Abstract
The Islamic concept of “tawḥīd” or Divine Unity is more than a simple affirmation that God is One. It lies at the heart of Islamic spirituality, thought, and practice. It is a concept with a rich semantic field and complex philosophical connotations. Tawḥīd affirms God’s incomparable unity in such a way as to embrace the plurality of existence and infuse it with life and meaning. Tawḥīd, in the context of Turkish Muslim thought, has functioned as a conceptual tool for addressing difference to suggest ways of engaging the challenges posed by skepticism and the truth-claims of other religions within an Islamic context. This chapter lays out various Turkish Muslim theological interpretations and applications of tawḥīd (Turkish: tevhid) to the phenomena of religious pluralism and global diversity, and then turns to the work of theologian Şaban Ali Düzgün as a case study. The paper concludes with the observation that, in both Düzgün’s work and in Turkish discussions on pluralism more generally, tawḥīd serves as both a limit and a facilitator to pluralism.
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Notes
- 1.
Gülistan Dertli, “Anahtarı Var Açılmaz Sanılan Kapıların,” http://bedirhaber.com/gulistan-dertli-yazilari/anahtari-var-acilmaz-sanilan-kapilarin-58114.html, accessed December 6, 2018). In Turkish: “O dertten kurtuluş yok arkadaş imtihan olduğunu anlamadıkça! O karanlık sokaklardan çıkış yok yalancı sokak lambalarının cılız ışıltılarını yok sayıp, derdi verenin nuruna sığınmadıkça. Karanlıklar içindeki tevhid nurunun aydınlığına sığınmadıkça karanlığa mahkumsun.”
- 2.
Cemalnur Sargut, Beauty and Light: Mystical Discourses of a Contemporary Female Sufi Master (n.p. Fons Vitae, 2018), 95.
- 3.
Founded in 1984, the İSAM library contains over 250,000 physical books, the archives of influential Ottoman and Turkish thinkers, as well as a database with comprehensive archive listings throughout the whole of Turkey. Its catalogue follows the Dewey decimal system, including extensive subsections on Islam and Islamic sciences. Their catalogue is based on Dewey Onlu Tasnif ve Relatif Endeks, 15th Printing (Istanbul: Millî Eğitim Basımevi, 1962).
- 4.
In her seminal work Qur’an and Woman (1992), Amina Wadud famously used the concept of tawḥīd to affirm that God transcends gender and therefore does not favor a specific gender, leaving gender as a category of difference divinely willed as part of human creation. Jerusha T. Lamptey, in her monograph Never Wholly Other (2014), expanded on the discussion of gender difference in Islam to apply it to questions of religious pluralism, affirming tawḥīd as the grounds for Muslims to uphold the divine plan for a common humanity that comes to know itself through difference.
- 5.
Donald Arthur Carson, The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), 33.
- 6.
Fatma Barbarosoğlu, Sözüm Söz [My Word is Word] (İstanbul: Profil Yayıncılık, 2012), 43.
- 7.
Barbarosoğlu , Sözüm Söz, 44.
- 8.
Mevlüt Özler, İslâm Düşüncesinde Tevhid [Tawhid in Islamic Thought] (Istanbul: Rağbet Yayınları, 2005), 44.
- 9.
Thomas Michel, Insights from the Risale-i nur: Said Nursi’s advice for modern believers (Clifton, NJ: Tughra Books, 2013), 2.
- 10.
Michel, Insights, 5.
- 11.
Felix Körner, Philip Dorroll, and Taraneh Wilkinson have written on the “modern” qualities of Turkish Muslim academic theology. See for instance, Felix Körner, Rethinking Islam: Revisionist Koran Hermeneutics in Contemporary Turkish University Theology (Würzburg: Ergon Press, 2005); Philip C. Dorroll, “The Turkish Understanding of Religion: Rethinking Tradition and Modernity in Contemporary Turkish Islamic Thought,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 82 (2014), 1033–1069; Taraneh Wilkinson, Dialectical Encounters: Contemporary Turkish Muslim Thought in Dialogue (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019).
- 12.
For a detailed summary of this debate, see Cafer S. Yaran’s “Non-exclusivist Attitudes towards Other Religions,” in Change and Essence: Dialectical Relations Between Change and Continuity in the Turkish Intellectual Tradition, eds. Sinasi Gunduz and Cafer S. Yaran (Washington, DC: The Council for Research and Values in Philosophy, 2005).
