In this thought-provoking interview, Dr. Moeed Pirzada, Editor of Global Village Space, engages with Professor Ahmet Kuru, Director of the Center for Islamic and Arabic Studies and Professor of Political Science at San Diego State University. Professor Kuru, renowned for books like Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment, offers a penetrating analysis of why many Muslim societies have struggled with democracy, progress, and intellectual freedom.
Together, they examine the decline of Muslim societies, focusing on how enduring alliances between orthodox scholars and authoritarian states have shaped politics, obstructed democracy, and stalled progress. Here is the full transcript of this insightful and exclusive interview:
Moeed Pirzada with Prof. Ahmet Kuru of San Diego Univ: Rise & Fall of Muslim Mind & Power?
Date: 26th April, 2025
Dr. Moeed Pirzada: Assalamu Alaikum! This is Moeed Pirzada in Washington. I am now joined by Professor Ahmet D. Kuru, who is the Director of the Center for Islamic and Arabic Studies and a Professor of Political Science at San Diego State University in California. Professor Kuru has written several books, monograms, and papers. These have also been translated into different languages. But his last book, Islam, Democracy and Underdevelopment, which has been translated into different languages, continues to attract international attention and debate. This is the starting point of my discussion, and I would also like to tell you in advance that I believe this is going to be the first of a series of discussions with Professor Kuru on the subject. Professor Kuru, I’m grateful for your time. Thank you so much for finding time out of your classes to discuss with me. A very warm welcome!
Professor Ahmet D Kuru: Thank you. The honor and pleasure belong to me, Mr. Moeed Pirzada. I have followed you in the media, on social media, and, in fact, I gave one of the first interviews about my book in Pakistan to your magazine, Global Village Space.
Dr. Pirzada: Professor Kuru, thank you so much. You know it was very widely read. Thank you so much for it, and it’s a pleasure to be with you. So my first question, a very open question to you, is that this book, Islam, Democracy and Underdevelopment, continues to attract international debate. What made you write this book? What made you research for that book?
Prof Kuru: So there are both personal and academic motivations for me. Personally, I was born in Turkey. For the last 25 years, I’ve been in the United States, but during my childhood, similar to almost all other Turks, I was grappled by the question of what went wrong with the Ottoman Empire. Why was Turkey at the time so prestigious and important, but not anymore? And that’s why I started the book with an anecdote about my late father and his debate with a secularist general about the contribution of Muslims to human civilization.
In my first book, I compared Turkey with France and the US in terms of secularism and the legal structure. With this 2019 book, Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment, I decided to put Turkey into a much broader context. Initially, it was the Middle East, then it became the entire Muslim-majority world, which is 50 countries. And the more I examined, the more I realized that, first of all, the general attitude in Western academia about almost denying the fact that Muslims ever had an intellectual decline was very problematic.
Dr.Pirzada: Explain to me, I missed the point, the absence of the debate in the intellectual circles, in the Western intellectual circles, that is, Islam?
Read more: Crisis of Liberal Democracy in the Muslim World:…
Prof. Kuru: Definitely, because when I came to the United States in the late 1990s, it was a high moment of Edward Said’s book Orientalism. I had the chance to see him in person before he passed away. He was a great scholar, Edward Said. I’m teaching his book Orientalism to my students every year. It’s an important contribution to say that Western academia should put aside its prejudices against Islam, Arabs, and the Oriental/Eastern people. But everything can be overused. If you eat honey, that’s nice, but too much honey may hurt your stomach, so too much emphasis on the book became an apology for Islamists, orthodox scholars, ulema, cultural conservatives—you name them—to cover up problems in the Muslim world. As I said, I was born in Turkey.
I knew the problems in my society. I knew how Ottomans, despite their military grandeur and power, intellectually were a very backward society. Well, by intellectual I refer to education, literacy rate, and book publishing. In the last 300 years, especially in Ottoman society, Muslims in the Ottoman Empire had a very low literacy rate. They had a very limited number of book publications, and let me be specific—for 300 years, Ottomans did not get printing technology. From Gutenberg, around 1450, to Ibrahim Muteferrika in Istanbul, 1720, over about three centuries, the Ottomans did not get the technology. Can you imagine a society?
Dr Pirzada: What was the reason?
Prof. Kuru: That’s a major question I ask in my book. Can you imagine a society today without the internet? Three hundred years ago, even the Taliban, I guess, would have been using the internet. So what was the reason? It is all about psychological mechanisms. First, denial. Initially, Muslims in Turkey and certain Western academics in America said there was no problem with not adopting the printing press for 300 years because Muslims in the Ottoman Empire and elsewhere were already writing manuscripts manually.
They argued that they had enough books. But when I looked at the number of books in Ottoman libraries in comparison to French, English, and other European libraries, the Ottoman numbers are minuscule. So it is not true that handwriting was very efficient. Second, if handwriting was so efficient, why did all Muslims adopt printing technology after the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries? Why don’t we see people writing manually today? Because it is very expensive, very slow, and prone to many mistakes. Everywhere, even the most radical Islamist Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia and Iran use technology.
Dr Pirzada: I also had the opportunity to attend a class from Professor Edward Said. I was a postgraduate master’s student at SIPA (School of International and Public Affairs). I read his book, and subsequently, over the years, I thought that the book had provided a defense not only to Muslim scholars but also to left-wing scholars of the Western world.
It argued that cultures should not be criticized, because every culture is unique and complete in its own aspects. And I think in countries like Pakistan, where I come from, this argument has become very prominent—that we have a complete, sophisticated culture, so we shouldn’t really be criticizing it. So every culture is equal. I mean, is this what you’re saying? When you said that Orientalism provided a sort of apology and defense to Muslim scholars and even non-Muslims studying Islam—that you should not criticize cultures—is this what Orientalism did?
