Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East current issue

Introduction: State and Society: Neither Lovers nor Haters

Turam, B., Ringer, M. M. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:11:14 PST

In both media accounts and scholarship, contemporary Turkey draws much attention as a hotbed of contestation between Islamists and secularists. Indeed, the ban of the popularly elected Islamist Welfare Party and of the headscarf in universities in 1998 reinforced an already predominant dichotomy between the repressively secular state and the Muslim actors. What deserves more attention, however, is the transformation in state-society relations since the late 1990s.

From a state-society perspective, the recent secularist backlash remains understudied. Why does the secularist discontent peak at a time when Muslim actors in Turkey seem to have secularized and integrated into the secular polity and capitalist market? The answer lies in the shifting patterns of interaction between the secular state and Muslim actors. While Islamists abandoned their radical edge and integrated into the secular system and free market, the ability of the Turkish state to accommodate religion has likewise expanded. Put differently, through its nonconfrontational interactions with Islamists, the Turkish state has experimented with greater capacities for accommodating religious piety and politics. While admittedly this increased tolerance has not always been smooth or unilinear, the long-term trend has been toward "the politics of engagement"—that is, everyday negotiations and cooperation between Muslims and the secular state.

The Dynamic Nature of Educational Policies and Turkish Nation Building: Where Does Religion Fit In?

Bayar, Y. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:11:14 PST

This article looks into how religion was situated within the educational policies of the early republican era (1920–38) in Turkey. The existing literature on Turkish nation building treats the educational policies of the time as solely and unchangingly directed toward the Westernization and secularization of the newly built nation. The present work is critical toward these works, and its aim is twofold. First, it demonstrates that while the direction and content of the republican elite's educational policies included the aims of Westernization and secularization, they also went beyond and above these two goals. More specifically, religion occupied a central place in educational policies. Second, the present article also demonstrates that the content of educational policies shifted throughout the Kemalist era and that these shifts signified a redefinition and reinterpretation of the role of religion in the education system.

Islam, Nation-State, and the Military: A Discussion of Secularism in Turkey

Gurbey, S. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:11:14 PST

In comparative and theoretical discussions, Turkey—where secularism is imposed from above as one of the irrevocable founding principles of the constitution—is criticized for being religiously hostile, aiming to repress religion in the public sphere in a coercive manner. This view is faulty on two grounds. First, it essentializes religion by assuming that religion is an objectively identifiable concept and that as such it can be separated from the realm of the secular and become an object of state power. The separation between the secular and the religious, as this article argues, is premised on particular definitions of religion, the roots of which are historically contingent and intimately linked to the rise of the modern nation-state. As the article argues, a particular conception of Islam is integrated into the nation-state's projects of rationalization, homogenization, and disciplinization, and as such it is turned into a disciplinary tool through which new citizens are created. Second, the claim that the state represses "religion" relies exclusively on legal and constitutional machinery that restricts the use of religion for political purposes and consequently misses how a particular conception of religion is disseminated by state institutions in the private realms of culture and education in order to form new Islamic selves that agree to put the nation's "sacred" interests above all "particular" interests. The article problematizes the way military service is normalized in defending the secular constitution through an appeal to the Islamic conception of martyrdom, wherein "good" citizens are promised to be rewarded not in the secular time but in the hereafter.

A Transformed Kemalist Islam or a New Islamic Civic Morality? A Study of "Religious Culture and Morality" Textbooks in the Turkish High School Curricula

Turkmen, B. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:11:14 PST

This article discusses the meaning of the formulation of a new Turkish civic morality infused with Islam in contemporary Turkey through a content analysis of the 1995 and 2007–08 editions of Religious Culture and Morality course textbooks used in high school curricula. I argue that this course, while maintaining continuity with the republic's diffusion of national religious morality through a revised version of Islam, referred to as "Kemalist Islam," concretizes in its recent syllabus the consequences of the re-Islamization of the Turkish public sphere since the 1990s.

This article asks questions about the relationship between secularism, citizenship, and Islam in contemporary Turkey. I argue that the "privatized religious belief" that Kemalist secularism tried to propagate did not result in reinforcing individualism in Turkish society. Rather, it was thought to provide a basis for a civic morality reinforcing the holistic spirit of Turkish nationalism, which subordinates the individual to society. My research tries to figure out in what sense the content of Kemalist Islam, once the only legitimate religiosity taught in national education, changed with the modifications and whether Kemalist Islam loses its centrality in the definition of citizen identity, to the advantage of a new Islamic morality with the re-Islamization of the Turkish public sphere.

