Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty (19 page)

T
HE
H
ANAFI
W
AY

The form of Islam subscribed to by the Ottoman Empire fostered an important advantage. It had adopted the Hanafi school in jurisprudence and the Maturidi school in theology—which were both, as described in the previous chapters, on the Rationalist side of the Sunni spectrum. This gave the Ottomans more freedom in interpreting the Shariah. Ottoman scholars often employed the Hanafi principle of
istihsan
(juristic preference), which allowed alterations in the Shariah for the public good, to cope with new issues and problems.
¹⁶

In the sixteenth century, for example, S¸eyh-ül I˙slam Ebusuud Efendi legitimized reasonable interest-charging by pious foundations because they served the welfare of society.
¹⁷
He also found singing, dancing, whirling, and shaking hands—all banned by various Hadiths—permissible.
¹⁸
On the other hand, another scholar of the time, Mehmet Birgivi, who subscribed to the strict Hanbali school, denounced these “innovations” and condemned Ebusuud Efendi’s Hanafi-based flexibility.
¹⁹

The Ottoman system was also innovative in the sense that it gave the state the right to enact secular laws, called
kanun
, along with the Shariah.
²⁰
Doing so meant that the Shariah did not cover all aspects of public life, and the state thus had the religiously legitimate authority to introduce new rules and regulations.
²¹
Thanks to this tradition, the empire would be able to enact many modernizing laws in the nineteenth century.

Even the Shariah itself was regulated by the Ottoman kanun. Under Sultan Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, some harsh corporal punishments (such as amputations of hands) were deemed obsolete and were replaced by beating or monetary fines assessed according to the economic status of the culprit.
²²
Stoning also became difficult to implement, and it is known to have occurred only twice during the six centuries of Ottoman rule.
²³

The Ottoman flexibility also had something to do with its geography, which, as we have seen, was influential in shaping perceptions of Islam: “unlike previous Islamic states, the Ottoman Empire rose in Anatolia and the Balkans, areas of solid and steady peasantries, rather than on the edge of nomad-inhabited deserts.”
²⁴
This allowed the rise of autonomous guilds and provincial notables, saving the empire from a total surrender to patrimonialism—i.e., absolute domination by the central power—the hallmark of that arid Middle Eastern geography.
²⁵

O
N THE
W
ESTERN
E
DGE OF
I
SLAMDOM

The fact that the Ottomans were rooted in Anatolia and the Balkans also gave them a unique geostrategic position on the western edge of Islamdom, bordering with Christendom. This proximity to the West allowed them to recognize the great transformation in Europe—the rise of modernity—much earlier than did other Muslim or Eastern peoples.

For a long time, in fact, the Ottomans, overconfident in their superiority, were not particularly curious about the ways of the People of the Cross. Yet once they started to lose battles with Christian powers, being forced to retreat from lands they had conquered, the Ottoman elite began to realize that they were lacking something. Especially after their disastrous defeat at the Second Siege of Vienna in 1683, which clearly marked the revived supremacy of European powers, Ottoman statesmen started to think about reform. Initially they focused on internal corruption and disorder, hoping that the restoration of their effective former system would be enough. Yet soon it dawned on them that their decline was due not only to problems on their side but also to the innovations on the European one.

Hence, starting in the early eighteenth century, the Ottoman government sent a large number of civil servants to various European capitals to observe “Western ways.” Yirmisekiz Mehmet Çelebi, a special envoy sent to the court of Louis XIV in 1720, was specifically instructed to “visit the fortresses, factories, and the works of French civilization generally and report on the modern French institutions, which might be applicable in Turkey.”
²⁶
(The French—and, fatefully, not the Anglo-Saxons—would continue to be the prime model of modernity to which most Ottomans and other Muslims were exposed.) Another Ottoman bureaucrat who spent time in Europe, Ahmed Resmi Efendi, would write in the 1770s that “the age of
jihad
” was over and that the Ottomans needed to pursue a peaceful path of diplomacy and reform.
²⁷

The expeditions to Europe soon led to the creation of new schools with modern curricula and the translation of some European scientific works into Turkish. Then came the
Nizam-ı Cedid
(New Order) of Sultan Selim III in the late eighteenth century, which produced important military and administrative reforms. The next sultan, Mahmud II, initiated an even more extensive new order—first by getting rid of the military establishment that resisted reforms and then by introducing European-style clothing, architecture, legislation, institutional organizations, and land reform. He also established the Grand Council of State, a precursor of the parliament that would come four decades later.

Mahmud II also introduced the concept of equal citizenship for all regardless of religious belief. This was directly linked to the Ottoman state’s goal of winning the hearts and minds of non-Muslim peoples, because the latter, and especially those in the Balkans, were increasingly influenced by the ideas of modern nationalism. In order to keep the Serbs, Bulgarians, Armenians, and other Christians loyal to the empire, the sultan and his bureaucrats started to promote the spirit of Ottomanism as a common and equal identity among all citizens.

The fez, the red flat-topped cap that Mahmud II adopted as the new national headgear, became the symbol of this new ecumenism. Unlike the different types of turbans and caps that formerly differentiated religious preferences, now all Ottomans would be one nation under the fez. “Henceforth,” the sultan famously announced in 1830, “I distinguish among my subjects, Muslims in the mosque, Christians in the church, and Jews in the synagogue, but there is no difference among them in any other way.”
²⁸

A
RE
A
LL
O
TTOMANS
C
REATED
E
QUAL?

