 42 (İstanbul:
Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 2012); M. Sait Özervarlı, “Muhammed Abduh,” Türkiye Diyanet
Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi vol. 30 (İstanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 2005); Özcan,
“İslamcılık.”

9
Cemil Aydın’s recent articles and book chapters22 constitute an important place in the
literature. Contrary to the other studies, he analyzes Islamism in a broader regional
and historical context with a comparative methodology. Mehmet Ali Büyükkara’s
Çağdaş İslami Akımlar (Contemporary Islamic Movements) can be regarded as the
second important study. 23 In this book, Büyükkara examines modern Islamist
movements from the 1860s onwards when Islamism emerged as a modern
phenomenon. The last crucial work about Islamism in the last period of the Ottoman
Empire is Türkiye’de İslamcılık Düşüncesi ve Hareketleri (Islamist Thought and
Movements in Turkey) which is the compilation of the symposium notes organized in
May 2013 by the Zeytinburnu Municipality in which many important scholars who
worked on Islamism like İsmail Kara, Cemil Aydın, and Mümtazer Türköne had
participated.24
Although there are also theses on Islamism and the Islamism of Abdulhamid
defended in reputable world-class universities, they do little to advance the literature.
The thesis of Rashed Chowdhury titled Pan-Islamism and Modernization During the
Reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II, 1876-190925 is a weak thesis that is not much more
than a summary of the literature on Islamism in English. Hatice Yentürk’s thesis titled
Ittihad-ı Islam and its Conceptual History with a Particular Focus on the Young Turk
Press before 190826 is also no more than an ordinary summary of the literature on

22
Cemil Aydın, “Imperial Paradoxes: A Caliphate for Subaltern Muslims,” Reorient, vol. 1, no. 2
(Spring 2016): 171-191; Cemil Aydın, “Globalizing the Intellectual History of the Idea of the “Muslim
World,” in Global Intellectual History, ed. Samuel Moyn and Andrew Sartori (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2013); Cemil Aydın, “The Emergence of Transnational Muslim Thought, 1774–
1914,” in Arabic Thought Beyond the Liberal Age: Towards and Intellectual History of the Nahda, ed.
Jens Hanssen and Max Weiss (Cambridge: Cambridge Universtiy Press, 2016.)

23
Mehmet Ali Büyükkara, Çağdaş İslami Akımlar (İstanbul: Klasik, 2015).

24
İsmail Kara, and Asım Öz, Türkiye’de İslamcılık Düşüncesi ve Hareketi: Sempozyum Tebliğleri,
(İstanbul: Zeytinburnu Belediyesi Kültür Yayınları, 2013).

25
Rashed Chowdhury, “Pan-Islamism and Modernization During the Reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II,
1876-1909” (Ph.D. diss., McGill University, 2011).

10
Islamism and Abdulhamid II. However, Akın Kiren’s thesis on Ottoman-Iranian
relations in the context of pan-Islamism is a good thesis that fills a gap in the
literature.27
The pan-Islamism of Abdulhamid, the genesis of Islamism, and the ideas of
Islamists in general and in the biographical level, are frequently studied topics in the
literature. Relations between Abdulhamid and the intellectuals are mostly analyzed in
a broader format, in the context of the Young Turks. However, although Islamists
were acting together with the Young Turks, since the Young Turks cannot be
denominated as Islamist, these studies do not clarify the role of Islamism in the
conflict.
On the other hand, these studies analyze only some of the Islamist actors, many
of which seem to be disregarded especially while analyzing the Islamists’ relations
with Abdulhamid. However, almost every Islamist actor had a connection with
Abdulhamid on some level. Therefore, not to be restricted to the evaluation of
Islamists who were among the Young Turks, the conflict of Abdulhamid with Islamist
intellectuals should be considered separately and these actors should be included in
the analyses of it.
Finally, I start to the evaluation of the topics by looking at what is Islamism
and who is an Islamist.

1.6. What is Islamism and who is an Islamist?

According to Ismail Kara, Islamism in its broader format is

a movement that covers all the political, intellectual, and scientific studies,
research, suggestions, and solutions which has predominantly activist,
modernist, and eclectic features; which aims to re-make Islam holistically
(belief, prayer, morality, philosophy, politics, law, education) dominant,
through a rational methodology to save the Muslims and the Islamic world

26
Hatice Yentürk, “Ittihad-ı Islam and its Conceptual History with a Special Focus on the Young Turk
Press Before 1908” (Ph.D. diss., Wien University, 2016).

27
Akın Kiren, “II. Abdülhamid Dönemi Pan-Islamist Uygulamaları Ekseninde Osmanlı-İran İlişkiler”
(Ph.D. diss., İstanbul Üniversitesi, 2013).

11
 from western exploitation, tyrannical and despotic rulers, captivity,
superstition, mimesis… to civilize, unify, and develop the Muslim World.28

In a more straightforward definition by Şerif Mardin, though as large as Kara’s

definition, Islamism is “the name of the construction of a conscious movement toward
the end of the nineteenth century, from the social movement that emerged before, of
aspiration and searching in the Muslim societies.”29 As it is seen from the definitions
by Ismail Kara and Şerif Mardin, two prominent scholars on Islamism, Islamism is a
Pandora’s Box that may contain hundreds of variables in different levels of analysis.
Actors, activities, and the discourse of Islamism vary according to the perspective that
the researcher is approaching. In this thesis, I will use the concept of Islamism in this
broadest sense.
Islamism is an umbrella concept that includes pan-Islamism, Ittihad-ı Islam
(Union of Muslims), Revivalism, Muslim modernism, and Islamization
(islamlaşmak). It is important to note that although these concepts have been used in
different levels of Islamism, there are no clear lines between them, and they are mostly
used interchangeably in the literature. According to Azmi Özcan, in the Ottoman
context Islamism was first used in 1913 by Ziya Gökalp in an article titled “Üç
Cereyan” (Three Movements). In 1914, the prominent Islamist Babanzade Ahmed
Naim disapprovingly uses this concept in his famous essay “İslam’da Dava-yı
Kavmiyet” (The Ideal of Nationalism in Islam).30
“Islamism” is an a posteriori denomination of scholars. Islamists do not refer
to themselves as Islamists. In his article about the history of the concept, Mehdi
Mozaffari states that the term Islamiyyun (the Arabic version of Islamist) was not used
by any of the Islamists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as Afghani
(1838-1897), Abduh (1849-1905), Rashid Rıza (1865-1935), Hasan al-Banna (1906-
1948), Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), Mawdudi (1903-1979), or Khomeini (1902-1989).

28
İsmail Kara, Türkiye’de İslamcılık Düşüncesi I (İstanbul: Dergah Yayınları, 2017), 17.

29
Şerif Mardin, Türkiye’de Din ve Siyaset (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2017), 23.

30
Azmi Özcan, “İslamcılık,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi vol.23 (İstanbul: Türkiye
Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 2001), 63.

12
Instead, the Quranic denomination, Muslim, is preferred.31 In the beginning of the
twentieth century, Islamlaşmak (Islamization) was also used to refer to the Islamists’
attempts. 32 Islamism was used in French and English in the previous centuries by
Voltaire, Tocqueville, and Renan, but these usages referred to Islam, not to a separate
ideology.33
In the 1860s and 1870s Ittihad-ı Islam and pan-Islamism were the concepts
that corresponded to Islamism. According to Mümtaz’er Türköne, although pan-
Islamism conceptually emerged later in the foreign literature, since there are
references to other “pan” movements in Turkish articles about Ittihad-ı Islam, Ittihad-
ı Islam can be taken as the Turkish version of pan-Islamism.34 According to Karpat,
Islamism refers to the internal, while pan-Islamism and Ittihad-ı Islam refer to the
international dimension of the same movement.35 The last point about the nature of
the concept that may lead to confusion is whether Islamism is an ideology or a
movement. However, there is no separation in the literature, and they are used
interchangeably.
Another important point is the difference between Islam and Islamism.
Islamism emerges in the form of an ideological version of Islam as a result of the
combination of the Western ideological mentality and traditional Islamic values.36
Islamism is a “European-type movement of liberation and change” that emerged out

31
Mehdi Mozaffari, “What is Islamism? History and Definition of a Concept,” Totalitarian Movements
and Political Religions 8, no. 1 (March 2007): 19.

32
Ziya Gökalp, Türkleşmek, Islamlaşmak, Muasırlaşmak (Ankara: Akçağ, 2010).; Said Halim Paşa,
“İslamlaşmak.” Buhranlarımız ve Son Eserleri (İstanbul: İz Yayıncılık, 2012).

33
Mozaffari, “What is Islamism?” 17-18.

34
Mümtaz’er Türköne, Siyasi İdeoloji Olarak İslamcılığın Doğuşu (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1994),
197-198.

35
Kemal Karpat, The Politicization of Islam: Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and Community in
the Late Ottoman State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 18.

36
Türköne, İslamcılığın Doğuşu, 25.

13
of Islam.37 While Islam considered other religions as rivals, Islamism considered the
nineteenth century schools of philosophy, such as positivism, as rivals rather than
other religions.38 Different from traditional Islam, the legitimization or justification
process of Islamism is bound to rationality and the new paradigms of the
contemporary world. In Islamism, otherworldly affairs retreated into the background
and religion became gradually more secular.39 Furthermore, the topics of the long-
lasting discussions of traditional Islam were no longer on the agenda of Islamism,
which instead dealt with the questions that were mostly posed by Orientalists. 40
Finally, in the context of the Ottoman Empire, Islamism was an ideology among other
ideologies such as Ottomanism, nationalism, and Westernism, and was not perceived
as a religion among others.
Islamism began to gain strength at the end of the 1860s. There are different
claims about who used the concept first. According to Mümtaz’er Türköne, it was first
used by Namık Kemal in an article in Hürriyet published in 1869.41 According to Şerif
Mardin, it was first used in Ziya Paşa’s article in Hürriyet published in 1868, in which
he does not use the term “Ittihad-ı İslam” but mentions the importance of the unity
of Muslims.42 It is essential to notice that both of these articles were published while
the Young Ottomans were in London. After 1872 Islamism began to be widely

37
Karpat, The Politicization of Islam, 18.

38
Türköne, İslamcılığın Doğuşu, 28-29.

39
Ibid., 26-27.

40
İsmail Kara, Türkiye’de İslamcılık Düşüncesi I (İstanbul: Dergah Yayınları, 2017), 17 and 21.

41
Azmi Özcan, Pan-İslamism: Osmanlı Devleti, Hindistan Müslümanları ve İngiltere (1877-1914)
(İstanbul: TDV İslam Araştırmaları Merkezi Yayınları, 1992), 50; Türköne, İslamcılığın Doğuşu, 199.

42
Şerif Mardin, Yeni Osmanlı Düşüncesinin Doğuşu (İstanbul: İletişim, 1998), 72.

14
discussed among Ottoman intellectuals,43 which is why some scholars accept 1872 as
the date of the emergence of Islamism.44
On the other hand, Fazlur Rahman regards the Indian intellectual Sayyid
Ahmed Khan as the earliest Islamist, and he states that Ahmed Khan’s Islamism starts
after his brief stay in London in 1860s, which corresponds to the date that the Young
Ottomans were in London.45 Although I could not find information about who is the
pioneer of Islamism, the role of Sayyid Ahmed Khan seems more accurate. It is
possible that under the conditions following the 1857 Rebellion in India, Sayyid
Ahmed Khan realized the necessity of a change before the Young Ottomans.
According to Azmi Özcan, after 1857 Indian Muslims were “pessimist as much as not
to be able to adapt to new conditions, offended as much as not to make an objective
evaluation, and returned to the past in a level that prevents them from making a plan
for the future.”46 These are the same conditions that are depicted as valid for the
emergence of the Ottoman Islamism, which will be evaluated later.
In addition to this reasoning, according to Hayreddin Karaman,47 Afghani had
Islamist sentiments before leaving India in 1869. Contrary to the claims of Mümtaz’er
Türköne that Afghani took his Islamist ideas from the Young Ottomans when he came
to Istanbul in 1869,48 Islamist/ Pan-Islamist sentiments already existed among Indian
Muslims. As will be mentioned later, while the emergence of Islamism was one of the
consequences of the Islahat Edict (1856) especially in 1860s, during the Great Indian

43
Aydın, The Politics of Anti-Westernism, 42; Karpat, The Politicization of Islam, 18; Türköne,
İslamcılığın Doğuşu, 199.

44
Karpat, The Politicization of Islam, 18.

45
Fazlur Rahman, Islam & Modernity (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), 50.

46
Özcan, Pan-İslamism, 29.

47
Hayreddin Karaman, “Efgânî, Cemâleddin,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi vol.10
(İstanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 1994).

48
Türköne, İslamcılığın Doğuşu, 36.

15
Revolution the Revivalist movement had already united the Muslim population in
India. However, in terms of the emergence of the concept, it is hard to do more than
speculate about who the pioneer of Islamism was and who affected whom. What is
certain is that Islamism gained strength in the 1860s, making this period widely seen
as the period of the genesis of Islamism.
After being adopted as the state ideology by Abdulhamid (1876-1909),
Islamism entered into its second phase in which state-centered Islamism prevailed
over the intellectual one. With the power adopted from the recognition of the role of
the caliphate over all Muslims by the constitution of Kanun-ı Esasi (1876),
Abdulhamid II applied the principles of Islamism internally and externally.49
The third phase of Islamism started with the Second Constitutional Revolution
in 1908. For some scholars like Ismail Kara, we can speak of Islamism from this time
onward. According to Ismail Kara, Islamism began to show characteristics of being
an intellectual movement after 1908.50 Although conceptually Islamism emerged at
the end of the 1860s, there was no strict theory of Islamism or Turkism during the
51
Tanzimat period. During Abdulhamid’s despotic period, intellectuals were
compelled to relinquish politics and inclined to non-political, cultural, and
philosophical questions that led to the creation of the Islamist theory and the formation
of an intellectual movement.52 This intellectual contemplation on non-political issues
is also the reason for the discussion of whether the Young Ottomans (especially
Namık Kemal and Ziya Paşa) can be taken as Islamist or not. The final point about
periodization is that we cannot identify strict ruptures between these phases. They
were the consequences of different social and political conditions, and therefore while
analyzing these periods I will surpass these lines.

49
Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (London: Hurst & Company, 1998), 268.

50
Kara, İslamcılık Düşüncesi I, 29; Tarık Zafer Tunaya, İslamcılık Cereyanı: İkinci Meşrutiyetin Siyasi
Hayatı Boyunca Gelişmesi ve Bugüne Bıraktığı Meseleler (İstanbul: Baha Matbaası, 1962), 19.

51
Hilmi Ziya Ülken, Türkiye’de Çağdaş Düşünce Tarihi (İstanbul: İş Bankası Yayınları, 2017), 70.

52
Berkes, The Development of Secularism, 289.

16
 The last point is about who these Islamists were. Although Islamism is seen
as an ideology, it does not completely fit into the scope of a modern ideology. Its
boundaries and principles were not determined, soit is hard to identify who was an
Islamist and who was not. 53 On the other hand, as mentioned in the previous
paragraphs, Islamism can be evaluated under three periods: the period lasting until the
reign of Abdulhamid II (1876-1909), the period during his reign, and the period after
the Second Constitutional Revolution. In each period the social, political, and
intellectual conditions changed. Moreover, the backgrounds of the people who were
seen as Islamists changed. While the early Islamists were bureaucrats and journalists,
the Islamists of the Second Constitutional era were mostly from the ulema class.54
Another point is that the Islamists of the earlier period, such as Namık Kemal
and Ali Suavi, as well as being the pioneers of Islamists, were also the precursors of
nationalists, Westernists, and even the secularists and laicists.55 This is a crucial point
to be aware of because it may lead to confusion while evaluating the literature.
However, although the labeling of an intellectual as Islamist depends to a large degree
on the definition and the periodization of the scholar, in its general form these names
can be mentioned: Namık Kemal (1840-1888), Afghani (1839-1897), Sayyid Ahmed
Khan (1817-1898), Emir Ali (1849-1928), Şehberderzade Ahmed Hilmi (1865-1914),
Said Halim Paşa (1865-1921), Mehmet Akif Ersoy (1873-1936), Mustafa Sabri
(1869-1954), Said Nursi (1877-1960) and other intellectuals who gathered around the
journals of Sebiür-reşat, Sırat-ı Müstakim, Volkan, Beyan’ul-hak, and Islam
Mecmuası.

53
Özcan, “İslamcılık.”

54
Ibid., 62.

55
Kara, İslamcıların Siyasi Görüşleri I, 24; Türköne, İslamcılığın Doğuşu, 94.
17
 CHAPTER 2

THE ISLAMISM OF INTELLECTUALS

The focus of this chapter is on the Islamism of intellectuals of the late Ottoman
period. Although there are changing connotations around the definition of intellectual,
I will take the definition of “intellectual” in its broadest form, as any “person
whose life or work centers around the study or use of ideas, such as in teaching or
writing.”56 Therefore, I will include journalists, ulemas, or state elites who had ideas
about Islamism in our analysis.
In this chapter, our primary concern is to show the attitudes of different
Islamist actors toward Abdulhamid. In order to show the background of these
motivations I will surpass the chronological limitation of the Hamidian Period. In this
chapter I will look at the regional and international conditions that led to the
emergence of Islamism. In this part I will look at four different Islamist actors/groups:
the Young Ottomans including Namık Kemal, Ziya Paşa, and Ali Suavi; the Revivalist
movements which are also known as Mujaddidi Nakshibendi; Jamal ad-Din al-
Afghani; and the Islamists of the Second Constitutional period. Although many of the
intellectuals in these groups are worth analyzing individually, because of the
limitations of the thesis I will analyze them under these groups, especially in terms of
their attitude toward Abdulhamid.

2.1. International and Regional Context

In its history, Islam has encountered several crises and was able to overcome
them. Firstly, during the Abbasids State (750-1258), the crisis resulted from the first

56
Cambridge Dictionary, “Intellectual,” accessed June 18, 2019,
[Link]
18
encounter of the Islamic World with Greek philosophy, but the power of the belief
system and political will prevented this crisis from expanding. Secondly, there was
the political threat during the Mongol invasions in the 13th century. However, while
the political institutions collapsed, the crisis was avoided owing to the power of the
intellectual and cultural base. However, in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the
Islamic world and especially the Ottoman Empire experienced a total downfall of
faith, mentality, and politics as a result of different internal and external dynamics.57
The first external factor was the foundation of a new international system and
its effects on the structure of the Ottoman State. After the Congress of Vienna (1815),
a new global order was founded which sought the protection of the “balance of power”
dynamic. For the Ottoman Empire, to face the challenges of the time, especially from
Russia and Europe, there was no other option except to be part of this balance.58 The
attempts to be a part of the concert of Europe brought a series of reforms, mostly
demanded by the foreign powers as an assurance, especially on the issue of minorities.
Therefore, the Tanzimat (1839) and Islahat (1856) edicts, which promised a single
legal system for all subjects in the state ideology, became the two main pillars of the
period. These reforms demonstrated a profound change in the state ideology, which
created a duality in the state that would endure until the end of the empire between
the "traditional centrality of Islam and the nondenominational ideological basis of the
state.”59 These reforms emerged as a solution to a crisis, but the solution created a
new crisis in internal and external affairs.60
The second factor related to the position of the non-Muslim communities that
began to receive support from foreign powers in their internal affairs with the Ottoman

57
Kara, İslamcılık Düşüncesi I, 20.

58
Aydın, The Politics of Anti-Westernism, 23-28.

59
M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire (New Jersey and Oxfordshire:
Princeton University Press, 2008), 73-74.

60
Carter Vaughn Findley, Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity: A History, 1789-2007 (New
Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2010), 78.

19
center from the early nineteenth century. In the minority issue, 1856 held an important
place because of the events that were triggered by the Crimean War (1853-56) in the
region and the international arena. Using the dispute over the representation of the
Orthodox in Jerusalem, which led to the Crimean War, European powers demanded
further reforms to the status of Christian subjects. This led to the declaration of the
Islahat Edict with the direct intervention of the foreign powers. However, almost no-
one was content with the edict, including non-Muslims.61 Firstly, the edict eliminated
the official superior status of Muslims, which was the last motivation of the Muslims
toward the unequal physical conditions among the Ottoman subjects. 62 Moreover,
Christian citizens not only gained equal rights with the Muslims, but they were also
allowed to keep their existing rights from the previous system, such as exemption
from military conscription.63 Secondly, several articles of the edict created discontent
among some non-Muslim groups. For instance, the Greeks declared that they accepted
the superiority of Muslims but did not accept their equality with the Armenians and
the Jews.64 The third disaffected group was some of the bureaucrats and soldiers, who
started to criticize the Bab-ı Ali in its relations with foreign powers.65
In the 1860s a series of events concerning minorities caused conditions for the
Ottoman Empire to deteriorate and gave pretexts for further interventions by foreign
powers in internal affairs. In addition to the external pressure on the Bab-ı Ali for the
implementation of the Islahat Edict, growing trade relations with the Europeans,
increasing missionary activities in Ottoman territory, and strengthening national and

61
Ufuk Gülsoy, “Islahat Fermanı,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi vol.19 (İstanbul: Türkiye
Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 1999), 185.

62
Eraslan, II. Abdulhamid ve İslam Birliği, 37.

63
Aydın, The Politics of Anti-Westernism, 38.

64
Gülsoy, “Islahat Fermanı,” 188.

65
Şerif Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought (USA: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 18.

20
political consciousness among the non-Muslim population created demands for
further rights. Consequently, they revolted to obtain further rights in the 1860s.66
An additional reason for the revolts of the minorities in the Balkans is the
factor of Russia. After the defeat of the Crimean War the Russians turned to pan-
Slavic propaganda in the Balkans. Furthermore, since it had been stopped on the
Ottoman border, Russia directed its expansionist policy toward the Central Asian
Khanates. 67 Consequently, the 1860s and especially the 1870s are the period of
recurrent revolts in the Balkans. As a result of these revolts, a famine occurred in
Anatolia (1873-1875), causing Istanbul to be flooded with Muslim refugees while the
state became financially bankrupt (1875-1881).68 The effects of Russia’s expansion
into Central Asia will be evaluated later.
During the 1870s, the balance of power in the international arena that had been
founded after the Congress of Vienna started to break down. After their respective
unifications, Germany and Italy had joined in the rivalry. After that time, the British
policies in favor of the Ottoman Empire during the Tanzimat period began to change.
For this reason, the Ottoman Empire lost the protection over its territorial integrity
and state sovereignty that was guaranteed by the balance of power. The first result of
this vulnerability was seen in the Russian aggression toward the empire during the
1870s, which resulted in the traumatic Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, which led
to Russian annexation or independence of the majority of Ottoman territory in
Europe.69 However, the change in the international arena was not only the Ottoman
Empire’s vulnerability to the Russian political and military expansion. The period
from the 1880s to the 1890s saw the peak of the Great Powers’ expansionist policies.70

66
Ibid., 14.

67
Eraslan, II. Abdulhamid ve İslam Birliği, 39.

68
Findley, Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity, 83.

69
Aydın, The Politics of Anti-Westernism, 40.

70
Aydın, The Politics of Anti-Westernism, 44.

21
In addition to the loss of the Russo-Turkish War, Tunisia was occupied by France in
1881 and Egypt by Britain in 1882, which were crucial events for the spread of
Islamism.71

2.1.1. Discussion of “Civilization”

In addition to the political and social developments, there was also an

intellectual background to the “balance of power” and its reflections on the Ottoman
Empire. The concept of civilization constituted the central part of intellectual
discussions from the Tanzimat Period to the beginning of the twentieth century.
Moreover, Islamism as an alternative ideology emerged while the principles of
Western civilization dominated the minds of intellectuals. Therefore, understanding
what changed in the nature of the intellectuals, where Islamism stood in this
intellectual environment, and what the attitudes of the Islamist actors toward these
principles were would provide us with a broader perspective while analyzing the
Islamism of intellectuals.
The concept of “civilization” symbolized the moral basis of the balance of
powers after 1815, and it was the main framework of Ottoman intellectual life. The
first reactions of the Tanzimat elites to the power politics of the Ottoman Empire,
which was to be part of the “Concert of Europe,” and to the intellectual discussions
about “civilization,” which was the moral base of the balance, appeared in the form
of radicalization and the universalization of the concept of civilization. 72 In this
environment, the West without any reference to the Christianity began to be perceived
in universal form which provided the only model of reforms not only to the military
but also to politics, the economy, culture, and society for the future of the Ottoman
Empire. For the Muslim reformers, since the values, institutions, and international

71
Nikki R Keddie, “The Pan-Islamic Appeal: Afghani and Abdülhamid II,” Middle Eastern Studies 3,
no. 1 (Oct., 1966): 48.

72
Aydın, The Politics of Anti-Westernism, 40.

22
norms of the new system were perceived as universal and not specific to Christianity,
the Christianity of the West did not pose a problem.73
In the 1860s, the Muslim population started to interpret the demand for the
reforms of the Western powers as an act in favor of the Christian community. Muslims
began to ask why, if the demanded reforms in the Islahat Edict were universal, the
Muslims who lived under the rulership of the Great Powers in Central Asia and India
did not benefit from the same rights.74 However, this was a reaction from the lower
classes of the Muslim world. As it will be analyzed later, most of the Muslim
intellectuals who lived in the Ottoman Empire continued to believe in the universality
of Western civilization until the 1880s. However, in the 1860s, they devised an
alternative methodology to gain the support of the general population for their vision
of reform.75
In the 1880s, the discourse on the universality of civilization turned into the
“uncivility” and inferiority of the Muslims. The Prime Minister of England William
Gladstone’s (1809-1898) constant remarks about the incivility of the Ottoman Muslim
elites created friction with the attempts of Ottoman diplomats to be in close relations
with the leaders of the Concert of Europe, such as Metternich and Palmerston, to attain
universal principles of civilization. Contrary to the universality of the principles of
the Western civilization, according to Gladstone “the success rate of non-Western
reforms, non-Christian and non-white nations would never perfectly fulfill all the
required standards of civilization because of defects in their racial makeup, religious
dogmatism, or cultural character.”76
There was also the claim of a French intellectual, Ernest Renan (1823-1892),
from a speech made at the Sorbonne in 1883. In addition to Gladstone’s claims of
Islam’s religious dogmatism, he defined Islam as “the biggest obstacle to the process

73
Ibid., 23-28.

74
Ibid., 28.

75
Ibid., 47.

76
Ibid., 45.

23
of science in Muslim Societies.” With reasoning based on the Aryan race theory, he
positioned Muslim backwardness as a more profound incompatibility. 77 Both
Gladstone’s and Renan’s statements about the role of Islam in impeding progress
created a sentiment among the Muslim intellectuals of being ostracized. The change
in Western discourse, especially Renan’s statements, created a strong reaction among
the intellectuals of the Muslim World. Inevitably, the universality of the civilizational
discourse started to be questioned among Muslim intellectuals. The new attitude of
the West was seen as discourse for the legitimization of increasing Western
imperialism in the Muslim World.78
As a result of the exclusionary trend of the West toward Muslims, despite their
respect for European civilization, almost all intellectuals of that time began to see
international events as a global conflict between the Christian and Muslim worlds.
They interpreted the conditions as “a dangerous encirclement of Muslim populations
by an aggressive Christian West." However, the expansionist policies of the European
powers continued to be evaluated in the framework of the discourse of civilization
and interpreted as the violation of the standard of civilization.79 Afterward, since the
realization of universal Western civilization became impossible for Muslims, an
alternative conception of Islamic civilization began to emerge.80
This civilizational discussion was not a baseless scrimmage that based on the
prejudices of the Western intellectuals. Orientalists of the nineteenth century made in-
depth research on the history, anthropology, linguistics, and theology of the Islamic
world. In addition to their political and intellectual superiority, Islamists had to
struggle with questions that were revealed by the Orientalists about Islam, such as the
rationality of religion, the relationship of religion and state, the accuracy of the Ayahs
and Hadiths, criticisms of the character of prophet Muhammed, and the impact of the

77
Ibid., 51.

78
Ibid., 51-52.

79
Ibid., 63.

80
Ibid., 56.

24
Romans, Byzantines, Persians, and Indians in the development of the Islamic
tradition. Evaluations of these topics focused on the invalidation of the Islamic
principles. 81 Unlike the struggles of the traditional ulema in the previous periods,
Islamist intellectuals had to confront Western intellectuals in an environment that was
shaped by their counterparts. The platform of the discussion, the methodology that
was accepted, and the questions that were asked were determined by Western
intellectuals. Consequently, the output of the Islamist intellectuals was highly
dependent on the Orientalists.82
Additionally, the Orientalists were not the only actors standing in front of the
Islamists. The arguments mentioned above were also accepted by some Ottoman
Westernist intellectuals, especially among the Young Turks. The superiority of
Western civilization had been defended seriously on different levels. Since almost all
intellectuals of the Ottoman Empire were Westernists in some sense, Hilmi Ziya
Ülken’s classification of the Westerners under four categories eases our understanding
of the divergent positions toward the West.
The first category was the Westerners of the Tanzimat period who wanted to
implement the principles of the Western civilization in a way that did not contradict
Ottoman-Islam traditions, and who intended to protect Ottoman unity. Their main
method was the reform of education.83 They legitimized their methodology with the
reasoning that since the material superiority of the West had passed from the Muslims,
there was no problem in adopting the principles that had already given form to Islamic
civilization.84 The second group, headed by Prens Sabahattin, saw the main problem
of the state as the lack of producers and entrepreneurs with private investments. The
third group was the positivist group that considered Westernization as the only option.
They did not reject Islamic civilization but did not find it necessary to look at the East.

81
Kara, İslamcılık Düşüncesi I, 21

82
Kara, İslamcıların Siyasi Görüşleri I, 19.

83
Hilmi Ziya Ülken, Türkiye’de Çağdaş Düşünce Tarihi (İstanbul: Türkiye İş bankası, 2017), 287-290.

84
Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (London: Hurst & Company, 1998), 296.

25
The last group was the radical Westerners headed by Abdullah Cevdet. They rejected
everything that came from the East and the past. They opened for discussion topics
that were considered radical for their time, such as women’s rights, the modernization
of the family, and the change of alphabet.85 A statement by Abdullah Cevdet very well
summarizes the mentality of this group: “there is no second civilization: civilization
is the European civilization, we have to take it with its rose and thorn.”86 The views
that this group advocated were highly influenced by the materialism of the rationalism
and positivism of Western philosophy and later also constituted the dynamics of the
secular Turkish state. Therefore, they created new threats from inside toward the
Islamists that they had not seen before.87
The last point of the regional and international conditions of intellectual
Islamism is the change in the characteristics of intellectual life in the last century. In
the nineteenth century, the major questions that occupied the minds of Ottoman
intellectuals revolved around what was going wrong in the empire, the reasons it had
fallen behind the West, and what to do to save it. When it comes to 1900s, the nature
of the questions changed and turned to questioning the nature of the entity that they
wanted to save. 88 Until the end of the nineteenth century, Islam was the main body of
the state ideology, but from that time onward it started to lose its unquestioned
status.89
To show the emergence of the question of identity, Bernard Lewis compares
two intellectuals, Akif Efendi (1822) and Yusuf Akçura (1904). Concerning the
problems of the Ottoman Empire and Muslim society, according to Akif Efendi there

85
Ülken, Türkiye’de Çağdaş Düşünce Tarihi, 287-290.

