- Fabio Vicini
Università di Verona
Dipartimento di Scienze Umane
Palazzo Zorzi-Polfranceschi, piano 1° ala Vipacco, stanza 1.34
Fabio Vicini
Università di Verona, Dipartimento di Scienze Umane, Faculty Member
- Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies, Anthropology, Department MemberIstanbul 29 Mayis University, Social Sciences, Faculty Member, and 2 moreadd
- Anthropology, Islam in Turkey, Islam (Anthropology), Turkey, Islam, and the West, Anthropology of Turkey, Islamic movements (Anthropology Of Religion), and 124 moreSociology of Religion, Laicity, and Secularisation, Critical Theory, Sociology of islam, Sociology, Islam and Modernity, Sufism, Persianate Sufism, Alasdair MacIntyre, Gabriel Tarde, Islamic Studies, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Anthropology of Civil Society, Islam, Reading, Embodiment, Islamic Education, Civic Engagement, Educational Anthropology, Education in Turkey, Roberto Esposito, Anthropology of Education, Transnational Sufi Network, Anthropology of Religion, Introduction to Sociology, Sociology of Islam (Sociology), Sociology of Islam and Muslim Societies, Islam in Europe, Islam In the Middle East, Islam in the Media, Cultural Theory, Social Movements, Social Theory, Sociological Theory, Sociological and anthropological theory, Comparative Sociological Research, Contemporary Sociological Theory, Social and sociological theory, Social Anthropology, Social Sciences, Sociological Classics, Sociological Theories, Cultural Anthropology, Antropología, Ethics, Turkish History, Modern Turkey, Turkish and Middle East Studies, Anthropology of the Body, Political Anthropology, Anthropology of the State, Sociology of the Body, Sociology of Religion, Sociology of the State, Anthropology of emotions, Virtue Ethics, Virtue, Youth Civic Engagement, Civil Society, Civil Society and the Public Sphere, Islamic Philosophy, Islamic Contemporary Studies, Islamic Political Thought, Kalam (Islamic Theology), Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, Contemporary Islamic Studies, Religious Studies, Religious Education, Anthropology of Religions, Religion, Religion and Politics, Comparative Religion, Science and Religion, Ancient Philosophy, Habitus, Dispositions, Anthropological Theory, Anthropological theories, Classical Sociological Theory, Talal Asad, McIntyre, McIntyre Alasdair, Postcolonial Studies, Post-Colonialism, Postmodernism, Postcolonial Theory, Postcolonial Thought, Postcolonial theory (Cultural Theory), Subaltern Studies, Postcolonial Theory/Subaltern Studies, Free Will, Moral Responsibility, Middle East Studies, Reading Habits/Attitudes, Contemporary Movements and Trends in Islam, Practical Reasoning, Contemporary Sufism, Legal Reasoning, Anthropology of ethics and morality, Middle East, Turkey (Anthropology), Free Will and Moral Responsibility, Contemporary Islam, Gulen Movement, Reading Education, Anthropology of Islam, Moral Authority, Theology and Religion, Contemporary Islamic Thougt, Cultural Antropology, Contemporary Islamic Movement, Religious education in Turkey, Post-Communism, Islam and Human Rights, Sufism in Turkey, Faith Based Organizations, Arturo Escobar, Decolonial Thought, Modernity/coloniality/decoloniality, Gilles Deleuze, Humanitarianism, Anthropology of Humanitarianism, Cheryl Mattingly, Islam in Indonesia, Islam and the State in Indonesia, and Axial Ageedit
- I am Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Verona, Senior Research Associate in the "Quit... moreI am Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Verona, Senior Research Associate in the "Quite Aid" Project (https://quietaid.info/), and founder and convener of the EASA Muslim Worlds Network (MSN) (https://easaonline.org/networks/mwn/).
From 2014 to 2020, I was Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at Istanbul 29 Mayis University. I also served as an Affiliate Member of the School of Religious Studies at McGill University, Montréal (from 2019 to 2020). Before, I was TÜBITAK Post-doctoral Researcher in Istanbul (from 2013 to 2014) and Research Fellow at BGSMCS, Berlin (2011).
I earned my Ph.D. in Anthropology and History from SUM – Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane (now Istituto di Scienze Umane e Sociali, Scuola Normale Superiore, Firenze) in 2013. The same year, I was honored with the Malcolm H. Kerr Award in the Social Sciences by MESA. My book "Reading Islam: Life and Politics of Brotherhood in Modern Turkey," drawn from that dissertation, has been published in Brill's Social, Economic, and Political Studies of the Middle East and Asia Series, edited by Dale F. Eickelman.
Currently, I am supervising a PRIN project (Research project funded by Italy's Ministry of University and Research) on Muslim Albanian communities in Italy, and initiating a new project on Islamic networks connecting Turkey with Central Asia.
My work has been published in various scholarly journals, including Culture and Religion, Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Ethnicities, the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, La Ricerca Folklorica, and Sociology of Islam. I am now co-editing the '[Oxford] Handbook of Religion in Turkey' (alongside Caroline Tee and Philip Dorroll: https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/55832), and a special section dedicated to Divine Presence in Islam for the HAU - Journal of Ethnographic Theory (2024, with Lili Di Puppo).
My work engages in interdisciplinary inquiry at the intersection of Anthropology, Islamic studies, and Social Theory. My research interests encompass the Anthropology of Islam; Religion and Secularism in Turkey, the MENA region, and Europe; the relationship between Religion and Modernity; Political Theology; and Ethics. I welcome Ph.D. and postdoctoral students whose research aligns with these themes, particularly focusing on Europe, Turkey, Central Asia, and South-East Asia.edit
This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will... more
This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In Reading Islam Fabio Vicini offers a journey within the intimate relations, reading practices, and forms of intellectual engagement that regulate Muslim life in two enclosed religious communities in Istanbul. Combining anthropological... more
In Reading Islam Fabio Vicini offers a journey within the intimate relations, reading practices, and forms of intellectual engagement that regulate Muslim life in two enclosed religious communities in Istanbul. Combining anthropological observation with textual and genealogical analysis, he illustrates how the modes of thought and social engagement promoted by these two communities are the outcome of complex intellectual entanglements with modern discourses about science, education, the self, and Muslims’ place and responsibility in society. In this way, Reading Islam sheds light on the formation of new generations of faithful and socially active Muslims over the last thirty years and on their impact on the turn of Turkey from an assertive secularist Republic to an Islamic-oriented form of governance.
‘For the better part of a century, Turkey has been a major center of intellectual, educational, and ethical reform in modern Islam. In this vividly written and theoretically sophisticated book, Fabio Vicini takes readers through a reading of the two most foundational currents in that reform movement, and shows their deep relevance for education, ethics, and civility in the broader Muslim world. This is a must-read book for all students of Islamic affairs.’
Robert W. Hefner, Pardee School of Global Affairs, Boston University
‘Fabio Vicini’s Reading Islam is both methodologically careful and theoretically insightful, reflecting the best qualities of ethnographic writing on the social life of Islam in Turkey. Vicini describes in rich detail the forms of piety and intellectual development encouraged in religious communities active in Turkey. It is certainly refreshing to read an analysis of religious practice that takes seriously the practitioners’ orientation toward transcendence in developing religious knowledge and ethical reasoning.’
Kim Shiveley, Kutztown University
‘This perceptive study of brotherhood, ethics and self-disciplining in religious communities focused on reading Said Nursi’s Risale-i Nur draws attention to aspects of religious tradition hitherto neglected in studies of Turkish Islam. Vicini’s thoughtful analysis engages critically with a large body of contemporary social theory and provides essential new insight into the interiorizing practices of these communities and Islamic piety in general, offering a sympathetic understanding of Muslim life in modern Turkey.’