Prof. Kuru: Let me close the windows I already opened. As you said, I wrote the book, and I explain that both personal and academic reasons became combined when I came to America and saw the denial based on Orientalist literature. One dimension of denial is Muslim apology—Arab nationalism, Turkish nationalism, and some Islamists. They want to deny. In Western academia, there were three reasons. First, as you referred to, left-wing postmodern and poststructuralist criticisms of Western imperialism, by thinkers like Michelle Fuko and others, were used to justify Islam’s apology. Second, some good Western people feel guilty because of colonization, racism, and imperialism. They say, “Let’s not discuss Muslim problems, just focus on white men’s supremacy.” Then the third reason is that many Western scholars are very smart.
They know how critique is helpful for society’s future. That’s why they wrote books like Decline of America, Collapse of Western Civilization, etc. Muslims in Turkey and the Arab world didn’t understand the point of self-criticism. They translated these books into Turkish, Arabic, and Persian and said, “Look, the West is collapsing. It’s not the time to discuss Muslim problems; we will be superior again.” But my response in this book, and overall in my debate, is that no, we should have self-critique. Do not just translate Western publications without understanding their main message. They are trying to make the West more powerful through criticism.
So that’s what I’m trying to do—make Muslims more powerful, smarter, well-educated, with critique. The postmodern Orientalist debates have so far been used by Islamists and others to cover up. And let me conclude: historically, it’s a fact that at the beginning of the 19th century, the literacy rate among Muslims in the Ottoman Empire was less than 5%, probably 2-3%, whereas it was 30% in Western Europe. And one last number: when the Ottomans started printing technology in the 18th century, they printed 50,000 books. Although they were late, they were ahead of all other Muslim societies, because printing came to Iran, Egypt, and Southeast Asia much later. Only 50,000 books in the Ottoman Empire. In the same century, Europe printed 1 billion books—1 billion books—20 times more.
Dr. Pirzada: 1 billion in the 18th century! Oh my God.
Prof. Kuru: When I compare this situation with the early Muslims in the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th centuries, and how they picked up paper technology from China, how they wrote books, and founded big libraries. At that time, Europe resisted papermaking for 500 years, hence was backward from the 8th to the 12th century. So what explains the change of roles? We were ahead in technology. Europe was backward. Then Europeans got the technology, and we became backward. What explained this reversal of fortune?
Dr. Pirzada: Just a thought to share. You know, many people in Pakistan, many highly educated people in Pakistan, I have found them saying this thing. They go: “Dr. Moeed, read that book about the decline of the West and the collapse of Western civilization. You will see that such and such professor at Harvard, Columbia, or Princeton has himself written this. He himself is saying that American civilization is collapsing.” And I think more than 90% of literate, educated Muslims seriously believe this—that the West is actually collapsing. They think that, if somehow, because of higher immigration rates or higher birth rates, it is time for Islam to actually come forward. I mean, it’s so interesting to hear this thing from you. So what were the main challenges? From the initial chapters of your book, you grappled with the issue of whether colonialism was responsible for the decline of Islam. Was Islam itself somehow responsible for the intellectual decline? Was patriarchy responsible? Were the Crusader invasions and the Mongol invasions responsible? Or was it the consolidation of state power over the scholars? So what were the other questions? What are the leading questions?
Prof. Kuru: A major challenge was to document the Muslim Golden Age. Because when I compare Muslim society today with its early history and say there was a Golden Age, some people are very critical. Some secularists in the Muslim world and certain Westerners deny it. They say, “No, Muslims never had a Golden Age. It’s a fantasy.”
Again, therefore, it is difficult. Because today, for example, you and I can compare Turkey’s and Pakistan’s GDP per capita. We have numbers, technology, and computers. But it’s very difficult to document the Golden Age in the 7th, 8th, and 9th centuries. For example, out of thousands of books in Ibn Nadim’s Fihrist that document Muslims’ scientific publications, 90% are lost. Only 10% exist in some manuscripts and libraries. It’s very difficult to reconstruct the historical archive of this Golden Era. That’s why I dedicated this particular chapter, first of all, to show how dynamic and productive Muslims were between the 8th and 12th centuries.
It was also a response to Western scholars like Ernest Renan, the 19th-century French philosopher, who said, “Oh, Muslims didn’t have a Golden Age. If they had some productivity, it was just an imitation of Greek philosophy.” I document in the book that Muslims learned, yes, from the Greeks, but also from Persians, Chinese, Africans, Indians—multiple civilizations. They read Ptolemy’s astrophysics, but tried to go beyond him. They read Greek Galen’s medical science, but they critiqued and contributed further. And today, the terms we use—like algorithm, algebra, alcohol—are all from Arabic. That’s not a coincidence; it’s because of Muslim mathematical contributions. Also, optics, the proto-version of the camera, and other innovations were invented by Muslims at the time.
Islamists like Sayyid Qutb, Maududi, and others say, “Oh, we were very pious, religious people. That’s why we became successful. And we stopped being good Muslims. That’s why we are backward today. So if we become more religious, we’ll have another Golden Age.” That’s their argument.
Dr. Pirzada: Two things actually troubled me here. So, given what you referred to, I understand it is the period between the 8th—maybe the end of the 7th—but the 8th and 12th centuries that are the golden era of Islamic civilisation. Given the huge contribution they made in physics and chemistry, in architecture, in medicine, in mathematics, in algebra, and in different ways, yet you, when you arrived in the United States, you actually felt that somehow, 25 years ago, this era between the 8th and 12th centuries was not fully understood. This is one point that troubles me. The second is that I do not know what argument Maulana Maududi and Sayyid Qutb gave for the Muslim rise in physics, chemistry, biology, human sciences, architecture, archaeology, and everything, by saying that we progressed because we were pious, because we were modest. What connection did they ever establish between piety and physics and chemistry and biology and architecture? What was the argument?
Prof. Kuru: It’s just an ideological rhetoric and a defence mechanism. And again, since ordinary people have very limited access to history, making such political claims can live without being falsified. But in the book, I try to document once again that, first of all, yes, Islam was important because Islam brought hygiene, time management, discipline, a sense of community, and a sense of civilisation. The Arabic language became the centre of intercontinental trade. And Islam brought the concept of trust. That’s why Muslim economists established innovations such as cheques. The cheque we use today—although the old generation used it more, while the young people generally use credit cards—comes from the Persian term sheikh in English, French, and others. Yeah, it is a Muslim banking innovation.