86
Bernard Lewis, Modern Türkiye’nin Doğuşu, trans. Boğaç Babür Turna (Ankara: Arkadaş, 2002),
318-319.

87
Mardin, Said Nursi Olayı, 57.

88
Lewis, Modern Türkiye’nin Doğuşu, 315.

89
Mardin, Said Nursi Olayı, 190.

26
were three options: the first was defending the existing Ottoman provinces at any
price; the second was to withdraw from those provinces and shrink back to Anatolia;
and the third was accepting slavery. Eighty years later, concerning the same questions,
Yusuf Akçura mentioned three different options: Ottomanism, pan-Islamism, and
pan-Turkism. According to Akif Efendi, identity or loyalty was not considered a
problem, but for Akçura, the main concerns of the state were the nature of the society
that the country would deal with.90
Through the chronological evaluation of the concept of “civilization” I have
shown the major discussions of intellectual life in the Ottoman Empire from the 1840s
to the beginning of the 1900s. By doing so, I illustrated the evolution of the
intellectuals’ agenda and where Islamism stood in this evolution. Islamism as an
alternative ideology had emerged while the universal principals of Western
civilization dominated the minds of intellectuals. While evaluating the Islamism of
the various actors, I also looked at intellectuals’ approaches to the principals of
universal Western civilization. In the complexity of Islamism, approaches to the
concept of civilization will provide perspective while analyzing the ideological nature
of the intellectuals.

2.2. Actors

As discussed in the first chapter, Islamism is a broad subject that covers a long
period, a wide geography, and different groups. Therefore, it is not possible to talk
about a unique Islamist ideology represented by a stable group with a defined agenda.
For this reason, while giving descriptive information for each actor and their relation
with the Hamidian Regime, they will also be evaluated in terms of the similarities and
differences among themselves. In this part of the chapter concerning the Islamism of
the intellectuals, four different actors will be assessed: The Young Ottomans, the
Revivalist movements, Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, and the Islamists of the Second
Constitutional period. Although Muhammed Abduh was also an effective Islamist of
that period, due to his role on the formation of the contemporary Middle East, he will

90
Lewis, Modern Türkiye’nin Doğuşu, 440-442.
27
be included to the third chapter of the thesis that is about the Islamism of the
contemporary Middle East.

2.2.1. The Young Ottomans

In this part of the chapter, the earliest representatives of Islamism in the

Ottoman Empire will be analyzed. Although in the context of Islamism primarily
Namık Kemal and then Ziya Paşa can be mentioned, in order to position the movement
in Ottoman intellectual and political life, instead of looking at Namık Kemal and Ziya
Paşa as individuals, I prefer to look at them as the Young Ottomans. Aside from being
the pioneers of Islamism in the 1860s and 1870s, the Young Ottomans were still
effective in political and intellectual life in the beginning of the Hamidian Period.
Furthermore, after their deaths their writings continued to influence oppositional
intellectuals including the Islamists who played central role in the confrontation with
Abdulhamid.
The Young Ottomans is the name of a group formed in opposition to the
Tanzimat authorities, especially Âlî Paşa and Fuad Paşa. It was secretly founded
among Ottoman intellectuals in 1865 and continued to be active until 1876. Members
of the group, especially Namık Kemal, Ziya Paşa, and Ali Suavi, are the first modern
ideologues of Muslim society in the Ottoman Empire. In the context of Islamism, it is
hard to talk about an intellectual homogeneity in the group but Namık Kemal and Ziya
Paşa were in the forefront. The main common ground of the society was antagonism
toward Âlî Paşa and Fuat Paşa, and seeing the declaration of a constitution as an elixir
for the detrimental conditions of the state and the Muslim communities.91
Their opposition was also partially toward the sultan as well. However,
because of the strong Sunni jurisdiction that legitimizes loyalty to almost any kind of
state authority, in their political struggles the Young Ottomans could not directly
attack the sultan. Because of the influence of Âlî Paşa and Fuat Paşa on the sultan

91
Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought, 80.

28
over state affairs, the Young Ottomans directed their critics toward the Bab-ı Âli, not
to the sultan, except for Ali Suavi who directly attacked the sultan.92
In addition to their criticisms of exogenous reforms, the Young Ottomans were
prominent intellectuals who re-interpreted and ameliorated the intellectual trend of
the Tanzimat period.93 Therefore, the genesis of most of the modern concepts in the
Ottoman context, including Islamism, date back to the members of the Young
Ottomans, especially Namık Kemal, Ziya Paşa, and Ali Suavi.94
In the 1860s, Ottoman intellectuals had to encounter the challenges of
modernism simultaneously with society. They felt the need to protect the Ottoman
and Islamic tradition under the detrimental conditions resulting from the Tanzimat
reforms, which also aimed to overcome the challenge of the modern world. 95
However, although they felt the necessity to protect the Ottoman and Islamic tradition,
they were not so different from the Tanzimat elite in terms of their attitude toward
Western style reforms. This contradiction was the stronger version of the duality in
the minds of the Tanzimat elites, which resulted from the acceptance of the
universality of the principles of Western civilization. This duality was the co-
existence of conflicting worlds such as the new and the old, and the East and the
West.96 Therefore, their views about social and political reform emerged as a mixture
of traditionalism, reformism, Westernism, and Islamism.97
According to İlber Ortaylı, in the 1860s Ottoman intellectuals had not yet
decided the exact nature of their political ideology and their program. Therefore, three

92
Türköne, İslamcılığın Doğuşu, 124.

93
Aydın, The Politics of Anti-Westernism, 41.

94
Kara, İslamcıların Siyasi Görüşleri 1, 24.

95
Hanioğlu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire, 104.

96
Ülken, Türkiye’de Çağdaş Düşünce Tarihi, 278.

97
Berkes, The Development of Secularism, 289.

29
prominent intellectuals of the 1860s who were also part of the Young Ottomans, had
quite different views: Şinasi (1826-1871) was secular-nationalist, Namık Kemal
(1840-1888) was modernist-Islamist, and Ali Suavi (1838-1878) vacillated between
Islamism and Laicism, and between Ottomanism and Nationalism.98 This ideological
complexity is the reason why these ideologues are seen as the pioneers of several
ideologies. In the subsequent periods, seemingly conflicting groups referred to these
intellectuals.
The primary role of the Young Ottomans on various intellectual movements,
not only on Islamism, was to create an intellectual environment that revolved around
two concepts: “liberty” and “fatherland.” These concepts spread in the Hamidian
period despite heavy censorship. With their courage and intellectual productivity, they
aroused the potential for opposition to Abdulhamid.99 The Young Ottomans provided
an ideological basis and guidance to subsequent intellectuals, especially to the Young
Turks.100
To determine the Young Ottomans’ position among the Islamists and their
relations with Abdulhamid, they should be evaluated in the context of the 1860s and
1870s. As mentioned above, the discontent in the Muslim society that resulted from
deteriorating conditions for themselves, made Islamism the only base for a possible
movement toward Tanzimat reforms and rulers in the Muslim society. Islamic
discourse provided legitimacy for the opposition and supplied power driven by the
population. When these conditions are considered, the Young Ottomans could be seen
as an opposition movement toward the Tanzimat authorities more than pioneers of
Islamism. Although they increased their focus on pan-Islamism during the 1870s,
until the reign of Abdulhamid II, their primary concern was the modern political
reforms and the adoption of constitutionalism.

98
İlber Ortaylı, İmparatorluğun En Uzun Yüzyılı (İstanbul: Hil Yayın, 1983), 189.

99
Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought, 80.

100
Ülken, Türkiye’de Çağdaş Düşünce Tarihi, 119-120.

30
 Islamism camouflaged the Young Ottomans’ reformist intentions. For
example, in their writings the Young Ottomans used the concepts of traditional
Islamic political theory such as “adl” (justice), “biat” (contract of investiture), “icma-
ı ümmet” (consensus of the community), and “meşveret” (consultation).101 However,
as Türköne has pointed out, although these were old concepts, they were used with
new meanings taken from modern political philosophy.102 Ayahs and hadiths were
interpreted following the meanings of modern concepts.103
Furthermore, according to Ismail Kara in the Islamic intellectual tradition
these concepts were used for discussions of morality, and it is hard to derive political
or institutional meaning from these concepts as the Young Ottomans did.104 Finally,
the Young Ottomans’ Islamism was a pragmatist policy to win the support of the
Muslim society, the ulema, and Sufi orders in the political struggles against the
Tanzimat rulers. They used Islamic literature as a tool of legitimacy for their
oppositional and reformist agenda.105 For example, in the constitutional struggles, the
Young Ottomans repeatedly argued that the Shariah is the constitution of the
Muslims. However, even though Namık Kemal and Ziya Paşa were on the
commission for the preparation of the Constitution in 1876, they preferred to look at
the Belgian Constitution of 1831 and the Prussian Constitution rather than the
Shariah.106
The Young Ottomans defended the self-improvement of Muslim society
through the implementation of some aspects of Western civilization. They did not

101
Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought, 81.

102
Türköne, İslamcılığın Doğuşu, 102.

103
Türköne, İslamcılığın Doğuşu, 116.

104
Kara, İslamcıların Siyasi Görüşleri 1, 39.

105
Ibid., 22.

106
Ercüment Kuran, “Devlet Adamı Olarak Cevdet Paşa,” in Ahmet Cevdet Paşa: Vefatının 100. Yılına
Armağan, 3-7 (Ankara: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 1997), 5.

31
have an aggressive discourse toward the principles of Western civilization except for
the interference of foreign powers in Ottoman sovereignty through the manipulation
of the concept of civilization. 107 Even during the emergence of the discourse of
Islamic civilization at the beginning of the 1880s, in his critique of Renan Namık
Kemal did not use anti-Western discourse and did not make references to Christianity.
Instead he addressed materialistic atheism in his answer to Renan.108
As far as the abovementioned points are considered, I conclude to the
conclusion that although the Young Ottomans were the first actors that began
mentioning Islamism/pan-Islamism, Islamism did not play a central role in their
agenda. This was an oppositional movement toward the Tanzimat rulers and they were
within the limits of the general Western trend among Tanzimat intellectuals. The
superficial inclination toward an Islamist agenda was the result of their pragmatism.
In 1860s, the Muslim community felt humiliated in front of the non-Muslim subjects
and Islam was still the major legitimizer. Therefore, the Young Ottomans wanted to
legitimize their agenda though Islamic principles and to win the support of the
discontented masses. In terms of the conflict of intellectuals with Abdulhamid, the
role of the Young Ottomans was to create the intellectual atmosphere for the
intellectuals of the Hamidian period, and to provide an ideological base for those
intellectuals, especially the Young Turks.

2.2.2. Revivalist Movements

Revivalist movements were important actors of Islamism both during the

Ottoman Empire and after it collapsed. Although Islamism as a modern ideology
began to emerge in the 1860s, Revivalist movements had silently played the roles that
would later be picked up by Islamists in many parts of the Muslim World, and they
continued to play this role in the contemporary Middle East. Furthermore, although it
is not frequently mentioned in the literature, Revivalists had deep impacts on different

107
Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought, 61.

108
Ibid., 70.
32
actors of Islamism. Therefore, it is included among the actors of intellectual Islamism
and will be analyzed in this part of the chapter.
According to Carter Findley, in the downfall of the Muslim World two trends
emerged. The first trend, which was widespread among the ruling elites, was a desire
to to know about the outside world. As mentioned before, the reaction of the Tanzimat
elites to the empire’s attempts to be part of the Concert of Europe was the
universalization of the principles of Western “civilization” which was the moral basis
of the new international system founded after 1815. This universalization sparked the
interest in knowing the outside world. The second trend was Revivalism, which aimed
for the greatest Islamic awakening within Muslim society in reaction to deteriorating
conditions for Muslims.109
This movement had a long tradition going back to seventeenth-century India.
Ahmed Faruki el-Sirhindi, better known as Imam Rabbani in the Muslim World, is
the founder of this branch. Imam Rabbani had struggled with the eclectic approach of
the Mongol Emperor Akbar in his way of creating a different religious understanding
by combining different principles of Islam and Hinduism. In this environment, Imam
Rabbani created the Revivalist (Mujaddadi) movement. This movement gained
legitimacy from a general belief of traditional Islam that Allah sent to his servants a
renewer of religion at the beginning of each century.
In the nineteenth century, the representative of the Mujaddiyya Nakshibandi
branch, Khalidi Bagdadi (1776-1827) created a movement for religious and political
renewal based on traditional Revivalism. Different from the classical otherworldly
tarikats or the anti-Ottoman Wahhabism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
this movement concentrated on worldly affairs for the sake of religion. In the
nineteenth century, Baghdadi was able to spread this movement through most parts of
the Muslim World in many levels of society.110
The Revivalist movements of the nineteenth century mobilized Muslim
populations and them brought to the political arena. They used the power of this
mobilization for many aspects of the changing conditions. They created resistance

109
Findley, Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity, 69.

110
Ibid., 70.
33
movements against imperialist expansion. They resisted non-religious reforms within
the states, as in the case of the Kuleli Incident, and confronted supporters of the
reforms from the ulema class. Finally, they also used this power to discredit the
ordinary ulema who did not concentrate on the conditions of ordinary people and those
who were accused of remaining on the surface of the religion.111
The main objective of the Revivalist movements was to return to the Qur’an
and the Sunna. However, more than twenty revivalist movements, led by self-
designated leaders in the nineteenth century, became resistance movements against
foreign occupations in Central Asia, the Caucasus, India, and North Africa.112 Shaykh
Shamil, who resisted Russian imperialism in the Caucasus, and Shaykh Ahmed, who
established the first rebellion attempt against the Tanzimat reforms that is known as
the Kuleli Incident (1859), were parts of Revivalism.113 Revivalists also played an
important role in the mobilization of Indian Muslims under the chaotic environment
following the collapse of Mughal rule in the 1850s, and prevented the Muslim
community from dispersing.114
The weaknesses of the central states played a crucial role in the emergence
and spread of Revivalists movements in the Muslim World. When the expansionist
policies of the Great Powers first started in Muslim lands, it started in the periphery
of the central states. The revivalist revolts like those in India and the Caucasus (the
1850s), in Central Asia and China (1860s), and in Egypt and Sudan (1880s), emerged
in the absence of powerful states. Revivalists created their own armed resistance
toward imperial expansion based on tribal leaders and fighters.115

111
Karpat, The Politicization of Islam, 20-21.

112
Ibid., 20-21.

113
Şerif Mardin, Türkiye’de Din ve Siyaset (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2017), 12.

114
Mardin, Said Nursi Olayı, 92.

115
Keddie, “The Revolt of Islam,” 482.

34
 Parallel to the emergence of armed resistance from local communities, new
types of leaders and intellectuals also emerged. The collapse of the old social system
and the pressure of foreign occupation removed the power of the existing political
elites over the Muslim population. Therefore, Muslim communities were deprived of
the support and guidance of the state, and began looking to create their own
intellectuals and religious sources to pursue their cultural and religious survival.116
As Kemal Karpat writes, “where the state had disappeared, Muslims tried to
reform society or community; where the state survived, elites sought to reform the
state.”117 Therefore, the role of the Revivalists in the Ottoman context was different
from in the rest of the Muslim World. As mentioned above, in the periphery of the
Muslim states, Islamism took the form of a revival of religious principals in society
because the society was alone while dealing with the challenges. In the Ottoman
Empire, since political unity continued until the beginning of the twentieth century,
the effect of the Revivalists was limited compared to the Islamism of the intellectuals
within the Young Ottomans and the Islamists of the Young Turk period.
The resistance of all local Revivalist forces was inadequate to stop the strong
foreign expansion into Muslim lands. In this case, it became vital to create a broader
mobilization with other Muslims to overcome these challenges. 118 As far as these
dynamics are concerned, it is possible that the intellectuals who looked for the
realization of pan-Islamism in the 1860s were affected by this consciousness for
mobilization that the Revivalists created. To illustrate this, I can give two possible
examples. First, as mentioned before, Sayyid Ahmed Khan, who was one of the
pioneers of Islamism, first mentioned Islamism after the failure of the Great Indian
Revolt (1857) in which the Revivalists had played crucial roles in the mobilization of
the Indian Muslims. Secondly, it is possible that the community that the Young
Ottomans were addressing in their journals and relying on in their political struggles
were those that the Revivalists had awakened and brought into the political arena.

116
Karpat, The Politicization of Islam, 22.

117
Karpat, The Politicization of Islam, 3.

118
Landau, The Politics of Pan-Islam, 11-12.
35
 On the other side of the need for broader mobilization is the promotion of the
post of caliphate. The call for cooperation among Muslims increased the prestige of
the Caliph as an already existing sublime leader over the Muslim world. The public
consciousness for the worldwide unification of Muslims by the Revivalists would also
affect the policies of Hamidian rule in the latter period. This point will be mentioned
in detail in the third chapter on the Islamism of Abdulhamid. Finally, what the
Revivalist did profoundly affected the methodology and agenda of the other Islamist
actors.
Another important point about the Revivalist movements is their role in the
emergence of nationalisms in the Muslim World. As Karpat writes, “Revivalist
groups, representing folk Islam and using the Sufi tarikat (paths) inadvertently upheld
local, ethnic, and cultural ties while still considering themselves to be part of the
universal ümmet.”119 As mentioned in the previous pages, Revivalist movements had
immediate problems to overcome, in particular foreign expansion. Therefore, any
potential ties among the Muslim masses were important for the Revivalists. As will
be mentioned below, this kind of pragmatism also existed in the methodology of
Afghani. Although he was looking for the broadest unification of Muslims, he began
by supporting local unifications. The revivalist actors’ usage of local, ethnic, and
cultural ties in the creation of resistance in the absence of state power can be seen as
the basis for the proto-nationalist sentiments mentioned by Nikki Keddie.120
The last point about Revivalism relates to its relationship with Abdulhamid.
As can be understood from the dynamics mentioned above, Revivalist movements
had good relations with the Hamidian rule and generally supported the Islamist
policies of Abdulhamid.121 In their resistance to foreign powers, Abdulhamid was the
most capable leader in the Muslim World and also held the title of Caliph over the
Muslims.

119
Karpat, The Politicization of Islam, 20.

120
Keddie, "Pan-Islam as Proto-Nationalism.”

121
Mardin, Said Nursi Olayı, 203.
36
 Finally, as shown in the previous paragraphs, Revivalist movements were
crucial actors in many levels of Islamism. Since they began to be active before the
emergence of Islamism in the 1860s, they established the social base for the other
Islamist actors through the mobilization of the Muslim community against internal
and external threats. Before the Young Ottomans and intellectuals like Sayyid Ahmed
Khan and Afghani had emerged, the Revivalists had already created the consciousness
of the need for a broader mobilization of the Muslim World. Abdulhamid’s
willingness to cooperate with the Revivalists was also highly dependent on their role
in the periphery of the central Muslim states.

2.2.3 Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani

Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani (1839-1897) was one of the prominent Islamists who
reinterpreted the traditional Islamic understanding in response to the challenges of the
nineteenth century toward Islam and Muslim populations. Similar to the Young
Ottomans but in a broader geography, Afghani is seen as the pioneer of different
ideological trends in the Islamic world, such as the Islamic liberalism of Muhammed
Abduh, the conservative Islamic Revivalism of Rashid Rida, and different types of
Middle Eastern nationalisms including Turkish Nationalism. 122 Therefore, he is
included among the actors of intellectual Islamism.
As much as Abdulhamid, Afghani had a controversial reputation in his time
and later. As he indicated in his notes, “The English People believe me a Russian. The
Muslims think me a Zoroastrian. The Sunnis think me a Shi’i. And the Shi’is think
me an enemy of Ali…”123 There are long-lasting discussions on Afghani’s nationality,
sect, and birthplace. One of the prominent views on the identity of Afghani is that he
was born in Asadabad close to the Hamedan province of Iran as an Iranian Shi’ite.
For another view, mostly supported by his Arab followers, he was born in Afghanistan

122
Nikki R. Keddie, Sayyid Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of
California Press, 1972), 1-2.

123
Ibid., 54.

37
as a Sunni. Until he was eighteen, according to one view, he remained in Kabul and
received his education from the famous scholars of Afghanistan. For those who claim
that he was an Iranian Shi’ite, he passed his adolescence in Qazvin, Tehran, and Najaf,
and took courses from the famous Shi’ite scholar Shaykh Murtaza el-Ensari.124
After that time he went to India where he improved his reformist thoughts.
When Muhammed A’zam gained power in Afghanistan in 1863, he made Afghani his
grand vizier. However, because of the interference of Britain, this governance lasted
only a short time and Afghani had to return to India. Toward the end of the 1860s, the
British authorities worried about the public attention toward him and asked him to
leave India. According to Hayrettin Karaman, before leaving India, he made
encouraging speeches to the Indian Muslims for an anti-British movement.125
After he left India he went to Istanbul, where he was welcomed and respected
by the intellectuals of the time. At the opening ceremony of the Darülfünun-ı Osmani
(the Adobe of Practical Science— that is a university)126 in February 1870 he made a
speech. Since the medrese scholars were opposed to the Darülfünun and Afghani
personally disturbed some scholars, his comparisons between art and the prophethood
were exaggerated and turned into a widespread discussion. Afghani had to leave
Istanbul in 1871 and moved to Cairo. In his eight-year stay in Cairo and he began to
deal with political issues. To pursue his political agenda, he joined different Masonic
lodges. This relationship with the Masonic lodges still makes him the target of
accusations. Because of the power that he gained in Egyptian political life, he had to
leave Cairo in 1879 under pressure from the British authorities. For the third time he
went to India, but upon his incitement of the Indians against British rule during the
Urabi Revolt in Egypt in 1882, he was deported from India. After that he first went

124
Hayreddin Karaman, “Efgânî, Cemâleddin.” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi vol. 10
(İstanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 1994).

125
Ibid.

126
Somel, Historical Dictionary of the Ottoman Empire, 70.

38
first to Britain and then to Paris. Between 1886-1889 he stayed in Russia, before
returning to Istanbul in the early 1890s, where he remained until his death in 1897.127
Compared to the Young Ottomans, Afghani had a more versatile personality.
Although it sometimes seems confusing, Afghani’s main methodology was to speak
according to the position of his audiences. In his first visit to Istanbul his main topic
was the reform of education because the general trend of the time in the Ottoman
Empire was towards reforming the education system. Furthermore, contrary to his
attitude in India, he did not make any negative reference to Anglo-Ottoman relations.
At that time Âlî Paşa and Fuat Paşa were still effective in governance and Anglo-
Ottoman relations had not yet deteriorated at the state level.128 On the other hand,
while he was speaking to people with mixed religious affiliations in India and Egypt,
he used an anti-imperial and nationalist discourse to unite people against foreign
expansion.129
However, despite the complexity of his discourse, Afghani’s primary reaction
to the challenges of the time was the reform and revival of pure Islam.130 Therefore,
Afghani can be seen as an Islamist more so than the Young Ottomans, because, in the
case of the Ottoman Empire, Islam remained the ultimate legitimizer of intellectual
life. Therefore, the main component of the ideology of the empire until 1923 was
Islam under the Sultan-Caliph, even though it began to change in 1908.131 Therefore,
as mentioned before, the Islamism of the Young Ottomans was not a choice but the
nature of Ottoman intellectual life. On the other hand, when the whole life of Afghani

127
Karaman, “Efgânî, Cemâleddin.”

128
Keddie, Sayyid Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, 62.

129
Keddie, "Pan-Islam as Proto-Nationalism,” 23.

130
Keddie, Sayyid Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, 62.

131
Feroz Ahmad, "Politics and Islam in Modern Turkey," Middle Eastern Studies 27, no. 1 (Jan., 1991):
3.

39
is considered regardless of the environment in which he lived, his pan-Islamist and
reformist attitudes are visible.
According to Afghani, the independence of the Muslims from imperial
pressure was the precondition for the revival of Islam and gaining a respectable
position in the international arena.132 Therefore, what Afghani wished from Islamic
reform was the revival of the military and political power of the Muslims. 133
Compared to Abduh and other subsequent Islamists, Afghani concentrated mostly on
political issues. However, similar to the relations between the “balance of power” and
the concepts of “civilization,” “imperialism,” and the “incapability of Muslims” to be
civilized, Afghani’s political attitudes were not totally separate from intellectual
contemplations. Besides the priority of political and military issues, Afghani also
concentrated on intellectual issues. According to Afghani, Islam is not only a faith but
also a civilization, with the potential to be a world power.134
Afghani’s attitude toward the Ottoman Empire, including Abdulhamid II, was
always positive. His relationship with the Ottoman Empire started with his first visit
to Istanbul between 1869-1871. Although he had to leave the state upon his speech at
the opening of Darülfünun, Afghani saw Istanbul as the center of power and
modernization in the Islamic World. For Afghani Istanbul was the foremost capital of
the Islamic World.135
Afghani’s concentration on pan-Islamic appeals corresponded to the time of
the increase in imperialist expansion in the 1880s, which also triggered Abdulhamid
to implement Islamism as the state ideology. Afghani was looking for a capable
monarch to unify Muslims, similar to the Germans’ Bismarck or the Italians’

132
Aydın, The Politics of Anti-Westernism, 53.

133
Keddie, "Pan-Islam as Proto-Nationalism,” 23.

134
Keddie, “The Pan-Islamic Appeal,” 50.

135
Keddie, Sayyid Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, 59.

40
Cavour. 136 Afghani appreciated the role of a charismatic leader for pan-Islamic
purposes similar to the role of those powerful leaders over the unification of Germany
and Italy.137 Although he thought that republicanism and constitutionalism were the
best political system, he also mentioned the possibility of enlightened despotism.
According to Nikki Keddie, Afghani’s mention of the possibility of enlightened
despotism was made either because of the fear of censorship, or the thought that the
actions of a government are more important than its form.138
In the search for a charismatic leader, Abdulhamid was the best leader for
Afghani. He wanted to be in cooperation with the court, and in his writings in the
1880s, especially in al-Urwa al-Wuthqa, he praised Abdulhamid with the intention of
attracting the sultan’s attention for a collaboration.139 However, the relations initiated
by Afghani with Abdulhamid did not result as Afghani expected. He was invited to
Istanbul by Abdulhamid but was not employed as a foreign policy adviser. Instead the
sultan kept Afghani in Istanbul with limited duties. Abdulhamid’s suspicion about
Afghani’s good relations with Wilfrid Blunt, who propagated the Arab caliphate,
prevented a possible cooperation.140 Blunt was an ex-diplomat and British agent in
Egypt who spread the view that “the Caliph of the future, in whatever city he may fix
his abode, will be chiefly a spiritual and not a temporal king and will be limited in the
exercise of his authority by few conditions of the existing material kind.” This view
was elaborated by Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi during the 1890s in a manner that
undermined the Islamist propaganda of the Ottoman caliph.141 Furthermore, I can also

136
Keddie, “The Pan-Islamic Appeal,” 50.

137
Keddie, Sayyid Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, 139.

138
Keddie, Sayyid Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, 108.

139
Keddie, “The Pan-Islamic Appeal,” 47.

140
Keddie, “The Pan-Islamic Appeal,” 64; Tufan Buzpınar, “The Question of Caliphate under the Last
Ottoman Sultans,” in Ottoman Reforms and Muslim Regeneration, ed. Itzchak Weismann and Fruma
Zachs (London, New York: Tauris, 2005), 28.

141
Buzpinar, “The Question of Caliphate,” 20.
41
add the suspicious character of Abdulhamid toward any kind of powerful personality
in the Ottoman lands, which can also be seen in the prevention of Islamist
organizations in Ottoman territory. This point will be mentioned in detail in the
subsequent parts.
Another aspect of Afghani is the effects of the Revivalists on his methodology
in later periods. As mentioned before, the Revivalist movements were highly effective
in India in the 1850s and 1860s, and Afghani stayed in India in this period.
Furthermore, when foreign invasions and Western style reforms discredited the
existing elites of the Muslim societies, the Revivalists who led Muslim society looked
for the creation of their own elites/ulema. Lastly, Afghani’s methodology in terms of
the mobilization of Muslim communities in different parts of the world highly
resembles that of the Revivalists.
As it is mentioned above, Afghani with his complex Islamist vision was a
crucial actor of intellectual Islamism. Like the Revivalists, he was open to any form
of cooperation with other Islamist actors. His vision of reform in Islam and the
realization of pan-Islamism affected several intellectuals in his time and latter. In
terms of his relationship with Abdulhamid, his willingness did not bring the
cooperation that he expected. Instead, in the last few years before his death
Abdulhamid forced him to stay in Istanbul with a few symbolic missions.

2.2.4. Islamists of the Second Constitutional Period Gathered around the

Journals of Sırat-ı Mustakim, Sebil’ür-Reşad, Volkan, and Beyan’ül Hak

The genesis of Islamism corresponds to the 1860s. It became the state ideology
and was extensively implemented during the reign of Abdulhamid, but it emerged as
a distinct intellectual movement among the Westernists and nationalists under the
liberal conditions of the Second Constitutional Revolution (1908). 142 Therefore,
according some scholars like Ismail Kara and Tarık Zafer Tunaya, Islamism was taken
seriously from this time onward. Furthermore, these Islamist were among the main
actors in the conflict between intellectuals and Abdulhamid that ended with the

142
Kara, Türkiye’de İslamcılık Düşüncesi I, 28.
42
deposition of Abdulhamid. Although the many intellectuals gathered around the
Journals of Sırat-ı Mustakim, Sebil’ür-Reşad, Volkan, and Beyan’ül Hak had certain
differences, and each of them is worth being evaluated individually, because of their
similarities in terms of their relationship with Abdulhamid they will be analyzed as a
group.
Although Abdulhamid appealed to Islamist policies in many levels of the state
apparatus, throughout the Hamidian Period Islamist intellectuals could not find an
opportunity to express their views. Together with other intellectual movements, they
were strongly affected by the censorship of Abdulhamid, who therefore became the
primary issue of their agenda. They either formed independent opposition groups or
joined other groups opposed to Abdulhamid. In these intellectual groups the greatest
consensus was over the despotism of Abdulhamid. After the revolution Islamists
found the chance to express their views about Islamic unity and reformation, just like
advocates of other views were also able to express their ideas freely. However, after
the revolution they lost the basis for the realization of Islamists ideas.143
Since Islam had been seen as the main legitimizer in the intellectual and
political arena, Islamism/pan-Islamism had been the dominant ideology in the empire
from the 1870s until 1908. Under the liberal environment of the Revolution, every
intellectual tendency found an opportunity to express and spread its views. On the
other hand, during the Hamidian period, the intellectuals’ main concentration was on
the despotic rule of Abdulhamid. This position overshadowed the essential differences
among different intellectual tendencies. Furthermore, since Islamism had already
been adopted as a state ideology and Abdulhamid had prevented any alternative
political or intellectual Islamist organization, Islamist intellectuals could not form a
separate intellectual movement. They had to mostly remain under the umbrella of the
other oppositional intellectual groups. 144 Under the liberal environment of the
Revolution, the pseudo alliance of the previous period collapsed. Unclarity on the
discursive and contextual differences disappeared, and each ideology intensified its
boundaries.