These gradual reform efforts took a giant leap forward on November 3, 1839, when Sultan Mahmud’s newly crowned son, Abdülmecid, announced the edict of
Tanzimat
(Reorganization), a document that has been compared to the Magna Carta in terms of its content and significance.
²⁹
The symbolism of the edict reflected the empire’s goal of reforming its ways while remaining loyal to its religion. After a public proclamation before an impressive assembly of diplomats and Ottoman notables, the young sultan and his high officials gathered in the chamber that preserved the mantle of the Prophet Muhammad and swore to uphold the Tanzimat. The text began by criticizing the nonobservance of “the precepts of the glorious Qur’an,” as the cause of the empire’s decline. It then proclaimed the security of life, honor, and private ownership; regular and orderly conscription into the armed forces; and fair and public trials. The sultan, who took an oath to respect these individual rights, was clearly limiting his power by law. “These imperial concessions,” he also affirmed, “are extended to all our subjects, of whatever religion or sect they may be.”

These liberal precepts were clearly inspired by Europe, but, in the eyes of the Ottoman elite, they also were a reaffirmation of the primal values of Islam.
³⁰
The abolition of the sultan’s right to confiscate property at will, for example, was not just a modern liberal reform but also the reestablishment of the Shariah’s original guarantees on private property—which had been partly eroded by the patrimonial power structures of medieval Islamic empires, inherited, to some extent, by the Ottomans.
³¹

One of the architects of the Tanzimat was Sadık Rıfat Pas¸a, author of
A Booklet on Conditions of Europe
, which analyzed the reasons for Europe’s success and concluded that the key was a liberal state that secured the rights and freedoms of its citizens. “Government is for the public,” he wrote, “but the public is not for the government.” He also praised the concept of freedom of the press and the notion of natural, inalienable rights of men.
³²
Most notably, he articulated these ideas in not a secular but a religious framework.
³³

In 1856, the Ottoman government proclaimed another edict, entitled
Islahat
(Reform), which removed all the remaining distinctions between Muslims and other citizens and effectively asserted non-Muslim’s rights. Non-Muslims were exempted from the poll tax, gained the right to work in the government and the military, and earned the right to testify against Muslims in a court. Meanwhile, the sultan’s edict forbade “every distinction or designation tending to make any class whatever of the subjects of my Empire inferior to another class, on account of their religion, language, or race.” The echo of this on the Muslim street would be a common joke: “Infidels won’t be called infidels anymore.”

Implementations soon followed. Some Christians were appointed, and elected, to local advisory councils established in each province and also to the Grand Council of State. Christians and Muslims were accepted together as students in the newly established imperial high school of Galatasaray in 1867. Two years later, the Ottoman Nationality Law was issued, which further consolidated the principle of equal citizenship.
³⁴

During this period, the Ottoman bureaucracy started to employ large numbers of non-Muslims. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, at least three thousand Armenian civil servants worked in important ministries and legal institutions of Istanbul. Another six thousand were working as state officials in the countryside.
³⁵
Many other non-Muslims were appointed to such influential positions as bureau chief, ambassador, and even minister. “Egalitarianism,” a Western historian observes, “really had begun to take root in Ottoman minds.”
³⁶

These reforms for the equality of all citizens amounted to the abandonment of the classic Islamic political system—dominant Muslims and “protected” yet second-class non-Muslims—by the prevailing power in the Muslim world. Today, critics of this classic system—
dhimmitude
—often overlook both the significance of Ottoman reforms of the mid-nineteenth century and the fact that equal citizenship was not established in Europe until the same era.

Here is an irony to add: Since the non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire weren’t doing too badly under their “protected” status, some of them resisted the equality introduced by the Tanzimat and Islahat edicts. Equality ended the extra tax that the non-Muslims had to pay, but it also made them eligible to serve in the armed forces. It soon became obvious that most Christians preferred to pay the extra tax rather than be drafted. Besides, the leaders of the non-Muslim communities also did not want to lose control over their people. When the Tanzimat edict was read publicly in 1839 and then returned to its red satin pouch, the Greek Orthodox patriarch did not look happy. “God grant,” he reportedly said, “that it not be taken out of this bag again!”
³⁷

Balkan Christians, too, were uninspired by the reforms, because they sought independence, not equal citizenship. That’s why, despite legal guarantees, equality for the empire’s Christians and Muslims would not be fully realized—“not because of bad faith on the part of leading Ottoman statesmen but because many of the Christians wanted it [equality] to fail.”
³⁸

Moreover, while one obstacle to the consolidation of equality “was the innate attitude of superiority which the Muslim Turk possessed,”
³⁹
the other one was, ironically, the constant interference of European states, and Russia, to “protect” the rights of the Christians of the empire. To the Ottomans, such interference implied that even if they regarded all citizens as equal, foreign powers did not. The Muslim population became fed up with “the support given by Christian diplomats and consuls to thousands of protégés . . . who were shielded against the taxes and courts of their own state and were often granted foreign passports.”
⁴⁰
This was a mistake Western powers made then, and one that they continue to make today: their calls for greater religious freedom in Muslim lands focused only on the rights of Christians, not on those of Muslims.