Christian and Turkish: Secularist Fears of a Converted Nation

Ozyurek, E. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:11:14 PST

In the past twenty years, around three thousand Turkish Muslims converted to a Turkish-speaking Protestant movement. Despite their small number, they have been physically and ideologically attacked by Turkish nationalists. This article asks why it is so difficult for Turkish secular nationalists to accept that one can be a Turk and a Christian at the same time. Based on eight months of ethnographic research among Turkish Christians in Istanbul and Ankara and discourse analysis of popular antimissionary literature in Turkey, it argues that the nature of the campaign against Christian missionaries and Turkish converts to Christianity is first and foremost nationalist and etatist, not religious. Spokespeople and the gunmen of the antimissionary and anti-Christian campaign fear and loathe Turkish Christians primarily because they believe that by converting to Christianity they are being disloyal to their nation and their state.

Does Secularism Face a Serious Threat in Turkey?

Heper, M. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:11:14 PST

Since 2002, the year the Justice and Development Party (JDP) formed a majority government in Turkey, the bulk of secularists in that country have felt that Turkey would soon drift toward a state based on Islam. The secularists in question are of the opinion that the JDP government has been engaged in dissimulation (takiyye) and that, in the first opportune moment, would attempt to Islamize the state. In a related manner, the secularists think that there has been a gradual increase in the number of turbaned women and that the latter would exercise a moral pressure on uncovered women and oblige them to sport turbans. Thus it is presumed that the bulk of the people in Turkey long for a state based on Islam. This article takes up the question of whether indeed a great majority of the people in Turkey are inclined toward a state based on Islam, for they oppose the secular republic, they have little or no tolerance toward the secularists, and they insist that everybody in that country should practice and live Islam as they themselves do. The article draws on findings from reliable nationwide surveys conducted in Turkey since 1999.

The Urban Dynamism of Islamic Hegemony: Absorbing Squatter Creativity in Istanbul

Tugal, C. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:11:14 PST

The transformation of urban space constitutes one of the most dynamic aspects of the Islamist movement. Prevalent models have accounted for this phenomenon by referring to the rural immigrants' capacity for autonomous network building or their creative subjectivities. This article analyzes Islamization by studying the interactions between Islamists and the residents in a poor district in Istanbul. It demonstrates not only that the urban poor are indeed active in forming communities and subjectivities but also that their agency is shaped (and ultimately absorbed) by the Islamist project. It is Islamism as political practice and not solely the dynamism of civil society that lies at the root of the city's religious transformation. Nevertheless, Islamism becomes influential because it is able to link civil society and urban subjectivity to its project. These arguments are based on a two-year-long ethnography and fifty interviews.

The Synergy between Neoliberalism and Communitarianism: "Erdogan's Third Way"

Patton, M. J. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:11:14 PST

What distinguishes the Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP) from previous Islam-oriented parties is its ability to create a comfortable fit between neoliberal economic policies and conservative communitarian ideas. This article explains this convergence by exploring how a certain articulation of communitarianism by the AKP government lends itself to deepening neoliberalism and by drawing comparisons to experiments in Third Way politics elsewhere by modernizing social democrats. It suggests that the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan has formulated a Turkish variant of the Third Way that accommodates Islamist values while privileging the neoliberal capitalist economic order.

Women's Choices of Head Cover in Turkey: An Empirical Assessment

Carkoglu, A. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:11:14 PST

Despite its political significance, not much is known about the behavioral and attitudinal bases of different head cover practices in Turkey. The article makes use of two nationwide representative surveys, one carried out in 1999 and the other in 2006, to expose the characteristics of "covered" women in contrast to "the uncovered." Three different types of head covers are distinguished: (1) the more traditional but relatively more colorful head cover allows for the hair, neck, and shoulders and much of the face to be seen; the turban, paler in color, covers all hair, the neck, and the shoulders and leaves only a smaller portion of the face uncovered; and the veil, in dark brown or black, leaves only the eyes uncovered. Several hypotheses are made on an a priori conceptual level, variables are operationalized, and proper tests are conducted. A detailed series of questions concerning attitudinal traits and the social and political preferences of covered and uncovered women, together with demographics, are used to determine Turkish women's choices for different types of religiously meaningful head covers. Among the various hypotheses, the political significance of turban wearing, as opposed to purely private-sphere religious beliefs as the guiding motivation behind turban use, is contrasted and tested.