143
Kara, Türkiye’de İslamcılık Düşüncesi I, 29.

144
Özcan, “İslamcılık.”
43
 The period of revolution was an intellectually prolific period. Compared to the
Islamists of the previous period, they deepened their contemplations about many
points concerning the challenges of modern times for the Muslim community.
However, these points still revolved around a limited agenda. The points that the
Islamists of this period problematized in their writings can be summarized with these
concepts: degradation (tedenni), standstill (tevakkuf), depression (inhitat), the
downfall (inkıraz) of the Ottoman Empire and the Islamic World; the domination of
lethargy (rehavet), and languidness (cümud) in the Muslim society. According to
these Islamists, Islam became “a skin worn inside out” (ters giyilmiş deri). The
problem of backwardness did not stem from Islam but from the ruler that alienated
Islam from its sources and principles, and from the ulema and Muslims who approved
of this diversion. Their solutions to these problems the broadest version were: to
procure progress (terakki) and advancement (teali); to highlight the concepts of jihad,
work, and effort and to change the content and meaning of resignation (tevekkül),
destitution (fakr), and asceticism (zühd); to clean Islamic history and culture from
destructive traditions and interpretations, and turn to pure Islam as symbolized by the
Asr-ı Saadet (the days of the Prophet); to re-explore the rationality of Islam through
re-interpretation; to achieve Islamic illumination through educational reforms; and to
fight despotic regimes.145
In terms of content and methodology, similar to other intellectual movements
like the Young Turks, the Islamism of the Second Constitutional period was
profoundly affected by the Young Ottomans. However, compared to the Young
Ottomans, knowledge of Europe and Western Civilization by these Islamists was very
limited, except a few intellectuals such as Said Halim Paşa and Halil Halid who
studied in Europe. The columns of the Islamist journals about political issues were
written by Yusuf Akçura and Ahmed Ağaoğlu, who would later become prominent
names of Turkish Nationalism.146
The Islamists’ views on Abdulhamid during this period were not different
from other intellectual movements. Depending on the intellectual’s manner, their

145
Kara, İslamcıların Siyasi Görüşleri 1, 20.

146
Kara, İslamcıların Siyasi Görüşleri 1, 24.
44
views on Abdulhamid can be softer or harder, but an article published in Beyan’ül-
Hak written by a member of the ilmiyye, Hafız Mehmet, summarizes the Islamists’
views on Abdulhamid:

“The previous government applied the greatest persecution to Muslims among all
Ottomans and plagued to Islam the most unbearable form of banditry and
despotism that applied to the helpless population. He still declared that the crimes
that he performed to legitimize the employed cruelty and destruction of law and
to hypocritically veil his secret treason from public attention, based on the
precious rules of the religion. He said that the taxes that he viperously imposed
on the people were the "zekat" which the caliph has the right to collect. He
dedicated himself to destroying the meaning of religion and to annihilating the
ceremonies of the Shariah. He collected religious books and burned them in
abominable places and the boiler rooms of hammams. Since they had libertarian
thoughts, he sent the students abroad with trashy caiques. He suspended a court
of justice like the Court of Serenity (Huzur Mahkemesi), and he abolished the
Mecelle Parliament, which was a place of enlightenment. While the Europeans
were translating the norms of jurisprudence by Ibn Abidin, the Minhac, the fiqh
of Hanafi and Shafii, and published several times a book of Kalam, the Şerh-i
Mevafık, he removed them form the market of knowledge. In his last years, he
bothered the believers so much that when the members of the religion saw the rift
in the body of religion because of this damned despotism, they understood that
religion had started to perish in these lands…”147

During the Hamidian Period and the heyday of the revolution (1908-1909)
until the 31 March Incident, enmity towards Abdulhamid was the main factor of
coalescence among intellectuals. Before turning to the ideological conflicts,
especially after 1909, this situation led to conflicting scenes. For example, Derviş
Vahdeti, who was hanged for his role in the 31 March Incident, praised Abdullah

147
Kara, İslamcıların Siyasi Görüşleri 1, 125. “Hükümet-i sâbıka bütün Osmanlılar’a reva gördüğü
zulmün en şeni hissesini müslümanlara tevdi eder, biçare ahaliye havale eylediği silah-ı şekavet ve
istibdadın en mukavemet-sûzunu İslam’a musallat ederdi. İhtira eylediği mezâlime, kanun-şikenliğe
bir şekl-i meşrû vermek, cebîn-i hıyanetini riyakârâne bir surette enzâr-ı tecessüs-i âlemden sete
eylemek için icra eylediği cinayâtın hâlâ ahkâm-ı celile-i din-i mübînden olduğunu ilan ederdi. Ahaliye
hâinâne tevzi eylediği vergileri hilafetin hakk-ı cem’i olan zekat olmak üzre gösterirdi. Meâlim-i din-i
mübini hedm u tahrib, merasim-i şeriat-ı garrayı mahv u nâbûd eylemeği bir vazife edinmişidi. Kütüb-
ü diniyeyi toplar, en hasis yerlerde, hamam külhanlarında ateş yakardı. Talebe-i ulûmu - kendilerinde
efkâr-ı ahrarâne bulunduğundan dolayı- mavnalarla, süprüntü kayıklarıyla hârice tarz u teb’îd eyledi.
Huzur Mahkemesi gibi bir bab-ı adalet-i sedd ü tatil, Mecelle Meclisi gibi bir mahfil-i ilm u irfanı lağıv
u tenkil etti. Avrupalılar İbn Âbidin’i, Minhâc’ı, fıkh-ı Hanefi, Şafiî, Malikî’den binlerle desâtir-i adalet
ve ahkâsı tercüme ettikleri, Şerh-i Mevâkıf gibi kütüb-i kelâmiyeyi defaatle tab’u neşr ettikleri halde
revacgâh-ı sûk-ı irfandan kaldırdı. Sinîn-i ahîrede ibadullaha o kadar musallat oldu ki erba-ı diyanet bu
melâ’in-i istibdadın cism-i İslam’a açtığı rahnelere bakarak bu memleketten İslamiyet’in artık zevale
yüz yuttuğuna hükümler vermeğe başladı, matemler içine girdi. (…) ”

45
Cevdet, who translated the book of Reinhart Dozy (1820-1883) which attacks Islam
and its prophet. 148 However, in the heyday of the Revolution advocates of each
ideology began to express their real agenda and distinguish the boundaries of their
ideologies from others.
The Islamists of the Second Constitutional Period gathered around the journals
of Sırat-ı Mustakim, Sebil’ür-Reşad, Volkan, and Beyan’ül Hak, were the primary
actors in conflict with the Hamidian regime. Since they deepened the intellectual
discussions on the agenda of Islamism, they made Islamism a distinct ideology in the
Ottoman Empire. In the context of the conflict with Abdulhamid, they were not
different from the general intellectual trend of the time. This point, together with their
discourse and the details of their agenda, will be evaluated in the following part in a
detailed manner.

2.3. The Discourse of Intellectual Islamism

In the nineteenth century, according to Şerif Mardin, Islam lost its ascetic
nature and became a tool for Muslims not only for the interpretation of the conditions
in their locale but also for integration in the broader world. Islam was used as an
intensifier for the social relations and a locator that determined the place and identity
of Muslims in the broader world. 149 Similar to other modern ideologies, Islam
provided a system of thought to make sense of the world in which the masses lived,
and to give direction to them.150 Therefore, in the detrimental conditions of the 1860s
and 1870s social movements that previously had no guiding ideology took up religion
as the ideology, and it became their language. Thus, any group that wanted to gain
power for its political ambition needed to speak this language first.151 Therefore, until

148
Şükrü Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902-1908 (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2001), 308.

149
Mardin, Türkiye’de Din ve Siyaset, 17.

150
Türköne, İslamcılığın Doğuşu, 24.

151
Ibid., 92.
46
the liberal environment of the 1908-1909 period, intellectuals had to defend their ideas
using this language.
As can be understood from the various definitions discussed in the
introduction of the thesis, from the 1860s to 1950s the main discourse of Islamism
was that the conditions being experienced were the results of straying from the
principles of Islam. If the domination of religion were reestablished, the unfortunate
events could be reversed. Although the wording of the discourse is the same, in the
hundred-year period covered by this thesis, different Islamist actors understood or
implemented this discourse differently. Therefore, in the discourse parts of the three
chapters, the Islamist discourse will be evaluated in terms of its anti-Western attitude,
the perception of the caliphate, nationalism, constitutionalism, and other points that
distinguished them from others.
To begin with, the main concentration of the Young Ottomans’ writings was
on the reimplementation of religious principles. For them, starting with the Tanzimat
period the Ottoman Empire had begun to loss its cultural identity. The best way to
reverse this deterioration was to reintroduce the religious principles that were lost due
to the Tanzimat reforms. 152 As mentioned in the part concerning the concept of
civilization, during the Tanzimat period the reaction of the elites to the political
rapprochement with the Western powers was in the form of the universalization of the
principles of Western civilization as an ultimate remedy for the challenges of the
empire. The emergence of the discourse of the Young Ottomans corresponds to the
period that this political balance began to break up.
However, the discursive confrontations with the general trend of the Tanzimat
period did not exist in reality. The Young Ottomans accepted the validity and
universality of the civilizational discourse and the superiority of Western values. The
primary objective of the Young Ottomans’ Islamism was to show the existence of the
Western concepts and institutions that were accepted as universal within the Islamic
tradition, and to prove that they were suitable to Islamic principles. In this process,
they used the language of the past, and made references to traditional values. For them,
as Berkes points out, “Ummet meant nation, icma meant social contract, biat meant

152
Şerif Mardin, Türk Modernleşmesi (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2017), 91.

47
parliamentary legislation, meşveret meant democracy, and ilm meant science.” 153
They had the same agenda as the Tanzimat elites. The difference was their appeal to
Islamic justifications to convince the masses.154
In the first phase of Western imperialist expansion, as mentioned before,
Muslim modernists first adopted the universal discourse of civilization and wanted to
prove the “civility” of the Ottoman Empire to get equal rights with other nations in
the international arena. However, starting with the collapse of the balance of power
toward the ends of the 1860s and increasing imperialist expansions of the Great
Powers in the 1880s, these intellectuals partially gave up their attempts to prove the
civility of the Ottoman Empire. They began to imagine an alternative world order that
would provide equality in the international arena with an alternative way.155 From this
time onward, anti-Westernism began to dominate not only Islamist but also all
intellectuals’ discourse.
As Niyazi Berkes indicates, “the dominant desire was to turn all eyes away
from the West. … The supplement to anti-Westernism was the cultivation of an
attachment to the past and the old. For the first time since the beginning of the
eighteenth century, the Orient and the medieval Islamic past replaced the modern
West as models for reform.” 156 In this environment, the Japanese victory against
Russian expansion in 1905 became the symbol of anti-imperialist feelings among
Ottoman intellectuals. The general intellectual trend of “making the Ottoman Empire
the Japan of the Near East,” was also shared by the Islamist intellectuals gathered
around the journals of Sırat-ı Mustakim, Sebil’ür-Reşad, Volkan, and Beyan’ül Hak.157

153
Berkes, The Development of Secularism, 261.

154
Aydın, The Politics of Anti-Westernism, 42.

155
Ibid., 63.

156
Berkes, The Development of Secularism, 261.

157
Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution, 304.

48
 For instance, in one part of his poems, Mehmet Akif admiringly praises the
Japanese people. He describes their lifestyle as the way of life idealized by Islam,
even though they are not Muslim. He writes that if the Ottomans made efforts to
proselytize Islam, it would flourish there.158 However, this anti-Westernism and pan-
Islamism caused some to accuse the Ottoman intellectuals of being xenophobic and
reactionary, and they therefore attempted to prove the reverse of these claims and to
show the defensive nature of Islamism toward Western expansionism. 159
The tension that many Muslims perceived between the universal notions of
global modernity and the immoral and imperialist politics of the Eurocentric world
order led them to imagine an alternative vision of world order that would be more in
harmony with their search for equality in the international sphere. The idea of the
transnational solidarity of the Muslim communities as a way to overcome their
subjugation by the Western powers developed in this context as a practical realpolitik
option. Muslim modernists initially favored implementing the standards of
civilization in a secure international environment based on the normative notions of
the rights of states. Yet, against the dynamics of the power politics of imperialism and
under the influence of the Darwinian idea that the weak will be eliminated by the
powerful unless the weak parties cooperate and protect themselves, pan-Islamism
became an indispensable defensive idea.160
Besides the political discussions, there was also an intellectual discussion
revolving around the claims of Renan and Gladstone about the impossibility of the
civilization of Muslim communities. Ottoman Islamists had an apologetic discourse
in this discussion. They tried to delegitimize these claims about Islam’s being an
obstacle to advancement. The counter-argument of the Islamists was that all that is

158
Mehmet Akif Ersoy, Safahat (Konya: Palet Yayınları, 2008) 178. “Sorunuz şimdi de Japonlar nasıl
millettir? Onu tasvire zafer-yâb olamam hayrettir. Şu kadar söyleyeyim; din-i mübinin orada, Ruh-u
feyyazı yayılmış yalnız şekli: Buda. Siz gidin saffet-i İslam’ı Japonlarda görün. O küçük boylu, büyük
milletin efradı bugün. Müslümanlıktaki erkan-ı sıyanette ferid. Müslüman denmek için eksiği ancak
tevhid… Müslümanlık sanırım parlayacaktır orada Sâde, Osmanlıların gayreti lazım arada.”

159
Aydın, The Politics of Anti-Westernism, 64.

160
Ibid., 63.

49
good in civilization (referring to Western Civilization) is directly or indirectly
included in Islam. In a point that any one of the civilizational principles could not be
legitimized through an Islamic principle, the argument of the Islamist turned into that
the religion was always open for the better. They wanted to prove that the real
civilization is the Islamic civilization. In this discussion, the addressees of the
Islamists’ discourse were not only Westerners but also other Ottoman intellectuals
who began to see Islam as a burden on the way of civilization.161
In addition to the theoretical Islamization of Western concepts, another
attempt was to trace Western values back to the Islamic tradition. This was an attempt
to prove that the principles of the civilization or the technical and scientific superiority
of the West stemmed from advancements made in the Islamic world in previous
centuries. The claim to be the pioneers of modern progress among some Islamists
eventually went to such lengths that it was claimed that the main idea of the French
Revolution came from Muslim lands, that during the Egyptian Campaign Napoleon
highly appreciated the advancement of the Islamic civilization, and even that the novel
that made the French writer Victor Hugo famous was translated from an Arabic
risale.162
In terms of the discourse directed toward the Muslim audience, the content of
this discourse was not different from the points mentioned above. The main part of
the discourse was dedicated to the return to the religious sources that had been
forgotten over the course of history. These forgotten principles were the remedy of
current conditions. However, in reality, there was no connection with the past, and the
principles that they claimed had been forgotten had never existed. Since the primary
purpose of the Islamists were release, development, power, progress, and sovereignty,
they were more inclined to find immediate solutions to short term problems. They
appealed to the past as far as it served progress in the way of the future. In the

161
Kara, İslamcıların Siyasi Görüşleri I, 25-27.

162
Ibid., 25-27.

50
discourse of most Ottoman Islamists, the future took the place of the present and the
past.163
The concept of “progress,” which was also used by the Committee of Union
and Progress, was not peculiar to Islamists. Indeed, it was the main commonality of
the intellectuals of the late Ottoman period. This concept was fortified by the concept
of “power” (kuvvet), that the Muslim world was in search of power through the
concept of progress. An ayah about power was frequently mentioned in the books and
sermons of these Islamists: “Prepare power as far as you can for your enemy.”164
It is known that the major ideologies of the late nineteenth century Ottoman
Empire, Ottomanism, pan-Islamism, and pan-Turkism, concentrated on the creation
of identity among the subjects of the empire, and the prevention of the diffusion.
Starting with the Tanzimat period, the Ottoman Empire tried to stop these rifts through
the creation of an identity of unity through these ideologies. Together with the impact
of foreign powers, while non-Muslim subjects consolidated their national
consciousness and where increasingly inclined to separatist attempts, the Ottoman
Muslim elites attempted to provide unity. As Cevdet Küçük states, there was a belief
among Muslims that the state already belonged to Muslims, 165 and therefore the
concepts of “unity” (ittihad) and “brotherhood” (uhuvvet) constituted an important
place in the Islamists’ discourse.
These concepts were elaborated in different contexts with new meanings to
prevent separatism from the empire. On the one hand, the purpose of “progress” was
“the working of the Muslim and non-Muslim subjects of the Ottoman lands with unity
and a sense of brotherhood, under the great title of Ottoman.” On the other hand,
progress was the “comprehension of the Muslims that they are together in reality but

163
Kara, Türkiye’de İslamcılık Düşüncesi I, 18.

164
Kara, İslamcıların Siyasi Görüşleri I, 27.

165
Cevdet Küçük, “Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda “Millet Sistemi” ve Tanzimat,” in Tanzimat: Değişim
Sürecinde Osmanlı İmparatorluğu, ed. Halil İnalcık and Mehmet Seyitdanlıoğlu (Ankara: Phoenix
Yayınevi, 2006), 384.

51
dispersed in sight, the truth of the religion through pursuing a common ideal, and the
progress of Islamic civilization and education according to religious principles.”166
The need for the prevention of separatism of Muslims and non-Muslims in the
empire led the Islamists to think about multiple brotherhoods to sustain unity. The
discourse of “equality” of the Tanzimat era turned into “unity” and began to be heard
everywhere in the empire, including the mosques.167 The concept of “brotherhood”
was elaborated among the Islamists in multiple ways that covered all existing subjects
of the empire: biological brotherhood (uhuvvet-i Nesebiyye), religious brotherhood
(uhuvvet-i diniye), national brotherhood (uhuvveti vataniyye), human brotherhood
(uhuvveti insaniye).168
When addressing non-Muslim communities, one frequently referenced point
is the articles of Islamic Law on Zimmi. However, the interpretation of these articles
by the Islamists on the level of advocating the equality of Muslims with zımmis was
a modern understanding which did not have a basis in the Islamic tradition. When
Islamists could not base their argument on an Islamic tradition about inequality or
differences, they chose to remain silent. Some of them interpreted the ayah that states
that Muslims are brothers of each other as the brotherhood of the people of book (ehl-
i kitap). They appreciated the priority of the worldly rights of those zımmis who live
under the protection of the Shariah before the Muslims. However, after the Balkan
Wars (1912-1913), many Muslim intellectuals felt deceived, and the tolerance in their
discourse turned to hatred.169
The last group of concepts in the Islamist discourse of the late Ottoman era
was about regime preferences. As has been seen above, Ottoman intellectuals were

166
Kara, İslamcıların Siyasi Görüşleri I, 29. “Memalik-i Osmaniyedeki müslim ve gayrımüslim
efradın, Osmanlı ünvan-ı bülendi altında yekdilane ve uhuvvet-karane çalışması… hakikatte müttehid
lakin sureta müteferrik bulunan müslümanların bir fikr-i emel takip ederek hakayık-ı dini idrak
eylemesi ve medeniyet ve maarif-i İslamiye’yi evamir-i diniye mucibince terakki ettirmesi…”

167
Ibid., 30.

168
Ibid., 32.

169
Ibid., 33-34.

52
also under the effect of the current civilizational discourse. Starting in the 1860s
constitutionalism began to dominate the agenda of Ottoman intellectuals, who wanted
to put an end to the absolute power of the sultan.170 These tendencies increasingly
dominated the intellectuals’ agenda. The banners of the Second Constitutional
revolution, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and Justice,” show how deep this
inclination was.171
These concepts were supported by the concept of “despotism” (istibdad) that
is used to express the unmerited rulers of Muslim communities. 172 According to
Mizancı Murad’s statements, many intellectuals did not support the First
Constitutional Revolution (1877) since they saw the constitution as a foreign
invention. However, during the Second Constitutional Revolution (1908), no one
hesitated to welcome the new regime except the lower classes, whose daily affairs
were positively affected by Abdulhamid’s policies.173
For example, in his first speech after the Constitutional Revolution
“Addressing Liberty” Said Nursi, who was one of the most prominent Islamists and a
member of the Union of Muhammadan, said, “the unity of heart and the national love
which are the source of felicity and freedom were achieved by other nations through
the loss of millions of valuable people, and this unity was accidentally obtained by
the Muslims…” 174 In Nursi’s discourse, despotism is the base of arbitrary rule,
cruelty, and oppression, and that through its various forms it was responsible for the
backwardness of the Ottoman Empire and the Islamic world in general. He understood
that political despotism s led to religious imitation and scientific intolerance in the

170
Türköne, İslamcılığın Doğuşu, 31.

171
Şükrü Hanioğlu, “The Second Constitutional Period, 1908–1918,” in The Cambridge History of
Turkey; Turkey in the Modern World, vol.4, ed. Reşat Kasaba (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2008), 65-66.

172
Kara, İslamcıların Siyasi Görüşleri I, 120.

173
Ibid., 95.

174
Nursi, Asar-ı Bediyye, 449.

53
religious sciences.175 On the other hand, in an article about the relations between Said
Nursi and Abdulhamid, Abdulhamid is seen as the representative of the state-oriented
religiosity that started with Muaviye (603-682) and ended the period of the Four
Caliphs. Other Islamists of the Second Constitutional Period had discourses similar to
Nursi.
However, in the ten months between the revolution and the 31 March Incident,
Abdulhamid was still mentioned in a tolerant way because he held the title of Caliph.
However, after the Incident, the Islamists were accused of being obscurantist (irtica)
by other intellectuals, and in response the Islamists worked to show that they had not
worked with Abdulhamid to break the Constitutional Regime. 176 This apologetic
attitude went so far that in a sermon at the Ayasofya Mosque, Manastırlı İsmail Hakkı
(who was also an Islamist) almost claimed irreligious saying “we want Shariah,”
which was the motto of the Incident.177

2.4. Conclusion of the Second Chapter

In this chapter, I analyzed the regional and international context of the period
that led to the emergence and evolution of Islamism, the actors of intellectual
Islamism, and the general discourse that they used. What I meant by “intellectual”
was, in its broadest sense, a “person whose life or work centers around the study or
use of ideas, such as in teaching or writing.” Before passing to the evaluation of the
actors’ relations with Abdulhamid, I first positioned each actor in the broader
discussions of Islamism. I examined if these actors were really Islamists, in what sense
they differentiated from others, and if they always relied on an Islamists agenda.
Finally, I compared and contrasted the points that they agreed or disagreed on with
the Hamidian regime. The Islamist personalities and groups that I analyzed in this
chapter were the Young Ottomans, the Revivalist Movements, Afghani, and the

175
Ibid., 298.

176
Kara, İslamcıların Siyasi Görüşleri I, 50

177
Ibid., 52.
54
Islamists who gathered around the journals of Sırat-ı Mustakim, Sebil’ür-Reşad,
Volkan, and Beyan’ül Hak.
Concerning the Young Ottomans, I concluded that Islamism was not the
primary concern of their agenda. What they did in the context of Islamism was to
Islamize the concepts of Western origin. The objective in doing that was to win the
support of the Muslim masses in their political struggles. They chose an Islamist
discourse since it had become the language of the Muslim masses in the post-Islahat
period. Although they seemed to be opposed to the Tanzimat reforms, they still relied
on the same Western principles. In terms of their relations with Abdulhamid, they
were among the actors that convinced Abdulhamid to proclaim the first constitution
and the assembly, but they did not have long-term direct relations with Abdulhamid.
Their primary role in Ottoman intellectual life is that they were the pioneers of almost
all the modern ideologies of the late Ottoman period. Therefore, they had an impact
on almost all intellectual movements of the subsequent periods.
The second actor of intellectual Islamism was the Revivalist movement.
According to our findings, Revivalists were the most important actors of Islamism in
the nineteenth century. They began to spread in the peripheral regions where the
central Muslim states could not stop foreign expansion. They mobilized the Muslim
community and brought them into the political scene. Their primary role is that they
constituted the base for Islamist intellectuals in many parts of the Muslim World. In
terms of pan-Islamism, they first created the consciousness in the Muslim community
for local resistance toward foreign expansion, and when they failed to stop that they
turned their attention to pan-Islamist mobilization. The masses that Abdulhamid
appealed to as the Caliph of the Muslims were created by these movements.
Furthermore, when the existing elites/intellectuals were discredited by foreign powers
and changing state institutions, they looked for the creation of their own elites and
ulemas to be able to learn and perform their religious life. As far as the life span of
Afghani is taken into account, he can be seen among these ulemas created by the
Revivalists.
The third actor analyzed was Afghani. Afghani had the greatest effect Islamist
on intellectuals (not only Islamists) in many parts of the Muslim World. Although
similar to the general trend of the time he was in favor of a constitutional system, he

55
was also looking for a charismatic leader who would unite the Muslim World like the
Germans and Italians had been united, and so wanted to cooperate with Abdulhamid.
However, because of Abdulhamid’s suspicious character, he did not find the support
that he was expecting. On the contrary, in the last period of his life Abdulhamid
pacified him with a few symbolic missions in Istanbul and prevented him from leaving
the city.
The last actors analyzed in this chapter were the Islamists who gathered around
the journals of Sırat-ı Mustakim, Sebil’ür-Reşad, Volkan, and Beyan’ül Hak. These
Islamists were among the main actors of the conflict with Abdulhamid. During his
period Abdulhamid prevented any kind of political or intellectual organization in the
Ottoman lands, including Islamism. Therefore, the Islamists who gathered around
these journals experienced the heavy censorship of the Hamidian regime. They were
also affected by the general intellectual trend of constitutionalism. Therefore,
although they enlarged the Islamist literature to the non-political issues, similar to the
Young Ottomans, they re-interpreted the Islamic principles to show the importance of
constitutionalism and the heresy of the despotic rule of Abdulhamid. In their
opposition to Abdulhamid their Islamism did not play the central role. This point will
be analyzed more closely in the following chapter concerning Abdulhamid’s state-
centered Islamism.

56
 CHAPTER 3

HAMIDIAN STATE-CENTERED ISLAMISM (1876-1909)

In this chapter, similar to the scheme of the previous one, the Islamism of
Abdulhamid and his conflict with intellectuals will be evaluated under three titles: the
regional and international context that led to the empowerment of the role of the
caliphate, the actors of state-level Islamism, and the discourse that Abdulhamid
created and used. In each tittle, along with general descriptions, Abdulhamid’s
relations with the actors of intellectual Islamism will be evaluated. Since the Islamism
of the intellectuals and of Abdulhamid were two different outcomes of the same
international and regional conditions, points that are mentioned in the previous
chapter are also valid in this chapter. Therefore, in the first subtitle of this chapter, it
will suffice to evaluate the conditions that led to the adoption of Islamism as a state
policy, and to assess the conditions that brought an end to the reign of Abdulhamid
and created the new era.

3.1. International and Regional Context

3.1.1. The Rise of the Caliphate

In the 1870s the international balance that had existed for 50 years began
collapse with the unification of Germany and Italy. As a result of the need for a new
balance the attitude of the foreign states, especially Britain, toward the integrity of the
Ottoman lands began change.178 In addition, the international, economic, military, and
demographic conditions of the empire had changed drastically. In this environment,

178
Benjamin Fortna, “The Reign of Abdulhamid II,” in The Cambridge History of Turkey; Turkey in
the Modern World, vol. 4, ed. Reşat Kasaba (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 44.

57
Islamism was the dominant ideology in the Ottoman Empire. Islamism served to
consolidate power over the changing demography of the empire and to threaten the
imperial powers that ruled millions of Muslims in their colonies.179 Islamism thus
became a tool for Abdulhamid for the creation of a new balance of power. In this
environment, with new roles and new attributed meanings, the caliphate emerged as
a main actor.
Although the caliphate had passed from the Abbasid Caliphate to Yavuz
Sultan Selim, before the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca of 1774 the post had not been
used as a separate title over the Muslim population or in international relations. After
the loss of Crimea, which was the first Muslim territory lost by the Ottomans, the
sultan wanted to maintain his spiritual authority over the land that he lost political
authority over. Therefore, the titles of caliph and sultan began to be used separately.180
Furthermore, during the Tanzimat period, because of the policy of creating an
Ottoman nation, a more secular attitude was used by the sultan, who used that title to
express his power over all Ottoman subjects regardless of their religion, while using
the title of caliph to express his power over all Muslims. After the renouncement of
the Tanzimat reforms, the title of caliph gained further importance. This title was
legalized in the 1876 Ottoman Constitution as, “the Padişah, by virtue of the caliphate,
is the protector of the religion of Islam and the ruler and emperor of all Ottoman
subjects.” 181 After Abdulhamid’s adoption of Islamism as the state ideology, the
caliphate started to play an even more crucial role in the international arena.
Before the Ottoman sultan proclaimed himself to be the authority over all
Muslims and the protector of Islam, because the Ottoman Empire was the only state
capable of helping Muslims living under colonial rule, Istanbul was already
recognized as the center of the Islamic World and the sultan as the leader of all
Muslims.182 The call for solidarity and support from the Ottoman sultan by Muslims

179
Ibid., 48.

180
Landau, The Politics of Pan-Islam, 10.

181
Buzpinar, “The Question of Caliphate,” 19.

58
suffering under British rule in India and Russian expansion in the Central Asian
Khanates during the 1860s and 1870s created a consciousness among intellectuals and
pressure on the Ottoman rulers.183 This dynamic was also noticed by the Great Powers
during the 1870s, and pan-Islamism and the caliphate started to be perceived as threats
to their authority in their colonies.184
Furthermore, the deterioration of relations between the Ottoman Empire and
the Western powers in the 1880s further supported the authority of the Caliph over
the Muslim World. On the one hand, the adoption of strict Islamist policies by
Abdulhamid made him the enemy of civilization and enlightenment in Western
propaganda.185 On the other hand, this situation was interpreted by the Muslim World
as the independence of the caliphate from European guidance and suppression, as was
perceived during the Tanzimat period. For example, the leading Egyptian Islamist
Muhammad Abduh said, "the Ottoman Empire was what was left of the political
independence of the umma, and if it vanished Muslims would lose everything and
become as powerless as Jews.” 186 Abdulhamid took advantage of this situation
internally and externally.

3.1.2. The Effects of Hamidian Rule (1876-1909) on Intellectual Life

In addition to the conditions that increased the importance of the Caliph,

Abdulhamid also created new conditions that led to the emergence of a different
intellectual class. As Niyazi Berkes writes, the Hamidian Period “was boiling with the

182
Selim Deringil, “Legitimacy Structures in the Ottoman State: The Reign of Abdulhamid II (1876-
1909),” International Journal of Middle East Studies 23, no. 3 (Aug., 1991): 350.

183
Keddie, "Pan-Islam as Proto-Nationalism,” 20.

184
Aydın, The Politics of Anti-Westernism, 39.

185
Fortna, “The Reign of Abdulhamid II,” 44.

186
Deringil, “Legitimacy Structures,” 355.

59
signs of a coming revolt.” 187 Therefore, the conditions that he forced on the
intellectuals also determined the attitudes of the Islamists and their counter-arguments
towards his rule.
In 1876, together with the dynamics mentioned above, intellectuals and state
elites convinced Abdulhamid to declare the Kanun-ı Esasi and the parliament.
However, after the disastrous results of the Russo-Turkish War (1878), Abdulhamid
closed down the parliament and a thirty-three-year authoritarian regime began.
Intellectuals were subject to a policy of censorship and exile, similar to the Young
Ottomans, and as a result a new but more powerful intellectual movement known as
the Young Turks emerged in this period.188
Generally speaking, the nature of the intellectuals of the Hamidian Period is
different from the intellectuals of the previous and subsequent periods. Compared to
the courageous nature of the Young Ottomans, the intellectuals under the authoritarian
rule of Abdulhamid were frightened, oppressed, fearful, suspicious, pessimistic, and
rebellious in thought and sentiment. Most of them perceived their environment darkly
and the future as hopeless.189
Furthermore, as a result of this suppression these intellectuals had to
concentrate on non-political and cultural questions that resulted from the challenges
of the times and which were overshadowed by the search for political reforms by the
previous intellectuals. 190 Under these conditions, Islamism, as well as other
ideologies, started to form as an intellectual movement that was more concerned with
religious questions than political ones. Their suppression by Abdulhamid for further
control deepened the intellectual basis of the ideologies and consequently resulted in
the reverse of what the sultan expected.191 However, the lines between the different

187
Berkes, The Development of Secularism, 289.

188
Ülken, Türkiye’de Çağdaş Düşünce Tarihi, 119-120.

