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Thank you.

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A few weeks ago, I had a chance
to go to Saudi Arabia.

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And the first thing
I wanted to do as a Muslim

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was to go to Mecca and visit the Kaaba,

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the holiest shrine of Islam.

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And I did that;
I put on my ritualistic dress,

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I went to the holy mosque,

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I did my prayers,

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I observed all the rituals.

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And meanwhile,
besides all the spirituality,

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there was one mundane detail in the Kaaba

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that was pretty interesting for me:

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there was no separation of sexes.

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In other words, men and women
were worshiping all together.

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They were together while doing tawāf,
the circular walk around the Kaaba.

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They were together while praying.

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And if you wonder
why this is interesting at all,

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you have to see the rest of Saudi Arabia,

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because this a country which is strictly
divided between the sexes.

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In other words:

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as men, you are simply not supposed to be
in the same physical space

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with women.

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And I noticed this in a very funny way.

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I left the Kaaba to eat something
in downtown Mecca.

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I headed to the nearest
Burger King restaurant.

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And I went there -- I noticed
that there was a male section,

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which is carefully separated
from the female section.

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I had to pay, order and eat
in the male section.

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"It's funny," I said to myself,

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"You can mingle with the opposite sex
at the holy Kaaba,

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but not at the Burger King?"

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(Laughter)

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Quite, quite ironic.

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Ironic, and it's also,
I think, quite telling,

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because the Kaaba
and the rituals around it

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are relics from the earliest
phase of Islam,

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that of prophet Muhammad.

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And if there was a big emphasis
at the time to separate men from women,

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the rituals around the Kaaba
could have been designed accordingly.

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But apparently, that was not
an issue at the time.

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So the rituals came that way.

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This is also, I think,
confirmed by the fact

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that the seclusion of women
in creating a divided society

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is something that you also
do not find in the Koran --

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the very core of Islam,
the divine core of Islam --

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that all Muslims, equally myself, believe.

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And I think it's not an accident

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that you don't find this idea
in the very origin of Islam,

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because many scholars who study
the history of Islamic thought --

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Muslim scholars or Westerners --

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think that, actually, the practice
of dividing men and women physically

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came as a later development in Islam,

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as Muslims adopted
some preexisting cultures

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and traditions of the Middle East.

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Seclusion of women was actually
a Byzantine and Persian practice,

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and Muslims adopted it
and made it a part of their religion.

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Actually, this is just one example
of a much larger phenomenon.

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What we call today Islamic law,
and especially Islamic culture --

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and there are many Islamic
cultures, actually;

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the one in Saudi Arabia is much different

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from where I come
from in Istanbul or Turkey.

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But still, if you're going to speak
about a Muslim culture,

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this has a core: the divine message
which began the religion.

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But then many traditions, perceptions,
practices were added on top of it.

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And these were traditions
of the Middle East medieval traditions.

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There are two important
messages, or two lessons,

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to take from that reality.

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First of all, Muslims --

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pious, conservative, believing Muslims
who want to be loyal to their religion --

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should not cling onto everything
in their culture,

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thinking that that's divinely mandated.

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Maybe some things are bad traditions
and they need to be changed.

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On the other hand, the Westerners
who look at Islamic culture

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and see some troubling aspects

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should not readily conclude
that this is what Islam ordains.

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Maybe it's a Middle Eastern culture
that became confused with Islam.

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Let me give you a few examples
on the latter issue.

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There is a practice
called female circumcision.

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I don't know
if you've ever heard about it,

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but it's something terrible, horrible.

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It is basically an operation
to deprive women of sexual pleasure.

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I don't want to go into details,
but it's something very bad.

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And Westerners --

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Europeans or Americans --
who didn't know about this before,

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[saw] this practice

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within some of the Muslim communities
who migrated from North Africa.

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And they've thought,

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"Oh, what a horrible religion that is,
which ordains something like that."

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But when you look at female circumcision,

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you see that it has
nothing to do with Islam;

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it's just a North African practice
which predates Islam.

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It was there for thousands of years.

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And, quite tellingly,
some Muslims do practice it --

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the Muslims in North Africa,
not in other places.

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But also the non-Muslim
communities of North Africa --

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the animists, some Christians
and even a Jewish tribe in North Africa --

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are known to practice female circumcision.

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So what might look like a problem
within Islamic faith

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might turn out to be a tradition
that Muslims have subscribed to.

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The same thing can be said
for honor killings,

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which is a recurrent theme
in the Western media --

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and which is, of course,
a horrible tradition.

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And we see, truly, in some Muslim
communities, that tradition.

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But in the non-Muslim communities
of the Middle East,

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such as some Christian communities,
Eastern communities,

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you see the same practice.

