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Muslim Laws, Politics and Society in Modern Nation States
Drawing on theories of legal pluralism, this book tests whether and to what extent claims of the modern nation-state laws to exclusive dominance over other spheres are tenable, and reassesses the operation of law in society. Incorporating a combination of legal theory, post-modern critique and socio-legal analysis of three current jurisdictions in which Muslims play an important role, the volume identifies Muslims' current socio-legal situation and attitudes from different perspectives and reconciles them with modern legal systems in three key countries. It analyzes the conflict between the assumptions of modern legal systems and plural legal realities, and also examines attempts by modern legal systems to impose official laws in the face of resistance from unofficial Muslim laws and discusses possible responses to the challenge of dynamic Muslim legal pluralism. A valuable resource for students, researchers and academics with an interest in the areas of Islamic law and politics, and the interplay between secular law and religious/cultural traditions.
Contents: Law, politics and society in the post-modern condition; Dynamic legal pluralism; Muslim legal pluralisms; Muslim legal pluralism in England; Muslim legal pluralism in Turkey; Muslim legal pluralism in Pakistan; Post-modern Muslim legality and its consequences; Looking to the future; Bibliography; Index.
Dr Ihsan Yilmaz, SOAS, Department of Law, University of London, UK.
eBook
SALAFI THOUGHT IN TURKISH PUBLIC DISCOURSE SINCE 1980
Turkey has been absent from the growing literature on the phenomenon of transnational Salafism. A tendency among Middle East specialists to focus on Arab regions and in Turkey on the Islamist movement and its long struggle with the Kemalist establishment has perpetuated the notion of Turkey as a category apart. This article argues that, on the contrary, Salafism is a fringe strand of Turkish Islam that began to evolve in the context of the state's effort in the 1980s to recalibrate religion as a complement to nationalism. Salafism became a topic of discussion in media and scholarly writing in Turkish religious studies faculties, while self-styled Salafi preachers trained in Saudi Arabia found a niche through publishing houses. These publishers facilitated the translation into Turkish of Arabic texts by important Saudi religious scholars in an effort to change the discursive landscape of Islam in Turkey. I show that contra assumptions of a rich Sufi tradition acting as a block against modern Salafi ideas, Salafism managed to gain a foothold in Turkey, facilitated in part by the republic's experience of secular materialism.
Journal Article
Reconciliation or polarization in Islamic bank preference? Socio-political, socio-economic and demographic aspects
Purpose
The reasons for Islamic bank preferences have been extensively covered in the literature where religion has been depicted as a strong factor. In the limited number of accounts on this subject in Turkey, it was found that religiosity is a major factor in the selection of Islamic banks.
Design/methodology/approach
This study evaluates the findings of a major field work performed in the period between March and May 2011 in Eskisehir with the participation of Islamic bank customers. In the study, a sample of 500 respondents was used and a semi-structured survey was conducted.
Findings
According to the findings, religiosity is not the most significant and leading factor in Islamic bank preference; instead, it was found as the fourth most important factor. The study finds that recommendation by friends and relatives is the most significant factor for the people in preferring Islamic banks. The nationalist-conservative people make stronger reference to the religiosity as a factor than the secular-modernist and leftist-social democrat people do. Socioeconomic status is not found as a significant factor in the Islamic bank preference. People in advanced age, men, people with lower income and businessmen/artisan rely on the religiosity in Islamic bank preference as a factor stronger than people from other backgrounds.
Practical implications
In conclusion, it could be said that there is a strong relation of substitution between Islamic banks and conventional banks in Turkey and that the Islamic banks play significant role in inclusion of the people staying out of the banking system due to religious concerns and considerations in the financial system.
Originality/value
It is very comprehensive, both politically and economically, to handle the issue of Islamic banking.
Journal Article
'Breaking the silence': the religious Muslim women's movement in Turkey
This article explores the emergence of the religious Muslim women's movement in the 1990s in Turkey, and its relation with the broader women's movement, including the exclusion of religious Muslim women from the women's movement. My analysis is based on interviews I conducted in April and May 2006 with religious Muslim women who work in non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and participate in joint projects with other women's NGOs in Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey. I argue that because of a modernist perspective which views both the headscarf and religious Muslim women as 'backward', as opposed to the 'ideal female citizen' as secular and 'modern', religious Muslim women have been largely excluded from women's movements in Turkey. However, religious Muslim women are challenging this binary categorization and struggle to break the stereotype of 'backwardness' that is put upon them; instead they are seeking to reconstruct an identity that is neither 'modern' nor 'anti-modern'. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
Journal Article
From Islamic Radicalism to Islamic Capitalism: The Promises and Predicaments of Turkish-Islamic Entrepreneurship in a Capitalist System (The Case of İGİAD)
The rise of Turkish Islamic capitalism, and with it an Islamic bourgeoisie and the accompanying lifestyle has profound implications for the Muslim world, since the Turkish Muslims have been backed by a relatively successful democratic and liberal system that has allowed them to integrate more easily into the global system. Focusing mainly on the members of the Islamic-oriented Association of Economic Entrepreneurship and Business Ethics (İGİAD), the aim of this article is to demonstrate the inherent (in)compatibility and contradictions between Islam and capitalism in contemporary Turkey, and by extension in the Muslim world. From the start, for the Turkish Muslim bourgeoisie, the burning questions were 'how to earn' and, more importantly, 'how to consume' within a capitalist system while still not transgressing Islamic boundaries. In order to overcome these challenges, the article argues that, rather than creating an 'alternative Islamic economic system', Islamic actors have reduced - in some cases, even eliminated - this discursive and ideological tension between Islam and capitalism by (a) trying to introduce Islamic morality into capitalism and (b) redefining both Islam and capitalism. Through these mechanisms they have also broadened and deepened Turkish modernity.