Martin van Bruinessen, Comparative Study of Contemporary Muslim Societies, Utrecht University
‘For the better part of a century, Turkey has been a major center of intellectual, educational, and ethical reform in modern Islam. In this vividly written and theoretically sophisticated book, Fabio Vicini takes readers through a reading of the two most foundational currents in that reform movement, and shows their deep relevance for education, ethics, and civility in the broader Muslim world. This is a must-read book for all students of Islamic affairs.’
Robert W. Hefner, Pardee School of Global Affairs, Boston University
‘Fabio Vicini’s Reading Islam is both methodologically careful and theoretically insightful, reflecting the best qualities of ethnographic writing on the social life of Islam in Turkey. Vicini describes in rich detail the forms of piety and intellectual development encouraged in religious communities active in Turkey. It is certainly refreshing to read an analysis of religious practice that takes seriously the practitioners’ orientation toward transcendence in developing religious knowledge and ethical reasoning.’
Kim Shiveley, Kutztown University
‘This perceptive study of brotherhood, ethics and self-disciplining in religious communities focused on reading Said Nursi’s Risale-i Nur draws attention to aspects of religious tradition hitherto neglected in studies of Turkish Islam. Vicini’s thoughtful analysis engages critically with a large body of contemporary social theory and provides essential new insight into the interiorizing practices of these communities and Islamic piety in general, offering a sympathetic understanding of Muslim life in modern Turkey.’
Martin van Bruinessen, Comparative Study of Contemporary Muslim Societies, Utrecht University
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This special section emerges from a general sense of dissatisfaction with the way human relations with not-immediately-perceptible reality, the realm of God, the invisible, and the otherworldly have been approached methodologically and... more
This special section emerges from a general sense of dissatisfaction with the way human relations with not-immediately-perceptible reality, the realm of God, the invisible, and the otherworldly have been approached methodologically and formulated theoretically within anthropology in its long and more recent history. [...] [T]hese two dimensions are intimately related. Because of the difficulty anthropology continues to face in relinquishing its secular vestiges, field encounters with not-immediately-perceptible reality, and with God especially, have usually been removed or deemed insignificant in anthropologists’ accounts. As we developed this line of inquiry, however, we realized that digging into the epistemological premises upon which these earlier field encounters were accounted for in anthropological texts also implied the need for reconsidering how anthropology has historically defined “knowledge.” Accordingly, the project turned from one aimed at making Muslim ontologies more vocal within the most recent debates in the anthropology of religion into a more radical reconsideration of the role that other “modes of knowing” that the anthropologists encounter in the field play in unsettling consolidated views of “knowing” itself —views that, suffering from secular conditioning (Furani and Robbins 2021), have usually relegated knowing to the domain of secular reason.
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This issue investigates the ways in which the Sufi repertoire of heuristic categories of intellectual and spiritual maturation (e.g. batin, spiritual growth, intuitional knowledge and inner awareness) may converge, intersect, and also... more
This issue investigates the ways in which the Sufi repertoire of heuristic categories
of intellectual and spiritual maturation (e.g. batin, spiritual growth, intuitional
knowledge and inner awareness) may converge, intersect, and also diverge from
modern epistemologies of the inner self. In doing so, the contributions touch upon
two questions in particular. On the one hand, they discuss the relation between
selfhood and the transcendent, describing not only how the self is built but also
how it is somehow unbuilt in the relationship with the divine: rather than defined
through its ‘inner’ boundaries, the self is seen as emerging continuously on the
background of a wider horizon of existence, that is, the transcendent dimension
of life. On the other hand, the authors highlight the overlaps between notions
belonging to the Islamic tradition and modern discourses on interiority, tracing
out the specific social and micro-political issues that lie behind this entanglement
through key experiential notions such as dhawq, love, imagination, dreams and
visions. In such a way, the papers tell about the strive of translating transcendence
into new forms of sociality which may subvert, substitute or be alternative to
institutionalised, established mundane and also religious forms of interaction and
inter-subjectivity.
of intellectual and spiritual maturation (e.g. batin, spiritual growth, intuitional
knowledge and inner awareness) may converge, intersect, and also diverge from
modern epistemologies of the inner self. In doing so, the contributions touch upon
two questions in particular. On the one hand, they discuss the relation between
selfhood and the transcendent, describing not only how the self is built but also
how it is somehow unbuilt in the relationship with the divine: rather than defined
through its ‘inner’ boundaries, the self is seen as emerging continuously on the
background of a wider horizon of existence, that is, the transcendent dimension
of life. On the other hand, the authors highlight the overlaps between notions
belonging to the Islamic tradition and modern discourses on interiority, tracing
out the specific social and micro-political issues that lie behind this entanglement
through key experiential notions such as dhawq, love, imagination, dreams and
visions. In such a way, the papers tell about the strive of translating transcendence
into new forms of sociality which may subvert, substitute or be alternative to
institutionalised, established mundane and also religious forms of interaction and
inter-subjectivity.
Research Interests:
This article weaves together major lines of inquiry in the anthropology of Christianity and Islam to consider how to approach and think about transcendence within anthropology at large. It does so by exploring one particular kind of... more
This article weaves together major lines of inquiry in the anthropology of Christianity and Islam to consider how to approach and think about transcendence within anthropology at large. It does so by exploring one particular kind of Muslim ontology and illustrating how it can contribute to these major anthropological debates. As a point of departure, the article takes the researcher's reflection on his experiences of transcendence in and just after fieldwork. Though ephemeral, such occurrences raise both methodological and theoretical questions. Methodologically, they query the way the anthropologists' faith and their interlocutors' experiences of God have been bracketed off by a secular logic that has for long shaped anthropological thought. Theoretically, they call for an engagement with material approaches within the anthropology of Christianity, the ontological turn, and recent dialogues between anthropology and theology to shed light on how Muslim ontologies can help think of transcendence in a different, more immanent, way. In this light, the article proposes to take Muslim ontologies and related theologies seriously as sources for broadening anthropological theory and not just as an interpretative tool to better understand the anthropologist's "religious" interlocutors.
Research Interests:
Because of the difficulty anthropology continues to face in relinquishing its secular vestiges, field encounters with not-immediatelyperceptible reality, the realm of God, the invisible, and the otherworldly have usually been removed or... more
Because of the difficulty anthropology continues to face in relinquishing its secular vestiges, field encounters with not-immediatelyperceptible reality, the realm of God, the invisible, and the otherworldly have usually been removed or deemed insignificant in anthropological accounts. In dialogue with the ontological turn and other recent developments in anthropology, in this article we introduce the special section on Muslim ontologies by advocating for a more profound reconsideration of the role that the encounter with other modes of knowing in the field might have for the discipline. Proposing to include transcendence, the divine, and invisible realities in a reflection on anthropological knowledge, we foreground vertical knowledge as a mode of approaching knowledge that centers on the human ability to transform and experience the self in ways that also correspond to different modalities of perceiving reality.
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The paper explores the dynamics of internalisation and externalisation of the self in relation to transcendence within reading practices of key Islamic texts in the Suffa community in Istanbul. Based on fieldwork and textual analysis, it... more
The paper explores the dynamics of internalisation and externalisation of the self in relation to transcendence within reading practices of key Islamic texts in the Suffa community in Istanbul. Based on fieldwork and textual analysis, it illustrates how the imagination of the self as part of a cosmological framework is central to exercises of meditative reflection (tefekkür) within this community. The paper engages with emerging anthropological and philosophical scholarship on transcendence and argues that only some resonance can be traced between Sufi-inspired conceptions of the self at Suffa and their so-formulated modern equivalents. By highlighting the place of the imagination and transcendence in Islamic practice, it obliges us to rethink current debates within the anthropology of Islam by going beyond self-enclosed models that emphasise processes of subjectivity and self-fashioning.