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We had a tragic case of an honor killing

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within Turkey's Armenian community
just a few months ago.

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Now, these are things
about general culture,

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but I'm also very much
interested in political culture

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and whether liberty
and democracy is appreciated,

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or whether there's an authoritarian
political culture

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in which the state is supposed
to impose things on the citizens.

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And it is no secret

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that many Islamic movements
in the Middle East

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tend to be authoritarian,

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and some of the so-called
"Islamic regimes,"

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such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and the worst
case, the Taliban in Afghanistan,

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they are pretty authoritarian --
no doubt about that.

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For example, in Saudi Arabia,

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there is a phenomenon
called the religious police.

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And the religious police imposes
the supposed Islamic way of life

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on every citizen, by force --

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like, women are forced
to cover their heads --

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wear the hijab, the Islamic head cover.

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Now that is pretty authoritarian,

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and that's something
I'm very much critical of.

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But when I realized that the non-Muslim,

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or the non-Islamic-minded
actors in the same geography

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sometimes behaved similarly,

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I realized that the problem maybe lies

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in the political culture
of the whole region, not just Islam.

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Let me give you an example:
in Turkey, where I come from,

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which is a very hyper-secular republic,

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until very recently, we used to have
what I call "secularism police,"

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which would guard the universities
against veiled students.

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In other words, they would force students
to uncover their heads.

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And I think forcing people
to uncover their head

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is as tyrannical as forcing
them to cover it.

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It should be the citizen's decision

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and every individual
should decide about that.

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But when I saw that, I said,

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"Maybe the problem is just
an authoritarian culture in the region,

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and some Muslims
have been influenced by that.

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But the secular-minded people
can be influenced by that.

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Maybe it's a problem
of the political culture,

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and we have to think about
how to change that political culture."

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Now, these are some of the questions
I had in mind a few years ago

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when I sat down to write a book.

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I said, "Well, I will do research

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about how Islam actually
came to be what it is today,

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and what roads were taken
and what roads could have been taken."

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And I finished the book, actually
it's not published -

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it's coming out this summer.

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The name of the book is "Islam Without
Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty."

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And as the subtitle suggests,

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I looked at Islamic tradition
and the history of Islamic thought

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from the perspective
of individual liberty,

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and I tried to find what are the strengths
with regard to individual liberty.

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And there are strengths
in Islamic tradition.

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Islam, actually,
as a monotheistic religion,

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which defined man
as a responsible agent by itself,

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created the idea of the individual
in the Middle East,

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and saved it from the communitarianism,
the collectivism of the tribe.

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You can derive many ideas from that.

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But besides that, I also saw
problems within Islamic tradition.

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But one thing was curious:

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most of those problems turn out to be
problems that emerged later,

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not from the very divine core
of Islam, the Koran,

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but from, again,
traditions and mentalities,

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or the interpretations of the Koran
that Muslims made in the Middle Ages.

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The Koran, for example,
doesn't condone stoning.

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There is nothing about that in the Koran.

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There is no punishment for apostasy.

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There is no punishment
for personal sins like drinking.

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These things which make Islamic law,

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the troubling aspects of Islamic law,

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were developed into later
interpretations of Islam.

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Which means that Muslims can, today,

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look at those things and say,

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"Well, the core of our religion
is here to stay with us.

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It's our faith,
and we will be loyal to it.

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But we can change how it was interpreted,

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because it was interpreted
according to the time

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and milieu in the Middle Ages.

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Now we're living in a different world,

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with different values
and political systems."

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That interpretation
is quite possible and feasible.

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Now, if I were the only person
thinking that way,

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we would be in trouble.

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But that's not the case at all.

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Actually, from the 19th century on,

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there's a whole revisionist, reformist --
whatever you call it -- tradition,

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a trend in Islamic thinking.

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These were intellectuals or statesmen

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of the 19th century,
and later, 20th century,

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which looked at Europe, basically,

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and saw that Europe
has many things to admire,

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like science and technology.

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But not just that;
also democracy, parliament,

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the idea of representation,

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the idea of equal citizenship.

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These Muslim thinkers, intellectuals
and statesmen of the 19th century,

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looked at Europe,
saw these things, and said,

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"Why don't we have these things?"

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And they looked back at Islamic tradition,

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and they saw what I told you -

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they saw that there are
problematic aspects,

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but they're not the core of the religion,
so maybe they can be re-understood,

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and the Koran can be reread
in the modern world.

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That trend is generally called
Islamic modernism,

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and it was advanced
by intellectuals and statesmen,

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not just as an intellectual idea, though,

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but also as a political program.

