Panel on constitutionalism, Islam held in Istanbul

ISTANBUL

A panel on constitutionalism and Islam was held Saturday as a part of the 11th International Islam and Liberty Conference in Istanbul with the participation of dozens of academics from all around the world and former Turkish parliament speaker.

Former Turkish parliament speaker, Mustafa Sentop, described the era as “a period in which Western human rights and the paradigms of the rule of law have collapsed,” in his opening speech before the panel. “A period in which Zionist aggression has become blatant, and the paradigms of Western human rights and the rule of law have collapsed.”

Pointing out that human rights are for only Western people and biased, Sentop said human rights are not valid for the outsiders of the West.

He said when crossing outside Europe, humanitarian issues become “political matters."

Drawing attention to the situation in the Gaza Strip, which has been under Israeli attack for one year, Sentop said Israel is not only targeting places that belong to Islam and killing Muslims but is also targeting places that belong to Christianity and Christians.

Yet, the Christian world has remained silent, he added.

Stating that the discrimination in Europe against the Muslim community has been very "clear" after Oct. 7, 2023, Sentop said pro-Palestinian people in Germany were taken into custody by police.

“The West has shown that freedom of expression and freedom of assembly are internal matters and myths,” he said.

Discussing research titled, “Constitutionalism, the Elusive Missing Link for Muslim Societies and Their Quest for Democracy,” Saeed Khan, an academic from Wayne State University in the US, said the Holy Quran is not only the source of sharia, or Islamic law.

“Early Islamic history demonstrates that not only the Quran is the source of sharia and constitutionalism compatible, but that a constitution enacted in a Muslim state is the first such document in world history,” he said, referring to the Medina Constitution – the document that established a multi-religious state during the life of Prophet Muhammad.

Highlighting the significance of the Medina Constitution in legal history, Khan said that the Constitution of Medina provided the world with the first example of genuine, equitable, and inclusive citizenship.

He discussed the works of Western philosophers in the field of law, noting that philosophers developed their ideas by examining their own societies, while criticizing that their works sometimes lacked universal values.

Another academic from Quaid-i Azam University in Pakistan, Saeed Ahmed Rid, discussed how the concept of sovereignty is addressed in the constitutions of Türkiye, Indonesia, Pakistan and Tunisia.

Rid noted that there are differences in the treatment of the concepts of "divine sovereignty and popular sovereignty" in the constitutions of the four countries.

In another panel, “Democratic Practices in Muslim Majority Countries,” professor Kamal Ben Younes, a faculty member at Tunis University, criticized the dominance of Eurocentric methods in research on democratization.
Younes noted that democratization external factors play a significant role in the democratization process in the Middle East and emphasized the need for more research to examine the influences.

Noting that democratization in the Middle East should be encouraged, he said it should be done in collaboration with civil society.