Einladung an alle interessierten HörerInnen zum Gastvortrag von Dr. Alp Eren Topal (FU Berlin)
Datum: 22.06.2023, 16:15 Uhr bis ca. 18:00 Uhr
Ort: IOA, Abteilung für Islamwissenschaft und Nahostsprachen, Nassestr. 2, 2. OG, Raum 2.005
"A Radical Thinking of Tanzimat Politics: Hoca Sadık and Anarchist Islam"
This paper aims to introduce and discuss a unique Turkish manuscript from 1870, Tanzîr-i Telemak, authored by Sarıyerli Hoca Sadık Efendi (d. 1873) who was a dissident ulema exiled to Jerusalem for his political activities. The text advocates revolt against kings as an indispensable component of Islam, Christianity and Judaism, proposing a radical reinterpretation of Abrahamic religions around the concepts of economic equality (müsâvât) and freedom from tyranny (hürriyet). He considers tyrannical rulers (tâğût) the epitome of evil for they violate the rights of both the Creator and the Crated (hukūk-ı Hâlık ve halâyık). An Orthodox Sunni and a Naqshbandi affiliate, Hoca Sadık employs the concept of “tecdîd” as a key principle in the face of humanity’s propensity for corrupting their divinely revealed faith. He fiercely attacks religion-cum-tradition (diyânet-i resmiyye) and traditionalist ulema (ulemâ-yı resmiyye) for turning religion into ritual, and rejects any claims to honor or status through ethnicity and descent. In order to illustrate the ideal Muslim republic, he describes a fictional Muslim community somewhere in Africa where a Muslim caliph serves his community in the fashion of the prophet and leads them to jihad against tyrannical societies where humans are enslaved to their baser selves and to their rulers. He teaches them principles of politics, diplomacy and warfare.
Written in a beautifully flowing prose with a piercing clarity of thought at the dawn of modernity, Hoca Sadık’s work gives us a glimpse of a universal Islam par excellence, stripped of any ethnic, national or historical baggage. His ideas foreshadow the works of major Muslim thinkers of the 20th century such as Sayyid Qutb and Ali Shariati, allowing us to put the plight of modern Muslims in a deeper historical context.
Dr. Alp Eren Topal is a political scientist and a historian working on the broad intellectual and cultural history of the 19th century. A graduate of Bilkent University, Topal is currently a researcher at Freie University Berlin. Formerly he spent three years at Oslo University as a Marie Curie fellow. Topal has published extensively on Ottoman political vocabulary and concepts, modernization, secularization and the broad transformation of Ottoman-Turkish culture in the 19th century.
Kontakt und Rückfragen an: agueney@uni-bonn.de