- 13.
Cafer S. Yaran, “Non-Exclusivist Attitudes Towards Other Religions in Recent Turkish Theology and Philosophy of Religion,” 16.
- 14.
Cafer S. Yaran, Bilgelik Peşinde [In Pursuit of Wisdom] (Istanbul: Ensar Naşriyat, 2011), 254–5.
- 15.
For a historically informed analysis of contemporary articulations of Maturidite responses to religious reform and diversity see Dorroll, Philip C. Dorroll, “The Turkish Understanding of Religion: Rethinking Tradition and Modernity in Contemporary Turkish Islamic Thought.”
- 16.
The late Yaşar Nuri Öztürk (d. 2016) famously espoused such a position. Turkish Muslim literature for and against deism has since seen an uptick.
- 17.
Hilmi Ziya Ülken, Aşk Ahlâkı, 3rd edition (Ankara: Demirbaş Yayınları, 1971), xxix. The preface cited is from the 1958 edition of the Aşk Ahlâkı, whose title translates to Morals of Love.
- 18.
Ülken , Aşk Ahlâkı, 3rd edition (Ankara: Demirbaş Yayınları, 1971), 11. Turkish: “Herkese kendi alıştığı dille hitap edelim. Hiç kimseyi yabancı hakikatlarla karşılaştırmıyalım. Onlara şuurlarının altında uyuyan hazineyi meydana çıkarmaları için yardım etmekten başka bir şey yapmıyalım. Seninle ruhun hakikatını bulalım.”
- 19.
Ülken, Aşk Ahlâkı, 3rd edition (Ankara: Demirbaş Yayınları, 1971), 11. Turkish: “Bir asker, bir tüccar, bir şair, bir Hintli, bir Avrupalı ve bir köylü birbirinden gezegenler kadar uzak görünmezler mi? Fakat, insanın içinde kaynayan nihayetsiz ihtiras ocağı aynı ateşle yanmaktadır.”
- 20.
Hüsnü Tekşen, Vicdan Felsefesi (Istanbul: Mustafa Asım Matbaası, 1940), 23.
- 21.
Bekir Topaloğlu, Preface 2 in Özler, İslâm Düşüncesinde Tevhid (Istanbul: Rağbet Yayınları, 2005), 11. Original Turkish: “Allah’a ulaşmak isteyen her fert kendi iradesini kullanarak kendi anlayış, duyuş ve seziş noktasından hareket eder. Bu bakımdan yollar insanlar sayısınca çoktur. Ancak hakka yönelen bütün yollar bir süre sonra bir tek yolda birleşir. Bu yol Kur’an terminolojisinde ‘sırat-ı müstakim’ adıyla yer almıştır.”
- 22.
Agnosticism about salvation and the openness to the possibility of multiple salvations can be found in some Turkish Muslim discussions, for example the work of Mahmut Aydın, who has accepted the possibility of multiple salvations, and in the work of Adnan Aslan, who has entertained the thought of Classical Muslim thinker Muhammad Al-Ghazali to leave open an agnostic stance towards non-Muslims seeking truth. See, for instance, Adnan Aslan, Dinî Çoğulculuk, Ateizm, ve Geleksel Ekol: Eleştirel Bir Yaklaşım (Istanbul: İSAM Yayınları, 2010).
- 23.
Mahmut Aydın, “A Muslim Pluralist: Jalaluddin Rûmi,” in The Myth of Religious Superiority: A Multifaith Exploration, ed. Paul F. Knitter (New York: Orbis Books, 2005): 220–236.
- 24.
Mahmut Aydin [sic.], “Religious Pluralism: A Challenge for Muslims—A Theological Evaluation,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 38 (2001), 336.
- 25.
Rahim Acar, “Çoğulculuk (İsl.),” in İslamiyet-Hıristiyanlık Kavramları Sözlüğü, vol 1, eds. Mualla Selçuk, Halis Albayrak, Peter Antes, Richard Heinzmann, Martin Thurner (Ankara: Ankara Üniversitesi Yayınevi, 2013), 130.
- 26.
Rahim Acar, “Çoğulculuk (İsl.),” 131.
- 27.
Özler , İslâm Düşüncesinde Tevhid, 21.
- 28.
Ibid, 24.
- 29.
Ibid, 35.
- 30.
Ibid, 24.
- 31.