And this civilisation, at the same time, was very open-minded. It wasn’t simply religiosity or piety, because Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Zoroastrians contributed to Muslim or Islamicate philosophical and economic dynamism at the time. We have historians documenting how, in Egypt, Jewish and Muslim merchants lived in the same neighbourhood, collaborating socially and economically. So that’s why the Golden Age was real and also a time of multiplicity, diversity. It was not a time of Islamist orthodoxy. That’s why everyone tried to use the Golden Age without understanding what it really is. And for me, this is a good inspiration for Muslims to be open societies—dynamic and multicultural.
Therefore, we don’t need the Western model of democracy and liberalism if we know the early Muslims had the open-mindedness they had in their conditions, of course. In the 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th centuries, we are not talking about a liberal society. But under those circumstances, Muslims were much more tolerant than Europeans.
Dr.Pirzada: So, what started to bring the decline?
Prof Kuru: The decline is a very complex issue. Some people who didn’t read my book just look at the cover and maybe some pages and say, “Oh, you blame Ghazali.” And I thought that I knew how important Ghazali is—very important. Almost all societies, especially Turks, maybe also Pakistanis, because we are coming from an Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah, Hanafi background—Ghazali was a genius. He was a product of the Golden Age. That’s why we cannot produce such scholars now, since we don’t have the legacy of the Golden Age anymore. But one man, even if it is Ghazali, cannot stop a whole civilisation. That’s what I said. No, my analysis is broader.
I look at the 11th-century transformation, when there was an economic crisis because of climate change and declining agricultural revenue. The Abbasi and other rulers moved from a monetary market economy to a semi-feudal economy. We call it, in Arabic, Iqta.
And this Iqta system, based on a centralised state distributing revenues and lands and tax farming, was a semi-feudal regime replacing the old and very successful monetary economy in the Muslim world. And this marginalised Muslim private entrepreneurs and merchants. But the merchants were the backbone of the Islamic Golden Age. It was merchants who were sponsoring not only secular philosophers but also the ulema. Abu Hanifa, the founder of the Hanafi school, was himself a silk merchant. Ahmad bin Hanbal worked in the textile sector. Shafi and Maliki refused to be paid by the government. So the ulema defended their independence because they were funded by commerce.
So that was the secret ingredient of the Muslim early achievement, because there was a certain separation between the ruling class, the ulema, economics, and the scholarly community. But after the 11th century, when the economic crisis created a new state central mechanism that marginalised merchants, ulema started to be produced in the madrasa system. The Seljuk Empire’s Grand Vizier, Nizami Ulmur, established Nizamiya madrasas.
And these madrasas produced ulema with a very different mindset than Abu Hanifa and others. The new ulema got paid by the authorities, and then they became part of the government structure.
Dr. Pirzada: So you’re saying, in a way, that between the 8th and the 12th or 11th century, the Muslim institutions of learning and scholars were not being financed by the Umayyads or by the Abbasids, but by themselves and by the commercial circles. So it’s funny that this week, the Donald Trump administration got a shut-up call from Harvard. They threatened them by cutting off $9 billion.
And Harvard said, “No, the Harvard community has to be independent of government interference.” And within hours, the Trump administration had taken away $2.2 billion from Harvard. And Harvard could see that its independence is more important than the billions of dollars. So you’re saying that Muslim institutions in the early golden era were also independent of state patronage. Is this what you’re saying?
Prof. Kuru: Thank you. This is an excellent question. It’s exactly what I am trying to say, because my argument about social classes and their relations is universal—in Europe, in China, and in the Muslim world. Whenever a society gives autonomy to scholars, religious or others, and to economic entrepreneurs, and if the government does not abuse and oppress them, then you have justice, efficiency, and prosperity. Whenever you combine these, you end up with corruption. I was in India last month to launch my books in the Hindi version at the Delhi Book Fair. Then, to help the audience understand the argument, I said, “Look, in America now, Donald Trump and Elon Musk, politicians and corporations, they are coming together. This is against my argument, because that will create inefficiency and some level of corruption.”
Then some newspapers made the headline: “What is the similarity between the Ulema-state in Islam and the state-corporation in America today?” Some socialists and economists reviewed my book, saying, “Why do you appreciate merchants so much?” I say, “Look, I appreciate them, but I don’t want a society dominated by merchants. I don’t want a society dominated by ulema. Every class should be autonomous and respect the others.” Your question is very well taken. Yeah, this is the problem we are having globally now.
Dr. Pirzada: Very, very interesting. So what do you think of a state like Iran, dominated by the ulema under the Fakiha? What is that—the whole principle of Imam Khomeini? What is that?
Prof. Kuru: You know, there is a big debate in social science literature about Islamists. Some, as you refer to left-wing scholars, say, “Oh, Islamists are modern phenomena. Some even are postmodern phenomena.” My position is that Islamists have strong historical, deep roots, but at the same time, they are much more ideologically utopian than medieval thinkers. Because, look, my argument is that before the 11th century, there was a separation between the ulema and the state. After the 11th century, what emerged was the ulema–state alliance. And some Pakistani friends say “Mullah–military alliance.”
Dr Pirzada: So the Mullah–military alliance started in the 11th century?
Prof Kuru: Yes, in the 11th century, gradually in Central Asia, Iran, and then moved to Iraq; in the 12th and 13th centuries, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia—with the great Saladin, who defeated the crusaders and then established the Ayyubid and Mamluk. And the Ottomans established a Sunni ulema–state alliance. The Safavids in Iran established a Shia ulema–state alliance. And these alliances were medieval, except for two entities: the ulema and the state.
Dr. Pirzada: But why was it happening? Why from the 11th century and not before? Why, from the 11th century, did the state start to incorporate the ulema and want to create an alliance?
