Islams Reformers

“There is no need to limit the number of madhhabs in four. If
Muslims remain packed together within the limits of four
madhhabs, no improvement will be possible. First of all, man’s
reason should be freed from being a slave of the religion. Reason
is an unlimited blessing given by Allah. It is necessary to get out of
the four madhhabs and to give freedom to reason.”
And Celâl Nûrî, another reformer, writes in his book Târîkh-i
Tedenniyyât,
“ ‘The gate of ijtihâd has been closed,’ they say. Nonsense! The
Ottomans remained chained to wrong, coarse laws. On the other
end of the world, social conditions had already improved. The
Ottomans did not follow them. They lagged behind.”
The standards of living have changed, and science and arts
have improved, but from which inventions have the rules of Islam
prevented them, so that reformers direct such unpleasant
allusions as “coarse laws” to them? Does Islam say, “Don’t
construct roads, don’t run trains, don’t build ships, leave your
minerals under earth or sell the right of exploiting them to
communists or capitalists, don’t do trade with disbelievers.
Machinery, techniques, planes, electricity and radio are the
inventions of disbelievers; don’t learn them. Don’t earn money.
Kill each other in football games?” No! Islam emphatically
commands -as well as it considers morals and virtues- to work in
arts, sciences and to search and learn what the disbelievers have
invented. This will be explained more detailedly in the following
pages.
13 - The reformer says:
“Islamic laws, which were formerly suitable for the Ottomans,
did not suffice and became deficient later, because they were like
the Arab bedouins at the beginning of the establishment of the
Ottoman State. Later, they spread in Europe and the social life
changed. As for the laws, they remained fixed.”
It is obvious how reformers regard Islam by saying that Islam is
a religion suitable for bedouins living in tents and it needs reform
in order that it be accepted by civilized nations. On the one hand
they say, “Superstitions have been mixed with the religion. It
needs to be returned to its former state.” On the other hand they
do not hesitate to say, “The former state of the religion was for
those who lived in tents in Arabian deserts.”
14 - The reformer says:
“Islam was put forward by only one man.”
– 26 –