189
Berkes, The Development of Secularism, 274

190
Ibid., 289.

60
ideologies established during this period were distinctly seen after the 1908
Revolution.192
This passage form Hüseyin Rahmi very well illustrates the conditions that
were created by the Hamidian rule and its impacts on intellectual life:

“Western civilization has been a torchlight for our awakening… The Hamidian
tyranny… suppressed all the publications that are the moral food of a nation…
One thing, however, could not be eliminated. Despite the sever inspections of
the customs and educational officers, foreign books could reach the shelves of
the intellectuals…. I used to notice one thing: while the stores selling the
Turkish works censored and approved by the government were without
customers, despite their colorful window displays, the stores selling foreign
books thrived. The vacuum created by the bankruptcy of the traditional culture
was filled by the foreign culture… European thinkers, historians, poets, and
writers became known as if they were our own. The good effects of foreign
literature, however, were felt only by a small elite among the youth… as the
lights of our minds were on the verge of being extinguished entirely, the sparks
flying here from European culture rekindled them. If there are today (1908)
men who can think, can write and can defend freedom, they are those minds
who were enlightened by these sparks. In those dark and melancholy days, our
friends, our guides were those intellectual treasures of the West. We learned
the love for thinking, the love for freedom, from those treasures. All of the
recent developments in our ways of thinking, as well as in our poetry and verse,
are the products of the winds blowing from the West.”193

3.1.3. The Young Turks and the Emergence of the Constitutional Period

The Young Turks is the name of the umbrella movement that contained almost
all opposition to the Hamidian regime with a wide range of agendas and motivations.
Although its name and leading members changed a few times, the Committee of
Union and Progress (CUP), which was founded by students from the Imperial Medical
School in 1889, constituted the central part of the movement. The primary point that
brought these different groups together was the opposition to Abdulhamid.194

191
Ibid., 292.

192
Kara, İslamcıların Siyasi Görüşleri I, 24.

193
Berkes, The Development of Secularism, 292.

61
 One of the main reasons for the opposition stemmed from a tradition in the
Ottoman court that was removed by Abdulhamid. According to Ahmed Cevdet Paşa,
in the Ottoman state tradition there had always been intermediaries between the sultan
and the population, so the sultan was not the direct target of accusations from his
subjects. In a case of discontent in society, accusations were heard by an intermediary
and the official who took responsibility was dismissed. When society was appeased
and the issue was forgotten, these intermediaries were re-assigned to a new position.
By doing so, the sultan was praised as the executor of all pleasing actions, while
intermediaries were accused of the bad ones, and no one dared criticize the sultan
directly.195
As mentioned above, one of the reasons that the Young Ottomans criticised
the Bab-ı Ali was similar. Since the Ottoman political traditions did not allow criticism
of the sultan, the Young Ottomans chose the Bab-ı Ali as their target and frequently
attacked Fuat and Âlî Paşas. However, as Selim Deringil has noted, Abdulhamid, with
his authoritarian and centralizing manner, removed all the responsibilities of the
intermediary bodies. He was seen as the only executor of all policies in the empire.
Consequently, his personality was open to accusations stemming from the
malfunctioning of the empire. By centralizing power and tying all institutions to his
personality, he created a stronger opposition group of intellectuals and soldiers, which
was known as the Young Turks.196 Consequently, this growing opposition inside and
outside of the Ottoman Empire, and the re-emergence of the Balkan problem which
ended the short-lived First Constitutional Period in 1878, also brought an end to
Hamidian rule.197

194
Fortna, “The Reign of Abdulhamid II,” 58-59.

195
Ahmed Cevdet Paşa, Maruzat, ed. Yusuf Halaçoğlu (İstanbul: Çağrı Yayınları, 1980), 244.

196
Deringil, “Legitimacy Structures,” 355.

197
Fortna, “The Reign of Abdulhamid II,” 58-59.

62
 When Abdulhamid realized the hopelessness of the conditions for himself in
1908, he agreed to restore the constitution, and then reconvened parliament after thirty
years.198 The Young Turks broke the absolutist rule of Abdulhamid with the slogans
of the “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and Justice.” They established a constitutional
monarchy and parliamentary democracy, which had been the dream of Ottoman
intellectuals since the 1860s. They removed the censorship of the press and
idealistically wanted to sustain unlimited freedom of expression. They opened the way
for political parties and also wanted to replace the old notables and religious orders in
the state.199
When the Hamidian period was ended by the Young Turks in 1908, a four-
year liberal environment emerged. By 1910, 353 newspapers and magazines had
appeared. Political exiles returned to Istanbul. The four pillars of the Revolution
“liberty, equality, fraternity, and justice” 200 were tried to be applied by the CUP
leaders. In this period separatist political associations were prohibited, but since ethnic
and religious organizations were perceived as cultural organizations they could
continue to perform their activities. In this liberal environment, while Turkish
intellectuals were fighting against Ottomanist motivations, their non-Muslim
colleagues were seeking rights for their millets. 201 However, much as the Russo-
Turkish War terminated the First Constitutional Period, the catastrophic losses of the
Ottoman Empire in the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) ended this liberal environment.202
When it comes to the Islamism of the Young Turks, it is essential to note that
religion did not constitute a vital place in the agenda of the CUP. It can be even

198
Ibid., 60-61.

199
Hanioğlu, “The Second Constitutional Period,” 65-66.

200
Findley, Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity, 194-195.

201
Berkes, The Development of Secularism, 327.

202
Ibid., 201.

63
described as anti-religious. Most of the members saw religion as the main obstacle to
the process of civilization, which was the dominant intellectual trend of the post-
Renan period. The main characteristic of the opposition movements of the Hamidian
period was that they were reactionary, such as anti-imperialist, or anti-Hamidian.
Therefore, the difference in their agendas did not pose a problem for their cooperation.
In addition to the Islamists in Istanbul this reactionary nature provided for broader
cooperation. Two prominent Islamists, Muhammed Abduh who supported
Abdulhamid in the early days of his reign and his student Rashid Rıza, had worked
closely with the Young Turks.203 Moreover, although Ahmed Rıza was frequently
criticized for being an “atheist” among the Ottoman Islamists, because of his anti-
imperialist articles in foreign reports he was seen as a pan-Islamist fanatic. 204 As
Cemil Aydın points out, the Pan-Islamist vision between 1870s and 1920s had a
character of being the criticism of the Imperial world order and the domination of the
Western Civilization. Those who had a Pan-Islamist vision at that time did not always
have an Islamic sensitivity in the social life.205
Until the end of the Hamidan period and during the first phase of the Second
Constitutional Revolution, the CUP also partially appealed to Islam with three main
motivations: “first, as a proto-nationalist device to agitate the Muslim masses against
the sultan; second, to attack European imperialism; and third, to delegitimize the
sultan’s position from an Islamic point of view.”206 As mentioned before, although it
began to decrease, Islam was still the main legitimizer in political life, and the
language of the masses.207 After the revolution the CUP leaders were aware of the

203
Hanioğlu, “The Second Constitutional Period,” 103.

204
Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution, 307.

205
Cemil Aydın, “İmparatorluk ve Hilafet Vizyonları Arasında Osmanlı’Nın Panislamist İmajı, 1839-
1924,” in Türkiye’de İslamcılık Düşüncesi ve Hareketi: Sempozyum Tebliğleri, ed. İsmail Kara, and
Asım Öz (İstanbul: Zeytinburnu Belediyesi Kültür Yayınları, 2013), 47.

206
Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution, 307.

207
Ibid., 302-306.

64
existnce of different religious fractions in Ottoman society. Therefore, they had to
form an ulema branch to convince the society and to continue to hold the support of
the masses. Some of the leading Islamists already welcomed the revolution and began
to deal with the publication of articles supportive of the CUP. However, it was also
expressed by the Islamists that, “what was done was only to remove the stumbling
block to progress: Turkish society would be reformed thoroughly according to the
principles of Islam that had been forgotten under un-Islamic tyrannies.”208
However, the relations between the Islamists and the CUP deteriorated with
the return of many CUP members to their main anti-religious discourse. 209 The liberal
environment of the period revealed the main motivations of each opposition group
who were under the same umbrella. Although most of the Islamists did not join the
counter-revolution led by the Union of Mohammedans under the leadership of
Dervish Vahdeti, they constantly opposed the secular attitudes of the CUP members,
and wanted to promote the religiosity of the state and to amend many articles in the
1909 Constitution. However, in the final step, they were pushed aside by the CUP.210
In this process, the CUP gradually diminished the role of religion in different aspects
of political and social life.211
There are different views on the Young Turks’ attitude toward Abdulhamid
after the revolution. According to Niyazi Berkes, in the first year of the revolution
most of the revolutionaries were still under the effects of the previous period that made
them submissive to Abdulhamid. Therefore, after their disenchantment with the
Hamidian despotism in the heydays of the revolution, the deposition of Abdulhamid
could be imagined.212 After the counter-revolutionary attempt of a group of ulema led

208
Berkes, The Development of Secularism, 348.

209
Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution, 307.

210
Hanioğlu, “The Second Constitutional Period,” 68.

211
Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution, 308.

212
Berkes, The Development of Secularism, 254-256.

65
by Dervish Vahdeti under the banner of “Shariah” in April 1909, Abdulhamid was
deposed and sent to Salonica.213 From the perspective of Azmi Özcan, although the
Islamists were against the despotic rule of the sultan, they refrained from direct
criticism of Abdulhamid after the revolution because of his role as the caliph. Instead,
because of his proclamation of the constitution, they wanted to see Abdulhamid as
having good intentions and directed their criticism toward the people around him.
However, in the last period, Abdulhamid and those who around him were depicted as
responsible for the chaotic environment, and were shown a deep hatred.214
A more logical understanding is that of Şükrü Hanioğlu. The heroes of the
revolution had a conservative agenda instead of wanting to destroy the old system.
Although they made the revolution under the banner of the French Revolution, unlike
the French Revolution the CUP did not destroy the old regime. Unlike the Iranian
example, it did not replace the absolutist monarchy with a constitutional regime. They
only restored the already existing but suspended constitution, and the parliament of
1876. However, what they expected for the revolution did not come to pass, and
instead they ended up with a chaotic environment in which different power centers
aggressively pursued their own agendas. As a result, this environment led to the
dethronement of Abdulhamid and latter to the emergence of a new, authoritarian, one-
party rule.215

3.2. Actors

In this part of the chapter I will analyze the main actors of Abdulhamid’s state-
centered Islamism. Although he was the main actor, there were also other actors that
he relied on, such as pro-state ulemas, bureaucrats, and the Muslim masses of the

213
Fortna, “The Reign of Abdulhamid II,” 60-61.

214
Özcan, “İslamcılık.”

215
Hanioğlu, “The Second Constitutional Period,” 66.

66
Ottoman Empire and the Muslim World. In this part of our chapter I will analyze their
actions and the role that they played in Abdulhamid’s Islamist policies.

3.2.1. Abdulhamid II

Abdulhamid II came into power in 1876 with the promise of the promulgation
of the Constitution and the Parliament.216 However, citing the results of the Russo-
Turkish War (1878), he dissolved parliament and suspended the Constitution. After
that time, he began to establish a new administrative system that lasted for 33 years.217
He spent his first years looking for possible solutions for the chaotic conditions of the
state. His main concerns were preserving peace and preventing the loss of further land,
developing a plan to create balance between the conflicting interests of the Great
Powers, putting the finances and military of the empire into order, implementing
reforms in administration, and establishing the means to provide solidarity among
Ottoman subjects.218
In the first period of his rule, he tried to transfer power from the Bâb-ı Âli back
to the court. In 1895, he subdued the Bâb-ı Âli, which had dominated the state during
the Tanzimat period. From 1895 onward, he created an absolutist regime that endured
until 1908.219 He reformed the administrative cadres through a modern bureaucracy
headed by technocrats loyal to him alone, similar to the ways of the earlier sultans.220
Finally, he adopted Islamism as a means of solidarity among Ottoman subjects and as
a deterrent force toward foreign threat.

216
Hanioğlu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire, 111.

217
Ibid., 123.

218
Fortna, “The Reign of Abdulhamid II,” 47.

219
Hanioğlu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire, 109.

220
Ibid., 125.

67
 Abdulhamid’s main motivation during his rule was the four pillars of the state
codified by Reşit Paşa: Islam, the maintenance of the house of Osman, the protection
of the Haram al-Haramayn (Mecca and Madinah), and the maintenance of Istanbul as
the capital city. The absence of one of these pillars was seen as the end of the
empire. 221 Therefore, in the 33 years of his reign Abdulhamid adopted Islamist
policies where they served the preservation of the empire in accordance with these
pillars.
If the when Islamism of Abdulhamid is seen as stemming from a personal
religious motivation for the sake of Islam, as Ihsan Süreyya Sırma does, it undermines
the arguments of the Islamist intellectuals in their opposition to the sultan and makes
us blind to the different dimensions of Abdulhamid’s agenda. In his prominent book
on Abdulhamid’s Pan-Islamist policies, Sırma answers the question of what did the
Young Turks want from the Abdulhamid in this way: “The Young Turk movement
that was guided by the West had emerged against the conservative policies of
Abdulhamid. To be Western, to think Western, to dress Western, to legislate Western,
to eat Western; to imitate the West without any reasoning…”222
However, Sırma and other Islamists of today ignore the point that Abdulhamid
personally was not religious to such an extent that Islamism would constitute the sole
motivation for him in his policies.223 Instead, as the last capable sultan of the Ottoman
Empire, Abdulhamid created a new phase for the state with his seemingly
contradictory characteristics. He was repressive on the one hand and reformist on the
other; Islamist on the one hand, and Westernist on the other. The widest-reaching
Western-style reforms in the army and education were realized during Abdulhamid’s
reign. The Islamism of Abdulhamid served to extend the existence of the Ottoman
Empire and the caliphate by winning the support of the Muslim population.

221
Deringil, “Legitimacy Structures,” 346.

222
İhsan Süreyya Sırma, II. Abdulhamid’in İslam Birliği Siyaseti (İstanbul: Beyan Yayınları, 2007),
15.

223
Fortna, “The Reign of Abdulhamid II,” 41.

68
 According to Ismail Kara, through the modernization of education and the
foundation of Westernized institutions, Abdulhamid created the powerful cadres that
would bring about his end. On the other hand, since he kept the use of Islamism under
his monopoly, he weakened independent intellectual Islamism compared to other
ideologies.224 During his reign, Islamism as an ideology did not show any sign of
intellectual advancement, but was only used as a tool for the survival of the state.225
Therefore, looking at his motivation in terms of his personal preferences would lead
to the misinterpretation of the arguments of the intellectual Islamists.
In the context of Islamism what should be understood from Abdulhamid’s
Islamism is the flourishing of the religious element under the rule of one man in a
wide range of fields.226 In its general forms, the actions that Abdulhamid implemented
in the context of Islamism can be summarized as: the promotion of the post of the
caliphate, being in close contact with the Muslims in the world as their ultimate
authority, sending missionary Sufi members around the world, promoting religious
education in the medreses, increasing official attention to the Sufi organizations,
publishing selectively the main classical religious books and delivering them to rural
areas, increasing the official status of the Arab provinces, bringing the children of
prominent Muslim leaders to Istanbul for education, benefiting from the unifying
mission of the pilgrimage for the propagation of the caliphate, and delivering
messages of loyalty from the Muslims of the world to Ottoman Muslims through
every possible means. 227 Through symbolic images, ceremonies, architecture, and
medals, the Islamic character of the state was advanced everywhere in the empire.228

224
Kara, Türkiye’de İslamcılık Düşüncesi I, 29.

225
Özcan, “İslamcılık.”

226
Eraslan, II. Abdulhamid ve İslam Birliği, 23.

227
Berkes, The Development of Secularism, 270.; Eraslan, II. Abdulhamid ve İslam Birliği, 31-32.;
Kara, Türkiye’de İslamcılık Düşüncesi I, 28.; Landau, The Politics of Pan-Islam, 57.

228
Fortna, “The Reign of Abdulhamid II,” 53.

69
For those villages that could not afford to build mosques a charity program was
applied, and the presence of the state was reinforced in the periphery.229
Through an ornate celebration of religious days and nights, and by controlling
the morals of the society, Islam was made visible in society. The general liberal trend
of the Tanzimat period on the individual level was reversed, and the police forces
were given the task of implementing the rules of Shariah in the society.230 After the
humiliating conditions of the Tanzimat period for the Muslim population, the state
visibly played the role of the protector of Muslims to cure the demoralization of
society. 231 Under these conditions, the Islamism of Abdulhamid overshadowed
nationalism and constitutionalism, which were the two most prominent ideologies of
the subsequent period.232
Parallel to the general trend in the world, one of the main concerns of
Abdulhamid in the 1880s was the foundation of an empire-wide education system.
From 1867 to 1895 the number of rüştiye students increased four times. However, this
number was still half of the non-Muslim students. 233 Since lack of education was
higher among the Muslim population, educational reform also became an important
issue of the Islamist agenda. Muhammed Abduh and al-Afghani, concentrated on
educational reform in Egypt. 234 Said Nursi’s university project Medresetü’z-Zehra
regarding Al-Azhar in Cairo, that combined the positive sciences and sciences of
religion in Eastern Anatolia to increase the literacy of the Kurdish population, was
also part of the general trend of the time. 235 What is interesting is that instead of

229
Mardin, Türkiye’de Din ve Siyaset, 92.

230
Berkes, The Development of Secularism, 259.

231
Mardin, Said Nursi Olayı, 87.

232
Berkes, The Development of Secularism, 270.

233
Mardin, Türkiye’de Din ve Siyaset, 55.

234
Özervarlı, “Muhammed Abduh.”

70
reforming the traditional religious schools (medreses), Abdulhamid favored pursuing
Tanzimat-style secular education reforms. 236 Furthermore, he also dealt with the
reforms of the medreses; however, Abdulhamid’s main attention for their
amelioration stemmed from the role that the ulema was played in the propagation of
Islamism and the symbolic performance of Islam.237
With the same motivation, Abdulhamid appealed to the Sufi orders. In
comparison with other actors of Islamism, he used the basic methods of the
“revivalists” orders mentioned in the previous chapter.238 However, his relations with
the tarikats were not official. To avoid diplomatic foreign pressure, Abdulhamid
implemented some of his Islamist policies through the foundation of an unofficial
personal network centered in Istanbul among the Islamist leaders of the Muslim
World.239
In the higher levels of the intellectual and political circles, Abdulhamid was
generally more supportive of non-Turkish organs. 240 Unlike the other Ottoman
sultans, he hired Arab subjects for important positions of the bureaucracy.241 Between
1901 and 1907, 167 Arabs studied in the Imperial Public Service School (Mekteb-i
Mulkiye-i Şahane). These students, who later became the prominent intellectuals and
state elites of the future Arab states, studied in Istanbul as a result of the Hamidian
education policies.242 Furthermore, the Arab subjects of the Empire and Muslim tribes

235
Said Nursi, Tarihçe-i Hayat (İstanbul: RNK Neşriyat, 2016), 48.

236
Fortna, “The Reign of Abdulhamid II,” 50.

237
Deringil, “Legitimacy Structures,” 347.

238
Karpat, The Politicization of Islam, 23.

239
Aydın, The Politics of Anti-Westernism, 66.

240
Landau, The Politics of Pan-Islam, 60.

241
Deringil, “Legitimacy Structures,” 346.

71
from Sulawesi, Singapore, and Sumatra sent their children to Istanbul. After the end
of their education, these children returned to their home fluent in Turkish, with
Turkish passports and the power to claim themselves as “civilized” to the imperial
domination of Europeans in their land.243
The main addressees of Abdulhamid in terms of his Islamist policies were the
lower classes of the subjects in the Ottoman territory. At the end of the nineteenth
century in Anatolia, Muslims, Armenians, Kurds, and other ethnic and religious
groups were living in a complex social system that ensured a separate social life.244
The increasing political and economic power of the non-Muslim populations since the
beginning of the Tanzimat period was perceived as a threat toward both the state and
Islam. Furthermore, while there were not enough infrastructural investments by the
state for the Muslim population, Christian missionary activities were high and
increased the welfare of the non-Muslim population.245 Furthermore, the conflicts in
Anatolia were different from the ethnic conflicts in the Balkans or other parts of the
empire. Since there were no clear ethno-religious boundaries in Anatolia, any
concession to a non-Muslim millet was perceived as a threat toward Turkish and
Muslim existence.246 The continuation of the politicization of the different ethnic and
religious groups, and the increase in their economic investments and cultural
institutions, increased the sense of backwardness among the Muslim population.247
Thus one of the major Islamists policies of Abdulhamid aimed to increase the self-

242
Ibid., 355.

243
Ibid., 350.

244
Mardin, Said Nursi Olayı, 78-79.

245
Ibid., 54-56.

246
Lewis, Modern Türkiye’nin Doğuşu, 482.

247
Findley, Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity, 178-179.

72
confidence of the Muslim population, and mitigate hatred toward non-Muslims to
avoid any potential conflict.248
One of the main characteristics of Hamidian rule was the extreme
centralization of power around the personality of the sultan. At all levels of state
institutions, he bound authority to his personality and removed intermediary bodies,
especially parliament and ministries. He also prevented the formation of any powerful
organizations and the emergence of an alternative dominant personality.249 For this
reason, sharing the same destiny with other intellectual movements, Islamists were
not able to establish a Pan-Islamic association within Ottoman territory. Abdulhamid
preferred to work with the existing tarikats instead of allowing the emergence of an
Islamist association. However, it is also unclear in what level pan-Islamic policies had
penetrated these tarikats.250
In general, the Sufi organizations that Abdulhamid promoted and prepared to
the propagation of pan-Islamism with particular missions were ascetic organizations
dealing with mystic aspects of religion. They did not deal with the political issues that
constituted the main agenda of the intellectual movements. Furthermore, these
tarikats were weak organizations that were unable to cooperate. According to Landau,
this situation was their major weakness in terms of the realization of pan-Islamist
policies.251 The pragmatism of Abdulhamid can be seen in this ambivalence to the
perception of religion. Although Sunni orthodoxy was stressed as the state religion,
he did not prefer to apply Sunni Islamism but mostly appealed to the Sufi orders for
propaganda.252

248
Mardin, Said Nursi Olayı, 87.

249
Deringil, “Legitimacy Structures,” 355.

250
Landau, The Politics of Pan-Islam, 51.

251
Ibid., 52.

252
Deringil, “Legitimacy Structures,” 347.

73
 Abdulhamid’s strict dedication toward the centralization of power around his
personality was also seen in his relations with the leaders of the Muslim World. The
preservation of the religion or the Muslim populations against the Western threat was
not enough, and it was also necessary to preserve the authority of the House of Osman.
For example, a silver door for the Kaba was sent from the Nawab of Rampur, and
40000 rupees were sent by an Indian Muslim to Mecca. They were both rejected for
the reason that: "All such gifts can only be made by the Exalted Persona of the Caliph
who alone holds the august title of Protector of the Holy Places. No foreign ruler has
the right to partake of this glory." 253 This shows the exclusivist approach of
Abdulhamid toward the leaders of the Muslim world. On the other hand, it would also
be inaccurate to depict the world Muslims as completely open to accepting the
supremacy of Abdulhamid. His attempts to represent himself as the sublime leader of
all Muslims was reluctantly welcomed by some Muslim leaders such as the Iranian
Shah and the Emir of Afghanistan. Since both of them were squeezed between the
Anglo-Russian rivalry in the region, they had to cooperate with Abdulhamid. 254
Instead, the lower classes played the primary role in the acceptance of Abdulhamid
throughout the Muslim World, as they were mobilized by the Revivalist movements.
Finally, similar to the Constitutionalists (the Young Ottomans and then the
Young Turks) and Revivalists, Abdulhamid benefited from the political potential of
the masses for the survival of the Ottoman Empire. When Abdulhamid appealed to
the traditional values of the masses, he wanted loyalty to his personality.
Constitutionalists in return for the proposed reforms offered material betterment and
political freedom, which was a new concept to these populations. For the Revivalists
the aim was to reverse the deterioration of the conditions of the Muslims and the
revival of the Islamic consciousness. As Kemal Karpat summarizes,

“the sultan, the revivalists, and the constitutionalists all preached versions of
populism that were in line with their philosophies and expectations. The
revivalists practiced a community-based religious populism at the grassroots;

253
Ibid., 352.

254
Landau, The Politics of Pan-Islam, 44.

74
 the sultan promoted religious populism, managed, orchestrated, and contained
by the state—in other words, himself—from the top; and the constitutionalists
preached an institutional populism that took concrete form first in the
Constitution and Parliament of 1876–78, then reappeared in the period 1908–
18.” 255

3.2.2. Other Actors

While Abdulhamid generated strong opposition, he also managed to get the

support of different actors. Abdulhamid did not only rely on the state apparatus but
also on the Muslim masses in the empire and abroad, the pro-state ulemas, and
intellectuals.
The Muslim masses were the main actor of Hamidian Islamism. Abdulhamid
appealed to the beliefs and superstitions of the Muslim masses in the ways mentioned
above.256 In addition to the perceived religious degradation of Muslims during the
Tanzimat period, what made the Ottoman Muslims gather around Abdulhamid was
the changing economic conditions. Changing dynamics in economic life in the early
1870s resulted in bankruptcy in 1875. The masses perceived this bankruptcy as a sign
that the modernization reforms meant the domination of the European powers over
the Ottoman economy, and the decline of domestic agriculture and industry.
Consequently, it meant a further deterioration in their economic conditions. While the
masses were reactionary toward the West, Abdulhamid appeared as “indigenous,
tradition-loving, Islamic, and free from the worries and discomforts of change.”
Abdulhamid’s anti-Western attitudes appealed to the already existing anti-Western
feelings of the masses and his “personal austerity, sobriety, and piety” appealed to
their discomfort toward the extravagant Tanzimat rulers.257
According to Niyazi Berkes, the environment that Abdulhamid created was
such that “the man in the street could feel comfort in the security of this tradition. The

255
Karpat, The Politicization of Islam, 9.

256
Berkes, The Development of Secularism, 258.

257
Ibid., 255.

75
Hamidian regime built up for him a dream world in which his illusions appeared to
be coming true. The period was one of escape from actual conditions and a time of
reaction against the efforts as well as the frustrations of the Tanzimat.” Under these
conditions, the absolutist rule of Abdulhamid was benevolently accepted by the
masses and almost no one, including the intellectuals, were immune to these
feelings.258
The second actor of Abdulhamid’s Islamist policies was the Muslim World.
As explained in different parts of the thesis, two coinciding conditions attracted the
attention of the Muslim World toward the Ottoman Caliph. On the one hand, in 1857
Moghul rule was exterminated by the British and in the 1860s the Central Asian
Turkic Khanates were invaded by the Russians, meaning that the central powers in
the Muslim World were eliminated and the Muslim masses stand alone. On the other
hand, in this period the Ottoman Empire, which held the holy post of caliphate, was
the only independent power capable of helping these Muslims.
Furthermore, the emerging social power under the domination of the Great
Powers and their attraction to the Ottoman Empire gave the sultan the opportunity to
use this dynamic to create a new balance in the international arena in place of the one
that had collapsed at the beginning of the 1870s. On this occasion, Abdulhamid
deteriorated the already existing negative attitudes of the foreign powers toward the
Ottoman Empire.
The third group of actors was the ulema who lived in the palace. This group
of ulema were the advisers of Abdulhamid in his Islamist policies, and they were also
sent to local areas when it was necessary. In his pan-Islamic policies, Abdulhamid
consulted to four important names: Shaykh Muhammad Zafir, a Tripolitanian and one
of the leaders of the Shadhiliyya-Madaniyya Fraternity, who was responsible for
Egypt and North Africa; Sayyid Fadl from India who was responsible for the Red Sea
region and India; Shaykh Ahmad Asat from the Hijaz who was responsible for the
Holy Cities and Yemen; and the last and most prominent name was Shaykh Abulhuda

258
Ibid., 255.

76
from the Rifa’i order who came from Syria and was responsible for the remaining
parts of the Arab lands.259
Shaykh Abulhuda al-Sayyadi was the official ideologue of the sultan in
Islamist policies and also in the formation of propaganda.260 Abulhuda lived in the
Palace between 1878-1908 and the majority of his 212 books and pamphlets were
written in this period. Most of these works are about the legitimacy of Abdulhamid’s
caliphate. He called for Muslims to unite around and to obey the order of the caliph
as a requirement of faith.261 Abdulhamid highly benefited from this group. Compared
to the Young Ottoman Islamists, Abdulhamid’s ulema created a stronger religious
discourse. The Young Ottomans first read the Enlightenment philosophers and then
looked at religious sources for their legitimization. However, Abdulhamid’s ulemas
relied on a strong Sunni tradition that was already on the side of the ruler. They looked
at religious sources and interpreted them following the wishes of the sultan.262
The last actor of Abdulhamid’s Islamism is Ahmet Cevdet Paşa (1822-1895).
He was one of the prominent statesmen of the Tanzimat and the early Hamidian
period, and the writer of the Maruzat, which was made up of reports about the
Tanzimat period and presented to Abdulhamid. He was also important for the
formation of the Shariah-based Civil Law, Mecelle (1876), after the rejection of the
constitution created by a commission including Namık Kemal and Ziya Paşa which
was based on the Belgian Constitutions of 1831. He is an important name to
distinguish Islamism from statism.
Şerif Mardin mentions about Ahmet Cevdet Paşa as one of the most prominent
names of Islamism and evaluates Ahmet Cevdet in the same context with the
Nakshibendi reaction that aimed to overthrow Abdulmecid and revealed in the Kuleli

259
Landau, The Politics of Pan-Islam, 71.

260
Deringil, “Legitimacy Structures,” 347.

261
Landau, The Politics of Pan-Islam, 31.

262
Berkes, The Development of Secularism, 262.

77
Incident (1859).263 As Mümtaz’er Türköne points out, state rulers and intellectuals
should be evaluated separately because the state elites were concerned with the raison
d’état instead of intellectual contemplations.264 Ahmed Cevdet’s Islamism was very
similar to that of Abdulhamid which had a secondary place after his statism. In his
famous book Tezakir, Ahmet Cevdet Paşa mentions the Nakshibendi reaction that was
revealed in 1859 as the “malice society” (Cem’iyyet-i Fesâdiyye) because they were
a reaction to the state.265 Furthermore Namık Kemal made several statements praising
the leader of the movement, Shaykh Ahmed Efendi.266
Ahmed Cevdet and the Young Ottomans’ different views on the Kuleli
Incident shows the primary concerns of those actors who are known as Islamists.
Again, according to Mardin, the trigger for the reaction to the sultan in 1859 from the
Revivalists and the reason for the foundation of the Young Ottomans stemmed from
the same conditions. Therefore, Shaykh Ahmed is seen as the pioneer of the Young
Ottoman ideology in terms of their reaction to the Islahat conditions. 267 Ahmed
Cevdet disliked the society because of its reaction to the state and Namık Kemal
praised them because of the Young Ottomans’ criticism toward the Tanzimat reforms.
Neither Ahmed Cevdet nor Namık Kemal had a religious affiliation in their
approaches toward the Kuleli Incident.
Overall, although Abdulhamid seems practically and ideologically alone when
comparing the different actors of Islamism, he also relyed on different Islamist actors.
In addition to the sultanate and the caliphate, he had strong support from the Muslim

263
Mardin, Türk Modernleşmesi, 91.

264
Mümtaz’er Türköne, "Müzakere,” in Ahmet Cevdet Paşa: Vefatının 100. Yılına Armağan, 162-164
(Ankara: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 1997), 163.

265
Ahmet Cevdet Paşa, Tezakir II, ed. Cavid Baysun (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1986),
83.

266
Muharrem Varol, “Kahramanlıktan Kalebendliğe: Kuleli Vak’asının Baş Aktörü Süleymaniyeli
Şeyh Ahmed’e Dair Bilinmeyenler,” Tasavvuf 35, (2015/1): 124-125.

267
Şerif Mardin, Türkiye’de Toplum ve Siyaset (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2006), 281.

78
masses both inside and outside of the Ottoman Empire. In addition to them, he formed
a group of advisers from the ulema for his pan-Islamic policies.