The Secularization of a Faqih-Headed Revolutionary Islamic State of Iran: Its Mechanisms, Processes, and Prospects

Matsunaga, Y. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:11:14 PST

This article examines the secularization thesis of Iran's faqih-headed revolutionary Islamic state, as put forward by Sa'id Hajjarian (1954–), against the institutional and political developments in the post-Khomeini period. His thesis posited that the religious state in postrevolutionary Iran, with its official doctrine of the absolute mandate of the jurisprudent, serves as the most important accelerator in the two-part process of secularization of the traditional institutions and jurisprudence of Shiism as well as of the faqih-headed Islamic state. The article finds that the developments in the post-Khomeini period have generally confirmed the logic and insights of Hajjarian's thesis and suggests that the secularizing trends will likely continue as long as this particular state is in place.

Shiite Peasants and a New Nation in Colonial Lebanon: The Intifada of Bint Jubayl, 1936

Abisaab, M. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:11:14 PST

Studies on colonial Lebanon explain social change and the engagement with the state from the perspective of the rural landed elites and urban notables. Lebanon is usually investigated as a place for exhibiting or reconciling diverse sectarian cultures that ultimately develop a Libanist or Arabist national identity of some sort. Studies on Lebanon have rarely attended to the voices from below, or class and provincial engagements with colonialism. My article focuses on Shiite peasants and rural workers in the south struggling against a wide range of dislocations and civil disruptions brought by colonialism and the nascent Lebanese nation-state. The article also explores the connections among sectarian dynamics, colonial discipline, and peasant militancy. Shiite peasants used tools of collective organization, bargaining, and revolts against the French and drew critical alliances with a sector of the landed notables and religious intellectuals. The peasants were less amenable to Libanist national projections and not readily mobilized on the basis of a Shiite sectarian identity. Rather, their demands in the petitions they sent to the French and the slogans they raised during the revolts reflected suspicion of nationalist politics and a concern for local economic empowerment and political representation.

Who Could Marry at a Time like This? Debating the Mehndi ki Majlis in Hyderabad

Ruffle, K. G. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:11:14 PST

Networks of trade, scholarship, and pilgrimage have traditionally connected Muslims transregionally, yet these very networks draw into dramatic relief the significance of the local in defining Shi'i religious practices and worldviews. The Shi'i community in the South Indian city of Hyderabad, an important location within the Shi'i cosmpolitan, has strongly resisted campaigns launched by the religious elite of Iran and Iraq to homogenize its "vernacular" Muharram ritual-devotional practices. This article examined the contested nature of the mehndi ceremony of Qasem, who was married and martyred at the battle of Karbala in 680 CE. The mehndi ceremony, or majlis, is steadfastly observed on 7 Muharram by Hyderabadi Shias in defiance of pressures from the ulema in Iran and Iraq to eliminate practices deemed to be unauthentic and un-Islamic. Drawing on archival and ethnographic data, I argue that the participation in the mehndi ki majlis narrates a worldview connecting Hyderabad's Shias to the cosmopolitan Karbala through the vernacular ecology, aesthetics, and values of the local Deccani culture.

Reading the Texture of History and Memory in Early-Nineteenth-Century Punjab

Dhavan, P. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:11:14 PST

This article examines two early-nineteenth-century Punjabi histories to demonstrate how these texts reflect ruptures in the recording and reordering of Sikh historical memories in the decades prior to colonization. An awareness of the East India Company's interest in the records of the recent Sikh past is reflected in the works of Ratan Singh Bhangu, the author of the hagiographic work Gur Panth Prakash, and Ram Sukh Rao, the court historian of the Sikh kingdom of Kapurthala. The works on these Punjabi authors reveal anxieties about how the recent past would be recorded and understood not only by the colonial state but also by the larger Punjabi-speaking Sikh community. A close contextual reading of both texts reveals the complex impact of colonial rule on local modes of historical narration. Each author crafted competing discourses about the nature of Sikh sovereignty for the new audiences of Sikh courts and the Khalsa warrior community. Reading these two texts together destabilizes our understanding of these two important and widely used sources of Sikh history and raises methodological concerns about how such precolonial sources should be read. In particular, analyzing the expressive and literary forms of such narratives to understand the ways in which they simultaneously created and engaged new audiences in vernacular languages such as Punjabi, mobilizing such groups through the forging of new political and cultural identities, is extremely important.