Research Interests: Sociology of Religion, Sociology of islam, Islam in Turkey, Contemporary Sufism, Turkey, Islam, and the West, and 8 moreSociology of religion (Religion), History of Islamic movements in Turkey, Islam and Modernity, Turkey and Islamic world, Anthropology of Islam, Turkey and Islam, Anthropology of Religion, and Sufism in Turkey
This issue investigates the ways in which the Sufi repertoire of heuristic categories of intellectual and spiritual maturation (e.g. batin, spiritual growth, intuitional knowledge and inner awareness) may converge, intersect, and also... more
This issue investigates the ways in which the Sufi repertoire of heuristic categories of intellectual and spiritual maturation (e.g. batin, spiritual growth, intuitional knowledge and inner awareness) may converge, intersect, and also diverge from modern epistemologies of the inner self. In doing so, the contributions touch upon two questions in particular. On the one hand, they discuss the relation between selfhood and the transcendent, describing not only how the self is built but also how it is somehow unbuilt in the relationship with the divine: rather than defined through its 'inner' boundaries, the self is seen as emerging continuously on the background of a wider horizon of existence, that is, the transcendent dimension of life. On the other hand, the authors highlight the overlaps between notions belonging to the Islamic tradition and modern discourses on interiority, tracing out the specific social and micro-political issues that lie behind this entanglement through key experiential notions such as dhawq, love, imagination, dreams and visions. In such a way, the papers tell about the strive of translating transcendence into new forms of sociality which may subvert, substitute or be alternative to institutionalised, established mundane and also religious forms of interaction and inter-subjectivity.
Research Interests:
Recent anthropological scholarship on Islam has tended to carve out the ‘everyday’ as a space of Muslim life that has the potential to escape the normativity of religious discourses. In this paper, I discuss how the special issue edited... more
Recent anthropological scholarship on Islam has tended to carve out the ‘everyday’ as a space of Muslim life that has the potential to escape the normativity of religious discourses. In this paper, I discuss how the special issue edited by Di Puppo and Schmoller critically engages these debates by first moving the lens of attention from the religious to the ‘secular’ sphere as the source of normative discourse. The essays collected in the special issue focus indeed on the state’s and lay officials’ discourses in post-Soviet, self-declared secular Russia as the normative framework that defines much of the commitment and self-understanding of Muslims in the region. But the special issue does more. It also shows that far from remaining stalled in their own respective domains, normative discourses and ‘daily practices’ intertwine profoundly, as Muslims navigate through the normative dichotomies that are imposed on them by national and supranational global discourses. In the process, Muslims in post-Soviet Russia are able to bend these denominations to their needs, as they struggle to see legitimised their status of citizens belonging to a minority religious confession. In this vein, I conclude by suggesting that rather than reproducing static oppositions between the levels of discourse and that of practice, it is to the mutual interactions between the two and to the alternative possibilities that are disclosed by Muslim life within and without overdetermined limits that we have to turn when investigating the multiplicity and diversity of Islam in Post-Soviet Russia and beyond.
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In this article I assess the suitability of exploring the entanglement of state and Islam in Turkey under the rubric of post-Islamism. This is achieved through an exploration of the composite intertwining of religious discourse,... more
In this article I assess the suitability of exploring the entanglement of state and Islam in Turkey under the rubric of post-Islamism. This is achieved through an exploration of the composite intertwining of religious discourse, historical and teleological imaginaries, and ideals of civic engagement within the Gülen movement. In my view not only does the post-Islamist thesis appear to be limited in regard to analyzing this and similar cases, but it also dangerously echoes recurrent neo-orientalist narratives, which in essence circumscribe how Islam can be “inclusive” and open to ideals of “individual freedom,” “pluralism,” and to Western ideals of democracy. In this paper I argue that it is instead the ideologization of religious discourse – a specific product of political modernity – which hinders Islamic movements such as the Gülen and others from realizing the full potential of Islam as an alternative global civilizational discourse to that of liberal modernity.
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Focusing on Mazlumder, an Islamist human rights organization, the paper sheds light on the complex articulation of Islamism and human rights discourse in post-2002 Turkey. Based on fieldwork and on the analysis of the organization's press... more
Focusing on Mazlumder, an Islamist human rights organization, the paper sheds light on the complex articulation of Islamism and human rights discourse in post-2002 Turkey. Based on fieldwork and on the analysis of the organization's press releases and reports on controversial public issues such as the Gezi protests, the paper argues that Mazlumder's effort should not be read through normative lenses that reduce the issue to a matter of compatibility between Islam and human rights, and suggests that the analysis should instead take into account the positional shifts of the conservative front in relation to recent internal and external turmoil.
Research Interests: Political Sociology, Sociology of Religion, Cultural Sociology, Middle East Studies, Islam and Human Rights, and 15 moreTurkish and Middle East Studies, Middle Eastern Politics, Middle Eastern Studies, Islam in Turkey, Islam, Middle East Politics, Political Islam in Turkey, Turkey, Islam, and the West, Turkish Studies, Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, Politics of Culture, Islamic Humanism, Political Islam in Turkey and Middel East, Middle Eastern Politics, the politics and society of the Arab World, Islamic Studies., and Religius and Islamic Studies
Based on intense fieldwork inside the Islamic preaching-educational community of Fethullah Gülen in Istanbul, the paper explores the way Islamic sociability forms structure daily interactions and foster connectedeness among the religious... more
Based on intense fieldwork inside the Islamic preaching-educational community of Fethullah Gülen in Istanbul, the paper explores the way Islamic sociability forms structure daily interactions and foster connectedeness among the religious brotherhood there. In a counterweight to what I see as an excess of emphasis that recent trends in the anthropology of Islam have put on notions of Islamic discipline and ethical self-fashioning, I offer an alternative perspective from which to look at how devout Muslims experience Islam and come to inhabit particular conceptions of self and personhood.
Keywords: sociability, Islam, self, community, embodiment.
Keywords: sociability, Islam, self, community, embodiment.
Research Interests:
Based on a fieldwork experience of cohabitation within Gülen community's housing system, the article analyzes the way older students act as both role models and sympathetic guides for younger students’ spiritual maturation process. In... more
Based on a fieldwork experience of cohabitation within Gülen community's housing system, the article analyzes the way older students act as both role models and sympathetic guides for younger students’ spiritual maturation process. In contrast to some recent learning theories that emphasize the active role of apprentices, the focus here is on educators’ specific pedagogical interventions through guidance and emulation, and the role these play in young people's learning processes, particularly within religious contexts. In so far as the paper draws attention to the implicit side of education, it also aims to overcome the conscious/unconscious polarity to which the debate on habitus runs the risk of being reduced.
Research Interests: New Religious Movements, Social Theory, Anthropology, Ethics, Teaching and Learning, and 56 moreEducation, Social Anthropology, Religious Education, Learning and Teaching, Virtue Ethics, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Anthropology of the Body, Social Learning Theory, Islamic Contemporary Studies, Embodiment, Islamic Education, Pedagogy, Sociocultural Theory Of Learning, Gabriel Tarde, Habitus, Pierre Bourdieu, Sociological Theory, Islam in Turkey, Dispositions, Religious Studies (Theory And Methodology), Cultural Anthropology, Islamism, Bourdieu, Religious Studies, Pedagogía, Learning theories, Socicultural Theory of Learning, Antropología, Imitation, Anthropology of Islam, Pedagogia, Emulation, Learning Theory, Affection, Pedagogie, Christian Religious Education, Imitation Learning, Religious Studies and Educational Studies, Islamic religious education, Sociological and anthropological theory, Cultural Capital and Habitus Theory, Anthropological theories, Theory and practice of religious education, Anthropological Theory, Religious and Moral Education, Anthropology of Religion, Religious Education Pedagogy, The Role of Religious Education In the Spiritual and Identity Development of Adolescents., Islamic education, pedagogy, islamic religious education, Effective Teaching of Religious Education, Habitus Ve Alan Teorileriyle Pierre Bourdieu Sosyolojisi, Children and Religious Education, Embodied, Situaded, Extended and Enactive Cognition and Affection (VTR and O&R Versions), Pierre Bourdieu Y La Educacion, Religious and Values Education, and Religious education in Turkey
There is a tendency in the literature to emphasise how contemporary Islamic movements promote ways of living a pious Muslim life alternative to those proposed by secular liberal modernity. For this reason, the domains of religious and... more
There is a tendency in the literature to emphasise how contemporary Islamic movements promote ways of living a pious Muslim life alternative to those proposed by secular liberal modernity. For this reason, the domains of religious and civic engagement have often been thought of as opposed to each other. In counterpoint to this tendency, the paper explores the intertwining of national views about mass education and modern citizenship with a renewed Islamic emphasis on the need for moral and ethical reform of society within the Nur movement in modern Turkey.