3.3. Abdulhamid’s Islamist Discourse

Selim Deringil writes that:

all states have recourse to ideologies to justify their existence both to other
states and toward their subjects. These ideologies are usually promulgated by
a state elite that depends on them for its raison d'etre. The Ottoman state was
no exception to this rule… The legitimizing ideologies of the Hamidian era and
its elite were based on a set of clearly perceived policy aims, but especially on
the preservation of the state.268

The most crucial point that Deringil mentions is the “preservation of the state.”
It was also the case for Abdulhamid that he created his tools of legitimacy toward his
subjects and foreign powers to preserve the Empire. If the realization of Islamist
policies is evaluated as the main purpose of Hamidian rule, the discourse that he
created can be seen as confusing. However, if the discourse that was created and used
by Abdulhamid is evaluated in the context of the preservation of the state, it
constitutes a meaningful tool in the service of Abdulhamid’s statism.
Although the Millet system collapsed, religion was still the main determinant
of the unification of society and relations with the rulers. In this sense, the post of
caliph already allowed Abdulhamid to appeal directly to the Muslim society and also
to the independent countries of the Muslim World.269 In the case of loyalty, beside the
Ottoman tradition, classical Sunni Orthodox literature also served Abdulhamid.
Although there are hadiths that state that the caliphate belongs to the tribe of Quraish,
some prominent Islamic scholars such as Maverdi, Gazali, and Cema’a stressed that
the ability of the caliph to protect the Shariah and prevent chaos among the Muslims

268
Deringil, “Legitimacy Structures,” 345.

269
Buzpınar, “The Question of Caliphate,” 26.

79
was a priority above his being a member of the Quraish.270 This tradition eventually
came to legitimizes loyalty to any kind of state authority rather than collapse into
disorder.271 Relying on this strong Sunni tradition, Abdulhamid used the discourse of
the din ü devlet (religion and state) and tried to create a “caesaro-papist" title to
increase the prestige of the state.272
However, while Abdulhamid appealed to the post of the caliphate to protect
his legitimacy, a reactionary discourse emerged from the side of the West to
undermine his legitimacy. The reaction of the Great Powers occurred through the
claims of Orientalists such as George Birdwood, James Redhouse, and the most
prominent, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt who also had close relations with Afghani and
Abduh. They aimed to break the power of the caliphate in the Arab World and wanted
to create an alternative power center for the Islamic World instead of Abdulhamid.
These propagations concentrated on two points. First, in Islam the caliphate is
a spiritual leadership, not a political one. Religious reawakening and spiritual unity
should be under the leadership of the otherworldly caliphate. In the establishment of
the spiritual caliphate, the British government as a civilized state would be beneficial
while overthrowing the obstacles for the Muslims to restore the true caliphate.273
Second, the caliph should be from the tribe of the Qureish. In this point as well, British
forces wanted to support the Sharif of Mecca as the new caliph, with whom they had
close relations.274 Toward this reaction, Abdulhamid tried to legitimize his position
by creating a discourse in the Khaldunian sense, which is, “in the Abbasid period, the

270
Türköne, İslamcılığın Doğuşu, 172.

271
Türköne, İslamcılığın Doğuşu, 124.

272
Deringil, “Legitimacy Structures,” 346.

273
Berkes, The Development of Secularism, 268.

274
Buzpınar, “The Question of Caliphate,” 26-27.

80
Qureish lost power and were unable to fulfill the post, so many ulema concurred that
the condition of Qureish was no longer operative for the later Caliphs.”275
In addition to the Islamist side of Abdulhamid, he also appealed to Westernist
discourse. Under the conditions of high imperialism and the domination of the
discourse of Western civilization with a universal claim, Abdulhamid had to deal with
unequal relations with the West and had to get the recognition of Western powers in
the international arena over the rule of the non-Muslim populations in Ottoman
territory. In this process, Abdulhamid strictly relied on the universal discourse of
civilization.276 He refrained from identifying himself with anti-Western trends in the
Muslim world and was repeatedly emphasized that pan-Islamism was not a political
movement but a religious one.277
However, as mentioned before, the transformation of the discourse of
civilization during the nineteenth century was highly dependent on the need to
legitimize the increasing expansionist policies. In this case, Abdulhamid was did not
able to convince the Western powers to the “civility” of the Ottoman Empire.
Essentially, besides expansionist Western policies, Abdulhamid was not against
Western civilization. On the contrary, he believed to the necessity of Western-style
modernization.278
To sum up, Islamic discourse was the panacea of the Hamidian period.
Abdulhamid appealed to Islamic discourse to label any intellectual or political attempt
as illegitimate. 279 With his complex state structure and the role of the caliphate,
Abdulhamid claimed legitimacy and the monopoly over the protection and

275
Ibid., 29.

276
Aydın, The Politics of Anti-Westernism, 63.

277
Landau, The Politics of Pan-Islam, 64.

278
Aydın, The Politics of Anti-Westernism, 66.

279
Kara, İslamcıların Siyasi Görüşleri I, 37.

81
reformation of religion. This claim was not accepted by most intellectuals, who
reacted by attempting to delegitimize Abdulhamid’s authority.280

3.4. Conclusion of Chapter Three

In this chapter, I analyzed the Islamism of Abdulhamid in terms of the regional

and international conditions, the actors, and the discourse. Similar to the influence of
the regional and international conditions of intellectual Islam, Abdulhamid’s
preferences for Islamism and its adoption as the state policy were also the result of
these conditions. With the unification of Germany and Italy, the existing balance in
the international arena began to collapse.
In the process of the formation of a new international system, the Ottoman
Empire lost its protection over its sovereignty. Furthermore, in the 1880s, the Great
Powers increased their expansionist policies and the Ottoman territories were not
immune to this expansion. Under these conditions, Abdulhamid appealed to Islamist
policies to ideologically mobilize the majority-Muslim Ottoman subjects and create a
new force to deter aggressive Western policies.
In its broadest form the Islamism of Abdulhamid made Islam more visible in
daily life. His Islamist policies were generally focused on the symbolic side of Islam,
and regarding non-Ottoman Muslims sought to sustain his authority as the caliph of
all Muslims. However, in educational reforms he continued the general trend of the
Tanzimat by opening secular schools.
In his Islamist policies Abdulhamid had the support of several actors,
including primarily the Muslim masses of the Ottoman Empire and the world, the pro-
state ulemas, the state bureaucrats, and the Sufi branches. In general, the actors of
Abdulhamid’s Islamism were the actors that were subordinate to Abdulhamid and
directly bound to him. The Sufi groups that Abdulhamid worked with had a mostly
ascetic nature and did not have a world agenda. He generally prevented the formation
of any alternative Islamist movements.
In light of our findings I concluded that although Abdulhamid adapted
Islamism as a state ideology, the objective of this Islamism was not the re-domination

280
Karpat, The Politicization of Islam, 8.
82
of Islam but to maintain the existence of the Ottoman Empire. He was the sultan of
the Ottoman Empire more than an Islamist actor. The main pillar of Hamidian rule
was not Islamism but the four other pillars codified by the Tanzimat grand vizier
Reshid Paşa, and Abdulhamid relied on Islamism as far as it served these pillars.
Therefore, in his relations with other Islamist actors the reason for the lack of
cooperation is that Islamism did not constitute a central place in Islamists agenda.
However, since religion was the language of the masses at that time, Abdulhamid also
legitimized his actions or delegitimized others through religious discourse.

83
 CHAPTER 4

WHAT CHANGED IN THE CONTEMPORARY MIDDLE EAST?

The last chapter of this thesis will evaluate what changed between the period
of the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East, up until the 1960s. Like the
previous chapter it will examine the regional and international context, the actors, and
the discourse of modern Islamism. In the first part of the chapter, the focus will be on
three different regions: Turkey, the Arab world, and India. In the second part, which
is dedicated to the actors of the modern Middle East, four different actors will be taken
into consideration: Muhammed Abduh (1849-1905) and Hasan El-Benna (1906-
1949) from Egypt, Said Nursi (1872-1960) from Turkey, and Mawdudi from
India/Pakistan.
Although Muhammed Abduh was a contemporary of the Ottoman Islamists
who were evaluated in the previous parts, because of his role in the transition process
to modern Islamism he will be included in this chapter. The reason for choosing Said
Nursi is because, compared to the other Islamists, he provides more information when
comparing the transformation of Islamism from the Ottoman Empire to modern
Turkey. He was active in both the periods with different methodologies. The reason
for choosing Hasan El-Benna and Mawdudi is that they are the founders of the two
most influential Islamist movements in the modern Islamic World, the Muslim
Brotherhood, which has had a great effect on the Arab World, and the Jamaat-i Islami
in Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh.
In the last part, the discourse of modern Islamism will be analyzed in
comparison with the discourse of previous Islamists. Wahhabi Islamism will not be
considered in a detailed manner, but it will be discussed in the third part in the context
of Salafi discourse. Finally, since Shi’ite Islamism mainly took its place in the modern
Middle East after the Iranian Revolution (1979), it will also not be included in this
chapter.

84
4.1. Regional and International Context

The beginnings of modern Islamism are traced back to three significant events
of the 1920s and 1930s: the abolition of the caliphate in 1924, the creation of the
Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, and the foundation of Saudi Arabia in 1932.281 After
the removal of the caliphate, the Muslim World lost an institution that had united all
Muslims politically and spiritually. From that time onward, the Islamic World was
divided into three main geographical and cultural groups: the Sunni Arab Middle East,
the Sunni Indian subcontinent, and Irano-Arab Shiism. Turkey lost its leadership over
the Muslim World, and with a profound change in the nature of the state, it was also
isolated from the Arab world that had ruled for centuries.282
Furthermore, Islamism had lost its “monolithic” nature with a center and a
sublime leader. Although Islamist intellectuals continued to make global references,
from this time onward they mostly concentrated on regional conditions.283 In addition
to regionalization, the power vacuum that emerged after the abolition of the caliphate
created different, sometimes rival Islamist movements that wanted to fill this gap.284
Therefore, the regional and international contexts of the modern Middle East will be
examined separately under three main regions: Turkey, the Arab World, and India.

281
Florence Gaub, “Islamism and Islamists: A Very Short Introduction,” European Union Institute for
Security Studies, (October 2014):1.

282
Olivier Roy, The Failure of the Political Islam, trans. Carol Volk (Cambridge& Massachusetts:
Harward University Press, 1994), 2.

283
Mozaffari, “What is Islamism?” 24.

284
Gaub, “Islamism and Islamists,” 1.

85
4.1.1. Turkey

Although the Ottoman Empire declared its neutrality upon the outbreak of
World War I in August 1914, due to the strength of the pro-German branch of the
CUP and German pressure to include the Ottoman Empire in the war in order to open
new fronts with Russia and Britain, the Ottoman Empire entered the war at the end of
October 1914.285 As was expected, the Ottoman Empire tried to use its authority over
the Muslim world to rebel against the Western powers, and in November 1914 the
Ottoman ulema issued the Cihad-ı Ekber (Grand Jihad), which included the non-Sunni
sects and expected a global rebellion. However, it did not create the forecasted
results, 286 and the war did not live up to the expectations of the CUP leaders. In
November 1918, the Ottoman Empire had to sign the Armistice of Mundros.
At the end of the War, the Ottoman sultan, Vahdettin, was willing to make
peace with the Entente powers, which would be favorable to Istanbul. He wanted to
preserve “the house of Osman” and “Istanbul as the capital,” which were two of the
abovementioned four pillars of the empire as expressed by Reşit Paşa and strictly
applied by Abdulhamid. Therefore, he rejected the alternative defense in Anatolia led
by Mustafa Kemal.287 On the other hand, in the context of Islamism, the case was
hopeless. When the First World War ended, the millet of Islam had lost all its material
support, and the only thing that remained in its hands was a nationalism fortified with
religion. In the last phase, the Islamists had the dilemma of either supporting the caliph
or the national government in Ankara, and they chose the latter despite the antagonism

285
Hanioğlu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire, 178.

286
Hanioğlu, “The Second Constitutional Period,” 94.

287
Joshua Teitelbaum, ”Taking Back the Caliphate: Sharif Ḥusayn Ibn Ali, Mustafa Kemal and the
Ottoman Caliphate,” Die Welt des Islams, New Series 40 (Nov., 2000: 413

86
of the caliph. This choice showed the point where the political agenda of the Ottoman
Islamists had evolved.288
The victories of the National Struggle with Greece and the derogation of the
caliphate with his signing of the Treaty of Sevres strengthened the hand of Mustafa
Kemal for the reforms that he was planning.289 The announcement of the National
Pact in 1920 already meant the rejection of the Ottoman Empire and previous
ideologies concerned with the rescue of the Empire.290 According to Niyazi Berkes,
in an environment full of the joy of the independence, by stating “the real war is
starting now,” Mustafa Kemal announced the beginning of the war to secularize
Turkey.291 Thus began the phase of creating the Turkish nation and state based on
national sovereignty and independence. 292 Mustafa Kemal and the Kemalist elites
decided to adopt secular nationalism as the main ideology in all levels of the new state
and society.293 This nationalization and secularization process was codified as to reach
“the level of the civilized nations," which would be achieved through the total
appropriation of Western civilization.294
In the new period, contrary to the previous period, Islam became a matter of
dispute.295 To illustrate, during the First Constitutional Era the discussion among the
Young Ottomans was the source of the sovereignty in an Islamic State, but in the new

288
Kara, İslamcılık Düşüncesi I, 30.

289
Teitelbaum, “Taking Back the Caliphate,” 414.

290
Berkes, The Development of Secularism, 435.

291
Niyazi Berkes, Türkiye’de Çağdaşlaşma, (İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2017.), 493.

292
Findley, Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity, 248.

293
Ahmad, "Politics and Islam in Modern Turkey," 3.

294
Berkes, The Development of Secularism, 463.

295
Ibid., 431.

87
republican regime, the question became the place of Islam in a democratic regime.296
Although in the years of occupation religious feelings were used to unite people297
and for the creation of Turkish national identity, but it was not pursued.298 Mustafa
Kemal wanted to cut the ties with Islam and the past in the new state.
The first reason for this willingness is that Mustafa Kemal’s reformism was
more realist and pragmatist than other reformist ideologies. Almost all ideologies of
the previous period had already been tested and shown that they did not work. As
Şerif Mardin points out, for Mustafa Kemal there were ‘decades,’ while for the
Islamists of that time there were ‘millennia.’ 299 Secondly, the experiences of the
Second Constitutional Period had shown that Islam could be an obstacle to radical
reforms. Since Islam was the main legitimizer of the state and the opponents of the
reforms appealed to this discourse, the Kemalist elite responded to this opposition by
militantly limiting religion and extending secular laws to all parts of the society.300 To
prevent religious reactions, through the abolition of the caliphate in 1924, the official
ties of the state with Islam and the Muslim World were ended.301 Thirdly, as Abdullah
Cevdet had argued during the 1910s, Mustafa Kemal also accepted the superiority of
Western civilization as a rescuer.302 Since the “nation” and “Western civilization”
constituted the basis of the newly constructed state and society, there was no more

296
Berkes, “Türkiye’de Çağdaşlaşma,” 540.

297
Umut Uzer, An Intellectual History of Turkish Nationalism: Between Turkish Ethnicity and Islamic
Identity, (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2016), 95.

298
Karpat, The Politicization of Islam, 417.

299
Mardin, Türkiye’de Din ve Siyaset, 49-50.

300
Ahmad, "Politics and Islam in Modern Turkey," 3.

301
Ibid., 6.

302
Lewis, Modern Türkiye’nin Doğuşu, 360.

88
need for religion for the creation of social cohesion.303 Fourthly, the religion that
Mustafa Kemal wanted was the “civic religion” in the Durkheimian sense in which
religion has a secondary or marginal role.304
There is also an argument that Mustafa Kemal was not against religion but
wanted to limit its role in social and political life and to individualize and rationalize
it.305 This view is a reconciliatory view between Islam and Kemalism. Similar to the
main arguments of the Islamists, Islam is a religion that evaluates social life in terms
of the divine message and wants to bring society to Islam’s ideal social system in
which Islam is the main performer, not a superstructure.306
The most critical reforms concerning Islam were the abolition of the caliphate
in March 1924. As a result of that religion lost its ability to penetrate to every level of
daily life. Other reforms include the removal of the Şeyhülislam (March 1924), the
Evkaf Vekaleti (Ministery of Foundations - March 1924), and the Religious Court
(April 1924), the dispersion of the tarikats, tekke, zaviye (dervish lodges), and türbe
(tombs) (November 1925) which were expressed by Said Nursi as the branches of the
Ittihad-ı Islam, 307 the removal of Islam as the state religion (April 1928), the
introduction of the Latin alphabet (November 1928), and the change of the Ezan (call
to prayer) to Turkish (February 1932).308
With article 163 of the Criminal Code, the use of religion for political purposes
was banned. Article 241 of the code prohibited a religious official from criticizing
state laws or institutions. According to the Law of Association (1928), any group

303
Mardin, Türkiye’de Din ve Siyaset, 62-66.

304
Ibid., 119.

305
Uzer, “An Intellectual History of Turkish Nationalism,” 101.

306
Mardin, Türkiye’de Din ve Siyaset, 10.

307
Nursi, Asar-ı Bediyye, 83-84.

308
Mardin, Türkiye’de Din ve Siyaset, 96-97 and 121.

89
based on religion, sect, tarikat, i.e., and any of the Sunni, Alevi, Nakşibendi, or Nurcu
organizations were banned, and any religious dressings were restricted to the time of
prayer.309 In this period, almost all institutional and social bases of Islamism ended.
Kemalism had a gradual process of evolution. Through the many reforms in
alphabet, clothing, calendar, and so on, the difference between Turkey and the West
decreased. Moreover, through the exclusion of religion and the change in the alphabet
and the language, the Ottoman past became inaccessible for the new society,310 and a
new culture and history were created. In 1926 the Turkish Hearth (Türk Ocağı) was
replaced by the People’s House and by the 1930s it had around 200 offices and 30,000
members all over the country to spread Turkish nationalism and Kemalist ideology.
In 1927, the People’s House started to work with the Republican People’s Party
(CHP).311 The “Sun Language Theory,” which asserts that all languages are derived
from Turkish, and the “Turkish Historical Thesis,” which claims that the Sumerians
and Hittites were early Turkish societies, were promoted by the state.312
Finally, the events that were experienced during and after the First World War
restricted the Islamists’ perspective to a narrower geography. Those who supported
the Ankara government either continued to support the new regime or were
eliminated, like Said Halim Paşa who was not allowed to return to Turkey from exile,
or Mehmet Akif and Mustafa Sabri Efendi, who went to Egypt. The remaining
Islamists such as Ahmed Hamdi Akseki, Babanzade Ahmet Naim, Ferit Kam, and
Izmirli İsmail Hakkı had weaker voices and also gradually lost their power in Turkish

309
Berkes, “Türkiye’de Çağdaşlaşma," 534-36.

310
Findley, Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity, 256.

311
Uzer, “An Intellectual History of Turkish Nationalism,” 35.

312
Findley, Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity, 255-256.

90
politics. 313 However, during the democratization process between 1945-1950,
Islamism emerged as the primary opposition to the Kemalist regime.314

4.1.2. The Arab World

In the first fifty years after World War I, nationalism became the main
ideology of the Middle East.315 According to Nikki Keddie, after the deposition of
Abdulhamid in 1909 Middle Eastern intellectuals understood the weakness of
traditional political systems and began to adopt nationalism. The political and social
outcomes of the Balkan Wars had discredited Ottomanism and World War I had
discredited Islamism. 316 Furthermore pan-Turkist and Turanist tendencies in the
Young Turk regime had increased until eventually the Young Turks had adapted
Turkism as the main ideology of the state and gradually decreased the role of
religion. 317 Arab intellectuals’ separatism started after the adoption of Turkish
nationalism by the Young Turks. 318 Even some Islamists, such as the prominent
student of Abduh, Reşid Reza (1865-1935), had joined Arabist groups in opposition
to the caliphate.319 Finally, with the abolition of the Ottoman Sultanate in 1923 and

313
Özcan, “İslamcılık.”

314
Tunaya, İslamcılık Cereyanı, 190.

315
Edmund Burke III, “Orientalism and World History: Representing Middle Eastern Nationalism and
Islamism in the Twentieth Century,” Theory and Society 27, no. 4, (Aug., 1998): 493.

316
Uzer, “An Intellectual History of Turkish Nationalism,” 75.

317
Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution, 305-306.

318
Keddie, “Intellectuals in the Modern Middle East,” 49.

319
Kara, İslamcılık Düşüncesi I, 29.

91
the caliphate in 1924, the ties with the Islamic past had been cut, and the old Islamic
elites lost their legitimacy.320
Because of its non-colonial background, Turkey was one step ahead of the
Arab states in the process of modernization. The period from the end of Abdulhamid’s
reign until the foundation of the secular nation-state of Turkey was experienced by
Arabs in the interwar period. Intellectual disputes in the Ottoman Empire about the
preferences for Ottomanism, pan-Islamism, or pan-Turkism were seen in the interwar
period among Arab intellectuals either to support separatism or pan-Arabism. After
the Independence Struggle, Mustafa Kemal decided to implement a realist Anatolian-
Turkish nationalism limited to the existing territory after WWI. However, Arab
politics was, on the one hand moving towards building nation-states similar to
Kemalism, with Egypt returning to the Pharaohs and Lebanon to the Phoenicians, and
on the other hand pursuing a pan-Arabism similar to the utopic pan-Turanism of the
Young Turks. 321 Over time Arab nationalism evolved. Lebanese, Syrian, and
Egyptian nationalisms emerged in the interwar period, but pan-Arabism became the
dominant ideology among both intellectuals and the masses after the foundation of
Israel in 1948.322 The creation of a Jewish state in the middle of the Arab nations
created psychological pressure on the Arabs and was seen as another level of Western
colonialism.323
While nationalism became the main ideology of the modern Middle East,
Islamism also played a crucial role in its formation. As Nikki Keddie asserts in her
seminal article “Pan-Islamism as Proto-Nationalism," Islamism played an essential
role in the formation of Middle Eastern nationalism:

320
Burke III, “Orientalism and World History,” 492.

321
Keddie, “Intellectuals in the Modern Middle East,” 52.

322
Ibid., 49.

323
Ibid., 52.

92
 “Pan-Islam gave a new nationalist emphasis to the ideas of solidarity and
cultural superiority found in traditional Islam. Drawing on traditional mass
sentiment, Pan-Islam thus included several features that later went into local
nationalisms: hostility to the West, and particularly to Western conquest and
exploitation; identification with a glorious age in the past, specifically with an
age that was seen as having both "modem" institutions and military prowess;
statements of the superiority of the indigenous culture, in this case Islam, to all
others; and an appeal to both conservatives and liberals for the common goals
of unity and strength. All of these features find analogies in other nationalisms,
and all are found again in the local nationalisms which gained strength in the
Middle East as Pan-Islam declined. Not only Afghani, but several of the early
Iranian, Egyptian, and Arab nationalists and many Pan-Turkists were
simultaneously Pan-Islamists.”324

When it comes to Islamism, it continued to play a secondary but still important

role in Middle Eastern politics. However, compared to the time of the Ottoman
caliphate Islamism had lost its unity as new types of understanding emerged, such as
Wahhabi Islamism led by Saudi Arabia, which was founded in 1932. In the twentieth
century, Sunni Islamism was mostly represented by the Muslim Brotherhood founded
by Hasan al-Banna in Egypt in 1928, which became the umbrella term for different
sub-groups with sometimes conflicting agendas, such as Tanzim al-Jihad (Jihad
Organisation) and Al-Takfir wal-Hijra (Atonement and Emigration), of which the
latter was responsible for the assassination of president Anwar el-Sadat in 1981.
People like Ayman al-Zawahiri (second to Usama Bin Laden) come from this type of
organization.325 This group will be evaluated in detail in the subsequent parts.
Secondly, struggles over the propaganda and discussion about the nature of
the caliphate during the Hamidian period turned into an ongoing conflict. In addition
to the separatist Arab revolt, shifting the caliphate from the House of Osman to the
Hashemite family was an important motivation for the revolt of Sharif Husayn of
Mecca and his son Abdullah with the British support. He eventually achieved this goal
when the caliphate was abolished by the Turks themselves, 326 however that caliphate

324
Keddie, "Pan-Islam as Proto-Nationalism,” 26.

325
Mozaffari, “What is Islamism?” 25.

326
Teitelbaum, “Taking Back the Caliphate,” 412.

93
did not play the same role as had the Ottoman Empire. Together with the foundation
of Saudi Arabia in 1932, it began to represent an alternative religious understanding
and with oil revenues, financially supported the similar Wahhabi branch of Islamist
groups.327
The third group is the Shiite branch of Islamism that mostly began to increase
with Khomeini in the 1960s and took its place among the other Islamists after the
1979 Revolution. Unlike in the Ottoman Empire and Egypt where religious authority
was bound to the state, in Qajar Iran (1796-1926) religious authority was a sovereign
institution.328 In terms of politics, similar to the collaboration between the Islamist
and secular-nationalist Young Turks, in the 1906 Constitutional Revolution the Shia
ulema reacted to the absolutist monarchy with the liberal-nationalists and were
motivated by anti-imperialist feelings. This relation with liberal-nationalists was not
an ideological rapprochement.329 Until Khomeini, the principle motivation of Shia
Islamism was the protection of the privileges of the previous period in Iranian
territory. Their reactions to political and social events were shaped by this
motivation. 330 Since the transformation of Shia Islamism corresponds to the later
period, it will not be evaluated in the context of this thesis in a detailed manner.

4.1.3. Indian Muslims and the Khilafat Movement (1918-1924)

As mentioned above, from the collapse of Mughal rule in 1857 onward, Indian
Muslims focused on the Ottoman caliphate as the symbol of Islam’s worldly power.
Despite the conditions that the Ottoman Empire had to confront, including the heavy
burdens of the defeat in WWI and the fact that Islamism had been replaced with

327
Mozaffari, “What is Islamism?” 25.

328
Sami Zubaida, Islam, Halk ve Devlet, (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1994), 103.

329
Ibid., 105.

330
Ibid., 104.

94
nationalism for the majority of Muslim intellectuals, Indian Muslims continued to
believe in pan-Islamism. They believed that if the Ottoman Empire lost its
independence, Muslims “would become like Jews—a mere religious sect whose
kingdom was gone.” 331 For the Indian Muslims under British rule, the Ottoman
Empire’s sovereignty and integrity were of vital importance.
When the Allied powers threatened the existence of the institution of the
caliphate, Indian Muslims decided to support the Ottoman Empire. They organized
around the Khilafat Committee and demanded the survival of the Ottoman state and
the protection of the holy places. In addition to Muslims, due to the anti-British nature
of the organization it also had support from non-Muslim Indians and turned into a
movement that united people all over India with a sincere “enthusiasm and capacity
to suffer and sacrifice for their cause.” The leader of the Indian National Congress,
Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948), joined the central committee of the All Indian
Muslim League.332 Although this movement failed to achieve its purpose, it opened
the way for the national independence of the Indian people. It broke the reliance on
the British authority, and Indians learned to rely on their own power and unity.333
The first concrete step of the Khilafat Movement (1918-1924) was the
foundation of the All India Muslim League in Delhi in 1918. The main objective of
the League was to create public pressure on Britain. In 1919, the movement reached
its peak point and was governed by a central committee with adequate funding. This
movement was also supported by the Turcophile living in Europe. In this way, Indian
Muslims started to put pressure on British rule from both inside and outside. The
primary feature of the movement compared to other Islamist movements is that it was
a passive resistance movement, not a military one. This was also the prerequisite for
the support of non-Muslim Indians. They wrote petitions and sent representatives to

331
M. Naeem Qureshi, “The Indian Khilafat Movement," (1918-1924) Journal of Asian History 12,
No. 2 (1978): 153. Directly quoted from Valentine Chirol.

332
Ibid., 153-154.

333
Abdul Rauf, “The British Empire and the Mujāhidīn Movement in the N.W.F.P. of India, 1914-
1934,” Islamic Studies 44, No. 3 (Autumn 2005): 411.

95
the British authorities to express the demands of the Indian Muslims and organized
mass meetings. Those representative groups led by Ağa Han (1919), Muhammed Ali
Jinnah (1919), Muhammed Ali (1920), and Hasan İmam (1921), were the most critical
envoys. In this passive resistance, all Indians including non-Muslims boycotted
British rule in many aspects such as refusing to do military service and pay taxes.
Furthermore, they financially supported the independence struggle in Turkey led by
Mustafa Kemal with grants collected from the population.334
However, none of the attempts managed to deter the British from their
decision about the future of the Ottoman Empire. When the peace conditions for the
Ottoman Empire were declared in the Sevres Treaty (1920), Indians reacted in two
ways. One group known as the Indian Hijrat Movement proclaimed that the Indian
land had become Darul Harb, i.e., meaning it was impossible to perform the principles
of the religion, and immigrated to Afghanistan. The second group continued to
perform the same passive resistance. However, after the departure of Gandhi, the
movement lost the support of non-Muslim Indians, though it still effectively continued
until the abolition of the caliphate in 1924.335
After the success of the Independence Struggle in Turkey, Indian Muslims
turned their attention from the Ottoman Dynasty to Mustafa Kemal. They recognized
Abdülmecid Efendi, who was the last caliph after the separation of the caliphate and
the sultanate, and proclaimed Mustafa Kemal as the savior of the caliphate (Müncî-i
Hilafet). After the abolition of the caliphate in March 1924, different views emerged
among the leaders of the movement. The Ali brothers wanted to open the issue of the
abolition of the caliphate for discussion. Mevlana Azad proposed to offer the post of
caliph to Mustafa Kemal. Muhammed Ikbal did not see any problem with the policy
of the Ankara government and proposed to take it as an example for the Indian
Muslims. Finally, when Muhammed Ali Jinnah became the head of the All Indian

334
M. Naeem Qureshi, “Hindistan Hilâfet Hareketi,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi vol.18
( İstanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 1998).

335
Ibid.

96
Muslim League and turned the agenda of the movement to the independence of Indian
Muslims, this movement further diffused.336
Finally, according to the famous Turkish author Halide Edip (1883-1964), the
Khilafat Movement had "two curiously contradictory results in India: that of uniting
the Muslims and Hindus around a common activity; and that of dividing them.”337
The abolition of the caliphate deepened the identity crisis among Indian Muslims,
which emerged as a result of colonization, moral degeneration, and rapid change.
Therefore, Muslim thinkers turned to search for an alternative political framework
under the new conditions, and in the following years many of them came with
proposals of an Islamic state which was theoretically universal and practically modern
nation-state limited to a geographical place.338
The Indian Khilafat Movement was the result of strong pan-Islamist
sentiments that had existed since the 1860s. When it comes to the nature of the
movement, it was similar to the revivalist movements of the eighteenth century led by
Wali Allah, and to the Sarekat-Islam and the Muhammadiyya movements of
Indonesia in the twentieth century.339 As mentioned in the subchapter on Revivalism,
the revivalist movements of the nineteenth century emerged mainly in the periphery
where the state was inadequate to maintain the religion. Similar to that, this large-
scale movement had emerged to support the caliphate as the last hope of Muslims
where it was unable to protect its existence. Compared to other Islamists movements,
the pragmatic character of the Young Ottomans or Abdulhamid in terms of Islamism
did not exist in the agenda of this movement. As far as the primary concerns of the
movement are considered, it can be said that while Islamism was in decline in other
parts of the Muslim World, it was still influential in all levels in this region.

336
Ibid.

337
Qureshi, “Hindistan Hilâfet Hareketi,” 166.

338
Elisa Giunchi, “The Political Thought of Abul A’la Mawdudi,” Il Politico 59, No. 2 (Aprile-Giugno
1994): 350.

339
Qureshi, “Hindistan Hilâfet Hareketi,” 153.

97
 After the abolition of the caliphate and the adoption of Turkish nationalism
limited to Anatolia, Hindu-Muslim cooperation collapsed, and the old rivalries in the
community re-emerged. For Indian Muslims, pan-Islamism played an essential role
in the formation of the national character. The movement had a dual nature that first
aimed to maintain the sovereignty and power of the Muslim community, and secondly
to sustain the security of the Muslim community in India.340 However, although this
movement failed to achieve its objectives, it opened the way for a different Islamist
policy. Passing through various levels of Islamism, Indian Muslims realized that the
solution was neither universal pan-Islamism nor nationalism, and it was according to
a “multi-national neo-pan-Islamist” policy developed by Mohammed Iqbal (1877-
1938) that Pakistan emerged.341

4.2. Actors

In this part of the fourth chapter I will analyze four different intellectuals:
Muhammed Abduh, Said Nursi, Hasan el-Benna, and Sayyid Abu al-A’la Mawdudi.
Similar to the regional division of the previous part, I chose these names from three
major countries of the post-Ottoman Muslim World.