Ibid, 13. Original Turkish: “İnsanoğlu yaratıldığından beri, tarihin her döneminde, içinde, her şeyin rabbi ve yaratıcısı olan bir zatın varlığı fikrini daima taşımıştır. Allah inancı insanlarda fıtrî, umumî ve zarurîdir. Fıtratı bozulmamış insan bir ilâha yönelme arzu ve ihtiyacını kendi içinde daima duyar ve onun varlığını kuvvetle hisseder.” Note: Turkish does not have gendered pronouns; I have defaulted the Turkish he/she pronoun to “she” as the translator.
- 32.
Mustafa Said Yazıcıoğlu, Preface 1 in İslâm Düşüncesinde Tevhid (Istanbul: Rağbet Yayınları, 2005), 9.
- 33.
Recep Şentürk, review of Religious Pluralism in Christian and Islamic Philosophy: The Thought of John Hick and Seyyed Hossein Nasr , by Adnan Aslan, İslâm Araştırmaları Dergisi 2 (1998), 251–252.
- 34.
John Hick converted to an Evangelical form of Christianity, later moved away from fundamentalism during his initial university studies, and was a member of the United Reformed Church for much of his life. By the end of his life, he had moved away from traditional forms of Christianity and would attend Quaker meetings. “Obiturary: Professor John Hick,” Telegraph, February 16, 2012, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/religion-obituaries/9087324/Professor-John-Hick.html
- 35.
Şaban Ali Düzgün, Allah, Tabiat ve Tarih: Teolijide Yöntem Sorunu ve Teolojinin Metaparadigmatik Temelleri [God, Nature and History: The Question of Method in Theology and Theology’s Metaparadigmatic Foundations] (Ankara: Lotus Yayınevi, 2005; 2012), 63.
- 36.
Düzgün, Allah, Tabiat ve Tarih, 131.
- 37.
Ibdi, 134.
- 38.
Ibid, 152.
- 39.
Düzgün uses the terms ‘aql and qalb nearly interchangeably in Allah, Tabiat ve Tarih, 125. The combining of both heart and mind into one term like ‘aql or fu’ad is not uncommon in the classical Arabic tradition. For instance, Farid Jabré’s study of al-Ghazālī’s terminology strongly emphasizes the functional interchangeability of the words ‘aql (mind) and qalb (heart) — see his Essai sur le lexique de Ghazali (Beirut: Lebanese University Publications, 1970).
- 40.
Nazım İrem writes, “Bergon’s anti-scientism, blended with Romanticism, was the source of a new aestheticism that was based on a new conception of the human being as an intuitively creative free agent.” İrem, “Bergson and Politics: Ottoman-Turkish Encounters with Innovation,” The European Legacy 16 (2011): 874. İrem goes on to show how late Ottoman and Turkish intellectuals adapted Bergsonism to their own context.
- 41.
Düzgün, ATT, 208. Note, for instance, that “nuhā” is a Quranic term associated with the ability to think (cf. Q 20:54). In this sense, Düzgün’s understanding of the heart does not exclude faculties of intelligence.
- 42.
Düzgün, ATT, 153. Catholic theologian Karl Rahner has famously made a similar argument in his Hearer of the Word, published first in German in 1941.
- 43.
See chapters five and six of Taraneh Wilkinson, Dialectical Encounters.
- 44.
Düzgün, Allah, Tabiat ve Tarih, 141.
- 45.
Şaban Ali Düzgün, Din, Birey ve Toplum [Religion, Individual and Society], 3rd Edition (Ankara: Akçağ Yayınları, 2013), 38.
- 46.
Düzgün , Din, Birey ve Toplum, 117. Also in Düzgün, Çağdaş Dünyada Din ve Dindarlar [Religion and Religious People in the Contemporary World] (Ankara: Lotus Yayınevi, 2012; 2014), 207–208.
- 47.
English translation is a modification of the M.A.S. Abdel Haleem translation.
- 48.
To compare, Muslim scholar Jerusha T. Lamptey’s work Never Wholly Other: A Muslima Theology of Religious Pluralism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) also emphasizes the significance of this quranic passage and takes up the category of difference in the context of religious pluralism.
- 49.
Düzgün , Din, Birey ve Toplum, 123.
- 50.
While I here use the word “relative,” Düzgün does not espouse relativism (Turkish: görecilik). He is a universalist who also recognizes the social embeddedness of human knowledge. On the social character of knowledge, see for instance Düzgün, Allah, Tabiat ve Tarih, 99.