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This paper investigates trajectories of identity formation of "new" second generation Muslims in northern Italy through the lens of debates on transnationalism, multiculturalism, and multireligiosity. The opening vignette on the... more
This paper investigates trajectories of identity formation of "new" second generation Muslims in northern Italy through the lens of debates on transnationalism, multiculturalism, and multireligiosity. The opening vignette on the conversion of Silvia Romano to Islam is illustrative of how since the 1990s Italian identity has been formulated par opposition to migrants metonymically represented by Islam. Then the article explores the case of the Brescia section of the association Giovani Musulmani d'Italia (GMI) (Young Muslims of Italy) with a focus on the life narratives of three young Muslims. Based on online conversations with members of the association and on information gathered from their social media and online meetings, it discusses seminal works on Muslims in Europe and Italy and argues that the encounter with Muslim associative forms played a key role in their processes of identity formation. As my interlocutors rethink their identities as simultaneously rooted in only apparently contrasting traits such as being Italian, Muslim, and sons of people from a foreign country, their narratives invite us to rethink Italianness in the 21st century. In this regard, the article is an invitation to reflect on the lack of a genuine debate in Italy on the progressively more multicultural and multireligious character of the new generations of Italians. Further, it suggests that anthropology should think of involvement with our interlocutors' forms of thought as an important kind of public engagement.
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The paper explores everyday forms of racism toward sons and daughters of Muslim migrants born or raised in Italy since the late 1990s and early 2000s by shedding light on recent debates on Islamophobia in Italy and Europe. Based on my... more
The paper explores everyday forms of racism toward sons and daughters of Muslim migrants born or raised in Italy since the late 1990s and early 2000s by shedding light on recent debates on Islamophobia in Italy and Europe. Based on my interlocutors' narratives about their experiences of racism at different levels of education, the paper shows how these experiences significantly impacted their identity paths. The case is initially read through the lens of anthropological literature on cultural racism to introduce the discussion of another way of marking difference that seems particularly apt to describe long-standing forms of discrimination against ethnic-religious minorities in Europe: spiritual racism. Then, the paper introduces the notion of "microracism" to shed light on how Islamophobia is reproduced in an elusive and almost imperceptible way in daily interactions with teachers and peers, especially since middle school. Defining these forms of racism as "micro" is not meant to belittle the phenomenon but to point to its specificity. It is useful to highlight the particular ways in which ethnoreligious difference is marked in a context like Italy where minorities are relatively less visible than in other European countries. Finally, the paper refers to recent academic discussions on femonationalism, yet by moving the analysis from the level of public discourse to that of daily interactions between female teachers and students especially.
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Toward an Italian Reformism? New Generations between Secularism and Muslim Life After an overview of how the secularization thesis has impacted the study of Islam in Europe and Italy, the paper explores the way new generations of Muslims... more
Toward an Italian Reformism? New Generations between Secularism and Muslim Life
After an overview of how the secularization thesis has impacted the study of Islam in Europe and Italy, the paper explores the way new generations of Muslims in Northern Italy rediscover and reinterpret Islam through social media and Islamic youth groups. The article relies on interviews with Muslims raised in Italy who were born between the late 1990s and early 2000s as well as on materials drawn from social profiles and online discussion groups of Islamic youth groups that these young Muslims attend. The paper illustrates that, in line with long-standing trajectories within Islamic reformist thought, these “second generation” Muslims aim to live Islam in a more conscious way than their parents and also the Muslims who live in their countries of origin. It finally argues that, as my interlocutors contribute to the definition of an “Italian Islam”, they claim recognition not only for their Muslim identity but also for the possibility of cultivating their Islamic spirituality within the secular-liberal institutional and intellectual environment of contemporary Italy.
After an overview of how the secularization thesis has impacted the study of Islam in Europe and Italy, the paper explores the way new generations of Muslims in Northern Italy rediscover and reinterpret Islam through social media and Islamic youth groups. The article relies on interviews with Muslims raised in Italy who were born between the late 1990s and early 2000s as well as on materials drawn from social profiles and online discussion groups of Islamic youth groups that these young Muslims attend. The paper illustrates that, in line with long-standing trajectories within Islamic reformist thought, these “second generation” Muslims aim to live Islam in a more conscious way than their parents and also the Muslims who live in their countries of origin. It finally argues that, as my interlocutors contribute to the definition of an “Italian Islam”, they claim recognition not only for their Muslim identity but also for the possibility of cultivating their Islamic spirituality within the secular-liberal institutional and intellectual environment of contemporary Italy.
Research Interests:
This paper explores reading practices of an Islamic text, the Risale-i Nur, within the Suffa community, one of the many that emerged from the most influential reformist movement of modern Turkey, the Nur movement. The article tackles main... more
This paper explores reading practices of an Islamic text, the Risale-i Nur, within the Suffa community, one of the many that emerged from the most influential reformist movement of modern Turkey, the Nur movement. The article tackles main anthropological debates about the impact of modern secular education and new media on pedagogical practice within Muslim contexts. Whereas works on the topic have generally focused on the implications of these major transformations for the redefinition of religious authority, the paper draws attention to forms of reflection (tefekkür) and related views of the world, or cosmologies, that are generated by reading practices of the Risale. As some have argued, the direct access to religious knowledge by the individual believer that is allowed by this text may recall dynamics that took place in Europe within the Protestant Reformation. However, the paper suggests that such a perspective prevents the analysis of the lines of continuity between past and present paths to cultivating Muslim faith. Moreover, it argues that a new anthropology of reading, both in Islam and in other traditions, should pay more attention to the specific kind of intellectual exercises that are attached to reading practices in different cultural settings. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Fabio Vicini Per una antropologia della lettura: Islam, riflessione e modernità nella comunità Suffa di Istanbul
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Research Interests:
Le proteste di Gezi Park del maggio 2013 sono state un punto di svolta nella storia della Turchia contemporanea. Da un lato esse hanno inaugurato una nuova modalità di azione politica per la società turca e coinvolto per la prima volta... more
Le proteste di Gezi Park del maggio 2013 sono state un punto di svolta nella storia della Turchia contemporanea. Da un lato esse hanno inaugurato una nuova modalità di azione politica per la società turca e coinvolto per la prima volta una nuova generazione di giovanissimi, d’ispirazione in senso lato progressista, che non si erano mai affacciati alla politica. Dall’altro hanno fatto riemergere in modo drammatico e risolutivo la storica spaccatura esistente nella società turca tra la sua componente conservatrice-religiosa e quella laico-secolare. Dal fallimento di quelle proteste è uscito rafforzato il disegno finalizzato a mantenere le redini della società turca. Un disegno portato avanti con coerenza da Erdoğan, che ha dovuto tuttavia scontare le tensioni e le differenze di visione politico-culturale (e di interessi) esistenti all’interno stesso del campo poltico-religioso. Emblematico da questo punto di vista è il violento contrasto che ha finito per opporre Erdoğan e Fethullah Gülen.
