Competing Occidentalisms of Modern Islamist Thought: Necip Fazıl Kısakürek and Nurettin Topçu on Christianity, the West and Modernity

Abstract

This article will focus on the writings of two influential Islamist intellectuals of Republican era Turkey, namely Necip Fazıl Kısakürek and Nurettin Topçu, to examine the origins, content, appeal and legacy of Occidentalism in modern Muslim intellectual history. Both Kısakürek and Topçu were educated in France, as recipients of prestigious scholarships from the secular modernizing government of the Republic of Turkey. Upon their return to Turkey, however, they became leading proponents of Islamist alternative to westernization, harshly criticizing the pro-Western intellectual foundations of the Turkish Republic as well as Western civilization itself. Kısakürek and Topçu are neglected names in the recent literature on Islamism, which focuses more on the intellectuals from Egypt and South Asia. Yet, for the development of Islamism in Turkey, the writings of Kısakürek and Topçu were essential and occurred prior to the translations of Sayyed Qutb and Abu’l Ala Mawdudi into Turkish language in the 1970s. Their writings represent an Islamism that is more familiar with French intellectual life of the interwar era than any classical Islamic texts. Ideas of Kısakürek and Topçu represent the powerful occidentalist strands in modern intellectual history of Turkey and broader Middle East and can teach us a lot about the politics of the images of the West in an era of modernizing nation-states.