- 51.
Düzgün, Din, Birey ve Toplum, 123.
- 52.
Ibid, 123. The quranic verse he uses to support this is (Yusuf) Q12:76.
- 53.
Bekir Topaloğlu, Preface 2 in İslâm Düşüncesinde Tevhid, 12.
- 54.
Şerif Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 92. The original year of publication for this work is 1962.
- 55.
Düzgün, Din, Birey ve Toplum, 105.
- 56.
Ibid, 105. Original Turkish: “İslâm, gönüllü teslimiyeti ifade eder. Bu teslimiyet, canlı cansız herkes ve her şey için geçerlidir.”
- 57.
Ibid, 106.
- 58.
Düzgün’s position on human freedom and intuition is not without precedents. İrem credits Turkish theologian Baltacıoğlu and his Bergsonian circle in the early mid-twentieth century for developing a “conservative voluntarist philosophy of action,” founded on the idea of the individual as creative, intuitive, and spiritual. Nazim İrem, “Undercurrents of European Modernity and the Foundations of Modern Turkish Conservativism: Bergsonianism in Retrospect,” Middle Eastern Studies 40 (2004): 93. It would be perhaps worthwhile to see whether the Turkish Bergsonian circle made an explicit connection between the creative individual and tawḥīd as Düzgün clearly does.
- 59.
Düzgün, Çağdaş Dünyada Din ve Dindarlar, 188.
- 60.
While the theory of multiple modernities is usually traced back to Shmuel Eisenstadt’s Comparative Civilizations and Multiple Modernities (2000), late Ottoman engagements with European intellectual currents already indicated both a sense of a possible and distinct Ottoman or Turkish modernity, divided opinions on what that modernity might look like, as well as cognizance of the divided expressions of modernity within European intellectual tradition itself. See for instance Nazim Irem, “Undercurrents of European Modernity and the Foundations of Modern Turkish Conservatism,” Middle Eastern Studies 40 (2004): 79–112.
- 61.
Düzgün, Çağdaş Dünyada Din ve Dindarlar, 189.
- 62.
M.A.S. Abdel Haleem translation.
- 63.
Düzgün, Çağdaş Dünyada Din ve Dindarlar, 197.
- 64.
Ibid, 197. Düzgün’s critique of the marketization of an otherwise divinely willed blessing is a similar motion to that of Fatma Barbarosoğlu and her critique of Islamic “fashion” as a contradiction in terms at odds with Islamic values of modesty, humility, and frugality. Barbarosoğlu, though not a theologian, is a sociologist by training and a popular writer in Turkey.
- 65.
Bekir Topaloğlu, Preface 2, 12.
- 66.
Düzgün, Çağdaş Dünyada Din ve Dindarlar, 198. He writes here that where the concept of tawḥīd is compromised, pluralism cannot be fruitful.
- 67.
Düzgün, Çağdaş Dünyada Din ve Dindarlar, 201.
- 68.
Ibid, 289.
- 69.
Düzgün, Çağdaş Dünyada Din ve Dindarlar, 289. Original Turkish: “...hangi kültür ortamında olurlarsa olsunlar Batı dışı toplumların kendi kültür kodlarıyla bir çağdaşlık geliştirmelerinin imkânını kabul etmek gerekecektir.”
- 70.
Ibid, 289.
- 71.
Ibid, 295.
- 72.
Ibid, 295.
- 73.
Şaban Ali Düzgün, “Pluralism and Christianity in a Postmodern Age: An Interview with Roger Haight,” Ankara Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi 47 (2006): 46. This part of the article (i.e. the interview) is in English.
- 74.
I borrow the term “double-visioned” from Thomas Reynolds’s treatment of pluralism in “Reconsidering Schleiermacher and the Problem of Religious Diversity: Toward a Dialectical Pluralism,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 73 (2005): 171–2. While Reynolds applies this to a Christian understanding of God-world relation and his reading of Schleiermacher’s view of religion as both inclusive and nevertheless firmly grounded in Christian piety, I hold it may also apply to the present context with some adjustments.
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Wilkinson, T.R. (2021). Divine Unity and Human Plurality in Turkish Muslim Thought. In: Hashas, M. (eds) Pluralism in Islamic Contexts - Ethics, Politics and Modern Challenges. Philosophy and Politics - Critical Explorations, vol 16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66089-5_10
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