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https://www.easaonline.org/networks/mwn/ The Muslim Worlds Network aims to promote international collaboration and scholarly exchange around the contribution that the anthropology of Islam and Muslim life can offer to the discipline by... more
https://www.easaonline.org/networks/mwn/
The Muslim Worlds Network aims to promote international collaboration and scholarly exchange around the contribution that the anthropology of Islam and Muslim life can offer to the discipline by foregrounding non-Western ontologies and epistemologies. It intends to serve as a forum for exploring how embracing these worlds can generate new theoretical and methodological insights within anthropology and beyond.
The Muslim Worlds Network aims to promote international collaboration and scholarly exchange around the contribution that the anthropology of Islam and Muslim life can offer to the discipline by foregrounding non-Western ontologies and epistemologies. It intends to serve as a forum for exploring how embracing these worlds can generate new theoretical and methodological insights within anthropology and beyond.
Research Interests:
This chapter explores the relevance that the sunna takes in the disciplinary and socialising practices of a contemporary offshoot of the Nur movement, the Suffa community, in contemporary Turkey. Contrary to widespread journalistic views... more
This chapter explores the relevance that the sunna takes in the disciplinary and socialising practices of a contemporary offshoot of the Nur movement, the Suffa community, in contemporary Turkey. Contrary to widespread journalistic views portraying the imitation of the sunna as the exclusive trait of “Salafi” groups, it relies on the community’s main text, the Risale-i Nur (The Epistle of Light) and on ethnographic material gathered between 2009 and 2010 to investigate the way in which ḥadīth narratives shaped the life and conduct of this Sufi-inspired, yet inner-worldly oriented community. First, the chapter illustrates the role that the figure of the Prophet Muḥammad plays in the path of knowledge promoted in the Risale. It then moves to investigate how the imitation of the sunna is at the centre of the daily practices and sociability forms that shape Muslim life within the Suffa community. Particular attention will be given to the way in which conforming to the sunna intersects with Muslim norms of virtuous behaviour (adab). Finally, the chapter sheds light on the collective dimension of Prophetic piety by illustrating how both sunna and adab are embedded in the ideal of brotherhood as actualised in the daily life of the community.
Research Interests:
This chapter investigates Islamic-inspired volunteerism at Deniz Feneri Aid and Solidarity Association (Deniz Feneri Yardımlaşma ve Dayanışma Derneği), a charity operating in Turkey since 1998, under the light of theories of successive... more
This chapter investigates Islamic-inspired volunteerism at Deniz Feneri Aid and Solidarity Association (Deniz Feneri Yardımlaşma ve Dayanışma Derneği), a charity operating in Turkey since 1998, under the light of theories of successive modernities (see Jung and Sinclair 2015; Jung 2016 and 2017). Based on in-depth interviews with five volunteers and fieldwork within the organization, it tackles questions related to how Muslim forms of commitment have emerged and changed, both in shape and meaning, in the context of broader socioeconomic neoliberal restructuring in the country since the 1980s. In particular, the chapter investigates the way Muslims working as volunteers in this faith-based organization in contemporary Turkey think of their activism as a significant, often even essential, part of fully living a Muslim life in today’s society. For them, volunteerism is as important as complying with the key pillars of faith and with Muslim etiquettes of virtuous behavior. In this regard, they see their commitment as a fundamental complement to their life as pious people.
Research Interests: Subjectivities, Michel Foucault, Volunteerism, Islamic Student Activism, Islamic movements (Anthropology Of Religion), and 10 moreIslamic Movements and Political Islam, Subjectivity, Islamic revival and reform movements, Charity, Volunteering, Anthropology of Islam, Waqf Studies, Muslim Subjectivity, Islamic Charity (Sadaqa), and Waqf Studies: Concept
Inspired by the seminal work of Talal Asad, important studies, both within and outside anthropology, have pointed to secularism as a modern ideology resting on a distinction between “secular” and “religious” domains whose genealogy can be... more
Inspired by the seminal work of Talal Asad, important studies, both within and outside anthropology, have pointed to secularism as a modern ideology resting on a distinction between “secular” and “religious” domains whose genealogy can be traced back to specific developments within early modern European history. Instead, emerging new sociological scholarship suggests investigating “multiple secularities,” namely the many ways in which the boundary between these secular and religious spheres has been marked in non-European settings. After exploring these two scholarly approaches to secularism, the chapter relies on a few studies in historical sociology to single out the emergence of a separated “secular” sphere within bureaucratic culture in the Ottoman Empire beginning in the sixteenth century. It will be argued that although the “religious” and the “secular” were certainly intertwined within the Empire, a distinction between the two existed largely before European expansion in the MENA region. In this way, the chapter questions the common view that sees secularization as being mainly a Western import and points to the Ottoman state’s administrative and economic machine as a fruitful domain for exploring the secular/religion distinction in Muslim-majority contexts.
Research Interests:
Scholarly literature on Islamism in Turkey has generally focused on the two main drives of the Islamic revival of the last twenty years, the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, henceforth AKP) on the one hand and... more
Scholarly literature on Islamism in Turkey has generally focused on the two main drives of the Islamic revival of the last twenty years, the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, henceforth AKP) on the one hand and what today has become its fiercest nemesis, the Gülen community, on the other. By operating in the two distinct but complementary domains of party-politics and society respectively, these two actors have reconfigured the face of Turkey from a country still under the grasp of secular forces to one now promoting a religious outlook. Especially in the last ten years, they have been able to overturn the socio-political balance to their advantage by undermining the hold that the secularists had historically maintained on institutions (in particular the judiciary and the military) since the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923. While this scholarship has offered an important contribution, it has overshadowed parallel underground developments within Turkish Islamism, which have thus received relatively limited attention. New Islamic organizations have emerged and developed in the same period which can be seen as offering an alternative “third way” within Turkish Islamism with regard to the organization of the relationship between politics and society. These actors, indeed, often see themselves as distinct from and opposed to the theological views and patterns of social, civic and political transformation proposed by mainstream Islamic forces. This chapter explores the particular case of Mazlumder (the Organization for Human Rights and Solidarity for Oppressed People), an Islamist Human Rights organization that began operating in the country in 1991. Mazlumder is one of the first of its kind. It operates within the framework of civil-society organizations by gathering younger and older Muslims around the common goal of improving human rights standards in the country.
Research Interests: Sociology of islam, Islam in Turkey, Political Islam in Turkey, Islamic movements (Anthropology Of Religion), Religious Studies, and 4 moreAnthropology of Islam, Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, Middle Eastern Politics, the politics and society of the Arab World, Islamic Studies., and Religius and Islamic Studies
Renowned for its schools in over 120 countries, the Fethullah Gülen movement has extended its broad spread of cultural propositions into other fields since the end of the ‘90s. Among these, the numerous television series (a very popular... more
Renowned for its schools in over 120 countries, the Fethullah Gülen movement has extended its broad spread of cultural propositions into other fields since the end of the ‘90s. Among these, the numerous television series (a very popular genre in Turkey) broadcast by the movement’s platform Samanyolu TV occupy an important position. Recent cinematic productions financed by the movement are much less numerous and less well-known. Here, Kelebek (Butterfly, 2009) and Selam (Peace, 2013) will be analysed.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
While the term “Sufism” has long been used within the academic literature to define the mystic dimension of Islam, later works have questioned the orientalizing tendencies of such a definition and have shown the deep interconnectedness of... more
While the term “Sufism” has long been used within the academic literature to define the mystic dimension of Islam, later works have questioned the orientalizing tendencies of such a definition and have shown the deep interconnectedness of the phenomenon with social and political change in modern times. After an overview of the history of the term and how it has been employed in seminal sociological and anthropological scholarship, the entry illustrates how a new body of literature has explored the interconnectedness between Sufism and modernity from different perspectives. It mainly explains Sufism's resilience as a result of the flexibility of its foundational pedagogical and intersubjective patterns. Moreover, it highlights this particular tradition's capacity for recreating connectivity at a translocal level, as well as for offering replies to questions that, though framed partly in new ways, address long‐standing human problems.
