While Erbakan Hodja is keeping his place in our minds and hearts, in February, he comes differently to our agenda. We see how important it is to understand Erbakan Hodja when we see the reflection of his words in our life. He left us a big legacy when he left among us. It’s the responsibility of all of us to protect this legacy without being prodigal.
While I have emphasized the importance of what Erbakan Hodja told us, we all need to look carefully and again in the book Islam and Science edited by my dear friend Remzi Cetinkaya. I’d like to share with you the evocations that occur in my mind when I read the book composed of the presentations of Erbakan Hodja in a conference he gave in the seventies.
First of all, why need our Hodja give such a conference in the sixties and seventies? This question can only be answered by considering the terms of the period. In the conjuncture of the period, Muslims were in the opinion that they were useless. It was also a time when Western admiration was at its peak, and it was a time when Muslims were asking why we fall back.
Erbakan Hodja felt the need to give this conference in such an environment, because Muslims needed self-confidence to re-emerge on the stage of history. Erbakan Hodja was actually trying to give this with the content of this conference. He took the contribution of Muslims to human history in a timely manner.
Starting from this point of view, Erbakan said that we should learn the history from the right sources. He especially drew attention to the history of science. He reminded us of scholars who made great contributions to humanity in history. Even, he emphasized that the accumulation that forms the basis of Western science was created by Muslim scholars.
One of the highlights of the conference was opening the idea of progress up for discussion. He didn’t consider progress in science and technology as the ultimate progress. He concluded that human qualities, such as morality and compassion, were the main indicators of progress. In addition, Western science and technology development didn’t make progress with an understanding of history. He stated that there were occasional leaps and falls in historical processes.
Besides this, he also reminded the origins of West's superiority. He revealed the fact that West’s economic superiority was of colonialism and their scientific superiority was of passing away the development of science obtained from Muslims. We can evaluate political supremacy as a result of both.
In the conference, our Hodja proved his claims with the data of current science. At that time, especially by some groups, religion and science were perceived as opposing to each other. Religious sources were ignored; they weren’t accepted as the source of knowledge. Erbakan Hodja, by putting forward his claims in this way, he also exhibited the view of Muslim identity to science.
In a few points of the text, he specified that the Westerners are scientifically deadlocked. In fact, we may think that he drew attention to Islamic sources of information in here. He was on the prowl to express that truth can’t be found only by the naked mind or by the opportunities offered by positive science. This effort shows that in order to reach the truth, it is necessary to apply to revelation.
When we consider that the facts stated by Erbakan Hodja in the conference fifty years ago is still up to date, we need to pay more attention to what he said until today. Hereby, we commemorate our Erbakan Hodja with mercy on the 8th anniversary of his death.