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The most important challenge I face in my research has resurfaced during discussions about Turkey's membership in the European Union (EU), which once again highlights the question of variance between Islamic and Western cultures. As Turkey tries to enter the EU, Turkish Muslims need to revisit Islamic law to better prepare the normative ground for the relations between Turks and their non-Muslim neighbors. This has been my argument. Yet Turkish politicians in the current government are busy with quickly changing the laws that are inconsistent with universal norms, as it is required by the EU. However, the question, which remains thus far unanswered, is: why change the laws? Is it to get accepted by the wealthy Europe? Or is it because our normative culture also dictates the same rules? If our culture does not have these universal norms, how can one be sure that our society will internalize them fully and implement them? I have been advocating that we need to reform our system in the light of universal human rights norms even if we do not need to enter the EU. I have also advocated that the Hanafi branch of Islamic law provides us with the universal norms, which we need to critically analyze, rephrase, and put in the context of modern human rights discourse. As a sociologist, I claimed that the legitimacy of laws must be derived from indigenous cultural sources if possible to solidly establish them in the society. Yet politicians usually look at the issue from an instrumentalist perspective. I have been defending that Turkey should adopt universal norms not because they will help us in getting in the EU, but because they are good in themselves. The discussion about legal reforms to enter the EU is just an example of the underlying tension between instrumentalist and sociological approaches. I have been trying to defend the second approach against the first one. However, not only the politicians but also the general public tend to adopt the instrumentalist approach when it is politically convenient. Now let me tell you about my Cairo trip. After completing my work at Emory Law School, I went to Cairo. There, I met some of the leading lawyers and thinkers and asked them if they can in any way contribute to my project on the universal human rights in Islamic law. At first, searching for universality of human rights in the classical Islamic law looked like a strange invention to them. However, after I cited classical authorities and books, they realized that there is something they unintentionally missed which they were eager to learn from me. In our conversations, Egyptian scholars who are concerned with human rights agreed that the research on humanity (adamiyyah) and basic rights ('ismah) was very important and timely but they stated that they could not help. First of all, they were not familiar with the Hanafi tradition because Egypt traditionally follows the Shafii School. Secondly, the two-centuries long reaction against colonialism and Western powers has prevailed Islamic discourse. One scholar told me "what you are looking for is something very precious but no one here has an idea about it; you may use your time to search for it yourself." I had also spent a considerable amount of time at the International Arabic Book Fair in Cairo searching for books related to the questions I explore. Unfortunately, I could not find any research dedicated to the question of universality of human rights in the classical Islamic law. As a result, I purchased books that are only indirectly related to my core question. I need to carefully survey these books and verify their claims. Consequently, I returned to Istanbul without what I hoped to find in Cairo and with the realization that my burden will be heavier than I had originally thought. I observed that the universalistic perspective in Islamic law is no longer represented in the present scholarship on Islamic law. I thought this was a gap that I can fill. My experience in Istanbul with Turkish scholars who are specialized in Islamic law and human rights has not been very different. The usual initial reaction was to reject even the possibility of universalistic approach to human rights in Islamic law on the grounds that this was a modern Western construct. In a speech I made at the Center for Islamic Research, I convinced the audience by using quotations from the classical literature that Abu Hanifa and his followers advocated that basic rights are due for humanity. This was almost shocking to know for the majority of my Turkish audience. Yet the Hanafi view had been implemented for many centuries in Istanbul during the Ottoman rule. These liberal scholars and intellectuals did not even know how to read the Ottoman script. With the Turkish audience, I could also use the historical examples they are familiar with to solidify my textual argument in demonstrating how Ottomans practiced the Hanafi doctrine. Furthermore, Ottoman reforms in Islamic Law during the 19th century are not quite known by the current generation of historians and lawyers. Since the link between the present generation of Turkish intellectuals and Ottoman legal legacy is broken, one faces a great challenge in exploring a legal issue in the Ottoman history. This research question is coupled by another question concerning presentation. The current Turkish intellectuals are not any better equipped to understand Ottoman practice than non-Turkish intellectuals. I offered a two-month long seminar with students from different universities on the Sociology of Rights which met once a week. My purpose was to see the reaction of the youth to my research and ideas. At that time the war in Iraq was going on. I had difficult time to make my point advocating universal human rights during the war period. There was pessimism among students regarding universal human rights due to the violations of human rights during war. I tried to convince them that we need to know what is right and what is wrong regardless of whether we have the power to put them in practice or not. Most of the students believed that the discourse on universal human rights has lost its ground in our time which is characterized by power politics. The questions and criticisms that have been raised by my young students revolved around the following issues: The Hanafi School had a great doctrine but Muslims lacked the commitment, power ,and organization to put it in practice. Muslims violated each other's human rights more than others. Why should Muslims care about the universal human rights while others violated their rights? Why did Ottomans collapse if they reformed the Islamic law? Why should we be concerned with the rights of non-Muslims who do not care about us? The students who attended my seminar on the Sociology of Human Rights voiced these concerns and questions. It was a great challenge to defend universal human rights for everyone in the world when the most prominent actors frequently violated the rights. During my discussions, I have been more and more convinced that the question of universal human rights is not just a theoretical problem but a sociological issue. Nor can the problem of human rights be solved in the world if powerful political actors continue to adopt an instrumentalist approach to the issue of universal human rights. Recep Senturk, July 2003. Top |