Research Interests:
This workshop marks the launch of the newly established Muslim Worlds European Association of Social Anthropologists' Network. The main topic of discussion will be how to think about some of the latest debates in anthropology (the... more
This workshop marks the launch of the newly established Muslim Worlds European Association of Social Anthropologists' Network. The main topic of discussion will be how to think about some of the latest debates in anthropology (the ontological turn, the ethical turn, and the material turn) considering the ethnography of Muslim Worlds. Key among the themes to be addressed are the validity and limits of binaries such as secularism and religion, transcendence and immanence, reason, and faith, and how the different modes of knowledge disclosed by Muslim ontologies and epistemologies can contribute to the anthropological enterprise tout court.
The following are some of the questions we hope to think through together:
- What other modes of experiencing and knowing the world have been disclosed during your ethnographic encounters (for instance: experiential knowledge, meditative reflection, revelation through dreaming or visions, theological demonstration, etc.)? To what extent and how did these modes challenge (or had the potential to challenge) your methodological and/or theoretical approach?
- What type of limits and/or potentialities have these modes of experiencing and knowing revealed? For instance, have you felt the secular conditioning of the discipline to be a limit when you wrote about those encounters? Did these modes of experiencing and knowing encourage you to explore new ways of conducting research, thinking, and/or writing?
- How did the encounter with other modes of experiencing and knowing the world resound, challenge, or unsettle your usual way of viewing the world as a trained anthropologist, or simply as someone in search of knowledge? Did this encounter invite you to rethink how “knowing” is usually understood in anthropology and beyond?
- Did this same encounter with other forms of knowledge lead you to reimagine what fieldwork is? How have you approached your interlocutors’ modes of experiencing and viewing the world? Have you been inspired to follow their spiritual, “vertical” journeys? What has been your own journey during fieldwork and after it?
- What forms of “being” have you encountered during your fieldwork (in the form of your interlocutors, invisible realms, the divine, God, transcendence, your own self, etc.)? Relatedly, did your fieldwork experience reveal other dimensions of your own being?
The following are some of the questions we hope to think through together:
- What other modes of experiencing and knowing the world have been disclosed during your ethnographic encounters (for instance: experiential knowledge, meditative reflection, revelation through dreaming or visions, theological demonstration, etc.)? To what extent and how did these modes challenge (or had the potential to challenge) your methodological and/or theoretical approach?
- What type of limits and/or potentialities have these modes of experiencing and knowing revealed? For instance, have you felt the secular conditioning of the discipline to be a limit when you wrote about those encounters? Did these modes of experiencing and knowing encourage you to explore new ways of conducting research, thinking, and/or writing?
- How did the encounter with other modes of experiencing and knowing the world resound, challenge, or unsettle your usual way of viewing the world as a trained anthropologist, or simply as someone in search of knowledge? Did this encounter invite you to rethink how “knowing” is usually understood in anthropology and beyond?
- Did this same encounter with other forms of knowledge lead you to reimagine what fieldwork is? How have you approached your interlocutors’ modes of experiencing and viewing the world? Have you been inspired to follow their spiritual, “vertical” journeys? What has been your own journey during fieldwork and after it?
- What forms of “being” have you encountered during your fieldwork (in the form of your interlocutors, invisible realms, the divine, God, transcendence, your own self, etc.)? Relatedly, did your fieldwork experience reveal other dimensions of your own being?
Research Interests:
The workshop explores both ethnographically and theoretically the question of divine presence and the relation between immanence and transcendence in the Islamic tradition in regions as diverse as Egypt, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Turkey,... more
The workshop explores both ethnographically and theoretically the question of divine presence and the relation between immanence and transcendence in the Islamic tradition in regions as diverse as Egypt, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Turkey, Central Asia, Russia, and Europe. It does so by shedding light on how Muslims experience, understand, and approach saints, prophets, and other holy figures, dreams and dream visions, the relation between life and death, as well as any other state of being which renders the barrier between immanence and transcendence more porous. The papers illustrate how Muslim encounters with divine presence-through light, saintly voices, istikhara practices, pondering on the end of life or sacred landscapes-all rest on an engagement with Muslim epistemologies and related cosmologies. In this regard, the workshop calls for major engagement with such epistemologies. Relatedly, it aims to discuss new theoretical and methodological insights on how to approach phenomena and experiences which make their presence felt in human life but which, because not immediately perceivable, are not easy to grasp through conventional approaches and methods.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
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Soprattutto negli ultimi due decenni, la crescente visibilità pubblica dell’Islam nei paesi musulmani e in occidente ha catturato l’interesse del mondo accademico. Numerosi studi hanno cercato di comprendere, e spiegare, l’emergere di... more
Soprattutto negli ultimi due decenni, la crescente visibilità pubblica dell’Islam nei paesi musulmani e in occidente ha catturato l’interesse del mondo accademico. Numerosi studi hanno cercato di comprendere, e spiegare, l’emergere di soggettività e pratiche religiose connesse al “risveglio islamico” (al-sahwa al-islamiya), un movimento altamente diversificato al suo interno che attraversa il mondo musulmano dagli anni ’70 e ’80 del Novecento. La pubblicazione dei lavori di Saba Mahmood (2001, 2005), in particolare, ha inaugurato un modo radicalmente nuovo di guardare a questo complesso fenomeno, mostrando i limiti profondi dei concetti secolaristi e liberisti di agency e soggetto nel dare senso ai desideri e alle pratiche corporee attraverso cui le donne di un movimento pietista cairota coltivano se stesse come soggetti etici sottomettendosi a norme patriarcali piuttosto che sfidandole. Il modello teorico proposto da Mahmood, che combina l’idea
di “tradizioni discorsive” di Talal Asad con la nozione foucaultiana di “tecniche del sé”, ha ispirato quella che Filippo Osella e Benjamin Soares hanno definito una “svolta pietista” (2009: 10) in antropologia, animando il dibattito nelle scienze sociali per due decenni. Alcuni studiosi (es. Pandolfo 2007; Schielke 2009), in dialogo critico con il modello teorico di Mahmood, hanno spostato lo sguardo etnografico dalla formazione etica di soggettività pietiste all’esplorazione di ambivalenze, tensioni e incoerenza come elementi costitutivi dei legami fra Islam e vita quotidiana. Più recentemente, altri studiosi e studiose hanno dato visibilità a modalità d’incontro con la trascendenza divina che
si discostano dalle correnti dell’Islam salafita e/o che non possono essere compresi attraverso il “paradigma di coltivazione del sé” (Mittermaier 2011:5). Ed è proprio all’interno di questa seconda linea di ricerca che si situa Reading Islam: Life and Politics of Brotherhood in Modern Turkey di Fabio Vicini, una raffinata etnografia delle pratiche di lettura e riflessione meditativa che animano due comunità religiose della
Turchia contemporanea: Suffa e Gülen. L’idea centrale è che l’analisi di queste pratiche intellettuali imponga non solo di attraversare i confini, soggiacenti al senso comune e alla tradizione epistemologica moderna occidentale, fra religione e scienza, fra metafisica e riflessione intellettuale, ma anche di ricollocare la trascendenza a pieno titolo nell’ambito dell’analisi sociale.
di “tradizioni discorsive” di Talal Asad con la nozione foucaultiana di “tecniche del sé”, ha ispirato quella che Filippo Osella e Benjamin Soares hanno definito una “svolta pietista” (2009: 10) in antropologia, animando il dibattito nelle scienze sociali per due decenni. Alcuni studiosi (es. Pandolfo 2007; Schielke 2009), in dialogo critico con il modello teorico di Mahmood, hanno spostato lo sguardo etnografico dalla formazione etica di soggettività pietiste all’esplorazione di ambivalenze, tensioni e incoerenza come elementi costitutivi dei legami fra Islam e vita quotidiana. Più recentemente, altri studiosi e studiose hanno dato visibilità a modalità d’incontro con la trascendenza divina che
si discostano dalle correnti dell’Islam salafita e/o che non possono essere compresi attraverso il “paradigma di coltivazione del sé” (Mittermaier 2011:5). Ed è proprio all’interno di questa seconda linea di ricerca che si situa Reading Islam: Life and Politics of Brotherhood in Modern Turkey di Fabio Vicini, una raffinata etnografia delle pratiche di lettura e riflessione meditativa che animano due comunità religiose della
Turchia contemporanea: Suffa e Gülen. L’idea centrale è che l’analisi di queste pratiche intellettuali imponga non solo di attraversare i confini, soggiacenti al senso comune e alla tradizione epistemologica moderna occidentale, fra religione e scienza, fra metafisica e riflessione intellettuale, ma anche di ricollocare la trascendenza a pieno titolo nell’ambito dell’analisi sociale.