Prof Kuru: From a normative point of view, both Sunni and Shia ulema from the 8th to the 11th century had a principled distance from the government. It all started with the Sufyan War, the Jamal War, and Karbala, and the murder of the Prophet’s grandchildren, especially Hazrat Hussain, by the Umayyad authorities. Abu Hanifa and others were very critical of the Umayyads. And then Abu Hanifa became critical of the Abbasids. So the Abbasid Caliph, the Sultan, invited Abu Hanifa to become the judge, maybe the grand jurist. And he refused.
Dr Pirzada: Interesting!
Prof Kuru: And then the Abbasid Caliph said, “You have to give me an explanation. Why are you refusing?” And Abu Hanifa said, “I’m not qualified.” The Abbasid leader was angry: “You are the most qualified. You are a liar.” And Abu Hanifa said, “A liar can never be a judge.” Then they put him in prison. They killed him.
Dr. Pirzada: So Imam Abu Hanifa died in prison?
Prof. Kuru: Yes. He was killed in prison because he refused to serve the Abbasids.
Dr. Pirzada: One of the most respected of the four jurists of Islam, even in the eighth century, died in prison.
Prof. Kuru: And just for his principles, he is defending the principle that ulema would never serve the state. And Ahmed bin Hamal was also sentenced to death. Then, a new Caliph came with a different mentality, and he removed the death sentence, sent gifts to Ahmed bin Amber. He refused the gifts. Even his children accepted the gifts. He was angry with his family members, saying that we should never accept the gift of a Sultan. So, this principal position, starting from Karbala, the idea that the politicians are corrupt, was not only anecdote of leading figures, but also we have numerical data. A study shows that from the eighth to the 11th century, out of about 4000 ulema, only 9% accepted to be known, like Abu Yusuf, the student of Abu Hanifa, Imam Yusuf, who was very critical. People criticized him at the time: Why did you accept? Why did you do that? Yes, I don’t deny that there was 9%, but 91% had private jobs, different occupations, mostly from commerce.
When you look at today, Pakistan, Turkey, and Iran, and you ask the question about Iran, the Ulema completely state, they say, let us say, No, we, we are the state, and it’s very difficult to find privately funded Ulema today. They are a minority. They were historically the majority. So let me conclude by saying that despite my critics, after Ulema-State Alliance and Ottomans and others, the medieval system was still better than Islamic ideology, because it says ulema and state are separate, but they collaborate and ally. Then came the modern idea of Hassan Al Banna at Islam din wa-dawlah, which basically means Islam is both religion and the state. Hassan Al Banna – Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimun, Maududi of Jamaat-e-Islamia. They all propaganda the unity. Although Khomeini was Shia, he was influenced by them, and he produced the idea of Velayat-e-Faqih as the founding principle of this semi-theocratic Iranian Republic. So everything is connected.
Dr. Pirzada: You said Hassan Al Banna basically stated that the state and religion are intertwined. But the poet of Pakistan and Shair-e-Mashriq, Allama Iqbal, is very famous verses. If you take away the religion from the politics, all that you leave is actually the Chenghaziat, you know, that Chenghizi… sort of thing. You think that Iqbal was merely echoing the ideas of Hassan bin Bana?
Prof. Kuru: When I look at the Ulema-state alliance and try to understand how they justify it, because there is no Quranic justification or Hadith, and then I find out that they use a fabricated Hadith.
Dr. Pirzada: Fabricated?
Prof. Kuru: Yes, which says religion and state are twin brothers. Religion is the foundation, and the state is the guardian. That without foundation collapses, that without a guardian perishes. In reality, this maxim was said by King Ardashir of the Iranian Sassanid Empire 300 years before Prophet Muhammad. After the 11th century, when the ulema needed a justification, they took this Persian maxim and said this is a Hadith. And that’s why in many books, Sufis and ulema and recently Islamists keep repeating this again and again: religion and state are always together. This is an old Iranian government maxim. It has nothing to do with Islam.
Dr. Pirzada: How significant in your research and understanding is the debate between the Mutazillah and the Ashari, and the fact that the rationalists lost to the literalists in the 10th century? How significant is that to the decline of the Muslim mind?
Prof Kuru: In social science, we have a very big question whether ideas or material factors really shape history. And another related question, whether some leaders or broad structural societal factors. So, the Ashari–Mutazillah debate is important. I analysed this in the book. But it is just a source of ideas. And then I’m asking the question: why were the Mutazillah ideas defeated, whereas the Ashari ideas gained the political debate? That’s when I bring up the issue of material factors like the economy, the land revenue system, and the importance of merchants. Therefore, ideas and material factors, and then major figures like Ghazali, Mawardi, Ibn Taymiyyah, but at the same time, broad social trends.
We have to look at all of them. Mutazillah, in fact, were very diversified. Yes, there are five clear principles of Mutazillah, but other than this, there were multiple Mutazillah with different ideas.
Dr Pirzada: What was the gist of the ideas of the Mutazillah?
Prof Kuru: The origin is when Muslims came to Damascus in the 7th and early 8th century, there was no Kalam school, but Christians had established theology schools. Then Muslims came to say to them that you are polytheists, you believe in three gods. Then Christians say, No, you believe in two gods: Allah and the Quran. They said, We don’t worship Jesus as God, but Jesus is the word of God eternally, and you worship the Quran as the word of God eternally. Mutazillah developed the notion that the Quran is the creation of God, but not the word of God, like Jesus. They became more rationalists, paying attention to free will and interpreting the Quran because it’s a creation. It was a reaction to Christians and the debate, because Kalam is basically a debate-we call it in English speculative theology.
But to make a long story short, Imam Ashari was a Mu’tazili. His father-in-law, Jabbar, was a leading Mu’tazili Imam. Until the age of 40, Imam Eshari was a Mu’tazili. According to the anecdote At the age of 40, Imam Eshari went to the mosque, according to the anecdote. He said, Listen to me, people. I give up this ideology. I believe that the Quran is not a creation of God, but the word of God eternally. Take everything literally, not metaphorically.
Dr Pirzada: What’s the difference between the Quran not being the word of God and the creation of God?