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And that's why, actually,
in the 19th century,

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the Ottoman Empire, which then
covered the whole Middle East,

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made very important reforms --

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reforms like giving Christians and Jews
an equal citizenship status,

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accepting a constitution,

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accepting a representative parliament,

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advancing the idea of freedom of religion.

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That's why the Ottoman Empire,
in its last decades,

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turned into a proto-democracy,
a constitutional monarchy,

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and freedom was a very important
political value at the time.

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Similarly, in the Arab world,

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there was what the great Arab
historian Albert Hourani defines

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as the Liberal Age.

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He has a book, "Arabic Thought
in the Liberal Age,"

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and the Liberal Age, he defines
as 19th century and early 20th century.

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Quite notably, this was the dominant trend
in the early 20th century

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among Islamic thinkers
and statesmen and theologians.

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But there is a very curious pattern
in the rest of the 20th century,

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because we see a sharp decline
in this Islamic modernist line.

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And in place of that,

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what happens is that Islamism grows
as an ideology which is authoritarian,

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which is quite strident,

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which is quite anti-Western,

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and which wants to shape society
based on a utopian vision.

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So Islamism is the problematic idea

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that really created a lot of problems
in the 20th-century Islamic world.

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And even the very extreme
forms of Islamism

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led to terrorism in the name of Islam --

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which is actually a practice
that I think is against Islam,

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but some, obviously, extremists,
did not think that way.

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But there is a curious question:

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If Islamic modernism was so popular
in the 19th and early 20th centuries,

247
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why did Islamism become so popular
in the rest of the 20th century?

248
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And this is a question, I think,
which needs to be discussed carefully.

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In my book, I went
into that question as well.

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And actually, you don't need to be
a rocket scientist to understand that.

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Just look at the political
history of the 20th century,

252
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and you see things have changed a lot.

253
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The contexts have changed.

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In the 19th century,

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when Muslims were looking
at Europe as an example,

256
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they were independent;
they were more self-confident.

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00:13:17,577 --> 00:13:20,578
In the early 20th century,
with the fall of the Ottoman Empire,

258
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the whole Middle East was colonized.

259
00:13:23,418 --> 00:13:25,903
And when you have colonialization,
what do you have?

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You have anti-colonialization.

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So Europe is not just
an example now to emulate;

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it's an enemy to fight and to resist.

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So there's a very sharp decline
in liberal ideas in the Muslim world,

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and what you see is more of a defensive,
rigid, reactionary strain,

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which led to Arab socialism,
Arab nationalism

266
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and ultimately to the Islamist ideology.

267
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And when the colonial period ended,

268
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what you had in place of that
was generally secular dictators,

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which say they're a country,

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but did not bring
democracy to the country,

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and established their own dictatorship.

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And I think the West,
at least some powers in the West,

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particularly the United States,

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00:14:09,932 --> 00:14:12,595
made the mistake of supporting
those secular dictators,

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thinking that they were more
helpful for their interests.

276
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But the fact that those dictators
suppressed democracy in their country

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00:14:20,111 --> 00:14:22,602
and suppressed Islamic
groups in their country

278
00:14:22,627 --> 00:14:25,499
actually made the Islamists
much more strident.

279
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So in the 20th century,

280
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you had this vicious cycle
in the Arab world,

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00:14:29,079 --> 00:14:32,082
where you have a dictatorship
suppressing its own people,

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including the Islamic pious,

283
00:14:33,900 --> 00:14:36,122
and they're reacting in reactionary ways.

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There was one country, though,

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which was able to escape or stay away
from that vicious cycle.

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And that's the country
where I come from, Turkey.

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Turkey has never been colonized,

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so it remained as an independent nation
after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

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That's one thing to remember;

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it did not share
the same anti-colonial hype

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00:14:57,749 --> 00:15:00,419
that you can find in some other
countries in the region.

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00:15:00,443 --> 00:15:01,980
Secondly, and most importantly,

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Turkey became a democracy

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earlier than any of the countries
we are talking about.

295
00:15:06,200 --> 00:15:08,772
In 1950, Turkey had the first
free and fair elections,

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which ended the more
autocratic secular regime,

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which was in the beginning of Turkey.

298
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And the pious Muslims in Turkey

299
00:15:16,370 --> 00:15:20,439
saw that they could change
the political system by voting.

300
00:15:20,463 --> 00:15:23,973
And they realized that democracy
is something compatible with Islam,

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compatible with their values,

302
00:15:25,450 --> 00:15:27,427
and they've been supportive of democracy.

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That's an experience

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00:15:29,300 --> 00:15:32,084
that not every other Muslim nation
in the Middle East had,

305
00:15:32,108 --> 00:15:33,276
until very recently.

