The fourth-week sessions of Ibn Haldun Academy '25: Developing Culture and Climate took place on Saturday, May 10. The seminars and conferences, enriched by contributions from scholars across different disciplines, addressed the zeitgeist, intellectual tendencies in the Islamic world, the need for a return to core sources, and the formation of a literary climate. This week’s speakers included Assoc. Prof. Vahdettin Işık, Prof. Alev Erkilet, Prof. Ekrem Demirli, and Dr. Metin Kayahan Özgül, who engaged with participants both in person and online.
In the first session of the day, Assoc. Prof. Vahdettin Işık, Director of the Alliance of Civilizations Institute and faculty member in the Department of Civilization Studies at our university, delivered the second lecture of his seminar titled “The Spirit of Time as a Horizon or a Cage Enclosing the Mind”. As a continuation of last week's session, the seminar examined the relationship between the zeitgeist and changing realities. Emphasizing the importance of renewal in Islamic thought through the concepts of baqāʾ (permanence) and tajaddud (renewal), Işık highlighted the need to manage transitions effectively and to grasp new existential realities. He argued that reducing the spirit of the age to a future that neglects the past renders individuals passive and disengaged. Drawing attention to the techno-mediatic relations of the modern age, he noted that today’s individuals attempt to simultaneously satisfy their need for belonging and freedom, which leads to a contradiction masked by artificial solutions. He concluded by underlining the need to pursue selfhood despite the conformity pressures of the age, stating that building proper connections between time and Being is among the most vital intellectual efforts of our era.
In the second session, Prof. Alev Erkilet from our Department of Sociology gave a seminar titled “The Emergence and Development of Socio-Political and Intellectual Movements in the Islamic World (I).” She discussed the historical, social, and intellectual contexts in which political and ideological movements in the Islamic world emerged. Erkilet argued that explaining Islamism solely through modernity is an incomplete reading. Drawing on Muhammad Asad's The Message of the Qur’an and her own doctoral research, she emphasized that the central issue should be a return to the core sources: the Qur’an and the Sunnah. Highlighting the distinction between the formation of ideas and their application to social life, she stated that decay in the modern world is not merely external but also rooted in internal disintegration. Erkilet stressed the necessity of self-criticism and loyalty to foundational sources. She also reflected on the relationship between the individual, obedience, and moral responsibility, referencing Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil and the Stanford Prison Experiment. Erkilet concluded her session by asserting that women's piety must be recognized directly, without mediation, and that women should be acknowledged as world-building “subjects,” adding that she would continue from this point in the next week’s session.
In the afternoon conference titled “Reflections on Certain Issues in Contemporary Islamic Thought,” Prof. Ekrem Demirli addressed the disjunction and continuity issues between classical and modern Islamic thought. Referring to intellectual figures such as Necip Fazıl, Mehmed Akif, Sezai Karakoç, and Nurettin Topçu, he explored the lack of institutionalization of Islamic thought and the absence of enduring intellectual traditions in the Muslim world. He discussed the influence of thinkers like René Guénon and Muhammad Iqbal. Demirli also critically examined Ernest Renan’s theses on the religion-science dichotomy and the counter-arguments they inspired. He interpreted concepts such as faith, action, movement, and the search for meaning through both the aforementioned local thinkers and classical and modern philosophers. According to Demirli, with the loss of meaning in the modern age, the concept of God has also become increasingly ambiguous. Hence, he emphasized the need to build a new island of thought—intellectually consistent and compatible with faith.
In the final session of the day, Dr. Metin Kayahan Özgül delivered a lecture titled “Cultural Climate Shifts in the Context of Literature,” in which he examined the determining role of geography, continuity, settlement, cultural interaction, and microclimates in the development of culture, literature, and, more broadly, civilization. Özgül asserted that civilization has historically flourished in temperate climates, particularly near bodies of water, where cultural interaction is most vibrant. He argued that nomadic societies are unlikely to produce substantial literary works, and that urbanization is a fundamental prerequisite for the flourishing of civilization. He also noted that even in the pre-Islamic period, Turkish literature had a strong cultural foundation. Contrasting the Ottoman court with its Western counterparts, he stated that it did not feature a court literature in the Western sense, but rather that the Enderun provided a talent-based educational and creative environment. He described the “Sultan of the Poets” as a court-appointed figure who curated the poetic milieu of the era. Özgül also analyzed modern literary movements such as the Second New (İkinci Yeni) as forms of introversion and microclimate formation.
Ibn Haldun Academy will continue to offer multifaceted perspectives on the intellectual, cultural, and sociological issues of the modern age in the coming weeks.