Prof. Kuru: It’s basically a semantic debate, but Mutazili, with the idea of the creation of God, put the Quran in a historical context. Whereas Ashari, when you take the eternal word of God, you deny interpretation based on context. So, these are important debates, but I also want to tell the audience that they have many agreements. For example, even the most radical Ashari, even the people who reject interpretation, accept that there is Asbab al-Nuzul. Asbabi nuzul basically means that every verse in the Quran, when they are revealed from God, there is a reason for the revelation. They came after an event had happened. Nobody denied this. Another thing, so this is a very complex thing, maybe we’ll discuss separately, but my idea of separation. Some people say, Oh, you are bringing a Western idea. It’s not a Western idea.
Look, Imam Ghazali, another great figure, at the age of 40, he would transform, not from Mutazili to Ashari, but this time from a well-established, rich, powerful professor, Ghazali, he became a humble dervish Sufi. And then he went to the mausoleum of the Prophet Abraham and took an oath that he would never be paid by political authorities again. He would never teach in their madrasas again.
He would never even join political authorities’ debates, majlis, or gatherings again. So, even Ghazali, who is one of the architects of the ulema–state alliance, knew that there should be a separation, and he regretted that he became part of power politics. So, that’s fascinating that, as I said, even the most radical accept that there should be some interpretation.
Dr. Pirzada: Can we then say that Ghazali was an Ash’arite who basically believed that the Quran’s word has to be literally understood? So, Ash’arite’s basic idea is, emphasis is, that every word of the Quran means just what it means, and the Mutazila thought that they can interpret it. Is this the difference?
Prof Kuru: There is a list of differences; this is one of them, but even this one is very nuanced because if you ask an Ash’arite, they say on some specific issues, yes, that we need interpretation. Because the Quran itself says certain verses in the book are Muhkam, which is literal, taken. Some are Mutashabih. Mutashabih means open to interpretation. So, if the Quran says so itself, how can you deny, right? Another debate is free will. Mutazili believe in free will. Human beings create free will, whereas Ash’arite says God creates, humans don’t have true free will. And this is a theodicy problem because, let’s say, a small child was murdered. You say it is evil. How come Allah permits this evil? Mutazila has a simple answer: the murderer is responsible, not Allah, because it’s not God created. The murderer committed the act. Ash’arite says, No, everything is created by God. Then how do you explain evil happening? They say it’s not evil; it seems evil, but in the broad picture, it’s not evil. So this is another debate.
Dr. Pirzada: Are you then saying that Ash’arites would say that a murderer cannot be held responsible for the murder because of the murder itself?
Prof Kuru: No, of course. But it is a theoretical debate, who created what, in the ontological sphere. But, of course, the murderer is responsible for Ash’arite.
Dr Pirzada: It’s interesting that you just referred to Muhkam and Mutashabih. I was actually reading it myself because many people appear on my YouTube from time to time, and when I talk of cooperating with the American Congress or developing relationships and leverage in the West, they say, “Well, in the Quran it is said that the Christians and the Jews can never be your friends.” And I was explaining to them in one of my previous vlogs that this is not a Muhkam, this is a Mutashabih. Can you explain a little bit, I mean, this kind of statement?
Prof Kuru: This is fascinating. This is a very important point. And, you know, there is a late Ottoman scholar called Sayyid Nursi, and when he was asked, because the Ottomans had this debate very deeply. After all, the political project was to move from the separation between Muslim, non-Muslim citizenship and Ottoman identities they tried to create, Muslims and non-Muslims together. Then there was a big debate: what about the Quranic verses, as you just referred? Then this Ottoman scholar says, is it permissible for a man to get married to a Christian woman? And they say, yes, men can get married to Christian and Jewish women. So, you get married and you don’t love your wife? How come you don’t love your wife if you are getting married, right?
Dr. Pirzada: But on the other hand, many women, Muslim women, also raise the question that if Muslim men can get married to pretty Christian and Jewish women, why can’t Muslim women also get married to Jewish and Christian men?
Prof Kuru: This is an interesting question, but I generally try to skip these questions because we have to look at the major political structure.
If the Ulema-state alliance is dismantled, if we have an open society where we can debate these issues, then we reach the goal. Then, people decide, then there will be a free market of ideas, and then Muslims with their good sense and logic will make the decision. I’m not in a position to say who is right, who is wrong. And let me tell you an anecdote: a major scholar of history emailed me after I published the book, saying, “Ahmet, there’s a major problem in the book.” And I said, “How can I fix it? What is the problem?” He said, “You don’t tell the readers what the true Islam is.” I said, “Oh, I’m very happy.” This is the whole point of the book. Of course, I’m a Muslim, I even went to Hajj, Alhamdulillah, so I have my own understanding of Islam, but I didn’t put it in the book. The book is about historical analysis, and the only message I say is, we should respect diverse opinions. Even a very radical set of ideas, from an Islamic point of view, is welcome, as long as they don’t become hegemonic. The problem is domination and hegemony.
Dr Pirzada: In your book, you also discussed that the growing schism between Sunniism and Shi’ism also led to military mullah or state mullah alliances in two different spheres of the Muslim civilisation. Is that right?
Prof Kuru: You mean sectarianism?
Dr Pirzada: As a result, the Sunnis increasingly got the Abbasids, and then subsequently they became insecure about the rise of Shi’ism across North Africa, Tunisia, Egypt, Fatimid.
Prof Kuru: Thank you so much. This is a point I missed during the debate on the 11th century. You are absolutely right. In addition to the economic crisis and the rise of the semi-feudal iqta system, there were other things. One, as you referred to, was the rise of Shi’a powers in the 10th and 11th centuries. At that time, there was the concept of Ahlus Sunnah wal Jama’ah, but there was no clearly defined Sunni. There were multiple mas’abs, schools of kalam and fiqh, theology, and law. And Hanafis, Hanbalis, Shafi, Maliki, Ashari, they were competitors, sometimes enemies of each other. They were divided. People were not saying, I am Sunni. They were saying, I am Hanafi, you are Hanbali, the other Ashari, all the Ashari’s kalam school. But for various reasons, as you said, Fatimids in North Africa, Karmatis in the Arabian Peninsula, Hamdanis in Syria, Buwehis in Iraq, all of them Shi’a powers. They established a very strong powerhood and caliphate. The Fatimids in Egypt controlled Baghdad and made the Abbasid caliph a symbolic figure, like the Pope today in the Vatican.
