A great effort is being made to prevent Muslims from taking part in thought and political life. The concepts produced and spread by the West show their effect in general. "Fundamentalism", "Political Islam" etc. With these concepts, it keeps Muslims ineffective and out of life. Muslims make up a third of the world population. This great potential is gradually increasing. Muslims, however, remain on the defensive in this situation.
For how many days we have been making a Palestinian-centered assessment. Because Palestine has many features. Birth center of all civilizations. Jews, Christians and Muslims. It is a center where prophets lived. Goodness and beauty have been told to humanity from here. The living center of the prophets. In a way, this is the center of attention. I have been working hard on this issue for many years. I introduced the first of these studies with my book 'Eastern Magic Oh Jerusalem'. As a continuation of this, a five-volume series titled Eastern Light will be published gradually. The first volume will be available in a month and a half.
Edward W. Said; The second child of a Palestinian Christian father and a Lebanese Christian mother. But he is a child of this cultural land. In Palestine, the persecution is done against Muslims. He defends the rights of Muslims. That is the rights of their own cultural land. Because he is also a victim. Here he never looks like a Christian. Although his main field was literature and criticism, his work, which was published as his famous Orientalism or Orientalism, received great service. This work was a breakthrough and a beginning. In this sense, he wrote many works, most of them have been translated into Turkish. Muslims have a great need for both their own and honest intellectuals from other cultures. Edward Said is dead. After that, there are very few people who continue this effort. Thoughtful, Edward Said is a culture and thought fighter. What amazes him is that, instead of defending the civilization and thoughts of some Muslim intellectuals who went to America, they try to adapt and be with them. They literally become orientalists.
In Turkey, Şerif Mardin and his school are a clear example of this. Sociological studies are mostly aimed at serving imperialism. It helps them by analyzing the values of our nation with insider views and evaluations. This is not just about us. Pakistani, Iranian, Arab Egypt and other countries people go to the West and take on the same task. There is someone I wrote about in this column before. He came to us at that time and told Rasim Özdenören that he was doing his doctorate in Baku. After completing his doctorate, Prof. During our meeting on a television program after he was made, he said that he was doing his doctorate in Tel Aviv. Yavuz is from the same school. If one pays attention to his works, it is obvious what he serves. doctoral studies related to Turkey's private nationalism is being made at the University of Tel Aviv. Later, both Boğaziçi and other private universities take on this task.
Edward Said himself witnesses this situation in America. Instead of thinking of these researchers' own civilizations and people, they dedicate themselves to serving them. One of them is Fuad Ajami, a Muslim Arab. A few names like him are asked, leaving them aside Edward Said: "None of these names except Ajami are people who know something about Islam or the Arab world, even in the context of having an education. None of them. Fuad Ajami, an expert who makes this very clear as the American right-wing unites fate with the neo-conservative movement, takes a very conciliatory position when confronted with Israel. And since he is an Arab and Muslim, it is an ideal news source for talk shows. However, on the basis of what he actually published and said, he has established himself as someone of no particular interest, unknown to anyone in this field and in the Islamic and Arab world, and taken very little seriously." (Culture ve Resistance, p.139) There are many similar examples.