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A Muslim is not duty-bound to support a Muslim. However, they are duty-bound to support the just. We are not to be swayed by the demands of communitarianism. Rather, we’re guided by this Quranic maxim:

O you who believe! Stand firmly for justice, as witnesses to God, even as against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin, and whether it be for rich or poor: for God can best protect both. Follow not your desires, lest you swerve, and if you distort justice or decline to do justice, verily God is well-acquainted with all that you do.

Qur’an 4:135

Sadly, to say this much risks censure in these highly polarised times in which the world is painted as a game of us and them, good and evil, black and white, wherein all that matters can be distilled down to a just couple of highly contentious issues, against which all political parties must then be measured.

Today, that gauge is largely affirming traditional family values. Anything else is considered of lesser importance. Speak of protections for workers — a living wage, and adequate safeguards against harm — and these will be dismissed as mere side issues. So too environmental conservation and stewardship, or worries about privatisation of public assets, or the incessant march of hyper-capitalism.

The first of these is made an issue of fundamental importance for Muslims; the rest trifling concerns. And yet, really, the pursuit of social welfare is at the heart of our tradition in its nascent formation, before the impulses of empire transformed it from revolutionary force to enforcer of the status quo. Thus do we read:

And what can make you know what is the steep path? It is to free a slave, to feed at a time of hunger an orphaned relative or a poor person in distress, and to be one of those who believe and urge one another to steadfastness and compassion. Those are the companions of the right.

Quran 90:11-18

Learning today that a relative back home is standing as the candidate for a leftist political party in the upcoming Turkish elections — the Turkish equivalent of British Labour party under the tenure of Jeremy Corbyn or Neil Kinnock — I murmured: “If they’re standing for social justice, workers rights, social welfare and support of the most vulnerable, maybe I’ll vote for them.”

Unfortunately, despite emphasising if, this statement turned out to be explosive. The if is important because a lot of political parties claim to stand for justice and welfare, only to be highly partisan, ineffective and selective in transforming intentions into actual practice. If this party claims to be socially constructive, but in fact intends to introduce discriminatory policies which curtail freedoms, clearly it would not meet my criteria.

But alas, that if just got lost in the frenzied argument that followed. These are high stakes elections, apparently, and sentiments like these are unwelcome. These knife edge elections boil down to two things in the minds of the pro-government camp: preservation of traditional family values, and freedom of religion. What religious communities fear most is a return to the bad old days of aggressive, militant secularism which actively discriminated against them and proscribed their religious practices.

Those latter fears are not unfounded. On my first visit to Turkey, twenty years ago, my wife had wanted to walk me through the grounds of Istanbul university, as many a tourist freely would. However, having embraced Islam since leaving the country as a secular feminist a few years earlier, she had recently taken to wearing a headscarf, which precluded her from passing through the entrance gates. Standing in her way, a guard informed her that I could go in, but she could not.

So it is that many of her generation fear a return to a regime in which women could be barred from participation in education or taking up state employment on the basis of how they choose to dress. Dress, which in their interpretation of their faith, they believe to be mandated as a fundamental component of religious practice. Many observant Muslims fear that once more they will me marginalised, pushed to the periphery and denied employment opportunities, their life made unnecessarily difficult.

This is not a political environment which handles pluralism very well. Instead, politics forever seems to be deeply polarised. There seems to be little attempt from any quarter to take the middle ground, seeking accommodation of others. Religious communities fear the reach of an aggressive secularism which tramples on their rights and interferes with their desire to promulgate their strongly-held morals and ethics. Secular communities, meanwhile, fear the reach of sectarian religion which they suspect will curtail their rights in much the same way.

It is sad to witness how religion is coopted by all sides in these political battles. The workers’ party could — if they could look beyond imperial religion to see the movement for social justice at its core — find common ground with the disenfranchised religious poor, campaigning for a fairer world for all, regardless of faith profession. Instead, they target the religious as an enemy to be vanquished, alongside untamed capitalism.

Meanwhile, religious communities could find common ground with left-leaning parties in their ambitions to preserve the natural environment, pursue living wages, lifting themselves out of poverty, improving standards of education and opportunity, if only they could look beyond the polarisation which exploits religion for political gain. The impetus of the Muslim should be to strive to create a society in which safety, health, security and welfare are prioritised for all — these are religious goals, after all.

But to say so in the present environment is hardly wise, unless you don’t mind being called a traitor, your religious beliefs scrutinised and then found wanting. If you hold — as I do — that the culture wars are mostly just a device invented by the wealthy to prevent the distracted masses from dealing with real issues of social justice, perhaps you will be less swayed by appeals to populist causes. Perhaps you’ll be more minded to peer beyond these apparitions of religiosity to purse that more wholistic vision of society.

And among those We created is a community which guides by truth and thereby establishes justice.

Quran 7:181