What frightens Westerners: the danger of the "Islamization of the world"!

In a world where everything is interconnected, the most fundamental thing that frightens Westerners is the fear that the world might rapidly become Islamized.

That is why Westerners foreground their concern to demonize Islam and to cripple Muslims' relationship with Islam through projects like "moderate Islam," and to distance Islam from life.

THE TRUTH THAT FRIGHTENS WESTERNERS!

The fundamental thing that frightens Westerners is that secular Western culture and the experience it has produced have two essential weaknesses: First, the secular Western experience is built on conflict.

Second, secular culture, by its ontological nature, does not grant other cultures the right to exist.

If Islam is not demonized and weakened, in an era where everything takes place on a global scale and global communication tools have become so widespread, it will eventually become clear that Islam lacks such weaknesses; this will trigger a process that will cause the unjust hegemony produced by secular Western culture to crack.

Because secular culture is, in Marcuse's apt description, a "one-dimensional" worldview—a culture that absolutizes only the world/physical reality—it is impossible for it to understand other cultures that are not one-dimensional; therefore, it is also impossible for it to coexist with other cultures.

For these two reasons, secular culture can only sustain its existence by inventing others (imaginary enemies to be turned into ghosts).

This is not only the case in the West, but in all secularized countries. The unimaginable tensions and problems experienced in Türkiye are an indication of this.

IMPOSSIBLE AND TEMPTING MODERN PROJECTS

Throughout the 2,500-year history of Western culture, Westerners, unlike Muslims, have never had the experience of living together with different cultures.

This is the most fundamental reason why discourses such as democracy, freedoms, and human rights were developed in the West. Ontologically, it is impossible for these discourses to be realized in the West.

Because the moment other cultures begin to show even slight signs of existence and vitality, it becomes inevitable that they will be subjected to the assault of secular culture and rendered ineffective.

Today, the fact that Islam has begun to show itself, even if somewhat crookedly, in Europe is enough for Westerners to marginalize and demonize Muslims.

The most concrete example of this is how Jews, the representatives of the only "different" culture in European history, were humiliated for centuries and massacred in masses.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE JEWS WILL ALSO HAPPEN TO MUSLIMS...

Looking at what Jews experienced, it would not be difficult to predict the kind of frightening treatment that Muslims in Europe, whose populations are rapidly increasing, will be subjected to tomorrow.

Westerners know that Islam is currently the only religion that offers principles for granting other cultures the right to exist, and that Muslims have a historical experience of living together with societies belonging to other religions and cultures in peace, justice, and a legal order.

I want to say this to those who might object superficially and shallowly to what I am saying by looking at the miserable state of the Islamic world today: Today, the Islamic world is not independent; it is a world that is the product, work, and captive of colonizers.

The colonizers first shattered the Islamic world into pieces. Then they inflicted "native secular missionaries" upon the Islamic world, using them as puppets to dynamite the dynamism of Muslim societies and block their paths.

The Islamic world lacks a Muslim dignity in terms of protecting its natural resources and liberating its personality (its identity, mind, cultural dynamics, intellectual capabilities).

CAUGHT BETWEEN TWO CROSSFIRES...

On top of that, it remains caught between two cross-cutting secular fires coming from outside and inside: on one hand, struggling not to break its connection with being Muslim, and on the other hand, struggling to strengthen and re-Islamize itself.

In a world where everything takes place on a global scale, if Islam is not demonized, it will easily be understood that the one-dimensional, conflictual, and othering secular Western culture destroys humanity, society, and nature, and does not grant other cultures the right to exist. Then the path will suddenly and spontaneously open for the establishment of a livable global order of peace and justice—an order where Islam accepts everyone as they are, granting the right to exist in the Hereke (a livable world)—and thus for the rapid Islamization of the world.

This is the fundamental reason behind Islamophobia and even the West's enmity toward Islam.

"THE WORLD MUST BE A PLANET WHERE MUSLIMS LIVE!"

This article was published in this column 12 years ago. I am republishing it as is, except for minor corrections.

Let me illustrate with a historical example that what I pointed out in the article is not a fairy tale, and that after the Gaza genocide and the Epstein files—where 500,000 children were kidnapped, raped, and drained of their blood—the world is more pregnant with Islam than ever before.

Marshall Hodgson, a brilliant academic from the University of Chicago who wrote the monumental, unsurpassed three-volume work The Venture of Islam on Islamic civilization, recounts the following anecdote in his pioneering historiography book Rethinking World History: An alien arriving on Earth in the 14th-16th centuries would see Muslims living everywhere from Morocco to China, and would think that this planet must be a planet where Muslims live.

We are not living in a fairy tale. The place where Westerners have brought the world after their colonial and imperialist attacks is a complete hell. As seen in the resistance put up by Muslims in Gaza, only Muslims can bring about an exit from this hell.

The path is open for Islam, but Muslims are absent.

For this, Muslims need to become Muslims again. And so be it.

Happy Eid.