Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Ankara Universitesi Ilahiyat Fakultesi Dergisi, cilt.64, sa.2, ss.441-471, 2023 (Scopus)
Babanzade Ahmad Na'īm (1872/1934) was a scholar, translator and thinker who lived in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century and distinguished himself with his works in the fields of language, philosophy, psychology, ethics, and hadith. Babanzade, who graduated from a school and studied madrasa sciences at a time when the conflict between the school and madrasa was intense among Ottoman intellectuals, was well versed in the modern culture of the period as well as Islamic culture. In addition to witnessing the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic, Ahmad Na'īm contributed to the intense intellectual debates on the nature, limits, and possible effects of modernization in the late Ottoman period and the early years of the Republic. In these views, which he presented on the basis of the defense of Islam, he was based on utilizing the scientific and scientific opportunities offered by the West without moving away from religious, moral and cultural values. In addition, Babanzade criticized the point reached at the time by Muslims who made a breakthrough and built a civilization with their works in fields such as science, science, philosophy, and art in the historical process and drew attention to the great gap between the past and the current age, and in this context, he wrote defensive texts in response to the criticisms directed against Islam. This article aims to systematically identify Babanzade's views on the defense of Islam by considering his intellectual background. In this framework, at the center of Ahmad Na'īm's defense of Islam is the comparison of the universal values offered by Islam, which he sees as the religion of nature, with the values imposed by the cultural hegemony of the West and his criticism of the imitation of Western values. He does not consider the imitation of the West/Frenk, which was proposed by some Muslim intellectuals and bureaucrats as a way out of the current situation of Islamic society, as a way out for the salvation of Muslims, and he considers it as the main cause of social mischief. In the article, it is determined that Babanzade embraced the idea that Islam is a rational, moral, and consistent religion that contains universal principles as the starting point in his defense of Islam, and that the salvation of Islamic society depends on a definite return to the principles of this perfect religion.