The Qur'an Between the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic: An Exegetical Tradition by Susan Gunasti

Author:Susan Gunasti [Gunasti, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion, Middle Eastern, Social Science, Political Science, World, Islam, Koran & Sacred Writings, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9780429810022
Google: QpCKDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 43863179
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

4 The philosophical context of Elmalılı’s religious understanding

Hak Dîni had several connections to the philosophical currents of early twentieth-century Istanbul. Elmalılı engaged with philosophical topics in the work, sometimes referring the reader to Metâlib ve Mezâhib, his philosophy text. The title of his Qur’an commentary itself was aimed at philosophical discussions about the nature of knowledge. And the purpose of commissioning Hak Dîni was related to the intellectual context of the period. From the perspective of some of the parliamentarians who voted to commission the work, there was a need for a text to respond to the arguments of the materialists who had raised critiques of Islam. After the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, materialist critiques of Islam had become increasingly more strident, which had an impact on how Islam was perceived. One consequence of negative perceptions of Islam was to question the relevance of the traditional religious sciences in the modern period. In choosing “Hak Dîni” (The Religion of the Truth) as part of the title for his Qur’an commentary, Elmalılı was responding to materialists and unequivocally stating that Islam was the basis of knowledge. He could not, however, merely state that Islam was the source of all knowledge; in order to have a dialogue, he too had to adopt the language of the discussion: philosophy.

In order to better understand the intellectual currents of the period, Elmalılı furthered his study of Western philosophy, which was initially related to his study of French for work on amending the constitution. By 1913, the year he was appointed to the Committee on Scholarly Terminology, he was widely recognized for his expertise in philosophy. In this regard, he was similar to other intellectuals who were receptive to Western philosophical ideas in the early modern Middle East. The Muslim world has had a long-standing tradition of engaging with Western philosophy, yet this engagement took a new turn beginning in the late nineteenth century. In Istanbul, in particular, the intellectual culture was heavily influenced by the positivism of the French sociologist Auguste Comte (d. 1857) and the materialism of Ludwig Büchner (d. 1899) on the one hand, and by spiritualism on the other. In describing the situation this way, I do not, however, wish to portray Ottoman intellectual culture as a polarized battlefield between secular and religious and religiously oriented intellectuals. There was an interaction between the two sides, as individuals within each group were aware of each other’s positions and made arguments directed at one another. An issue that emerged in these discussions was the relationship between Islam and scientific and civilizational progress.

Elmalılı engaged extensively with Western philosophy, and his philosophical understanding was important to both his method of interpreting the Qur’an and his attitude towards religious reform. In particular, his conceptualization of knowledge underpinned his approach to Qur’anic exegesis. The basic principle underlying his approach to Qur’anic interpretation was that an increase in human knowledge helps mankind better understand the Qur’an. This attitude towards knowledge led him to embrace advancements in all fields of learning because of their potential to help understand what had already been revealed.

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