4.2.1. Muhammed Abduh (1849-1905)

Muhammed Abduh was one of the most prominent Islamist intellectuals and
was highly influential on the Islamism of his time in the Muslim World and also on
the Islamism of the modern Muslim World. The intellectual thought of Abduh had an
effect on a wide range of intellectuals in the Ottoman Empire, including most of the
writers of the Sırat-ı Müstakim and Sebilürreşad journals, some of the writers of the
Islam Mecmuası that later became nationalist, and even Westernists in the journal of

340
Qureshi, “Hindistan Hilâfet Hareketi,” 154-155.

341
Ibid., 168.

98
Ictihat such as Abdullah Cevdet and Celal Nuri.342 Abduh advocated for an Islamic
state and society that would rely on the basic principles of Islam but also be flexible
enough to cooperate with the necessities of the modern state and economic system
without any compromise. Similar to most Islamists, he appreciated the successes of
European civilization and was profoundly affected by Auguste Comte and Herbert
Spencer.343
Muhammed Abduh had a medrese background and a mastery of religious
issues, which is why he was seen as the leading figure of Islamism together with
Afghani. In his childhood Abduh was encouraged by his father to pursue education,
but on his first attempt he quit the medrese because of its repetitiousness and returned
to his village. After his return he met Shaykh Darvish, who reignited his interest in
learning. From this time onward, he pursued education through extra-curricular
courses such as mathematics and logic. After his meeting with Afghani in Cairo in
1871, he began to deal with social and political issues and became the mentee of
Afghani. 344 After their exile upon the Urabi Revolt in 1881, they embarked on a
productive collaboration through the journal of al-Urwa al-Wuthqa in Paris in
1884.345 In 1885, their relationship began to deteriorate, and Abduh left Afghani. This
separation also led to a methodological distinction among them. As Hourani states,
“Al-Afghani came from some distant place not to be determined with certainty, and
passed like a meteor from one country to another.” Therefore, compared to his master,
Abduh became a more systematic thinker.346
Abduh was the founder of the school of Islamic modernism that reopened old
discussions from the Sunni tradition such as the Mu’tazilite understanding that is open

342
Özervarlı, “Muhammed Abduh.”

343
Zubaida, Islam, Halk ve Devlet, 32.

344
Özervarlı, “Muhammed Abduh.”

345
Landau, The Politics of Pan-Islam, 25.

346
Hourani, Arabic Thought, 130.

99
to a discussion the Ayahs and Hadith that seem to be contradictory with rational
thinking. Abduh tried to prove the congruity of Islamic understanding with modern
sciences and modern principles. 347 As a result of the increase in the attacks of
orientalists parallel to the imperial expansionism of the 1880s, Abduh had an
apologetic demeanor compared to his confident attitude until the middle of the
1880s.348
Instead of political activism, Abduh was an important agent in the teaching
and interpretation of Islam. His interest in daily politics diminished over time because
of his interpretation of current events that created the necessity to be in good relations
with the British in Egypt. His main idea was that “Islamic values had been eroded, but
the Muslims themselves were at fault; regeneration of the early unadulterated Islam
would restore its pristine character and enable it to compete successfully with
European values.” He understood that the realization of the existing pan-Islamic idea
of a united Muslim state was not possible. He believed in a slower but more successful
methodology, which is education reform within the limits of Islamic religious and
social reforms.349
For the sake of his long-term plan he implemented a pragmatic attitude. After
his return from exile, he began to seek British support for the realization of his
reforms. Like Afghani in order to confront the despotic regimes and gain support for
educational reform he joined a Masonic Lodge, but he left after a short time since they
did not react to colonialism.350 Because of the changing conditions of different parts
of the Muslim world, Afghani started to focus on local dynamics, even though his
ideas were theoretically universal. In one article translated by Mehmet Akif, Abduh
advocated the priority of the national existence and gave a secondary role to pan-

347
Keddie, “Intellectuals in the Modern Middle East,” 47-48.

348
Landau, The Politics of Pan-Islam, 27.

349
Ibid., 25.

350
Özervarlı, “Muhammed Abduh.”

100
Islamism.351 This idea distinguished him from his contemporaries and made him a
transitional actor between the Islamism of the time of the Ottoman Empire and the
Islamism of the modern Middle East.
In terms of the caliphate, although in his early writings Abduh saw the
existence of the Ottoman Caliph as the prerequisite of the political independence of
the Muslims,352 his views changed later. According to Abduh, "Islam was corrupted
by its rulers: intellectual anarchy spread among Muslims, under the protection of
ignorant rulers.” He strongly disagreed with the Abu’l-Huda, Abdulhamid’s main
adviser on Islamism, on his conservatism about religious issues.353 As mentioned in
the chapter about Abdulhamid, this conservatism was mainly based on obedience to
the Caliph. In his political writings Abduh advocated the dominance of the
consultation (meşveret) and the law as opposed to the despotic rule of the Muslim
leaders.354 According to Hourani, Abduh “was no less opposed to the autocracy of the
Khedive than to foreign intervention.”355
Furthermore, similar to Blunt’s claim about the nature of the caliphate, Abduh
stressed the spiritual and symbolic role of the caliphate. He interpreted pan-Islamism
as religious-social unity instead of political unity, that provided cohesion, solidarity,
and support among Muslim populations. By asserting the religious, ethnic, and
sectarian differences in the Muslim lands, he did not support the centralization of
power.356 According to Abduh, the caliph had to have the respect of the Muslims to
provide spiritual unity, not to rule them. There should be a chief of the Egyptian nation

351
Kara, İslamcılık Düşüncesi I, 28.

352
Deringil, “Legitimacy Structures,” 355.

353
Hourani, Arabic Thought, 151.

354
Özervarlı, “Muhammed Abduh.”

355
Hourani, Arabic Thought, 157.

356
Özervarlı, “Muhammed Abduh.”

101
under the religious sovereignty of the caliphate. This is a system that did not contradict
the existence of nation-states.357
What makes Abduh the key actor in modern Islamism is the role of his
reformation and methodology on modern Islamism. Compared to the activism of
Afghani, Abduh had a profound effect on other Islamists. Firstly, his closest follower,
Reşid Rıza, after the death of his master and under the conditions of World War I
came to a more strict Salafist line and rejected any version of Western modernization.
This line would later trigger the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood. Secondly,
Abduh’s reformism that projects the synthesis of Islamic thought with modern though
was pursued by the scholars of the al-Azhar, especially Mohammad Farid Wajdi
(1878-1954), Mustafa al-Maraghi (1881-1945), Mustafa Abd al-Raziq (1885-1947),
etc. Thirdly, there was also a nationalist group that transformed his localism into
nationalism, and a group that turned his moderate attitude toward the West into
“radical laic modernism.”358

4.2.2. Said Nursi (1877-1960)

Said Nursi is an important name in the evaluation of Islamism from the

Hamidian period to the 1950s. In his long life, he experienced politically and
sociologically different periods, and he preserved his Islamist attitude until his death.
What makes him an actor in this chapter is his position in modern Turkey compared
to other Islamists. In the context of Turkey, the concept of Islamism was also used to
denominate new type of intellectuals including Necip Fazıl Kısakürek (1904-1983),
Sezai Karokoç (1933- ), and Nurettin Topçu (1909-1975). However, the Islamism of
these names was a conceptual similarity. They cannot be evaluated in the same context
as the Islamism that had evolved since the 1860s.359 Said Nursi can be evaluated in

357
Hourani, Arabic Thought, 156.

358
Özervarlı, “Muhammed Abduh.”

359
İlhan Kutlular, “İslamcılık,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi Vol. 23 (İstanbul: Türkiye
Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 2001.)
102
accordance with the previous context, however in this part Nursi’s life during the
Republican period will be considered.
Said Nursi was born in 1877 in the village of Nurs in Bitlis province in a
mostly Sunni Muslim, ethnically Kurdish environment. His family was known for
their piety and most of his brothers and sisters had a reputation for their religious
knowledge. Nursi started his education at the age of nine and received his diploma at
the age of 14 after passing through several medreses in Eastern Anatolia with a good
reputation for intelligence and comprehension. In 1907 he came to Istanbul to find
funding for the university he intended to open in Eastern Anatolia with both a religious
and a scientific curriculum but he failed to find funds. In the meantime, he joined the
Constitutional revolution and was jailed for his participation in the 31st March
Incident. He was released upon his defense which was latter published as Divan-ı
Harbi Örfi. In 1910 he returned to Van and for one year he visited different cities in
Eastern Anatolia and Syria. The speech that later became one of his most famous
books, Damascus Sermon (1911), was delivered in this period. In June 1911 he joined
Sultan Mehmed Reşad’s Balkan journey and managed to get the necessary funds for
his university project upon the cancellation of a university project in Kosovo after
Balkan wars.360
He returned to Van to realize his project but upon the outbreak of World War
I, he joined the war as a regimental commander to soldiers that were mostly made up
of his students. In 1916 he was captured by the Russians and sent to Kosturma
province in Western Russia as prisoner of war. In 1918, he escaped and returned to
Istanbul. Although Nursi was politically active in Istanbul between 1918 and 1922,
he began to adapt a new Islamist methodology in the social and political life in this
period. In 1922 he went to Ankara after being invited but when he realized that the
new political environment was not proper for Islamic services in April 1923 he
returned to Van as “the New Said” (as Said Nursi named himself). However, the
Shaykh Said Revolt in 1925 led the Ankara government to feel threatened by the
power of Said Nursi and he was exiled to Western Anatolia. The rest of his life passed

360
Şükran Vahide and Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi, Islam in Modern Turkey: An Intelectual Biography of
Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005.)

103
in exile in Burdur, Isparta, Eskişehir, Denizli, Afyon, and Kastamonu. A few months
before his death he went to Urfa, and on 23 March 1960 he died there.361
During the Independence Struggles, like most Islamists, Said Nursi had
friendly relations with the Ankara government. 362 After several invitations, in
November 1922 he went to Ankara but he perceived the general political trend to be
a threat to religion.363 He dealt with this trend through the publication of two books
about atheism, Zeyl’ül-Zeyl (1923) and Hubab (1923), and made a speech in
parliament about personal religious obligations.364 He wanted to pursue the agenda of
the previous period but the secular reforms, especially on education, forced him to
transform his methodologies. 365
In the beginning of the Kemalist period, Said Nursi realized that the problem
of society existed at the micro level and could not be solved through political and
institutional transformations. For him skepticism and the positivist philosophy were
the main dangers to religion and consequently to society, so raising Islamic
consciousness should be the primary concern.366 In this period he tried to compose an
Islamic map of meaning and a mode of thinking on the individual level for Muslims
to protect the faith, which was directly contradicted by the epistemology of the
Kemalist elites who wanted to create a new society and state.367

361
Ibid.

362
Nursi, Asar-ı Bediyye, 103.

363
Said Nursi, Lemalar, (İstanbul: RNK Neşriyat, 2016.), 215.

364
Vahide and Abu-Rabi, Islam in Modern Turkey, 168.

365
Ibid., 172.

366
Hakan Yavuz, “Towards an Islamic Liberalism? The Nurcu Movement and Fethullah Gülen,”
Middle East Journal 53, No. 4 (Autumn, 1999): 588

367
Ibid., 586-589.

104
 Contrary to the new type of social cohesion under Kemalist rule, Said Nursi
gave priority to the awakening of the individual as a member of a community, not as
a part of a political order.368 Nursi’s methodology fits with Mevlana Halid Baghdadi’s
(1776-1827) Revivalism, mentioned in the second chapter of the thesis.369 What Said
Nursi wanted was the renewal of traditional Muslim ways of life and personal
relations within the new industrial society.370 In this process he relied on the lower
classes, contrary to the elitism of previous Islamists like Afghani and Abduh.371 Şerif
Mardin writes that the failure of Kemalism was to leave unanswered questions in the
lower part of society and this failure increased Nursi’s power in the lower classes of
the Turkish society.372
Contrary to his active involvement in political life during the Ottoman Empire,
Nursi refrained from active politics and only concentrated on religious affairs. In this
period his agenda was reduced to the protection of the daily practices of Islam or the
belief system in spite of the state’s policies. He did not intervene in political power
but attempted to increase the religiosity of the population while attacking materialism,
which constitutes the base of Kemalist positivism.373 Moreover, while the regime was
looking to create a homogenous society that included even the Turkification of
religious practices, Nursi advised people to perform religion as an individual or a
community, not as a part of a political order.374 That is to say, his actions created

368
Mardin, Said Nursi Olayı, 166.

369
Hamid Algar, “The Centennial Renewer: Bediüzzaman Said Nursi and the Tradition of “Tajdid,”
Journal of Islamic Studies 12, No. 3 (September 2001): 291-311.

370
Mardin, Said Nursi Olayı, 29.

371
Dale F. Eickelman, "Qur’anic Commentary, Public Space, and Religious Intellectuals in the
Writings of Said Nursi,” The Muslim World (1999, 89): 265.

372
Mardin, Said Nursi Olayı, 270.

373
Ibid., 71.

105
resistance toward a perceived threat, which indirectly touched the political agenda of
Kemalism.
The writings of Said Nursi reached the broader population after 1950 with the
removal of the ban on his Risale-i Nur.375 However, Nursi’s ideas was not accepted
by the population as a part of the pan-Islamism. In his new methodology Nursi
integrated his ideas to both the newly created culture imposed by the state and the
heritage of the Turkish society.376As the culmination of his experiences, Said Nursi
created faith-based activism, which is based on the spread of the Islamic faith among
individuals without any political agenda. It became neither Sufism, which
concentrates on spirituality, nor political Islam, which concentrates on institutional
transformation.377
In the last phase of his life, Said Nursi accepted the dynamics of the modern
world and limited his agenda to the preservation of the faith instead of political
institutions. By the end of his life he did not support Islamist political organizations.
In a letter in the Emirdağ Lahikası II, he explains that since the religiosity of society
decreased, any attempt in the name of Islamic unity would lead religion becoming an
instrument for the politics, instead of the reverse, and it would lead to hypocrisy.378
Through this reasoning, he did not support Islamist parties but rather the Democrat
Party (DP), which was relatively more democratic and liberal than the RPP. He
appreciated the religious sensitivity of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Islamist
journals like Sebil’ür-Reşat and Büyük Doğu in Turkey, but his agenda differed from

374
Ibid., 166.

375
Ibid., 18.

376
Ibid., 48.

377
Zeynep Akbulut Kuru and Ahmet T. Kuru, “Apolitical Interpretivism of Islam: Said Nursi’s Faith
Based Activism in Comparison with Political Islamism and Sufism,” Islam and Christian-Muslim
Relations 19/1, (Sep. 2010): 100

378
Said Nursi, Emirdağ Lahikası II, (İstanbul: RNK Neşriyat, 2016), 168.

106
theirs mainly in political issues.379 There is an enormous change in the dynamics of
social and political life from the 1910s to 1950s; in the former Islam is the almost
unquestioned basis of the state, while in the latter it is laicism.
In an environment in which Islam became one option among many, Said Nursi
aimed to create a map of meaning for Muslims to protect their belief. Although Nursi’s
approach toward politics are criticized by some traditional scholars and Islamists,
Nursi has begun to be appreciated as a pioneer in contemporary secular issues among
Islamists.380
What makes Said Nursi a crucial actor in the transition from the Ottoman
Empire to the contemporary Middle East is the evolution of his Islamist methodology
in the new secular nation-state. In the last period of the Ottoman Empire, Said Nursi
aimed to establish a university, and joined in the political struggles. However, after
the foundation of the Turkish Republic he directed his aim to the revival of the Islamic
faith in Turkish society, instead of political reforms. In this period many Islamists
either left the country or had to reconcile with the Kemalist government. This
methodological change by Said Nursi shows us the rupture in the long period of
Islamism from the 1860s to the contemporary Middle East by showing one of the
reactions of Islamism to the secular state.

4.2.3. Hasan El-Benna (1906-1949)

Hasan El-Benna was one of the most influential Islamists of the twentieth
century. The organization that he founded in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan
AlMuslimin), is seen as the beginning of modern Islamism, together with the Jamaati
Islami founded by Mawdudi in Pakistan in 1941.381 Hasan El-Benna received his first
education from his father, then enrolled in a traditional medrese and latter went to a
high school (i’dâdi) that gave him a modern education. When the Egyptian

379
Metin Karabaşoğlu, Tehlikeli Denemeler, (İstanbul: İz Yayıncılık, 2016), 122.

380
Eickelman, “Said Nursi,” 267.

381
Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, 35.
107
government closed down the i’dâdis, he moved to the teacher high school. In his high
school years he joined different religious organizations and became a member of the
tarikat of Hassafiyye. When he finished high school in 1927, he continued his
education in Cairo. Besides his education, he managed to organize some shaykhs from
Al-Azhar, including Yusuf ed-Dicvi (1870-1946), Abd al-Aziz Jawish (1876-1929),
and Rashid Rida (1865-1935) to act against British imperialism and, consequently,
toward the corrupt rulers. With the people gathered around him, he founded the
Muslim Brotherhood in 1928. He continued his activities in Ismailiyye where he was
appointed as a schoolteacher, and the center of the organization was in Islamiliyye
until 1933. After a few years, the movement was able to reach to people from different
social levels.382
After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, British colonial power led to the
Westernization and secularization of the educated class in Egypt. This secular trend
gradually decreased the role of Islamic laws and institutions, and traditional values.383
Under these conditions, the organization had three main objectives: “social renewal
based on Islamic values, the long-term implementation of traditional Islamic law, and
ending foreign occupation of Muslim lands.”384 It focused on the establishment of
different institutions, schools for children’s education, factories and other economic
infrastructure, and medreses that gave traditional education. To increase the
intellectual and material level of Muslims, a wide range of religious, social,
educational, athletic, and economic activities were supported. 385 In terms of pan-

382
İbrahim El-Beyyûmi Ganim, “Hasan el-Bennâ,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi Vol.16.
(İstanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 1997.)

383
Noman Sattar, “”Al Ikhwan Al Muslimin” (Society of Muslim Brotherhood) Aims and Ideology,
Role and Impact,” Pakistan Horizon 48, No. 2 (April 1995): 9.

384
Ganim, “Hasan el-Bennâ.”

385
Gaub, “Islamism and Islamists,” 2.

108
Islamic appeal, Benna advocated the unification of Muslims through the re-
establishment of the caliphate.386
In terms of his position among other Islamists, Benna’s methodology may be
evaluated in relation to previous Islamists such as Afghani, Vahhab,387 Abduh, and
Reşih Rıza.388 However, it is hard to make a connection with a specific Islamist to
compare with Benna. The agenda, discourse, and methodology of the Muslim
Brotherhood was a summery of the agenda of the Islamists since the 1860s. It is an
amalgamation of the previous Islamists’ methodologies reshaped according to new
conditions of Egypt.
Similar to the nineteenth-century revivalist movements, the Muslim
Brotherhood had a military side because, unlike Turkey, Egypt was still experiencing
the conditions of the nineteenth century. That is, there was still foreign control over
the state. Furthermore, they were closely following the Palestinian issue in the 1940s,
which was perceived as another version of Western domination. During the Arab-
Israeli War upon the declaration of independence by Israel on 15 May 1948, the
Muslim Brotherhood declared jihad toward Israel. This military action created
discontent among the Western Powers, and their ambassadors in Cairo forced the
government to disperse the movement. The government agreed, and confiscated all
its assets with the pretext of attempting to rebel against the state, in December 1948.
After 20 days Prime Minister Mahmoud an-Nukrashi Pasha was killed by a young
member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and in February 1949 Benna was possibly
assassinated by the state. From that time onward, the Muslim Brotherhood continued
to play an important role both in Egyptian politics and in the Islamic World.389

386
Ganim, “Hasan el-Bennâ.”

387
Sattar, “Al Ikhwan Al Muslimin,” 8.

388
Zubaida, Islam, Halk ve Devlet, 91.

389
Ganim, İbrahim El-Beyyûmi. “İhvân-ı Müslimîn.” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi
vol.20. (İstanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 2000.)

109
 According to Benna, like other Islamists, the main reason for the weakness of
Egypt, and the wider Muslim World, was the weaknesses of Muslims’ ties with
religion, and the political and cultural imperialism of the West. With a Salafi
discourse, he urged a return to the sources of religion and the elimination of the bid’ats
(innovations) that entered the religion over the course of history. Unlike the elitism of
the Islamists before World War I, Benna wanted to implement this return to the
original Islamic principles by penetrating to the lower classes of the population.390
When the social and political conditions of Egypt and Turkey for the Islamists
are considered, we can see that Benna’s willingness to appeal to the lower class is
very similar to Said Nursi. Because of the existence of the British authority and the
anti-imperialist nature of the movement, Benna confronted the state authority. On the
other hand, since the nature of the state turned into a nationalist-secular state after the
collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Said Nursi also confronted with the state. Although
Nursi did not enter into active politics, since there was no other option, both Nursi and
Benna directed their attention to the lower classes. Moreover, compared to Benna and
Nursi, the Young Ottomans, Afghani, and many others tried to use the power that
emerged from dissatisfactions of the masses. The early Islamists mostly wanted to
win the support of the community on the way to political reformation. They did not
concentrate on changing the masses themselves, such as by educating them,
increasing religious consciousness, or finding immediate solutions to poverty in the
community. Benna and Nursi did not have the pragmatism that I mentioned in the
previous period. Mawdudi had also similar reaction in India during the 1920s, as will
be evaluated below.

4.2.4. Sayyid Abu al-A’la Mawdudi (1903-1979)

Sayyid Abu al-A’la Mawdudi and the Jaamat-i Islami movement that he
founded in 1941, is the other pioneer of Islamism, along with Hasan El-Benna, in the
modern Islamic World. Mawdudi was born in Deccan region of India in 1903 as the
son of a lawyer. Unlike Hasan El-Benna and Said Nursi, he was not raised as a

390
Ganim, “Hasan el-Bennâ.”
110
traditional ulema, but he learned Arabic and Persian at an early age due to his father’s
religious sensitivity, which later allowed him to access Islamic sources. After the
death of his father in 1918, he had to leave his education, and received neither a
medrese nor a modern school degree. Later he started to work as a journalist and at
the age of 20 he was invited to the Jamiat-i Ulama-i Hind (the Association of the
Indian Ulama), which had a close relationship with the Khilafat Movement, to work
as an editor in its journal, al-Jamiah.391 His first involvement in politics corresponds
to these dates. He joined the Khilafat movement, and after the abolition of the
caliphate, like Indian Muslim thinkers he turned his attention to India. In the early
years he supported the Hijrat Movement and also cooperated with the All-India
National Congress. However, due to increasing Hindu propaganda, he could not
continue his relations with the Congress.392
In 1924, a leader of the extreme Hindu movement was murdered by a Muslim
for having insulted the Prophet Muhammad. Gandhi and many other non-Muslim
Hindus criticized Islam for being violent, and most Westernized Muslims took an
apologetic attitude toward the concept of jihad. Mawdudi did not accept this attitude
and his evaluation led him to distinguish himself from both Westernized Muslims and
the traditional ulema.393 He explained jihad in a traditional manner but by skipping
the historical experiences of the Muslim world and referring directly to the days of
the Prophet and the four caliphs.394
Aside from his anti-British manner that gradually turned into total anti-
Westernism, since it was also necessary to respond to the Hindus’ claims stemming
from the conflict that dissolved the Khilafat Movement, Mawdudi concentrated on
proving the superiority of Islam over Western values and explaining what “true” Islam
was. These attempts were in a fertile ground that the Hindu-Muslim cooperation was

391
Eran Lerman, “Mawdudi's Concept of Islam.” Middle Eastern Studies 17, No. 4 (Oct., 1981): 493.

392
Giunchi, “Abul A’la Mawdudi,” 350.

393
Lerman, “Mawdudi," 493.

394
Giunchi, “Abul A’la Mawdudi,” 351.

111
collapsing and the Indian Muslim was looking for an alternative.395 Consequently, he
was accepted as one of the major Muslim thinkers and gained the status of Mawlana
(a religious teacher) among the Indian Muslims. 396 As a result of this reputation,
through Iqbal’s initiative a Waqf including a press was given to Mawdudi. He played
an active role in the discussions concerning the future of the Indian Muslims through
several books and articles published in this press.397
The life of Mawdudi can be evaluated in two periods. In the first phase, from
the 1920s until the Partition in 1947, he did not have any political agenda or aim to
create a concrete political theory. His existing writings on politics were generally
about individual attempts rather than institutional frameworks. The Jamaat-i Islami
movement, which was founded in 1941, did not emerge to gain political power. Until
the Partition, it mostly had the character of a revivalist movement.398
In 1920s, Mawdudi rejected the positive attitude of the Jamiat-i Ulama-i Hind
toward Gandhi’s liberation movement and interpreted it as another passivity of
ulamas in the face of a vital issue. Until the establishment of Pakistan, the main target
of his critiques were the Westernized leaders, especially Jinnah, who turned the
existing religious identity of the Indian Muslims to a national one. He criticized the
call for the Partition of India by the Muslim League, headed by Jinnah, in 1940.
According to Mawdudi: “In India, the Muslims who have had a Western education
are unable to understand this sublime truth (the truly Islamic State); and they are, even
if they chatter about an Islamic state, forced by their mentality and Western culture to
aspire to no more than a national state.”399

395
Ibid., 350.

396
Lerman, “Mawdudi," 493.

397
Ibid., 494.

398
Giunchi, “Abul A’la Mawdudi,” 347-348.

399
Lerman, “Mawdudi," 495.

112
 His revivalist attitude in this period can be seen in his long-term propositions
to societal problems. He criticized both Jinnah’s and Gandhi’s nationalist attitude but
did not offer any alternative solution to the daily issues of India. He based his attitude
on the Prophet’s concentration on the formation of a dedicated Islamic society instead
of looking at the immediate problems of Arabia, such as Byzantine and Persian
imperialism and internal conflicts. Therefore, he claimed the priority of the “re-
creation of a truly Islamic society.” 400 One of his criticisms toward the Khilafat
Movement was that its failure was to expect “so-called Muslims to act like real
Muslims.”401 Similar to Nursi and Benna, he turned focused on the revival of religion
in society as the prerequisite to a bigger change.
After the Partition, Mawdudi created a general framework from the
theological and ethical evaluations of the first period. Since the creation of Pakistan
was based on the Western political system, Mawdudi’s second period is mainly
characterized by criticisms of this political system. In the Partition, the preferences of
the nation-state provided a more concrete short-term basis for the new state compared
to Mawdudi’s seemingly weak conceptualization. From that time onward, Mawdudi
began to be involved in Pakistani politics, and his political theory became more
detailed and systematic. Consequently, in the 1950s the Jamaat-i Islami lost its
revivalist character and actively took its place in political life and joined in the
elections.402
As Elisa Giunchi points out, Mawdudi’s political work should be evaluated on
two levels: “the account of the ideal and idealized Islamic ‘Golden Age,’ and the
detailed and concrete proposals which were designed to respond to the particular
problems of Pakistan, and which found their practical model in the Western political
system.” The proportion of the second part increased after Mawdudi’s active

400
Ibid., 495.

401
Ibid., 493.

402
Giunchi, “Abul A’la Mawdudi,” 348.

113
involvement in politics, especially after the 1956 Constitution, yet his idealism always
existed even if it created an inconsistency with the second part.403

4.3. The Discourse of Contemporary Islamists

In the modern period, Islamism began to be referred to as fundamentalism.

The concept of fundamentalism is used for movements or doctrines that want to
preserve the unity of religion, state, and society and confront the modern secular states
in the Muslim world. Their focuses are on the return to the fundamental sources
(Quran and Hadith) of Islam in the political and social realms. Although it is not
homogenous, in general fundamentalism means the rejection of the political and
jurisdictional norms of the Islamic tradition that were created by Muslim states for
centuries.404 Fundamentalism rejects the conservative ulema that worked with secular
governments and reformers such as Abduh who wanted to integrate Islam into a
modern state and economic system to sustain the “progress” of the Islamic World.405
Similar to the Ottoman Islamists, the content of Islamist discourse remained
selective. Since every movement confronted its own government and regional
conditions, they appealed to the Ayahs and Hadiths that were useful for their concerns.
Although Sunni fundamentalists did not reject the Sunni tradition, since in the
medieval time Sunni ulemas were silent and mostly in favor of the state, modern
Islamists could not find any reference point for them and put aside the Sunni
tradition.406 The refore, the long-lasting discussion of opening religious doctrine for
reinterpretation (Ictihad kapısı) continued in this period.
Although conceptually fundamentalism is a new concept, in terms of returning
to the fundamental sources is not a new one. As explained in the previous parts, the

403
Ibid., 349.

404
Zubaida, Islam, Halk ve Devlet, 76.

405
Ibid., 32

406
Ibid., 40.

114
Islamists of the late Ottoman period also appealed strongly to the discourse of
“returning to the fundamental sources.” However, when the general context is
elaborated, it can be seen that a major change occurred. According to Mehdi
Mozaffari’s definition of Islamism, which covers the modern time, Islamism is “a
regressive ideology which is oriented towards the past (salaf). Islamism’s ideal is the
Medina model under Prophet Muhammad as well as the caliphate of the first four
caliphs (Khulafâ al-Râshidûn).”407 Although the Ottoman Islamists used the same
discourse, their main point of concentration was the future. They used the past
legitimize the future, but the modern Islamist discourse had a strict conceptual return
to the past. In this context, despite their differences modern Islamist like Mawdudi,
Said Nursi, and Hasan El-Benna appear more Islamist in the sense of the definitions
made in the introduction. These Islamists’ main orientation was primarily the
preservation of Islamic thought instead of material survival.
For example, one of the leading names of the Muslim Brotherhood after the
assassination of Benna, Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) who was sentenced to death by the
Egyptian government in 1966, wrote that economic and social worries have only
secondary importance. The aim of jihad cannot be social justice or liberty; the main
objective of jihad is to break the domination of the human being and to eradicate the
period of ignorance (jahiliyyah).408
Economic, military, and political superiority, and the dominant notion of
universal European Civilization based on liberal thought, created a perception that the
modern world is the ultimate achievement of mankind and it provides the set of
criteria for those who want to attain this achievement. Therefore, most Islamists
before World War I had an apologetic manner toward this claim and tried to prove the
conformity of Islam with this set of criteria. This perception was shattered by the two
world wars and Marxism. In this environment Mawdudi, for example, pursued Al-
Ghazali’s (1053-1111) revivalist understanding. Al-Ghazali played an important role
in the preservation of Islamic reasoning while Islamic philosophy was under the

407
Mozaffari, “What is Islamism?” 22.

408
Zubaida, Islam, Halk ve Devlet, 99.

115
effects of the Greek philosophy. Similar to Al-Ghazali refutations of Ibn Sina’s
thought, Mawdudi directed his critic toward Muslim intellectuals such as Sayyid
Ahmad Khan who accepted the superiority of Western civilization. Mawdudi saw the
West as “a sick and declining civilization.”409 According to Mawdudi, if the aim is to
overcome Western political and intellectual dominance, it is not the Islamic traditions
that should be transformed. Rather, what is necessary is the reestablishment of Islam’s
basic message. 410 The reconciliatory attitudes of intellectuals had led to the decline of
Islamic morality.411
In addition to the concept of fundamentalism, Salafism is the dominant
concept of the discourse of modern Islamists. It is important to notice that this concept
determines the nature of the movements. Sometimes it is used as an accusation by
equating the movement with radical Islamist terrorist movements like Al-Qaeda.
Salafism is the religious school that is strictly bound to the wording of the
Quran and Hadith, and does not accept any kind of interpretation (te’vil). The concept
means following those who lived during the time of the Prophet. In modern times it
has been used interchangeably with fundamentalism, but it has deeper roots in the
Islamic tradition. It found suitable ground under the Hanbali school of Sunni Islam,
and it was transformed into a systematic thought by Ibn Taymiyyah (1268-1328). Its
main rejection was directed toward the Mutezilite understanding, which tries to prove
religious principles through rational reasoning, and some extreme Sufi
understandings.412 However, since in modern times conceptual meaning of Salafism
and its common usage is different, describing Islamist groups with this concept is
leading to the conceptual confusions.
As mentioned before, from the beginning almost all Islamist actors used Salafi
discourse to legitimize their critiques and their solutions to the problems of the

409
Lerman, “Mawdudi," 504.

410
Ibid., 496.

411
Ibid., 494.

412
M. Sait Özervarlı, “Selefiyye,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi Vol.36 (İstanbul: Türkiye
Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 2009.)
116
Muslim World. They mentioned the divergence from the true Islam that was lived in
the Asr-ı Saadet (days of the Prophet). Instead of conscious belief, imitation had
increased among the Muslims. Instead of the true principles of Islam, the ideas of
scholars had been considered. The Sufi groups had lost the essence of the religion and
kept Muslims from performing the real Islam. Since this Islamist discourse was very
close to Ibn Taymiyyah's discourse, most Islamists, including Muhammed Abduh,
Reşid Rıza, Hasan El-Benna, and Mawdudi, were seen as Salafis.
All Islamists used a variant of the Salafi discourse, however, except for some
exceptions like Mawdudi, Benna, and Nursi, most Islamists, including Namık Kemal,
Abduh (who was criticized of being quasi-mutezilite in his time),413 and Afghani, were
not Salafis in terms of returning to the fundamental sources of Islam. As mentioned
in the chapter on intellectual Islamism, returning to the asr-ı saadet was the only
option to convince the masses of the religiosity of their proposal in front of traditional
Islam. As Ismail Kara points out, although nineteenth-century Islamists talked about
returning to the past, their main concern was the present and to find immediate
solutions to existing problems. They relied mostly on the concept of “progress," which
was part of Darwin’s theory of evolution.414
However, when calling a movement Salafi, the most crucial point is the sense
in which the word is used. In addition to the points mentioned above, although
Wahhabism was not accepted as a Sunni branch, its members call themselves Salafis
or Muwahhiduns, and consider themselves within the limits of the Sunni tradition.
Because of methodological similarities, several Islamist movements in the Muslim
World have been seen as Wahhabi, such as some Caucasian and Central Asian
independence movements, but this is just a similarity on the discourse.415
The Wahhabi understanding of Islam is rooted in the doctrines of Muhammed
Abdalwahhab (1703-1792) who was influenced by the Hanbali scholar Ibn

413
Keddie, “Intellectuals in the Modern Middle East,” 47-48.

414
Kara, İslamcılık Düşüncesi I, 18.

415
Büyükkara, “Vehhâbîlik.”

117
Taymiyyah. Compared to other branches of Islamism, Wahhabism is more
intransigent and violent.416 Following Ibn Taymiyya’s views, they can perform jihad
even toward Orthodox Muslims if they find them contrary to religious purity. 417
Salafism and Wahhabism, in terms of discourse, rely on the same scholars. According
to Özervarlı, Wahhabism was a literal interpretation of Hanbalism but is a movement
closed to renewals.418 Although on theological grounds it is not far from the Hanbali
understanding, together with the political and regional factors, it becomes a political
movement more than a theological understanding.419
The final point about Islamist discourse in modern time regards their regime
preferences. From the emergence of Islamism in the 1860s, constitutionalism and
parliamentarianism were the major preferences of the Islamist. The Japanese defeat
of Russia, as the only constitutional state in Asia, expanded this interest among the
intellectuals. The revival of the Ottoman constitution in 1908, the Persian
constitutional revolution of 1905-1911, and the Arab parliamentary regimes between
the world wars were the parts of this trend. In the Islamist discourse, after the Second
World War, nationalism (and later pan-Arabism) and socialism emerged as the new
panaceas in the Arab world.420
For the Islamists, the restoration of the caliphate was the first step of the
revival of Islam to rule over the entire world. Although in Shi’a doctrine the Imamate
has legitimacy, Ayatollah Khomeini shared the view of the Sunni Islamists about the
restoration of the caliphate without considering sectarian differences.421 On the other

416
Mozaffari “What is Islamism?” 25.

417
Karpat, The Politicization of Islam, 25.

418
Özervarlı, “Selefiyye.”