Dr. Pirzada: They ended up controlling the Abbasid caliphate at one point.
Prof Kuru: Yeah, the Shi’a Buwehis militarily controlled the entire Baghdad and Iraq. And they say the Abbasid caliph is just a symbol. And then a very powerful father and son to the Abbasid caliph, Qadir al-Qaim, declared a creed, an aqeedah. It’s called aqeedah al-Qadiri, or the Qadir’s creed. They declared Shi’a, especially Ismailis, as enemy. They declared Mu’tazila infidels, rationalists, and philosophers too. And then they declared non-practising Muslims infidels. And called all the mas’habs, Ahlus Sunnah wal Jama’ah, to establish a unified Sunni ground, a Sunni bloc. Ghaznavi Mahmud, Mahmud the Ghaznavi, embraced, but he couldn’t come to Baghdad. But Turks, the Seljuks, came to Baghdad, defeated the Shi’a, and made the Abbasid caliph strong again. And that’s how Ulema-State Alliance economically, religiously, and politically emerged. And first, the Seljuks in Central Asia and Iraq, then after Saladin, they defeated the Fatimids in Egypt, Tunisia, and then the Sunni Ulema-State Alliance spread there. And then, when the Ottomans and Safavids were enemies of each other.
Ottomans, sectarian Sunnis, and Safavids embraced Shi’a. So when I sent this project to a Turkish friend in America, a political scientist, he said, “Ahmet, you are proving that we, the Turks, destroyed the Muslim Golden Age, the Seljuks.” I said, “No, my friend. It’s a joint effort of Seljuk Turks, Abbasid caliphs, who are Arab, and then all the bureaucrats were Persian. Nizam-ul-Mulk, the great Ghazali, was also Persian. So don’t blame Turks only.” That’s a joke.
Dr Pirzada: It’s very interesting. I mean, when I read your book and many other books—I’m reading another book, A History of the Muslim People, Muslim World. So, the rise of the Ottoman Empire from the 13th and 14th centuries, when it started, is actually taking place at a time when the Muslim intellectual mind was already declining. So the Ottoman military power was rising. They go ahead, and in the middle of the 15th century, they end up conquering Constantinople, which actually looks like such a climax. But intellectually, they were declining, and intellectually, Western Europe had started to develop its ascendancy. Am I right?
Prof Kuru: You are right. That’s a very important point, and it disrupts and makes some Turkish friends uncomfortable, because we all grew up with the idea of the Ottoman Golden Age, and my analysis is that they were part of the intellectual decline. So here is the thing. Of course, we are talking about 600 centuries. Some Ottoman rulers, like the Fatih conqueror of Constantinople, were very open-minded. Sultan Mehmet Fatih opened an observatory in Istanbul, and he tried to encourage natural sciences. Another was the famous Grand Vizier, so-called Mehmet Pasha. He established an observatory in 1570 in Istanbul. But unfortunately, when this patron of science, the Great Pasha, died, the Sultan, the ulema, and the army decided against science for various reasons and destroyed the observatory. And from that time to the modernisation of the 18th century, so 19th century, there was no scientific production in the Ottoman Empire in terms of cosmology, in terms of a certain link to an observatory, and they didn’t even write a book on America. So the first book the Ottomans wrote about America was in 1570, 70 years after Columbus. Until 1830, for about 180 years, they never wrote a book on America. I explain it only by the lack of curiosity, and it shows intellectual apathy, the lack of dynamism.
Dr Pirzada: How significant were the Crusades, the Mongol invasions, and the destruction of Baghdad and the Abbasid Caliphate by the Mongols in contributing to the decline of Muslim intellectual and cultural power?
Prof Kuru: I made one of the first talks on the book in Oslo, and then a Turkish ambassador asked me this question, saying, “Why did you underestimate the importance of Western domination from the Crusaders to modern imperialism?” I took forward the question and said, Look, I have a whole chapter on Mongols and Crusaders, and today, some Muslims exaggerate this, because they all think it’s about foreigners. We don’t have an internal problem; we have a perfect culture, a perfect system at home, only the enemy is coming from outside. This is wrong. No, if you are strong internally, the enemies cannot defeat you.
Yes, Mongols and Crusaders were very detrimental. They killed millions of people. Worse, they made Muslims inward-looking. When Muslims saw the invasions, they no longer sought science or art; they looked at survival. That’s why they went after military heroes. That’s a very bad thing. But one point I also emphasise is that the Mongols and Crusaders were military occupiers; they came from an inferior culture. That’s why Mongols easily converted to Islam.
Dr Pirzada: Very, very interesting point!
Prof Kuru: The Crusaders learned many things from Muslims, but when the 19th-century Europeans came, they didn’t come from an inferior position. They came with better schools, better techniques, better pedagogy, and that time, Muslims were in shock.
Dr Pirzada: Very interesting, Professor Kuru. I had always wondered from my childhood that the Mongol military power destroyed the Muslim military power, but very quickly, the same powerful Mongol horsemen accepted Islam. So, Islam was far more powerful culturally, in terms of civilisation, just like they talk in terms of the Han culture in China, that ultimately, the periphery, even if it conquers the centre, it submits to the Han culture. The powerful Mongols converted to Islam. How interesting is that?
Prof Kuru: Yes. I totally agree with you. Keep the culture, and you will win, even if you are militarily weak.
Dr Pizada: My thesis is this: of the 49 Muslim countries, apart from Turkey, virtually all were colonized. The British and the Russians were not interested in colonizing Afghanistan, and Iran fell under their influence for over 20 years, but Turkey is the only country that wasn’t really colonized, right? What is your thesis on how Turkey escaped colonization?