Journal Article
Saudi Influence on Islamic Institutions in Turkey Beginning in the 1970s
This article investigates the influence of Saudi Arabia on aspects of Islamic social, political, and economic life in Turkey. Since the 1970s, long before the rise of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) of today, Turkish-Saudi Arabian relations have been characterized by an increasing
degree of cooperation, solidarity, and partnership centered on certain economic, diplomatic, social, and cultural activities with a good deal of Islamic content. Turkey's orientation toward the Middle East in general and Saudi Arabia in particular traces to the global oil crisis that started
in 1973 and its severe effects on the Turkish economy; it also stems from some of Turkey's foreign policy goals with regard to the Cyprus issue and its relations with regional and global actors. Examples of Saudi influence have included the involvement of Saudi-based non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) and multinational corporations (MNCs) in Turkey, Turkey's membership in the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), and Turkish labor migration to Saudi Arabia, with a spillover effect in a wide range of other arenas. This particular aspect of Turkish-Saudi Arabian relations is
analyzed using the theory of complex interdependence, which underscores the importance of economic, social, and cultural issues in international relations in addition to that of traditional political, diplomatic, and military goals.
Journal Article
Islamist New Thinking in Turkey: A Model for Political Learning?
The Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party's (Adalet ye Kalkinma Partisi) performance in government has led some observers in Turkey, in the Middle East, and even in US policy-making circles to argue that Turkish Islamism can be a model for Islamists in the region. Cavdar examines the potential exportability of the Turkish Islamist \"model\" to elsewhere in the Middle East. He also addresses the applicability of such a model to the region by examining the sui generis forces behind the transformation of Turkish Islamism and the lessons it might embody for Islamists in the region. Further, he contends that the \"Turkish model as is\" is unlikely to be adopted elsewhere in the Middle East, because it is the specific product of a transformation based on a set of distinct political and economic conditions.
Journal Article
Civility: Between Disciplined Interaction and Local/Translocal Connectedness
This study explores the question of if and how associative bonds based on violence, control and self-restraint mediated by contractual relationships become institutionalised within societies and discusses the cultural factors that determine this threshold. It investigates the trade-off between formalised forms of interaction that safeguard individual rights and secure state control, and less formal modes of civility that deepen trans-state interconnectedness. It asks whether civility is the result of a global civilising process in the sense highlighted by Norbert Elias, whereby affect control is matched by formal norms guaranteed by legitimate institutions, or whether it is rather the much more complex constellation of specific actualisations of the more general trade-off as just defined. After summarising the current twists of the meaning of civility against the background of liberal and modernist precedents and delineating the alternative patterns of civility within Islamic, especially modern Ottoman, history, the analysis critically interrogates Weber's notion of
Verbrüderung
as the pre-modern root concept of organised forms of common action, mutual solidarity and civic participation. Finally, it questions whether this idea fits the historic forms of association in the Islamic world, in particular the privileging of a lower threshold of institutionalisation of the associational bond than has traditionally been found in the European experience-and which survives in the current anxieties about resurgent mahalle (neighbourhood) informal governance in the AKP's Turkey.
Journal Article
Subjects of Rights and Subjects of Cruelty: The Production of an Islamic Backlash against Homosexuality in Turkey
Abstract
Departing from Turkish national debates around Islam, national belonging, and homosexuality during 2008–2011, this paper shows how “LGBT rights” discourses ultimately worked to position Muslim headscarf activists as against LGBT activists by rendering complex positions that do not follow easy “for vs. against” LGBT rights political formulas as “homophobic.” In return, this foreclosed potential solidarities differently injured citizens could have formed against increasing neoliberal state violence. I show that the multitude of Muslim women’s positions on the issue of LGBT rights complicates easy religious/secular binaries and illuminates how it is not only human rights discourses but also their “Western” critiques that travel transnationally. This story also contributes to current debates on postsecularism by illustrating how the same national context can house both liberal rights frameworks that can be used against pious Muslim subjects, and a monopolization of a definition of Islam for state power. Finally, I offer “politics of cruelty” and “right to sin” as alternative frameworks for imagining social justice outside of liberal rights-based politics.
Book Chapter