According to him despotism and oppression were two big obstacles that block Islam to spread over all the continents. He saw this situation as an obstacle which dams Islam to the conquest of hearts. 

People who need freedom due to their creations and who have gained their freedom by giving hard struggles in their societies for centuries have had a negative opinion about Islam by looking at the oppressions in Muslim regimes.

So Bediüzzaman said “Europe, due to permission of our ignorance and bigotry, assumes that Sharia is appropriate –Allah forbids! – for despotism. I feel deeply sad, and to reject their assumption, I applauded the constitutionalism more than anyone else on behalf of Sharia” (*). 

In the speeches he gave to the students and their teachers in the imperial mosques such as The Hagia Sophia, Bayezid, Fatih and Suleymaniye, he explained the real relationship between Sharia and constitutionalism and he says that sharia is not related to despotism. “He says, with the secret of the hadith ‘Government is the one who serves the people’ , Sharia came to the world to destroy the despotism and cruelty”. 

Sultan Abdulhamid was the head of the state during this period. 

Over one hundred years have passed. 

And a leader in power, who resembles Abdulhamid in the eye of some people and pledge allegiance to.

The deeds show that the leader and his team tended the regime in the likeness of a repressive and authoritarian line and that there were serious deviations from the criteria of law and democracy. 

This tableau formed by the religious known cadres, clearly put forth the importance of the efforts of Bediüzzaman in 1908, and the need to continue his struggles also by adopting to today.

And also put forth the obligation that, despotism “in the name of religion” should be resisted by religious ones first. 

Because that’s the way Sharia wants.

(*) Eski Said Dönemi Eserleri (in Turkish), p.123

Kâzım GÜLEÇYÜZ

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