Prof Kuru: A major reason was the 18th–19th-century reforms. The state rulers realised the problems. They convinced the ulema, first of all, to get the printing press. Ulema said no religious book will be printed. Then, 50 years later, they said, okay, tafsir, hadith, but no Quran printed. Then, 50 years later, the Quran in Arabic, but no translation. So, the state, after 1839, the sultan and the bureaucrats said we should sideline the ulema, embrace certain European laws, commercial laws, and some criminal laws in the European style. They opened schools, and they trained the military in a new way. Both the janissaries, the old school, and the ulema resisted, but for a while. Eventually, the reform made the Ottoman military and society powerful because when the French and British forces occupied Istanbul in 1920, it was the second time the centre of the caliphate was occupied by a non-Muslim force. It was like the Mongols in Baghdad.
Dr Pirzada: When was the first time?
Prof Kuru: Mongols occupied Baghdad—the first time. The second time, yeah, 1920, the British and French were in Istanbul, but they could only stay in Istanbul for two years. Atatürk was a great leader, but maybe more important than the leader was society, the elite, and national resistance, because thanks to Ottoman modernisation, Turks were ready to mobilise. It was not a docile, passive society.
It was a dynamic society. There was a parliament, so Atatürk was the leader of the parliament, and the parliament made the decisions during the liberation war. It wasn’t simply a military strategy. It was a political system, and then the Turks defeated the Greeks, Italians, the French, and the British, and then they left Istanbul. That’s one thing, but at the same time, of course, there was the great game between Russia in the north, Britain in the south, I mean in the Indian continent, and Afghanistan and Iran took advantage of the division between Russia and India, and so did Turkey play the balance of power between the British and the French. If Russia tried to occupy Istanbul, the British and French resisted. When the British and French occupied Istanbul, Atatürk got support from the Soviet Union. So that’s also strategic, and Ottomans were great strategists. I criticise them for science and philosophy, but I always appreciate their military strategy. And one last point is that they were like the Habsburgs in Europe.
The Habsburgs in Europe were a Catholic clergy-state alliance, and the Ottomans always supported Protestants in the Netherlands, in England, gave them capitulations, and economic privileges to divide Europe. And Ottomans succeeded in dividing Europe, but at the same time, Ottomans unintentionally helped Europe because a Catholic Europe, destroying the Reformation, the Habsburg clergy-state, would be a very backward, scientifically declining Europe. When the Protestants in the Netherlands, in England, in Northern Germany defeated the Catholics, Europe became diverse and progressive; this is the rise of Europe. So Ottomans helped the rise of Europe.
Dr Pirzada: If I choose my words correctly, Muslim societies, apart from Turkey, when they got colonised, had already intellectually, culturally collapsed. They were not part of the modern industrial culture. In a country like Pakistan, it is seen as a military defeat, but I think before the military defeat, they had collapsed scientifically, technically, culturally, and educationally, which facilitated the military conquest by the European imperialists. Am I right?
Prof Kuru: I totally agree, because I see military power as a result of socio-economic development. I went to Florence, Galileo’s house, which is a museum now. Interestingly, at the beginning of the museum, you have the Arab astrolabes and Arab tools of the Muslim Golden Age that Galileo used. Then, Galileo’s scientific tools, like the telescope. Then you have the calculation of an efficient artillery chute. So Galileo helped European military technology have better artillery. So if you are scientifically, economically underdeveloped, your military power eventually declines, and then you get colonised.
Dr Pirzada: When I see the documentaries and I read the books about the fall of Constantinople, or the conquest of Constantinople, the Ottoman artillery was very important because by the time in the 1450s, if I remember correctly, without those powerful Ottoman guns, the cannons, they could not have really destroyed Constantinople’s defence perimeter.
Prof Kuru: Definitely, and it helped Europeans to have a centralised state. They learned from the Ottomans, but eventually they surpassed them. So that’s what we need today: the Muslim society with the self-critics, with the intellectuals like yourself, with this debate we are doing now. Hopefully, Muslim society will appreciate its scientists, its philosophers, and their critical thinkers, and eventually they’ll be more powerful and wealthy.
Dr Pirzada: I see this as the beginning of a series of discussions with you on your books and on your writings. So, of course, we cannot really cover every subject. You mentioned four Muslim jurists, schools of thought, Imam Abu Hanifa, Imam Maliki, Imam Shafi, and Imam Ahmad Hanbal, and they are continuously referred to. Every Pakistani television channel has a religious programme once a day. And the Muslim scholars and ulema or maulvis that appear, they keep on referring to these four Muslim imams. My question is, why these imams between the time period of the 9th and 10th centuries and not in the 14th, 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries? Why didn’t we have any other schools of jurisprudence?
Prof Kuru: You can ask your question in two ways. First of all, what about the schools before them? Yes, there were multiple schools before them. Some say there were hundreds of fiqh and kalam schools. And most of them were eliminated naturally, and these great schools persisted because of people’s support. But why not after them? This has something to do with the state authority, because once the state alliance was established, the Sunni state said these are the four madhhabs we legitimise. I went to Egypt, for example. One of the main monuments is the Hassan Mosque, where you have four corners. They say one corner for each madhhab, but this is the state authority that designed the architecture and said these four are legitimate. So it is a combination, therefore, of people’s preference—yes, these were popular among people—but later on, the state eliminated any possibility of the emergence of new schools. That’s what the Ulema-state alliance is here.
Dr Pirzada: Let’s take the example of the Mughals in India that quickly fell under British domination, and look at Turkey that resists. My argument will be, which I would like you to consider, that Turkey, from the very beginning, from the 15th century, was continuously fighting against Europe. Initially, the Turks were ascendant; the Ottomans were ascendant. Then the Europeans became more industrialized, more scientific, and more technological, and Turkey and the Ottomans had continuous reversals from the 16th and 17th centuries. But the Ottoman power was continuously engaged with the assistant European power. Unlike the Mughals, who were simply, that were totally disconnected. They were living in isolation. All the ideas that used to come to Mughal India were coming from Central Asia. The pipeline of ideas started to dry up with the rise of industrialization, and then the British naval power suddenly fell over the Mughals, and they had no idea how to resist that. Am I right?