Research Interests:
Muslim imaginaries beyond mediation: Islam, the divine, and radical hope/transformation This panel investigates how the divine and the spiritual become present in Muslim life by opening spaces of individual or collective reflection,... more
Muslim imaginaries beyond mediation: Islam, the divine, and radical hope/transformation
This panel investigates how the divine and the spiritual become present in Muslim life by opening spaces of individual or collective reflection, transformation, and imagination of alternative views of human life, hope, and future. In the last few decades, the anthropology of religion has dedicated particular attention to processes of human mediation in the articulation of the relationship between immanence and transcendence. While these studies have been fundamental in renewing the field, in the name of mediation, they have underplayed religiously specific ways of conceiving transcendence and human interactions with it. On the other hand, whereas the ontological turn has paved the way for the discipline to engage with non-Western ontologies, religious traditions with a strong theological background have been only tangential, if not absent, in these debates. Religious ontologies, with their theological and epistemological underpinnings (i.e. specific views of the human self, senses, and other organs that allow for connecting with transcendence) have remained largely underexplored. In this light, the panel embraces the ontological turn's spirit of re-establishing anthropology as "a theory-practice of permanent thought decolonialisation" (Viveiros de Castro 2014) by inviting papers that will take these Muslim worlds, including their metaphysical and philosophical traditions, as offering not simply anthropological data but alternative insights into the nature of the divine and its relationship with human life. In the spirit of EASA 2022 general theme, the panel calls for papers illustrating how Muslim worlds prevalently structured upon a specific articulation of immanence/transcendence generate imaginaries of the present, past, and future that are ingrained in views of radical hope/transformation, either individually or collectively articulated, that diverge from those proposed by capitalist modernity.
This panel investigates how the divine and the spiritual become present in Muslim life by opening spaces of individual or collective reflection, transformation, and imagination of alternative views of human life, hope, and future. In the last few decades, the anthropology of religion has dedicated particular attention to processes of human mediation in the articulation of the relationship between immanence and transcendence. While these studies have been fundamental in renewing the field, in the name of mediation, they have underplayed religiously specific ways of conceiving transcendence and human interactions with it. On the other hand, whereas the ontological turn has paved the way for the discipline to engage with non-Western ontologies, religious traditions with a strong theological background have been only tangential, if not absent, in these debates. Religious ontologies, with their theological and epistemological underpinnings (i.e. specific views of the human self, senses, and other organs that allow for connecting with transcendence) have remained largely underexplored. In this light, the panel embraces the ontological turn's spirit of re-establishing anthropology as "a theory-practice of permanent thought decolonialisation" (Viveiros de Castro 2014) by inviting papers that will take these Muslim worlds, including their metaphysical and philosophical traditions, as offering not simply anthropological data but alternative insights into the nature of the divine and its relationship with human life. In the spirit of EASA 2022 general theme, the panel calls for papers illustrating how Muslim worlds prevalently structured upon a specific articulation of immanence/transcendence generate imaginaries of the present, past, and future that are ingrained in views of radical hope/transformation, either individually or collectively articulated, that diverge from those proposed by capitalist modernity.
Research Interests:
With critical reference to Eisenstadt's theory of "multiple modernities," Muslim Subjectivities in Global Modernity discusses the role of religion in the modern world. The case studies all provide examples illustrating the ambition to... more
With critical reference to Eisenstadt's theory of "multiple modernities," Muslim Subjectivities in Global Modernity discusses the role of religion in the modern world. The case studies all provide examples illustrating the ambition to understand how Islamic traditions have contributed to the construction of practices and expressions of modern Muslim sel oods. In doing so, they underpin Eisenstadt's argument that religious traditions can play a pivotal role in the construction of historically di ferent interpretations of modernity. At the same time, however, they point to a void in Eisenstadt's approach that does not problematize the multiplicity of forms in which this role of religious traditions plays out historically. Consequently, the authors of the present volume focus on the multiple modernities within Islam, which Eisenstadt's theory hardly takes into account. Readership This book offers insightful case studies on multiple Islamic modernities for all interested in religious and Islamic studies.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Islamic Modernities and Modern Muslim Subjectivities
Dietrich Jung and Kirstine Sinclair
1Modern Muslim Subjectivities: Theories, Concepts, and First Findings
Dietrich Jung
2Decolonizing Body and Mind: Physical Activity and Subject Formation in Colonial Algeria
Jakob Krais
3Daily Ritual, Mission, and Transformation of the Self: The Case of Tablighi Jamaat
Zacharias Pieri
4Hasan al-Banna and the Modern Muslim Self: Subjectivity Formation and the Search for an Islamic Order in Early Twentieth Century Egypt
Dietrich Jung and Ahmed Abou El Zalaf
5“Worship is Not Everything:” Volunteering and Muslim Life in Modern Turkey
Fabio Vicini
6The Modernity of Neo-traditionalist Islam
Mark Sedgwick
7An Islamic University in the West and the Question of Modern Authenticity
Kirstine Sinclair
8The Muslimist Self and Fashion: Implications for Politics and Markets
Neslihan Cevik
9Social Class, Piety, and the Formation of the Singaporean Muslim: Exploring Educational Choices in a Highly Regulated Society
Kamaludeen Mohamad Nasir
10Imaginaries of the Good Life from the Egyptian Revolution in 2011: Pride and Agency
Line Mex-Jørgensen
11“When I’m on the Mic Everything is Ḥarām:” Narrative Identity and Modern Subjectivities among American Rap Artists
Philipp Bruckmayr
Concluding Remarks: Modern Muslim Subjectivities, Islamic Modernities, and the Multiple Modernities Thesis
Dietrich Jung and Kirstine Sinclair
Index
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Islamic Modernities and Modern Muslim Subjectivities
Dietrich Jung and Kirstine Sinclair
1Modern Muslim Subjectivities: Theories, Concepts, and First Findings
Dietrich Jung
2Decolonizing Body and Mind: Physical Activity and Subject Formation in Colonial Algeria
Jakob Krais
3Daily Ritual, Mission, and Transformation of the Self: The Case of Tablighi Jamaat
Zacharias Pieri
4Hasan al-Banna and the Modern Muslim Self: Subjectivity Formation and the Search for an Islamic Order in Early Twentieth Century Egypt
Dietrich Jung and Ahmed Abou El Zalaf
5“Worship is Not Everything:” Volunteering and Muslim Life in Modern Turkey
Fabio Vicini
6The Modernity of Neo-traditionalist Islam
Mark Sedgwick
7An Islamic University in the West and the Question of Modern Authenticity
Kirstine Sinclair
8The Muslimist Self and Fashion: Implications for Politics and Markets
Neslihan Cevik
9Social Class, Piety, and the Formation of the Singaporean Muslim: Exploring Educational Choices in a Highly Regulated Society
Kamaludeen Mohamad Nasir
10Imaginaries of the Good Life from the Egyptian Revolution in 2011: Pride and Agency
Line Mex-Jørgensen
11“When I’m on the Mic Everything is Ḥarām:” Narrative Identity and Modern Subjectivities among American Rap Artists
Philipp Bruckmayr
Concluding Remarks: Modern Muslim Subjectivities, Islamic Modernities, and the Multiple Modernities Thesis
Dietrich Jung and Kirstine Sinclair
Index
Research Interests:
The introduction describes some of the recent developments in the anthropological study of Islam, and locates the purpose of the present collection in the broader literature, engaging in particular with the research programme on Islamic... more
The introduction describes some of the recent developments in the anthropological study of Islam, and locates the purpose of the present collection in the broader literature, engaging in particular with the research programme on Islamic piety that has taken " discursive tradition " as its principal keyword. We highlight its positive contributions, such as the notion of cultivation of an ethical self, so crucial to transcending the stubborn opposition between religion and modernity, as well as some of its theoretically problematic aspects. At the same time, our contention is that the effort to bring back legitimacy to the Islamist commitment, characteristic of the research programme above mentioned, may come at the expense of a description of the complexity and singularity of people's subjectivities and life-worlds. In this issue, we propose an understanding of the term 'subjectivity' that privileges lived experience, in an existential and phenomenological sense, and that foregrounds the everyday. We assume the everyday as an analytical framework that allows to take into account the diachronic and relational dimensions of people's religious commitment and subjectivities, thus enhancing the researchers' sensitivity to their lifeworlds. By the same token we call for an awareness of the researchers' positioning within the field and field relationships, which are part and parcel of our interlocutors' everyday and on which the ethnography of subjectivity is built.