419
Büyükkara, “Vehhâbîlik.”

420
Keddie, “Intellectuals in the Modern Middle East,” 48-49.

421
Mozaffari “What is Islamism?” 23.

118
hand, the understanding of the restoration of the caliphate by Reşid Rıza, a Sunni, was
very close to the Khomeini’s doctrine of velayet-i fakih.422

4.4. Conclusion of the Fourth Chapter

In this chapter I analyzed the evolution of Islamism from the Ottoman Empire
to the contemporary Middle East, a time when the nature of the state and the elites
had drastically changed. Contrary to the previous period, the regional and
international context that each new state faced profoundly changed, and therefore I
analyzed the regional and international conditions of three main regions: Turkey,
India, and the Arab World. In accordance with these regions, to show the reaction of
the Islamists to the new conditions, I chose four intellectuals: Muhammed Abduh,
Said Nursi, Hasan El-Benna, and Mawdudi. In analyzing these figures, I first
evaluated them in their local context, then looked at the continuities and ruptures from
the Islamists of the Ottoman Empire, and finally compared the methodology of each
in terms of their reactions to the new conditions. In the last part of the chapter I
analyzed the discourse of contemporary Islamists, mostly in the context of Salafism.
As far as these intellectuals are concerned, I concluded that these Islamists are
still part of a long tradition. When they are compared with the Revivalist movements
of the previous period, Mawdudi, Nursi, and Benna can be evaluated as parts of this
Revivalist tradition. Each of them had a strong agenda and discourse on the
preservation of the faith. Their methodological differences do not stem from
differences in their agendas but from differences in the regional and international
context. In terms of changes and continuities from the previous Islamists, the
methodology of these figures closely resembles the methodology of the Revivalists.
Moreover, since religion had lost its centrality in the contemporary period, the
pragmatism that the Young Ottomans, the Young Turks, and Abdulhamid appealed
to did not exist for these actors. The overall evaluation of the thesis will be made in
the following chapter.

422
Zubaida, Islam, Halk ve Devlet, 52.
119
 CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSION

In this thesis, I answered the questions “What are the commonalities and
divergences between the Islamism of Abdulhamid and that of the intellectuals? What
changed in the contemporary Middle East in the context of Islamism?” In the first and
second chapters of the thesis, the conflict between Abdulhamid’s Islamism and the
Islamist intellectuals of his time were analyzed. In the last chapter, I answered the
question of what changed in the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the
contemporary Middle East. In three chapters, the Islamist intellectuals of the Ottoman
period, Abdulhamid, and the post-Ottoman Islamists were analyzed in terms of their
regional and international conditions, their various actors, and their general
discourses. Although the main comparison centered on the Islamism of Abdulhamid
and the intellectual opposition, I also explored the similarities and differences of the
actors among themselves. In this thesis, in general I created a map of Islamism from
the emergence of Islamism in the 1860s until the 1950s, in which many of the
contemporary Islamist actors like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Jaamati-i Islami, and
the Nurcus emerged.
Many studies about the conflict between Abdulhamid and intellectuals, and
the Islamist intellectuals in particular, concentrate mainly on the conflicts stemming
from the intellectuals’ demands for the constitution and the assembly. Although this
is an important point, it does not give us information about the role of Islamism per
se and the relations of other Islamist actors, like the Revivalists and non-Ottoman
intellectuals, with Abdulhamid. Therefore, I included several Islamist actors in the
discussion of this conflict and showed the role of Islamism in those Islamists’ agenda.
Moreover, most of the political and intellectual actors of the late Ottoman
period showed Islamist features because of the centrality of Islam in the state
institutions and society. When those actors were analyzed comparatively as a whole,

120
I was able to distinguish the role of complementary ideologies like statism, anti-
imperialism, and nationalism. In the contemporary world the majority of Muslims live
in secular nation-states. Therefore, in contrast to earlier Islamists, while analyzing
post-Ottoman Islamist actors there is no problem of identity. The lines between them
are visible. However, at this point the problem becomes the lack of connections while
trying to understand these contemporary actors. In this thesis, I showed the similarities
among them, and the changes and continuities from the Ottoman period to the
contemporary Middle East.
Conceptually Islamism is a Pandora’s Box that covers many different people
and movements from the entire Islamic world since the 1860s. Depending on a
scholar’s perspective, Islamism has been used interchangeably with similar concepts
like pan-Islamism, Ittihad-ı Islam (Union of Muslims), Revivalism, Muslim
modernism, and islamlaşmak (Islamization). Although many researchers limit their
definition of Islamism to one of these concepts, in this thesis I took Islamism in its
broadest sense to cover all Islamist actors that have been analyzed under these
complementary concepts. The actors that were evaluated in this thesis are the Young
Ottomans, the Revivalists, Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, the Islamists of the Second
Constitutional Period, Abdulhamid, pro-state bureaucrats, the Muslim population in
the Ottoman Empire and outside of it, Muhammed Abduh, Said Nursi, Hasan el-
Benna, and Sayyid Abu al-A’la Mawdudi.
Islamism is a modern concept that emerged in the 1860s. After the foundation
of a new international system after the Congress of Vienna (1815), the concept of
Western Civilization began to dominate the intellectual and political life of the
Ottoman Empire. For the Ottoman rulers, being part of the new international system
was the only way to prevent the aggressive policies of Russia, and for Ottoman
intellectuals the application of the principles of Western Civilization was the only way
to reverse the decline of the empire. As a result of this rapprochement, the European
powers demanded reforms in order for the Ottomans to be accepted as a part of the
“concert of Europe,” especially concerning the non-Muslim population. A series of
reforms changed the balance between Muslims and non-Muslims in Ottoman society.
In the emergence of Islamism, the conditions stemming from the Islahat Edict
played important role. Firstly, the Edict removed the official superiority of the Muslim

121
community, which was the last motivation for them in the changing conditions of
Ottoman society. Secondly, the rights given to the non-Muslim subjects increased
their national and political consciousness and led to demands for further rights and, in
the 1860s and 1870s, a series of revolts in the Ottoman periphery, especially in the
Balkans. Thirdly, the Crimean War (1856) stopped Russian military expansion in the
Balkans, causing Russia to turn its focus to pan-Slavic propaganda in the Balkans and
military expansion in the Central Asian Khanates. Russian pan-Slavic propaganda on
the one hand inflamed the revolts in the Balkans, and on the other hand, together with
the general “pan” trend in Europe, increased the consciousness of Muslim intellectuals
about pan-Islamism.
After the unification of Italy and Germany, the Ottoman Empire began to lose
the protection of the Western powers over its territorial integrity. Therefore, during
the 1870s, the Ottoman Empire became vulnerable toward Russian expansionist
policies. By the 1880s, the concept of civilization had developed an aggressive tone
that claimed that Muslims could not be civilized because of racial and religious
obstacles. This discourse was the justification for high imperialism. The concept of
Islamism and the Islamist actors emerged under these conditions.
In terms of Islamist actors, the Young Ottomans, especially Namık Kemal and
Ziya Paşa who are accepted as the pioneers of Islamism, emerged in the 1860s as an
opposition group toward the Tanzimat rulers, Âlî and Fuat Paşas. These intellectuals
wanted to protect the Ottoman and Islamic tradition against the challenges of the
contemporary world. However, according to our findings, the point that some scholars
have used to claim that these intellectuals were Islamist is not sufficient because their
social and political views on reforms were a mixture of traditionalism, reformism,
Westernism, and Islamism. When the Young Ottomans are analyzed only in terms of
Islamism they appear to be Islamists, but from the broader perspective it is clear that
they were also Ottomanist, nationalist, secular, and modernist at the same time. They
used Islamism to legitimize their agenda, mainly by adopting the principles of
Western civilization and finding Islamic equivalents for them, including “adl”
(justice), “biat” (contract of investiture), “icma-ı ümmet” (consensus of the
community), and “meşveret” (consultation).

122
 Moreover, in terms of their relations with the West, similar to almost any
intellectual movement from the 1860s onward, the Young Ottomans had an anti-
imperialist attitude. They were against foreign interference in Ottoman affairs and
expansion in the Muslim world. However, they did not reject the principles of Western
civilization. Finally, concerning the Young Ottomans I concluded that although they
had some features of Islamists, Islamism did not play a central role in their political
and intellectual agenda.
Another Islamist actor that gained strength in this period were the Revivalists
(mujaddadis). In the nineteenth century Khalidi Bagdadi was able to spread his
revivalist understanding in many parts of the Muslim World. It first emerged in the
periphery of the Muslim states where they could not prevent foreign invasions. When
the Muslim states began to lose their Islamic natures, the movements began to
approach the center of the states. Therefore, in terms of their relations with
Abdulhamid, many of the revivalist leaders were subordinate to Abdulhamid’s
Islamist policies.
Discursively the main aim of the Revivalists was to return to the Koran and
the Sunna, but more than twenty Revivalist movements became resistance movements
toward foreign occupations in Central Asia, the Caucasus, India, and North Africa. In
terms of Islamism, the role of the Revivalists was to mobilize the Muslim populations
and bring them to the political arena. They mainly used the power of these masses to
resist invasion and oppose Western-style reforms. It is also possible that the masses
to whom the Young Ottomans appealed are the same masses mobilized by the
Revivalists. Moreover, the proto-nationalist sentiment mentioned by Nikki Keddie
may have been driven by the mobilization of the masses by the Revivalists.
When the main motivations are considered, Islam played a more central role
in the agenda of the Revivalist movements compared to the pragmatism of other
actors. When the strong Muslim states were discredited by foreign powers and the
remaining or new elites did not have legitimacy in front of the population, the
Revivalists turned their attention to the masses and pursued religious renewal.
Although during the time of the Ottoman Empire they were not so influential, when
the discourse and methodology of el-Benna, Mawdudi, and Nursi are analyzed, it is
clear that they applied this revivalist methodology.

123
 The third actor of intellectual Islamism is Afghani. He was an influential
personality in many parts of the Muslim World including India, Egypt, and the
Ottoman Empire, not only for Islamists but also for nationalists. According to
Afghani, Muslim societies can be saved from imperial pressure by gaining equal
recognition in the international arena, which is only possible through military and
political revival. For this reason, he attributed great importance to Abdulhamid as a
potential leader of Muslims similar to Germany’s Bismarck and Italy’s Cavour.
Therefore, he wanted to cooperate with the sultan, but he was not welcomed by
Abdulhamid who, because of his suspicious character, held Afghani in Istanbul with
a few symbolic missions. Finally, our findings in the second chapter showed that
Afghani, with his complex Islamist vision, was open to any kind of cooperation with
different actors.
The fourth and last Islamist actor are the Islamists of the Second Constitutional
Period gathered around the journals of Sırat-ı Müstakim, Sebil-ür-Reşad, Beyan’ül-
Hak, and Volkan. Although each member of this group is worth evaluating
individually, because of the limitations of the thesis I analyzed them as a group. As a
result of the strict censorship of the Hamidian regime, like other intellectual groups in
this period Islamists had to shift to non-political issues. Compared to the Young
Ottomans, this situation provided them a deeper perspective concerning religious
renewal. This is why they are seen as the first Islamists. This group of Islamists was
the main actor in the conflict with Abdulhamid. Although Abdulhamid appealed to
Islamism in many aspects of the state apparatus, he prevented any Islamist intellectual
attempt in Ottoman territory, and he only supported Islamist actors outside the
Ottoman Empire. Secondly, members of this group of Islamists were highly
influenced by the principles of Western civilization, especially the notion of
“progress.” Although discursively they mentioned the past, unlike twentieth century
Islamists they never looked back. For them the despotism of Abdulhamid was an
obstacle in the way of the future. Our findings showed that although they tried to
legitimize their attitude through religion, their primary motivations in their conflict
with Abdulhamid were not religious.
In the third chapter of the thesis, I analyzed the Islamism of Abdulhamid,
which mostly served to make Islamic symbols visible everywhere in the empire and

124
to sustain his authority over the Muslim World as the caliph. The Tanzimat reforms
especially after the Islahat Edict created a deep disturbance among the Muslim
subjects, which Abdulhamid wanted to reverse. On the other hand, toward the end of
the nineteenth century the Ottoman sultan was the only leader capable of helping the
Muslims living under the imperialist expansion of the Western Powers. With the
effects of the Revivalists and other Sufi movements, Abdulhamid appealed to the
Muslim population with the title of caliph and used it as a force of deterrence towards
the expansionist powers. Since they had already been excluded from the concert of
Europe, the adoption of Islamist policies was a realist choice.
Although it is widely accepted that Abdulhamid adopted Islamist policies in
many levels of the state, I concluded that Abdulhamid had a pragmatic approach to
the promotion of Islamism because of the conditions of the time. The vision to which
Abdulhamid appealed during his reign was based on the traditional four pillars of the
Ottoman Empire: the religion of Islam, the maintenance of the house of Osman, the
protection of the Haram al-Haramayn, and the maintenance of Istanbul as the capital
city. He appealed to Islamism as far as it served these pillars. This pragmatism can be
seen from the prevention of any Islamist organization in the Ottoman lands, the
incarceration of Afghani in Istanbul despite his goodwill, and the rejection of tributes
to the holy lands sent by Indian Muslims.
Concerning the conflict between Islamist intellectuals and Abdulhamid, it is
concluded that Islamism did not play a central role in this conflict. Moreover, in the
agendas of the Young Ottomans, Abdulhamid, and the Islamists of the Second
Constitutional period, Islamism was not the main objective and its definition was not
the revival of Islam. Constitutionalism, anti-imperialism, and progress were prevalent
in the discourse of these Islamists actors. In the relations between Abdulhamid and
the Islamists, the only actors that had Islamist motivations were the Revivalist
movements and Afghani. Although the Islamists of the Second Constitutional period
promoted Islamism intellectually, in their relations with Abdulhamid their primary
motivation was political.
The primary motivation of the Revivalists was the revival of Islamic
consciousness and the return to a powerful Islam. They emerged where the central
state and the existing elites became unable to protect and unite the Muslim

125
community. Although they had always existed in Caucasia, India, and Central Asia,
their existence became clearly visible when the Muslim states were replaced by
secular nation-states. As illustrated in the fourth chapter, three important Islamists of
the contemporary Middle East, Said Nursi from Turkey, Hasan El-Benna from Egypt,
and Mawdudi from India, pursued the same revivalist methodology in the absence of
a religious state.
Said Nursi first came to Istanbul in 1907 to find funds for his university project
in the Eastern Anatolia. In this period, he began to struggle with political issues. He
was against the despotic rule of Abdulhamid and in the heyday of the revolution he
openly supported the CUP regime. He joined World War I as a benevolent regimental
commander and was captured by the Russians in 1916, returning to Istanbul in 1918.
He continued to be active against the British occupation and supported the Ankara
Government despite the counter-decree of the sultan. However, when he saw the
process of the creation of a secular nation-state and a society compatible with the new
state of the Kemalist regime, Said Nursi gave up the political struggle and began to
concentrate on the reinterpretation of religious principles. What he was doing in terms
of Islamism was discrediting the basis of Kemalist reforms in the lower classes of the
society. Aside from methodological similarities, in his discourse he directly linked
himself to the tradition of Revivalism dating back to the seventeenth century.
Mawdudi emerged in an environment in which Hindu-Muslim cooperation
had collapsed, the spiritual power of the caliphate had disappeared, and Indian Muslim
were looking for an alternative. He came up with a question of what the “true” Islam
was. He aimed to provide a framework for religious revival on the individual level,
not for institutions. Although after Partition in 1947 he gradually created a political
agenda, until that time he applied a revivalist methodology that aimed to revive the
true meaning of Islam.
As the last example I looked at the methodology of Hasan El-Benna, and saw
that he created a new methodology as an amalgamation of different Islamist
methodologies that had emerged since the 1860s. However, the main actor that his
methodology resembled was again the Revivalists. He also wanted to penetrate into
lower classes. Unlike Nursi and Mawdudi, he directly confronted the state authorities
because of British control over Egyptian politics.

126
 What I understood from these three figures is that the Islamist actors of the
late Ottoman period, except for the revivalists, wanted to use the power of the masses
for their political reforms, but they did not want to change or awaken the masses.
However, Benna, Mawdudi, and Nursi aimed for the revival of religion in society.
Finally, in this thesis, I created a map of Islamism in the period of one hundred
years from the 1860s to the 1950s. I showed the similarities and differences among
the different Islamist actors who lived in the same period, and the evolution of these
Islamist actors from one generation to other. I dissipated the fog over the relations of
the Islamist actors, mainly between the intellectuals and Abdulhamid. I summarized
the role of each Islamist actor and positioned them within the broader tradition of
Islamism.
This study was designed according the framework of a master thesis. Since
the topic of the thesis covered a long period and several actors and dynamics, I had to
concentrate on the major points concerning our topic. Therefore, a full description of
the nature of each actor and the evolution of their relations with other actors remained
superficial. Those who were examined under groupings such as the Young Ottomans,
the Islamist of the Second Constitutional Period, and pro-state ulemas, are all worth a
more in-depth examination. For the same reason, I could not concentrate much on the
primary sources of the actors. These were the limitations of our thesis.
However, these limitations opened the way for further studies. First of all,
although our approach provided us with a map of one hundred years of Islamism, the
methodological similarities and differences among Islamist actors should be clarified
with in-depth studies. Secondly, since these actors are well known there are many
biographical studies, however what is lacking is their position in a social, historical,
and theoretical context. The social conditions that created each actor, whether or not
they relied on a tradition in the history of Islam, and a theoretical evaluation of the
concept and the discourse that these actors used in terms of Islamic political thought,
can help us better understand these figures.

127
 REFERENCES

Ahmad, Feroz. "Politics and Islam in Modern Turkey.” Middle Eastern Studies 27,
no.1 (Jan., 1991): 3-21.

Ahmed Cevdet Paşa. Maruzat. Edited by Yusuf Halaçoğlu. İstanbul: Çağrı Yayınları,
1980.

——. Tezakir II. Edited by Cavid Baysun. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu
Basımevi,1986.

Akbulut Kuru, Zeynep and Ahmet T. Kuru. “Apolitical Interpretivism of Islam: Said
Nursi’s Faith-Based Activism in Comparison with Political Islamism and
Sufism.” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 19/1. (Sep. 2010): 99-111.

Algar, Hamid. “The Centennial Renewer: Bediüzzaman Said Nursi and the Tradition
of “Tajdid.”” Journal of Islamic Studies 12. No. 3 (September 2001): 291-311.

Aydın, Cemil. The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in

Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought. New York: Columbia University Press,
2007.

Aydın, Cemil. “Globalizing the Intellectual History of the Idea of the “Muslim
World.”” In Global Intellectual History. Edited By Samuel Moyn and Andrew
Sartori. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.

——. “The Emergence of Transnational Muslim Thought, 1774–1914.” In Arabic

Thought Beyond the Liberal Age: Towards and Intellectual History of the
Nahda. Edited by Jens Hanssen and Max Weiss. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2016.

——. “Imperial Paradoxes: A Caliphate for Subaltern Muslims.” ReOrient. Vol. 1.

No. 2 (Spring 2016): 171-191.

128
——. “İmparatorluk ve Hilafet Vizyonları Arasında Osmanlı’Nın Panislamist İmajı,
1839-1924.” In Türkiye’de İslamcılık Düşüncesi ve Hareketi: Sempozyum
Tebliğleri. Edited by İsmail Kara, and Asım Öz. İstanbul: Zeytinburnu
Belediyesi Kültür Yayınları, 2013.

Berkes, Niyazi. The Development of Secularism in Turkey. London: Hurst&Company,

1998.

——. Türkiye’de Çağdaşlaşma. İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2017.

Burke, Edmund III. “Orientalism and World History: Representing Middle Eastern
Nationalism and Islamism in the Twentieth Century.” Theory and Society 27.
No. 4, (Aug., 1998): 489-507.

Buzpınar, Tufan. “The Question of Caliphate under the Last Ottoman Sultans.” In
Ottoman Reforms and Muslim Regeneration. Edited by Itzchak Weismann and
Fruma Zachs, 17-37. London, New York: Tauris, 2005.

Büyükkara, Mehmet Ali. Çağdaş İslami Akımlar. İstanbul: Klasik, 2015.

——. “Vehhâbîlik.” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi Vol. 42. İstanbul:
Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 2012.

Cambridge Dictionary. “Intellectual.” Accessed June 18, 2019.

[Link]

Chowdhury, Rashed. “Pan-Islamism and Modernization During the Reign of Sultan

Abdulhamid II, 1876-1909.” PhD diss., McGill University, 2011.

Deringil, Selim. “Legitimacy Structures in the Ottoman State: The Reign of

Abdulhamid II (1876-1909).” International Journal of Middle East Studies 23,
no. 3 (Aug., 1991): 345- 359.

Dale F. Eickelman, "Qur’anic Commentary, Public Space, and Religious Intellectuals

in the Writings of Said Nursi,” The Muslim World 89 (1999): 260-269.

Eraslan, Cezmi. II Abdulhamid ve İslam Birliği. İstanbul: Ötüken, 1992.

129
Ersoy, Mehmet Akif. Safahat. Konya: Palet Yayınları, 2008.

Findley, Carter Vaughn. Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity: A History, 1789-
2007. New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2010.

Fortna, Benjamin. “The Reign of Abdulhamid II.” In The Cambridge History of

Turkey; Turkey in the Modern World. Vol. 4, edited by Reşat Kasaba, 38-62.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Ganim, İbrahim El-Beyyûmi. “Hasan el-Bennâ.” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam

Ansiklopedisi Vol.16. İstanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 1997.

——. “İhvân-ı Müslimîn.” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi Vol.20.

İstanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 2000.

Gaub, Florence. “Islamism and Islamists: A Very Short Introduction.” European

Union Institute for Security Studies, (October 2014).

Giunchi, Elisa. “The Political Thought of Abul A’la Mawdudi.” Il Politico 59, No. 2
(Aprile-Giugno 1994): 347-375.

Gökalp, Ziya. Türkleşmek, Islamlaşmak, Muasırlaşmak. Ankara: Akçağ, 2010.

Gülsoy, Ufuk. “Islahat Fermanı.” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi Vol.19.
İstanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 1999

Hanioğlu, M. Şükrü. A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire. New Jersey and
Oxfordshire: Princeton University Press, 2008.

——. Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902-1908. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2001.

——. “The Second Constitutional Period, 1908–1918.” In The Cambridge History of

Turkey; Turkey in the Modern World. Vol. 4, edited by Reşat Kasaba, 62-112.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

130
Hourani, Albert. Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age:1798-1939. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Kara, İsmail. İslamcıların Siyasi Görüşleri 1: Hilafet ve Meşrutiyet. İstanbul: Dergah

Yayınları, 2017. (Revised version of the PhD thesis defended in 1993)

——. Türkiye’de İslamcılık Düşüncesi I. İstanbul: Dergah Yayınları, 2017.

——. Türkiye’de İslamcılık Düşüncesi II. İstanbul: Dergah Yayınları, 2017.

Kara, İsmail, and Öz, Asım. Türkiye’de İslamcılık Düşüncesi ve Hareketi: Sempozyum
Tebliğleri. İstanbul: Zeytinburnu Belediyesi Kültür Yayınları, 2013.

Karabaşoğlu, Metin. Tehlikeli Denemeler. İstanbul: İz Yayıncılık, 2016.

Karaman, Hayreddin. “Efgânî, Cemâleddin.” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam

Ansiklopedisi Vol.10. İstanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 1994.

Karpat, Kemal. The Politicization of Islam: Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and
Community in the Late Ottoman State. New York: Oxford University Press,
2001.

Keddie, Nikki R. “Intellectuals in the Modern Middle East: A Brief Historical

Consideration.” Daedalus 101, no. 3 (Summer, 1972): 39-57.

——. Pan-Islam as Proto-Nationalism.” The Journal of Modern History 41, no. 1

(Mar., 1969):17-28.

——. The Pan-Islamic Appeal: Afghani and Abdülhamid II.” Middle Eastern Studies
3, no. 1 (Oct., 1966): 46-67.

——. “The Revolt of Islam, 1700 to 1993: Comparative Considerations and Relations
to Imperialism.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 36, no. 3 (Jul.,
1994): 463-487.

131
——. Sayyid Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University
of California Press, 1972.

Kiren, Akın. “II. Abdülhamid Dönemi Pan-Islamist Uygulamaları Ekseninde

Osmanlı-İran İlişkiler.” PhD diss., İstanbul Üniversitesi, 2013.

Kuran, Ercüment. “Devlet Adamı Olarak Cevdet Paşa.” In Ahmet Cevdet Paşa:
Vefatının 100. Yılına Armağan, 3-7. Ankara: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları,
1997.

Kutlular, İlhan. “İslamcılık.” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi Vol. 23.
İstanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 2001.

Küçük, Cevdet. “Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda “Millet Sistemi” ve Tanzimat.” In

Tanzimat: Değişim Sürecinde Osmanlı İmparatorluğu, edited by Halil İnalcık
and Mehmet Seyitdanlıoğlu , 375-387. Ankara: Phoenix Yayınevi, 2006.

Landau, Jacob M. The Politics of Pan-Islam: Ideology and Organization. Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1990.

Lee, Dwight E. “The Origins of Pan-Islamism.” The American Historical Review 47,
no. 2 (Jan., 1942):278-287.

Lerman, Eran. “Mawdudi's Concept of Islam.” Middle Eastern Studies 17, No. 4 (Oct.
1981): 492-509.

Lewis, Bernard. Modern Türkiye’nin Doğuşu. Translated by Boğaç Babür Turna.

Ankara: Arkadaş, 2002.

Mardin, Şerif. Bediüzzaman Said Nursi Olayı Modern Türkiye’de Din ve Toplumsal
Değişim. İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2002.

——. The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought. USA: Syracuse University

Press, 2000.

——. Türk Modernleşmesi. İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2017.

132
——. Türkiye’de Din ve Siyaset. İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2017.

——. Türkiye’de Toplum ve Siyaset. İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2006.

——. Yeni Osmanlı Düşüncesinin Doğuşu. İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1998.

Mozaffari, Mehdi. “What is Islamism? History and Definition of a Concept.”

Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 8, no. 1 (March 2007):17–33.

Nursi, Said. Asar-ı Bediyye. İstanbul: Envar Neşriyat, 2010.

——. Emirdağ Lahikası II. İstanbul: RNK Neşriyat, 2016.

——. Lemalar. İstanbul: RNK Neşriyat, 2016.

——. Tarihçe-i Hayat. İstanbul: RNK Neşriyat, 2016.

Özervarlı, M. Sait. “Muhammed Abduh.” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi

Vol.30. İstanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 2005.

——. “Selefiyye.” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi Vol.36. İstanbul:

Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 2009.

Özcan, Azmi. Pan-İslamism: Osmanlı Devleti, Hindistan Müslümanları ve İngiltere

(1877-1914). İstanbul: TDV İslam Araştırmaları Merkezi Yayınları, 1992.

——. “İslamcılık.” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi Vol.23. İstanbul:

Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 2001.

Qureshi, M. Naeem. “Hindistan Hilâfet Hareketi.” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam

Ansiklopedisi Vol.18. İstanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 1998.

——. “The Indian Khilafat Movement. (1918-1924)” Journal of Asian History 12.
No.2 (1978): 152-168.

133
Rahman, Fazlur. Islam & Modernity. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1982.

Rauf, Abdul. “The British Empire and the Mujāhidīn Movement in the N.W.F.P. of
India, 1914-1934.” Islamic Studies 44, No. 3 (Autumn 2005): 409-439

Roy, Olivier. The Failure of the Political Islam. Translated by Carol Volk. Cambridge
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1994.

Said Halim Paşa. “İslamlaşmak.” Buhranlarımız ve Son Eserleri. İstanbul: İz

Yayıncılık, 2012.

Sattar, Noman. “”Al Ikhwan Al Muslimin” (Society of Muslim Brotherhood) Aims

and Ideology, Role and Impact. Pakistan Horizon 48, No. 2 (April 1995): 7-
30.

