Yeni Şafak columnist Kaplan criticizes conservative community over 'contractors': 'We set out as mujahideen...'

Yeni Şafak columnist Yusuf Kaplan offered criticisms directed at the conservative community in his article today.

"THE MIND MUST FIRST BE ISLAMIZED"

Kaplan stated, "When Muslims make directing the economy and growing the economy their goals, they can never transform the system; they are transformed by the system. The mind must first be Islamized; it is a condition! It is inevitable that it be cleansed and purified of contemporary superstitions. It is inevitable that it be cleansed and purified of contemporary superstitions."

"IF YOU TARGET ECONOMIC PROSPERITY..."

Kaplan continued his criticisms as follows:

“If you target economic prosperity before building the Muslim mind and personality, that economic prosperity will not lead you to salvation or deliverance; on the contrary, it lays the building blocks of your destruction. If Muslims act by placing technology ahead of culture, they drag themselves to the threshold of an intellectual dead end and exhaust their ability to move and maneuver. If Muslims do not concern themselves with themselves rather than others, they cannot propose a civilization that will change the world, a life-world that is livable, and a source of horizon and hope.”

Kaplan further added, “We will first cultivate people, then the soil will come to love and bear fruit... This country can only begin to make progress and cover distance in becoming a path when it can raise the people who will raise men.”