Revolution has spread across North Africa and the Middle East this year. In the aftermath of falling regimes everyone is uncertain what direction these revolutions will take. In Tunisia and Egypt elections have given religious parties control of the present. Many people in these countries have pointed to Turkey as the model they wish to follow for a new future. They should realize that that model is based on the detailed analysis of history by its founder, Kemal Ataturk. Kemalism, as it is often referred to by Western writers, came from Mustafa Kemal's experiences as a military leader fighting against European armies but also by a careful study of European history, literature and government. But there is good reason that today's Islamic political leaders should follow Ataturk. They should realize that the sacrifice of religious control also brought about a greater unity in European nations. The way Islam is divided today between Sunni and Shite weakens the Middle East. In Euro-American countries the way Catholics and Protestants of all sects work together in peace is to be examined by the Muslim clerics. The order and power that this has brought are at the core of European economic and military dominance of the past three centuries.
Mustafa Akyol in his new book, Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty, 2011, rejects the path of Kemalism without replacing it with a transformative process that can induce the kind of structural and social foundations necessary. Iran's Ali-Akbar Velayati, senior adviser to Ayatollayh Ali Khamenei, attacks Turkey for just the very institutions that brought Turkey order and power, while Iran sits stalled in a disorganized and weakened condition. But let's briefly look at the changes that Kemalism wrought in Ottoman Turkey to transform it into modern Turkey.
Ataturk also looked to Japan to find how the Japanese had been able to reinvent themselves as a modern industrialized and military nation. Japan incorporated Western technology without accepting Western cultural domination, especially religion. He also noted that Japan's leaders, mainly Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582) before industrializing, crushed its independent religious Buddhist strongholds and organizations.
By doing this Japan was free of religious strife and the Tokugawa leaders also stopped Christian conversion and organization as well. This allowed for an independent secular tradition of government to develop. For Ataturk the power of the Japanese resistance to European domination and its rise to industrial strength was an example to study. He followed an independent path but he moved the capital as the Japanese had done, creating new focus for a national state. The Republican Party he established then abolished the office of the caliph to make a break in tradition clear. They then outlawed polygyny and divorce by formula. They suppressed religious orders closing religious houses and shrines to free wealth for constructive investment and give direction for free education. They enacted laws banning the fez and ordering Western dress and discouraged the veiling of women. They then eliminated Sharia law and enacted the Swiss legal code, borrowing segments from Italian and German law. They rid Turkish of Persian and Arabic words, took control of mosques and from a central religious office authorized all texts to be used in preaching. The Young Turks at the core of the Party urged the banning of books and newspapers in Arabic and ordered the use of the Latin script for Turkish. They struck the section in the Turkish constitution that made Islam the national religion. Women were given legal status, allowed to vote and hold office. Some of this change was based on the investigations of a scholar of Kurdish background, Mehmet Ziya, who like Ataturk believed that a new nation needed to be forged. Ziya also, felt that this new Turkey had to be in the present and to be divorced from the Turkish history of the past, though elements of this local history in Anatolia were used to create a unifying foundation of social identity. Like America, both Ataturk and Ziya felt a new Turkey could be made up of people from many ethnic origins, but would be Turks like Americans of different backgrounds are Americans. Unfortunately, not all Kurds accepted this idea of a new Anatolian as Turk and this has plagued Turkey since.
Ataturk and the Young Turks had seen in their travels in Europe that a progressive nation was one freed of religious control. The example of England's control of religious activities and in France was significant and perhaps stands at the core of Turkey's success. One has to remember that the Turks did this consciously, whereas in Europe it was done in the wake of the conflict over the end of Feudalism, the disorder of the Black Plague and over a century of religious war that cost millions of lives. One might say that Ataturk and the Young Turks saw that Europe benefited from the army being restricted to civilian control as much as religion, but failed to believe that this latter could be accomplished without the active role of the army. It seems that Libya and Tunisia have the best chances for such a conscious transformation, while Egypt could if the Muslim Brotherhood had the power or support of the Salafis. But Iran is unlikely to make such a change as it looks, structurally, like Spain under Franco, the entrenched possession of a militant sect. For more details see Robert F. Spencer's article in American Anthropologist, v. 60,1958, pages 640-657.
It is hard to imagine such a transformation taking place today, although those of Hitler's Germany and Lenin's Russia were as thorough, but not as durable. In both cases an ideology replaced previous state motivations, in Germany a Fascism based on a vague Teutonic Christianity (see Hitler's architect's memoirs on this, Inside the Third Reich, 1970. It must be recalled that Hitler remained a Catholic until his suicide) , while in Russia Communism became a state religion. The collapse of these entities is interesting in itself, in the USSR largely the suits were changed as KGB and other state officials simply replaced uniforms for business suits and proceeded to continue looting the country. China's current transformation is of special interest as the Party is allowing not only state controlled capitalism, but also religion to competitors for power. Political scientist Chalmers Johnson, has addressed the form and structure of revolutionary change in the 20th century in a number of books since is formative text, Revolutionary Change (1966), especially noting how US military power has been used counterproductively (http://en.wikipedia.org/...). England achieved a social transformation beginning with the massacres of the Civil War (especially in Ireland) and the repression of Catholics, then the massive and brutal removal of the rural population detailed by Tawney in his book, The Agrarian Problem of the 16th Century, (1912) and Polanyi in his, The Great Transformation (1944).
Continuity and Change
But should the community of Islam desire to change? Is there not a value in a continuation of the present? To maintain independence? This was the dilemma of Japan in the 16th century, but they realized that there was no where to hide from Western domination and a temporary isolation resulted that allowed Japan to study the West and respond at its own pace and style (see my article detailing this process at: http://muse.jhu.edu/...). Margaret Mead in her Continuities in Cultural Evolution(1964) wrote of Melanesian communities that responded constructively to the disruption of contact with the West with the aid of outsiders, while Annemarie de Waal Malefijt in her book, Religion and Culture (1968) tells of peoples in the same area who broke ancient traditions of enmity and division to unify and resist Western domination. Most revitalization movements, however, have failed.
The chance for the nations of Islam to respond has, perhaps, in many ways passed. Ataturk was able to rally Turks at the end of WWI to drive out the invaders and stabilize Turkish authority before subjugation could take place. That time has passed for the nations of the Middle East and North Africa. Since the collapse of Ottoman power in the 17th century Islamic countries have been in a subject relation to the West. Religion does not shield the people who are at the mercy of international economic and cultural forces. Even the borders of the Middle East are the product of Western imperialism. Without an indigenous renewal the current situation allows for a continuation of an unequal role for the future. Generations of children will continue to find themselves amidst chaos and violence in asymmetry with the West.
Religion can play a role, but not one of the past mold, but as in Japan in the 19th century where Shinto did play a role in a transformation, Islam can be a force for change. The central question is what will that role be? And, can that role find a road to peace?