Sırma, İhsan Süreyya. II. Abdulhamid’in İslam Birliği Siyaseti. İstanbul: Beyan
Yayınları, 2007.

Somel, Selçuk Akşin. Historical Dictionary of the Ottoman Empire. Lanham,

Maryland, and Oxford: The Scarecrow Press, 2003.

Teitelbaum, Joshua. ”Taking Back the Caliphate: Sharif Ḥusayn Ibn Ali, Mustafa
Kemal and the Ottoman Caliphate.” Die Welt des Islams, New Series 40 (Nov.,
2000): 412-424.

Tunaya, Tarık Zafer. İslamcılık Cereyanı: İkinci Meşrutiyetin Siyasi Hayatı Boyunca
Gelişmesi ve Bugüne Bıraktığı Meseleler. İstanbul: Baha Matbaası, 1962.

Türköne, Mümtaz’er. Siyasi İdeoloji Olarak İslamcılığın Doğuşu. İstanbul: İletişim

Yayınları, 1994.

——. “Müzakere.” In Ahmet Cevdet Paşa: Vefatının 100. Yılına Armağan, 162-164.
Ankara: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 1997

134
Uzer, Umut. An Intellectual History of Turkish Nationalism: Between Turkish
Ethnicity and Islamic Identity. Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press,
2016.

Ülken, Hilmi Ziya. Türkiye’de Çağdaş Düşünce Tarihi. İstanbul: İş Bankası

Yayınları, 2017.

Vahide, Şükran and Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi. Islam in Modern Turkey: An Intelectual

Biography of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi. Albany: State University of New York
Press, 2005.

Varol, Muharrem. “Kahramanlıktan Kalebendliğe: Kuleli Vak’asının Baş Aktörü

Süleymaniyeli Şeyh Ahmed’e Dair Bilinmeyenler.” Tasavvuf 35, (2015/1):
97-143.

Yavuz, Hakan. “Towards an Islamic Liberalism?: The Nurcu Movement and

Fethullah Gülen.” Middle East Journal 53, no. 4 (Autumn, 1999): 584-605.

Yentürk, Hatice. “Ittihad-ı Islam and its Conceptual History with a Special Focus on
the Young Turk Press Before 1908.” PhD diss., Wien University, 2016.

Zubaida, Sami. Islam, Halk ve Devlet. İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1994.

135
 APPENDICES

A. TURKISH SUMMARY/ TÜRKÇE ÖZET

OSMANLI SON DÖNEMİNDE ABDÜLHAMİD VE MUHALEFETİN

İSLAMCILIĞI

Bu tezde Osmanlı son döneminde Abdülhamid’in İslamcılığı ile diğer İslamcı

aktörler arasındaki ilişki ele alınmıştır. Tezin araştırma sorusu şu şekildedir: Osmanlı
son döneminin İslamcı aktörleri nelerdir ve bu aktörler ile Abdülhamid’in İslamcılığı
arasında benzerlikler ve farklılıklar nelerdir? İslamcılık bağlamında Osmanlı’dan
Çağdaş Ortadoğu’ya neler değişti?
Bu tezde, İslamcılığın ortaya çıktığı 1860lardan, günümüz İslamcılığın birçok
aktörünün ortaya çıkmış olduğu 1950lere kadarki süreci kapsayan yüz yıllık bir
dönemin İslamcılık ve Ortadoğu bağlamında haritası çıkarılmıştır. Kapsanan dönem
ve coğrafyanın genişliği sebebi ile birincil kaynak kullanımı sınırlı tutulmuş olup daha
çok akademik kitaplar, makaleler, sempozyum bildirileri, ansiklopedi maddeleri ve
biyografik çalışmalar kullanılmıştır.
Bu tez dört üniteden oluşmaktadır. Birinci ve aynı zamanda giriş bölümünde
konunun önemi, tezin araştırma sorusu, tezdeki akademik yaklaşım, literatür taraması
ve tez boyunca kullanılacak olan İslamcılık kavramının farklı boyutları tartışılarak,
İslamcılığın farklı yönleri ve sınırları ele alınmıştır. İkinci ünitede Osmanlı son
dönemi entelektüel İslamcılığı ele alınmıştır. Bu ünitede takip eden üç ünitede olacağı
gibi entelektüel İslamcılık bölgesel ve uluslararası şartlar, aktörler ve söylem olmak
üzere üç ana başlıkta incelenmiştir. Birinci alt başlığı oluşturan bölgesel ve
uluslararası şartlarda 19 yüzyılda İslam dünyasını ve özelde Osmanlı entelektüel
yaşamının geçirmiş olduğu değişim ele alınmıştır.

136
 İkinci alt başlıkta ise Genç Osmanlılar, İhya hareketleri, Cemaleddin Afgani
ve İkinci Meşrutiyet Döneminde Sırat-ı Mustakim, Sebil’ür-Reşad, Volkan ve
Beyan’ül Hak gazeteleri etrafında toplanmış İslamcılar olmak üzere dört grup aktör
ele alınmıştır. Üçüncü ve son alt başlıkta da bu dört farklı aktörlerin kullanmış olduğu
genel söylem incelenmiştir.
Tezin üçüncü ünitesi II. Abdülhamid’in devlet merkezli İslamcılığının
incelenmesine ayrılmıştır. Bir önceki üniteye benzer bir şekilde Abdülhamid Dönemi
Osmanlı yönetimde İslamcı politikaların yükselişinde etkili olan bölgesel ve
uluslararası şartlar ele alınmıştır. İkinci alt başlıkta Abdülhamid’in İslamcı
politikalarının parçaları olan ulema, Osmanlı ve İslam dünyası Müslüman kamuoyu,
ve Halife sıfatı ile Abdülhamid’in kendisi ele alınmıştır. Üçüncü alt başlıkta ise
Abdülhamid’in İslamcı politikalarında kullanmış olduğu temel söylem ele alınmıştır.
Dördüncü ünitenin ana konusu Osmanlı’dan çağdaş Ortadoğu’ya geçişte
İslamcılık bağlamında devamlılıklar ve kopuşlar ele alınmıştır. İlk alt başlık olan
bölgesel ve uluslararası şartlarda Osmanlı’nın akıbeti ve Müslüman dünyasının yeni
şartlarının yanı sıra Türkiye, Hindistan/Pakistan ve Arap Dünyası özelinde bölgesel
değerlendirmelerde bulunulmuştur. Aktörlerin incelendiği ikinci alt başlıkta coğrafi
çeşitlik ve İslam dünyasındaki etkileri göz önünde bulundurularak Mısır’dan
Muhammed Abduh ve Hasan el-Benna, Türkiye’den Said Nursi ve Hindistan’dan
Mawdudi olmak üzere dört farklı figür ele alınmıştır. Bu isimler seçilirken içinde
bulundukları toplumdaki etkileri göz önünde bulundurulmuştur. Bu aktörlerin bireysel
rolleri haricinde kendi aralarında metodik benzerlikler ve farklılıklar ele alınmıştır.
Son kısımda ise bu aktörlerin değişen bölgesel ve uluslararası şartlar içerisinde
kullanmış oldukları söylem mukayeseli olarak ele alınmıştır. Bunun yanı sırada, 20
yüzyılda İslamcılığı domine etmeye başlayan ve günümüzde daha da bilinirlik
kazanan Selefilik, söylemsel olarak bu kısımda ele incelenmiştir.
Bu tezin temel bulguları ise sırası ile şu şekildedir. İslamcılık tanım itibari ile
çok geniş bir içeriğe sahiptir. İslamcılık, İslami yeniden hakim kılma ülküsü ile
hareket eden her türlü siyasi, entelektüel, bilimsel, toplumsal hareketi içinde
barındırır. Bu geniş tanım bazen birbiri ile çatışan İslamcı aktörleri bile aynı tanım
içerisine sokabilmektedir. Bu yüzden İslamcı aktörleri ele alırken dönemin şartlarını
ve bu aktörlerin temel motivasyonlarını o dönemin şartları içerisinde nereye

137
oturduğunun aydınlatılması gerekir. Bu tezde de en geniş hali ile İslamcı olarak
nitelendirilen aktörlerin öncelikle Abdülhamid yönetimi ile olan ilişkileri ve aynı
zamanda kendi aralarındaki benzerlikler ve farklar ele alınmıştır.
İkinci ünitede işlenen konu kapsamında şu sonuçlara varılmıştır. Her ne kadar
Genç Osmanlılar modern anlamda ilk İslamcılar olarak ele alınsa da, tam anlamıyla
onların İslamcı olarak nitelendirilmesi isabetli olmayacaktır. Bu tezin bulgurları
gösteriyor ki Genç Osmanlı Tanzimat Dönemi eğitim ve bürokrasi reformlarının
yetiştirdiği bir nesil olup dönemin baskın “Batı Medeniyetinin evrenselliği”
söyleminin dışına çıkamamışlardır. Her ne kadar siyasi anlamda meşveret, şura, şeriat
gibi kavramları çok dillendirseler de bu kavramlara yükledikleri anlamlar İslami
gelenekte var olan değil tamamen Batı Medeniyet tasavvurunun getirdiği yeni
anlamlardır. Bu durumun en somut örneği 1876 Kanun-i Esasi’nin hazırlanması için
kurulan ilk ekipte Genç Osmanlılardan Namık Kemal ve Ziya Paşa bulunmaktadır.
Ancak şeriatı baz almak yerine 1831 Belçika Anayasası örnek alınmıştır. Bunlara
bağlı olarak bu tezde Genç Osmanlılar hakkında varılan sonuç şudur ki onların
Abdülhamid ile olan ilişkilerinde İslamcılık temel motivasyonu oluşturmamaktadır.
Onların söylemsel olarak şeriata başvurmalarının temel sebebi Islahat Fermanı sonrası
dönemde Osmanlı Müslüman topluluğunda oluşan kamuoyunun gücünü arkalarına
alma isteğidir.
Bu ünitenin ikinci önemli aktörü İhyacı Hareketlerdir. 19. Yüzyılın ilk
yarısında Halid-i Bağdadi önderliğinde tüm Müslüman dünyasına yayılmış olan bu
hareket 16. yyda yaşamış olan ve Ekber Şah’ı dindeki reform anlayışına karşı çıkmış
olan İmam-ı Rabbaniye dayanmaktadır. 19. Yüzyılda ilk yayılmaya başladıkları
bölgeler merkezi İslam devletlerinin Müslüman halkları Batı emperyalizmine karşı
koruyamadığı yerlerdir. Lokal bazda başlayan bu hareketler daha sonraki dönemlerde
daha büyük örgütlenmeye duyulan ihtiyaç sonucunda İslamcılığın ilk formunu
oluşturan İttihad-ı İslam düşüncesinin olgunlaşmasını ve yayılmasını sağlamışlardır.
Bu hareketler İslamcılık kavramından bahsetmeye başladığımız 1860 sonrası dönemin
önemli aktörlerinden Seyyid Ahmed Han, Cemaleddin Afghani ve daha sonraki
dönemde Mawdudi ve Said Nursi’yi metod noktasında etkilemiştir. Abdulhamid ile
ilişkileri noktasında ele aldığımızda ise her ne kadar Abdülhamid daha mistik dini
grupları desteklemeyi tercih etse de İhyacı gruplar Abdülhamid’in Halife sıfatından

138
ve de Müslümanların birleşmesi yolunda sembolik bir yer tuttuğundan dolayı,
Abdülhamid’i desteklemişlerdir.
İkinci ünitede ele alınan üçüncü figür Cemaleddin Afgani’dir. Her ne kadar
metot ve motivasyonlarına yönelik ciddi eleştiriler olsa da Osmanlı son dönemi
İslamcılığında ciddi bir etkisi vardır. Hayatı boyunca İslam coğrafyasının farklı
beldelerini dolaşmış ve oralardaki İslamcı oluşları etkilemiştir. İslamcıların yanı sıra
Müslüman dünyasında oluşan milliyetçilik akımları üzerinde de derin tesiri vardır.
Afgani’nin Abdülhamid’e bakışına bakılırsa sürekli birlikte hareket etme gayreti
içerisinde olduğu görülür. Afgani’ye göre Abdülhamid Almanlar ve İtalyanların
birliğini sağlayan liderler gibi Müslümanların birliğini sağlayacak lider
pozisyonundadır. Ancak Afgani’nin pozitifliğine karşı Abdülhamid’in Afgani’ye
bakışı daha kuşku doludur. Bunun temel sebebi Afgani’nin ilişki ağının çok geniş
olmasından kaynaklanmaktadır. Örneğin Hilafet’in Kureyş Kabilesine ait olduğu
propagandasını yapan ve ciddi destek de toplayan Wilfrid Blunt ile olan yakın
arkadaşlığı Abdülhamid’de ciddi kuşku uyandırmıştır. Bu sebepten dolayı
Abdülhamid Afgani’yi kontrol altında tutabilmek için İstanbul’a davet etmiş ve
İstanbul’dan ayrılmasına izin vermeyerek birkaç göstermelik görevle İstanbul’da göz
hapsinde tutmuştur.
Bu ünitede ele alınan son grup, İkinci Meşrutiyet Dönemi dergilerinden Sırat-
ı Mustakim, Sebil’ür-Reşad, Volkan ve Beyan’ül Hak etrafında toplanmış olan
İslamcılardır. Günümüzde halen etkileri devam eden Mehmet Akif, Elmalılı Hamdi
Yazır, Filibeli Ahmet Hilmi, Said Nursi (Birinci Said dönemi) bu dönemin önemli
İslamcılarındandır. Abdülhamid Dönemi baskılarının bu dönem İslamcıları üzerindeki
tezahürü entelektüel derinleşme şeklinde olmuştur. O dönemin İslamcılarının
gündemini meşgul eden birçok soru üzerine derinlemesine literatür oluşmuştur. Bu
yüzden İsmail Kara gibi bazı akademisyenler İslamcılığın kendi ayakları üzerinde
duran bir ideoloji olmasının bu dönemde olduğu gerekçesiyle İslamcılığı bu
dönemden itibaren ele almışlardır.
Abdülhamid ile ilişkileri noktasında bu dönemin İslamcıları Abdülhamid’e
muhalif olarak toplanmış olan Jön Türklerden bağımsız hareket etmemişlerdir. Her ne
kadar bu İslamcıların İslamcılıkları noktasında tereddüt olmasa da Abdülhamid ile
ilişkilerinde temel motivasyonu dönemin baskın talebi olan Meşrutiyet ve Anayasa

139
noktalarında olmuştur. Ancak 1860lardan beri toplumda geçerli olan dil din olduğu
için diğer İslamcı aktörler gibi bu grup İslamcılar da siyasi fikirlerini din ile
meşrulaştırma gayretine girmişlerdir.
Bu tezin üçüncü ünitesinde Abdulhamid’in İslamcılığı ve onu tamamlayan
diğer aktörler ele alınmıştır. Osmanlı’nın Hilafet makamını kullanmaya başlaması
Küçük Kaynarca Anlaşması ile ilk kez bir Müslüman teb’ayı kaybetmesi üzerinedir.
Müslüman bir topluluk üzerinde siyasi otoritesini kaybeden Osmanlı, papalık gibi
hilafet makamını dini otoritesinin devam etmesi için kullanmak istemiştir. Bundan
sonraki süreçte, Tanzimat sürecinde biraz hız kesse de Hilafet makamının önemi
gittikçe artmıştır. Abdülhamid dönemine geldiğimizde ise dört önemli değişim ile bu
süreç daha da artmıştır. Birincisi Tanzimat Dönemi boyunca Osmanlı’nın sığınmış
olduğu uluslararası diplomatik denge bozulmuştur. 1870lerin başında Almanya ve
İtalya’nın birliğinin sağlanması ile yeni dengeler kurulmuş, kurulan yeni dengede
Osmanlı, Rusya gibi bir tehdide karşı savunmasız kalmıştır. İkinci 1880lerden itibaren
emperyal yayılma hız kazanmış ve de Osmanlı topraklarına da sirayet etmeye
başlamıştır. Üçüncüsü ise özellikle 1878 sonraki dönemde Osmanlı Devleti’nin
demografik yapısı ciddi oranda değişmiş, Müslüman nüfus artmıştır. Son olarak,
1850lerden 1880lere kadar olan süreçte Müslüman toplulukların şartları kötüleşmekte
olduğu için bir kurtarıcı arayışı zirveye ulaşmıştır. Bu şartlar altında İslamcılık ve
dolayısıyla hilafet makamı Osmanlının elinde önemli bir güç haline gelmiştir.
Ancak Abdülhamid’in İslamcılığına dair bu tezin temel bulgusu, devlet
merkezli İslamcılığın pragmatik oluşudur. Abdülhamid’in devlet yönetimi dört esas
üzere kaimdir: selatin-i İstanbul, Hanedan-ı Osmani, Millet-i İslamiyye, Haram el-
Harameyndir. Bu rükünlerden birisi bir diğerine tercih edilemez, her biri olmazsa
olmazdır. Bu rükünler ışığında Abdülhamid İslamcı olmaktan ziyade bir Osmanlı
sultanıdır ve asıl gündemi beka-yı devlettir. Bu yüzden de Osmanlı bekasına tehdit
olarak algıladığı her türlü oluşumu engelleme yolunu seçmiştir. Osmanlı dışında her
türlü İslamcı aktörü desteklerken Osmanlı içerisinde katı istibdat uygulamıştır. Bunun
yanı sıra Osmanlı Devlet geleneğinin aksine karar verme mekanizmasında her türlü
aracıyı kaldırıp doğrudan kendisine bağlamıştır. Geçmiş dönemlerde padişah
eleştirilemez bir konumda tutulmuş, olası aksaklıklar bir vezir ya da paşaya
yüklenilmiştir. Bu gelenek Genç Osmanlıların Sultan’ı eleştirememesinin bir

140
sebebidir. Bu yüzden de Abdülhamid döneminde, Genç Osmanlıların eleştirilerini
Sultan yerine Ali ve Fuat Paşalara yöneltmesi gibi bir durum olmamış, Abdülhamid
entelektüellerden gelen tüm eleştirilerin odağında kalmıştır.
Abdülhamid’in İslamcı politikaları İslamiyet’in sosyal hayatta sembolik
yönleri ile daha görünür olması şeklindedir. Daha genel olarak baktığımızda eğitimde
reform tarzı başta olmak üzere birçok alanda Abdülhamid batı tarzı reformlar yapmayı
tercih etmiştir. Onun İslamcılığı kandil ve bayramların şaşalı bir şekilde kutlanması,
belli dini kitapların Anadolu’ya dağıtılması, imkanı olmayan köy ve beldelere cami
inşa edilmesi, dünya Müslümanları ile sıkı ilişkinin kurulması gibi yöntemlerle
Osmanlı Devletini dini kullanarak toplum hayatında ve de uluslararası arenada daha
görünür hale getirmektir. Bu durum tam da hedeflenildiği üzere Müslüman teb’ada
1860larda ve 1870lerde içine düşmüş olduğu sahipsizlik duygusunu bir nebze
hafifletmiştir.
Abdülhamid İslamcılığını tamamlayan hilafet haricinde farklı aktörleri de
vardır. Bu aktörlerin birincisi devlet ulemasıdır. Bu devlet ulemasının görevi ayet ve
hadislere dayanarak Osmanlı hilafetinin meşruiyetinin zeminini tesis etmek ve de
muhalif İslamcılar tarafından yöneltilen ve yine dine dayanan eleştirilere cevap
vermek olmuştur. Abdülhamid’in görevlendirdiği dört önemli ulema örnek verilebilir:
Trablusgarp’tan sorumlu ve Şadiliyye-Medeniyye tarikatının liderlerinden Şeyh
Muhammed Zafir; Karadeniz ve Hindistan bölgelerinden sorumlu Seyyid Fazl; Hicaz
bölgesinden sorumlu Şeyh Ahmet Esad; ve en önemlisi Rifa’i tarikatına mensup ve
Hicaz harici Arap coğrafyasından sorumlu Şeyh Abulhuda’dır.
İkinci aktör ise tarikatlardır. Abdülhamid Müslüman dünyasında Osmanlı
hilafetinin varlığının hissettirilmesi genelde tarikatlar kanalı ile yapmıştır. Ancak
Abdülhamid kendi kontrolünden çıkma ihtimali ve siyasi ajandası olan tarikatlara yani
ihyacılara temkinli yaklaşmıştır. Üçüncü ve tüm İslamcı aktörler için de en önemli
olanı Müslüman teb’adır. 19. Yüzyılın ikinci yarısında oluşan Müslüman kamuoyu
Hilafet makamına ciddi önem atf etmiştir. Entelektüel İslamcılar da onların desteğini
almak istemişler ancak Abdülhamid kadar bu kamuoyunun desteğini alamamışlardır.
Abdülhamid İslamcılığının ve de tamamlayıcı aktörlerin söylemsel olarak
dayandığı güçlü bir Sünni gelenek vardır. Moğol İstilaları sonrası süreçte muhtemel
bir kaosun önüne geçmek için Sünni ulema her türlü lidere itaati öngören bir

141
pozisyonda olmuştur. Bu durum güçlü bir itaat kültürü oluşturmuştur. Abdülhamid bu
itaat kültürüne dayanırken 1860tan itibaren ortaya çıkan birçok entelektüel hareket bu
geleneği kırmak için uğraşmıştır.
Dördüncü ve son ünitede Osmanlı’dan çağdaş Ortadoğu’ya geçişte İslamcılık
bağlamında devam eden ve değişen noktalar ele alınmıştır. 1920lerle başlayan süreçte
başta Osmanlı’nın parçalanması ve Hilafetin Kaldırılması olmak üzere birçok
değişiklik olmuştur. Osmanlı Devleti’nin yerini seküler ulus-devletler almıştır.
İslamiyet toplum ve siyasal hayattaki yerini kaybetmiş milliyetçilik ve sekülerlik
baskın ideoloji halini almıştır. Bunların yanı sıra Osmanlı son dönemi ile mukayese
edildiğinde İslam Dünyası çok daha parçalanmış ve farklı bölgesel ve uluslararası
şartlar içerisinde bulunmaktadır. Çoğunlukla Osmanlı mirası üzerine kurulmuş
Türkiye Cumhuriyeti geçmişten kopmayı tercih etmiş ve seküler ulus devlet anlayışına
uygun bir toplum inşası için uğraşmıştır. Hindistan coğrafyasında 1915 sonrası Hindu-
Müslüman birliği dağılmış ve 1947’de Pakistan’ın kuruluşu ile sonuçlanacak süreç
başlamıştır. Arap dünyasında ise pan-İslamism yerini pan-Arabism almıştır. Bu güçlü
önemli değişimlerin İslamcılık üzerindeki etkisinin incelenmesi Mısır’dan Hasan El-
Benna ve Muhammed Abduh, Pakistan’dan Mevdudi, Türkiye’den Said Nursi’nin
incelenmesi ile olmuştur.
Bu ünitede ele alınmış olan ilk aktör Muhammed Abduh’tur. Abduh yaşadığı
dönem itibari Osmanlı son dönemi İslamcılarından olsa da bu dönemden çağdaş
Ortadoğu’ya geçişte önemli bir rol oynadığı için bu bölümde ele alınmıştır. Osmanlı
son döneminde Afgani ile birlikte İkinci Meşrutiyet dönemi İslamcılarının üzerinde
çok derin tesiri olmuştur. Hayatının son dönemine rastlayan dönemde Muhammed
Abduh modern siyaset ve ekonomik sisteme entegrasyonun nasıl mümkün olabileceği
üzere düşünceler beyan etmiştir. İlerleyen dönemlerde hakim olacak olan ulus-devlet
düşüncesinin İslamiyet ile uzlaşması üzerine ilk fikir beyan edenler arasındadır. Bu
yüzden birçok Osmanlı’da ve Arap dünyasında etkili milliyetçi entelektüeller üzerinde
de tesiri olmuştur.
Bu tezin temel bulgularından birisi şudur ki bu üç İslamcı aktörün İslamcılığı
farklı toplumsal ve uluslararası şartlara verilmiş benzer tepkilerdir. Günümüzde
Hasan el-Benna’nın kurduğu Müslüman Kardeşler, Mevdudi’nin kurduğu Cemaat-i
İslami ve Said Nursi’nin öğretileri doğrultusunda kurulmuş Nurculuğun birbirinden

142
bağımsız ele alınmasının sebebi bölgesel ve uluslararası şartlardaki radikal
değişimdir. Bu tezde de gösterildiği gibi bu İslamcılar derinlemesine ele alındığında
benzer söylem ve metot ile hareket ettikleri görülecektir.
Kurtuluş Savaşı sonrası süreçte Saltanat ve Hilafet kaldırılmış, dinin devlet ve
toplum hayatındaki yeri sınırlandırılmıştır. Osmanlı döneminde atılacak adımlarda,
yapılacak reformların bir İslam devletindeki yeri tartışılırken, yeni kurulan Türkiye
Cumhuriyeti’nde inşa edilecek olan yeni devlette dine ne kadar alan tanınacağı
tartışılmakta idi. Bu şartlar altında İslamcılar ya baskılanarak Kemalism yönetimi ile
anlaşmayı tercih ettiler ya da ülkeyi terk ettiler. Said Nursi ise ne anlaşmayı kabul etti
ne de ülkeyi terk etti. Kendisinin ifadesi ile Yeni Said dönemini başlatarak yeni bir
metotla İslamiyet’in toplumdaki yerinin muhafaza edilmesine uğraştı. Cemiyetlerin,
cemaatlerin, tarikatların kapatılması ve geleneksel yöntemlerin mümkün olmadığı bir
ortamda yazmış olduğu kitapların gizlice çoğaltılması ve okutulması yolu ile, bir
bireyin hiçbir büyük oluşuma ihtiyaç duymadan inancını koruyabilmesini hedefledi.
Her ne kadar aktif siyasetten uzak dursa da yeni bir toplum inşası sürecinde Kemalist
reformların toplumda yerleşmesine mani olacak tarza hareket etti.
Osmanlı Devleti’nin Birinci Dünya Savaşı’na girmesi ile Hindistan
Müslümanları Hilafet Hareketi’ni başlatmıştır. Ancak bu hareket sadece
Müslümanlardan değil Hindular tarafından da desteklenmiştir. İngiltere’nin Osmanlı
Devleti’ne yaptığı ve yapmayı planladığı baskılardan vaz geçirmek için sivil
itaatsizlik uygulanmış, silahlı çatışmaya girmeden askere gitmeyi, vergi vermeyi ve
İngiliz yönetimi ile birlikte hareket etmeyi reddetmişlerdir. Ancak bu durum
İngilizleri tutumlarından vazgeçirmemiştir. 1920 sonrası Osmanlı Sultan’ından
bağımsız Anadolu’da bir mücadelenin başlaması ve sonrasında Hindular ve
Müslümanlar arasındaki anlaşmazlıkların artması ile bu hareket dağılmıştır. 1947’de
ayrılma ile sonuçlanacak olan süreç 1920lerin başında başlamıştır. Bu şartlar altında
Mevdudi İslam’ı bilmeyen insanlardan Müslümanca bir tutum beklenildiği gerekçesi
ile “doğru İslamı” anlatmak için yazmaya başlamıştır. Bu yazdığı dönem Hindistan
Müslümanlarının Hilafetin yokluğunda yeni arayışlara girmesi sebebiyle ciddi rağbet
görmüştür. 1947’ye kadar İhyacı bir yöntemle hareket eden Mevdudi daha sonrası
dönemde kurulan İslam Devleti’nin pratik sorunlarına yönelik de yazıp çizmiştir.

143
Pakistan gibi bir İslam devletinin varlığı sebebiyle diğer İslamcılara göre siyasete dair
daha çok fikir beyan etmiştir.
Osmanlı’nın yıkılışından sonra Arap dünyasında İslamcılık yerini Arap
Milliyetçiliğine bırakmıştır. Arap dünyasının en köklü ve büyük devleti olan Mısır
özelinde ise Osmanlı’nın yıkılışı ve İngilizlerin Mısır üzerindeki hakimiyetinden
sonra Mısır’da eğitimli sınıf seküler bir tutum sergilemeye başlamıştır. Böylelikle
Mısır’da da İslamcılığın hakim ideoloji olması ortadan kalkmıştır. Bu şartlar altında
Hasan el-Benna’nın İslamcılığı önceki dönem İslamcılarından Afgani, Abduh,
Vahhab ve Reşid Rıza gibi birçok İslamcının metodunun bir sentezi olarak görülebilir.
Hasan el-Benna hem toplumun imani zafiyetlerinin giderilmesi, Müslümanların
ekonomik şartlarının iyileştirilmesi, İngilizlerle ve seküler devlet yöneticileriyle
mücadele edilmesi için çok yönlü metot benimsemiştir.
Bu tezde 1930larda Sudi Arabistan’ın kurulması ile siyasi ve ekonomik güç
kazanan Vahhabi İslamcılığı ile 1960lardan itibaren Humeyni önderliğinde
toparlanmaya başlayan Şii İslamcılığı ele alınmamıştır. Bu iki grup İslamcılık
geçişme güçlü bağları olmayan çoğunlukla 20 yyda ortaya çıkmış olan
İslamcılıklardır. Bu yüzden Osmanlı’dan çağdaş Ortadoğu’ya geçişte devamlılık ve
kopuşların incelenmesi noktasında diğer İslamcı aktörler kadar faydalı olmayacaktı.
Son olarak bu tezde ele alınan husus Osmanlı sonrası dönemde İslamcıların
söylemidir. Modern İslamcılığına dair literatürün İslamcılığı 1930lardan itibaren ele
almasından da anlaşılacağı üzere, çağdaş Ortadoğu’da İslamcı söylem radikal bir
şekilde değişmiştir. Osmanlı son döneminde her ne kadar dinin özüne dönüş gibi bir
söylem hakimse de pratikte İslamcıların hepsi geleceğe bakmaktadır. Arzuladıkları
“asr-ı saadet” kılıfı altında her şeyin daha iyi olacağı gelecektir. Ancak Osmanlı
sonrası dönemde İslamcı söylem geleceğin daha iyi bir şey getirmeyeceğine kani
olduğu için “asr-ı saadet” söylemine daha sıkı sarılmış. Hatta İslamiyetin doğuşundan
20yy kadar oluşan geleneği reddeder pozisyona gelmiştir. Bu yüzden Çağdaş
İslamcılar ele alınırken Selefi söylem sıkça incelenmektedir. Biz de dördüncü ünitenin
söylem alt başlığında selefi söylemi ele aldık.

144
 B. TEZ İZİN FORMU / THESIS PERMISSION FORM

ENSTİTÜ / INSTITUTE

Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü / Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences

Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü / Graduate School of Social Sciences x

X
Uygulamalı Matematik Enstitüsü / Graduate School of Applied Mathematics X
Enformatik Enstitüsü / Graduate School of Informatics

Deniz Bilimleri Enstitüsü / Graduate School of Marine Sciences

YAZARIN / AUTHOR

Soyadı / Surname : Sancak

Adı / Name : Lütfullah
Bölümü / Department : Middle East Studies

TEZİN ADI / TITLE OF THE THESIS (İngilizce / English) : THE ISLAMISM OF

ABDULHAMID AND ITS OPPOSITION IN THE LAST PERIOD OF THE OTTOMAN
EMPIRE

TEZİN TÜRÜ / DEGREE: Yüksek Lisans / Master x Doktora / PhD

1. Tezin tamamı dünya çapında erişime açılacaktır. / Release the entire

work immediately for access worldwide. x

2. Tez iki yıl süreyle erişime kapalı olacaktır. / Secure the entire work for
patent and/or proprietary purposes for a period of two years. *

3. Tez altı ay süreyle erişime kapalı olacaktır. / Secure the entire work for
period of six months. *

* Enstitü Yönetim Kurulu kararının basılı kopyası tezle birlikte kütüphaneye teslim
edilecektir.
A copy of the decision of the Institute Administrative Committee will be delivered to
the library together with the printed thesis.

Yazarın imzası / Signature ............................ Tarih / Date

145