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Secondly, in the past two decades,

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thanks to globalization,
thanks to the market economy,

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00:15:38,900 --> 00:15:41,198
thanks to the rise of a middle class,

309
00:15:41,222 --> 00:15:46,201
we in Turkey see what I define
as a rebirth of Islamic modernism.

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Now, there's the more urban
middle-class pious Muslims

311
00:15:50,538 --> 00:15:52,670
who, again, look at their tradition

312
00:15:52,694 --> 00:15:55,580
and see that there are
some problems in the tradition,

313
00:15:55,604 --> 00:15:59,038
and understand that they need to be
changed and questioned and reformed.

314
00:15:59,062 --> 00:16:02,539
And they look at Europe,
and see an example, again, to follow.

315
00:16:02,963 --> 00:16:05,876
They see an example, at least,
to take some inspiration from.

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00:16:05,900 --> 00:16:10,466
That's why the EU process,
Turkey's effort to join the EU,

317
00:16:11,333 --> 00:16:14,585
has been supported inside Turkey
by the Islamic pious,

318
00:16:14,715 --> 00:16:17,178
while some secular nationalists
were against it.

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00:16:17,733 --> 00:16:20,039
Well, that process
has been a little bit blurred

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00:16:20,063 --> 00:16:22,647
by the fact that not all
Europeans are that welcoming,

321
00:16:22,671 --> 00:16:24,245
but that's another discussion.

322
00:16:24,869 --> 00:16:28,332
But the pro-EU sentiment
in Turkey in the past decade

323
00:16:28,656 --> 00:16:33,451
has become almost an Islamic cause
and supported by the Islamic liberals

324
00:16:33,476 --> 00:16:35,606
and the secular liberals
as well, of course.

325
00:16:36,454 --> 00:16:37,726
And thanks to that,

326
00:16:37,750 --> 00:16:40,993
Turkey has been able
to reasonably create a success story

327
00:16:41,017 --> 00:16:45,842
in which Islam and the most pious
understandings of Islam

328
00:16:45,866 --> 00:16:47,853
have become part of the democratic game,

329
00:16:47,877 --> 00:16:52,032
and even contributes to the democratic
and economic advance of the country.

330
00:16:54,105 --> 00:16:57,773
And this has been
an inspiring example right now

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00:16:57,797 --> 00:17:00,734
for some of the Islamic movements

332
00:17:00,759 --> 00:17:04,863
or some of the countries
in the Arab world.

333
00:17:07,032 --> 00:17:10,375
You must have all seen the Arab Spring,

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00:17:10,400 --> 00:17:13,142
which began in Tunis and in Egypt.

335
00:17:13,674 --> 00:17:17,493
Arab masses just revolted
against their dictators.

336
00:17:17,903 --> 00:17:21,298
They were asking for democracy;
they were asking for freedom.

337
00:17:21,321 --> 00:17:23,938
And they did not turn out to be
the Islamist boogeyman

338
00:17:23,962 --> 00:17:29,031
that the dictators were always using
to justify their regime.

339
00:17:29,429 --> 00:17:31,851
They said, "We want freedom;
we want democracy.

340
00:17:31,875 --> 00:17:33,542
We are Muslim believers,

341
00:17:33,566 --> 00:17:37,464
but we want to be living
as free people in free societies."

342
00:17:37,853 --> 00:17:40,212
Of course, this is a long road.

343
00:17:40,236 --> 00:17:43,515
Democracy is not an overnight
achievement; it's a process.

344
00:17:43,539 --> 00:17:47,505
But this is a promising era
in the Muslim world.

345
00:17:47,529 --> 00:17:51,146
And I believe that the Islamic modernism
which began in the 19th century,

346
00:17:51,170 --> 00:17:53,380
but which had a setback
in the 20th century

347
00:17:53,404 --> 00:17:55,963
because of the political
troubles of the Muslim world,

348
00:17:55,987 --> 00:17:57,167
is having a rebirth.

349
00:17:57,565 --> 00:18:02,227
And I think the takeaway message
from that would be that Islam,

350
00:18:02,251 --> 00:18:05,596
despite some of the skeptics in the West,
these days

351
00:18:05,907 --> 00:18:07,783
has the potential in itself

352
00:18:07,807 --> 00:18:11,386
to create its own way to democracy,
create its own way to liberalism,

353
00:18:12,010 --> 00:18:13,546
create its own way to freedom.

354
00:18:13,870 --> 00:18:16,119
They just should be allowed
to work for that.

355
00:18:16,432 --> 00:18:17,596
Thanks so much.

356
00:18:17,620 --> 00:18:22,988
(Applause)