A Literary and Historical Background of Martyrdom in Iran

Korangy, A. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:11:14 PST

Martyrdom in Iran and the Middle East is a phenomenon that has been subject to a plethora of religious exegesis. However, scholars, often not having prescribed to the Aristotelian notion of poetics, have not only ignored the literary aspects of this phenomenon in the Middle East but have also failed to realize the poetics that exist within the parameters of religious and Koranic exigencies of martyrdom. This article summarizes and creates reference points for the morphology of a contemporary phenomenon, which finds its prototype not only in the tragic events of Karbala but also in literary occasions that long preceded it in Iran. This paradigm is found to be quite sufficient when dealing with martyrdom in Iran, which with the onslaught of the Safavids was provided with the proverbial "trigger" for its already long-standing literary canons. The importance of a lover-beloved relationship in accordance with a martyr's view of self as pertains to his or her actions in the face of God, country, and man under the rubric of some historical and literary events and productions throughout Iranian history is also epmhasized.

Issues of Power and Modernity in Understanding Political and Militant Islam

Amin-Khan, T. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:11:14 PST

The article offers an alternative to Eurocentric understandings of political Islam and now militant Islam—the two phenomena are distinguished—as an analysis of modernity, power, and the political is offered in relation to political Islam's characterization by modernists and civilizational theorists. This alternative perspective is useful to grasp the powerful new social reality in the form of militant Islam that has been unleashed since the end of the Cold War: altering culture, language, social, and political policy, while targeting women in many Muslim-majority societies. I argue that political Islam has to be conceived historically as a political phenomenon with a range of diverse manifestations that began to emerge during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as anticolonial movements and national liberation struggles became visible in colonized areas of Asia and Africa. Political Islam's emergence in the colonial context had two distinct responses: first, to engage with ideas of modernity, and, second, to contest and reject Western modernity by positing Islamic revivalism within the ambit of pan-Muslim nationalism. In the current context, the culturalist idiom has been employed equally by the forces of empire and militant/political Islam, but the latter has been more effective in galvanizing support. To make sense of this rise of militant Islam, the article examines the specific histories of political and militant Islam, the Muslim philosophers' engagement with the issue of "power" and the "political" in Islam and the unfolding dialectic of collaboration and resistance between political/militant Islam and the United States. The article's conclusion is that despite using the culturalist terrain of modernity to demonize the two tendencies in contemporary Islam, the United States' imperial drive and the role of client Muslim-majority states remain central in the rise of political and militant Islam.

The Second Empire: The Transformation of the Ottoman Polity in the Early Modern Era

Tezcan, B. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:11:14 PST

This essay proposes a new framework to study the history of the Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by focusing on the transformation of Ottoman political structures in the seventeenth century. It offers a summary of Ottoman political history up to the sixteenth century, underlines the socioeconomic transformation of the late sixteenth century and its impact on politics, and argues that the rebellions and depositions of the seventeenth century limited the political power of the Ottoman monarch and changed the nature of his relations with other major actors in the polity. This new political dispensation, which the author calls the "Second Empire," came to be remembered retrospectively as a corrupt version of the patrimonial empire that it had replaced mainly because its history was produced by the Ottoman New Order that destroyed the political structures of the Second Empire in the nineteenth century.

Communalism, Globalization, and Governmentality: Some Reflections on South Asia

Heath, D. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:11:14 PST

Any viable explanation of communalism must go beyond viewing all communalisms as nationalist fragments to delineate the differing natures of these fragments, as well as to study their changing configuration over time, including the ways in which they have been shaped by globalization. But since what distinguishes contemporary global processes from earlier geopolitical formations is that individuals are encouraged to voluntarily seek inclusion in the new global order, this article aims to extend the analysis of the relationship between communalism and globalization not only by exploring the ways in which the globalization of governmental processes that endeavour to fashion "the conditions in which the body is to live and to define its life" has served to shape contemporary communalisms but also by exploring the role of such communalisms in transforming the domain of global governmentality.

India Traders of the Middle Ages: Documents from the Cairo Geniza ("India Book")

Fisher, M. H. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:11:14 PST

Britain's Declining Empire: The Road to Decolonisation, 1918-1968

Stern, P. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:11:15 PST

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

Parsons, L. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:11:15 PST

Rethinking Global Sisterhood: Western Feminism and Iran

Bahramitash, R. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:11:15 PST

CONTRIBUTORS

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:11:15 PST