Prof Kuru: This is also a very complex question. Both Ottomans and Mughals in India were military powers, and, you know, originally they came from a Timurid-Turkic Central Asian sultanate. And as far as I understand, the Mughals in India were much more army-based. Ottomans, since being in the Mediterranean, achieved to be of both an army and a navy power. And then Ottomans initially were as good as Europeans in the navy, but due to various technological problems and also the difficulty of obtaining timbers in the African and Asian parts, their navy had a hard time defeating the Portuguese. Because, very briefly, Ottoman grand strategy: they tried to help Muslims in Central Asia by sending the navy from the Black Sea to the rivers all the way to Central Asia. They tried to help Muslims in Andalusia and Morocco, sending the navy to the western Mediterranean.
They also sent the navy all the way from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, India, and part of Ajar, Indonesia today. And they tried their best militarily and using the navy, but after the 1600s, they didn’t have enough technology, and then the timber to build a big navy. Europeans used a nautical compass, and technology was better. But Mughals, in comparison to Ottomans, paid more attention to merchants, as far as I understand. Therefore, they were producing more. And a Turkish Ottoman saying is: “If you want philosophy and books, go to Europe,” — which is a shame, by the way, why are you going to Europe, right? — “If you want economic products and goods, go to India.” They referred to Mughal India. “And if you want grandeur and honor, come to Ottomans.” So that’s what we have: honor, honorable military, but neither philosophy nor economic production at that time.
Dr Pirzada: According to the late Western scholar Bernard Lewis, whose work on Turkey you are likely familiar with, he observed in one of his books that Muslim scholars often remarked that the Turks, particularly the Ottomans in the late 18th and 19th centuries, had become less pious and less modest. Lewis argued that one of the fundamental reasons for the decline of Ottoman power was the discovery of the Americas by the Spanish, followed by other European powers, which shifted global economic and political dynamics. And they were able to bypass the land masses around the Mediterranean — and they were able to bring the gold, silver, and wealth from the Americas. And they started to become independent of the Ottoman military domination, and thus the Ottomans were not able to collect as much revenue. Revenue from the trade as the Europeans started to get rich, and this new wealth of the Europeans also contributed to their military and industrial power. And how do you look at that?
Prof Kuru: This is factually correct, yes. And it also explains the decline of Venice and Genoa because Venice, especially, was an Italian city-state making intercontinental trade in collaboration with the Ottomans. When the Portuguese and Spanish, later on the British and Dutch sailors and merchants, used the Atlantic ports, the Mediterranean ports lost their importance. And we see the economic decline of both Ottomans and Venice, and Italy in general. But I want to say that when Europeans made innovations, geographical discoveries, what were Muslims doing? The first Ottoman ship went to the Americas around 1840. For 340 years, no Ottoman boat sailed to the Americas. That shows the lack of curiosity, maybe capacity. I understand that they were busy with other things, but why didn’t you send a ship to America for over 300 years?
Dr Pirzada: But you’re talking of this lack of curiosity in the Ottomans. I mean, just look at Mughal India. They were never curious about Europe at all. They never had any connection with Europe, anywhere. I think the Mughals in India never knew about America. I think they didn’t have any connection with the Europeans when they were subjugated by them. But, you know, you’re also familiar with another great Western scholar, Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations, and his seminal paper in Foreign Affairs in June of 1993. And in that very paper, and in subsequent books, he dilates on the lack of a model leadership state in the Muslim world. You’re familiar with that, right? He identifies five potential leadership states. He starts with Saudi Arabia, and he brings in Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia, and Turkey. And one by one, he says, Saudi Arabia is far too conservative, has no real intellectual class. Iran is Shia, and Indonesia is outside the arc of Islam. Pakistan is far more divided and poor. And he says Turkey is the natural leader. Now, this was in 1993, and subsequently, I think that the AK Party and Erdoğan have actually imagined themselves to be the genuine leaders of the Muslim world. How is this project going?
Prof Kuru: I still expect Turkey to be a major leading power. Not now. Maybe in the future, after Erdoğan. Eventually, Turkey will have a different leader. Maybe after certain extremes of assertive secularism, assertive Islamism, Turkey will find a middle way through the Sirat-ul-Mustaqeem, the golden mean. This is still a possibility. But unfortunately, what I see in my beloved Turkey is the lack of sufficient theory. We are a people of practice. Maybe because of the military background. Turks always think that they will find a way in practice. But no, you have to sit down and think theoretically, conceptually. Now, for example, politics in Turkey is very much polarized. People blame each other. They focus on individuals. But what about events? What about ideas? It’s time Turkey really had a theoretical debate — what went wrong, how we can have a better future. And the same for all countries, including the United States. We really need a serious debate about our theories.
Dr Pirzada: Just summing it up, coming to your book, we have hardly discussed, actually, the structure of authoritarianism, but we have discussed the decline of the Muslim mind, the intellectual ideas. I think the next discussion we should start from a comparative analysis of the contemporary Muslim world, the major Muslim countries like Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Indonesia, and which country can actually lead the Muslim world, and how the Muslims can come out of the mental, intellectual, and scientific stagnation. Right? So I think this can be the starting point for the next discussion.
Prof Kuru: Yes, I’m looking forward to that. Pakistan is very important to me. In fact, recently, I had to show that the Urdu translation came out, and I said that when I was a child, they played “Jevay, Jevay Pakistan” on Turkish TV, because it was one of the few countries that Turks really trusted. And therefore, my friendship with you, and then the audience in Pakistan and Pakistanis in other countries, it’s very important for me to have some connection with them.
Dr Pirzada: Thank you, Professor Kuru. And the feeling in Pakistan is the same for the Turkish people. I think Turkey is, in fact, the most popular nation, the most loved nation in Pakistan. But Professor Kuru, thank you so much for this majestic discussion, and I look forward to staying in touch and treating it as a series of discussions. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Prof Kuru: Thank you.