Selim Sözer 
(Faculty of Theology and Religion Studies, Suleyman Demirel University, Turkey)

Abstract: The Western Europe based Renaissance and Reform movements as a revolt against the authority of the Church lead to the liberation of mind, a human-centered understanding and gave birth to the Enlightenment movement. The outputs of the Enlightenment movement are modern, post-modern and hyper-modern understandings and lifestyles. The Enlightenment and therefore the modernity promised to bring the heaven to the world, save mind from the captivity of magic and the next world, liberate mind and human and an illuminated, peaceful world. As a result of the Enlightenment, a small portion of the world became extraordinarily wealth while the rest became poor and stayed under the threat of famine and war. The cost of two world wars to the world is that millions of people either died or became disabled.
I think it will be possible with a new worldview to liberate man from his iron cage to remove unsustainable growth idea from being an absolute myth, to open the door of a different world with the idea that man has a soul, to eliminate the hostility emerged by the competition idea and to make the world a peaceful place. This means that you have something to say to this modern world. At the same time this means that there is a creator of the universe and the positions of the man in the universe are “the essence of the universe” and “the most honourable of the creatures”. This understanding is most obviously found in Islamic Sufism understanding. Such principles like multiplicity in unity and unity in existence give important clues related to this subject. Sufism exists in social field through the sects. While the sects should be the institutions to reflect the Islam in the best way, it is both interesting and worrisome that today, the sects have transformed into institutions functioning as bridges to carry water to the modernity ship and to transfer modernity to those who are late to be modernized.

 

Key words: modernity, tradition, sufism, sect