Research Interests:
From today’s perspective, Islam and capitalism seem to be natural partners. In a world where state socialism is on the wane, Islamic states in particular seem to be run by an exploitative class that in their hyper-capital-ist way of... more
From today’s perspective, Islam and capitalism seem to be natural partners. In a world where state socialism is on the wane, Islamic states in particular seem to be run by an exploitative class that in their hyper-capital-ist way of profit-making does not care at all about so-cial justice. Modern history, however, has seen a great number of movements, political parties and individu-als propagating the incompatibility of capitalism with Islam. And at a second glance, the quest for social jus-tice and the rejection of capitalism actually appear as a driving force in different Islamic discourses, includ-ing that of the so-called Islamic State.
The articles of this volume offer intriguing and origi-nal thoughts about the appropriate economic system for a Muslim society. Some of the concepts are based right away on socialism, while others call for a genu-ine, non-Western Islamic ‘third way’ between com-munism and capitalism. In fact, political reality has forced the secular Left to grapple with the response of Islamic movements to poverty and injustice. The vol-ume therefore also includes useful insights into the Left’s reaction to this political challenge.
The articles cover a wide range of world regions, not only the Middle East and Turkey, but also the Far East and North Africa, with a time span ranging from the late 19th century to the present. In addition, the reader is also introduced to economic concepts of early Islam and their textual sources.
The articles of this volume offer intriguing and origi-nal thoughts about the appropriate economic system for a Muslim society. Some of the concepts are based right away on socialism, while others call for a genu-ine, non-Western Islamic ‘third way’ between com-munism and capitalism. In fact, political reality has forced the secular Left to grapple with the response of Islamic movements to poverty and injustice. The vol-ume therefore also includes useful insights into the Left’s reaction to this political challenge.
The articles cover a wide range of world regions, not only the Middle East and Turkey, but also the Far East and North Africa, with a time span ranging from the late 19th century to the present. In addition, the reader is also introduced to economic concepts of early Islam and their textual sources.
Research Interests: Islamic Finance, Deobandi Islam, heterodoxy in Islamic philosophical thought (Baba İlyas, Sheikh Bedrettin, Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi) and medieval revolts, Ali Shariati, Islam and Justice, and 5 moreAntikapitalist Müslümanlar, Muhammed-Baqir Al-Sadr, Sayyid Qutb & Muslim Brotherhood, Islam and Capitalism, and Islam and Marxism
Newspapers, magazines, TV channels, film productions: the Islamic Fethullah Gülen movement owns a media empire in Turkey and in the world. Communication is a pillar of this movement, who promotes an idea of Islam behind the times, who, in... more
Newspapers, magazines, TV channels, film productions: the Islamic Fethullah Gülen movement owns a media empire in Turkey and in the world. Communication is a pillar of this movement, who promotes an idea of Islam behind the times, who, in the tradition, is able to match with technology, modernity, globalization and to use it. Thanks of his media and an extensive international network, composed of schools, cultural institutions, banks, financial and commercial structures, support networks able to affect political environments, since years Gülen movement is one of the most outstanding political player in Turkey, leaded by Akp party, of whom it was a strong ally, with whom now is on collision course. The monograph Gülen Media Empire, who contains Turkish, Italian, US authors’ essays, intends to analyse Gülen movement and its relations with media (TV, print, movies) with the purpose of spreading its ideology and its political and religious message. Through its media analysis, the monograph offers a look within the movement and its conflict with Akp, more generally on Turkish media and political Turkish scenario latest developments.
Research Interests:
Giornali, riviste, canali televisivi, produzioni cinematografiche: il movimento islamico Fethullah Gülen possiede un vero e proprio impero mediatico in Turchia e nel mondo. La comunicazione è uno degli assi portanti di questo movimento... more
Giornali, riviste, canali televisivi, produzioni cinematografiche: il movimento islamico Fethullah Gülen possiede un vero e proprio impero mediatico in Turchia e nel mondo. La comunicazione è uno degli assi portanti di questo movimento che promuove un’idea di islam al passo con i tempi, che pur muovendosi nel solco della tradizione, sa misurarsi con la tecnologia, la modernità e la globalizzazione e farne uso. Con i suoi mezzi di informazione e un vasto network internazionale composto da scuole e istituzioni culturali, banche, strutture finanziarie e commerciali e di reti di appoggio e di influenza anche a livello politico, il movimento Gülen è già da alcuni anni un attore politico rilevante e influente nella Turchia guidata dal partito dell’Akp, di cui è stato un forte alleato ma con cui oggi è in grave rotta di collisione.
La monografia L’impero mediatico di Fethullah Gülen, che include saggi di autori turchi, italiani e statunitensi ed è la prima in Italia sul tema, intende analizzare il movimento Gülen e il suo rapporto con i media (tv, stampa, film), nell’uso che il movimento ne fa sia per la propaganda della sua ideologia e del proprio messaggio tanto religioso quanto politico, sia per la costruzione della propria immagine tanto al suo interno quanto nella sua rappresentazione all’esterno. Attraverso un’analisi dei suoi media la monografia offre uno sguardo sul movimento, sul suo conflitto con l’Akp e più in generale sui media in Turchia e gli sviluppi più recenti dello scenario politico turco.
Saggi di Ruşen Çakır, Joshua Carney, Ragıp Duran, Joshua Hendrick, Lea Nocera, Semih Sakallı, Maria Concetta Tedesco, Fabio Vicini
La monografia L’impero mediatico di Fethullah Gülen, che include saggi di autori turchi, italiani e statunitensi ed è la prima in Italia sul tema, intende analizzare il movimento Gülen e il suo rapporto con i media (tv, stampa, film), nell’uso che il movimento ne fa sia per la propaganda della sua ideologia e del proprio messaggio tanto religioso quanto politico, sia per la costruzione della propria immagine tanto al suo interno quanto nella sua rappresentazione all’esterno. Attraverso un’analisi dei suoi media la monografia offre uno sguardo sul movimento, sul suo conflitto con l’Akp e più in generale sui media in Turchia e gli sviluppi più recenti dello scenario politico turco.
Saggi di Ruşen Çakır, Joshua Carney, Ragıp Duran, Joshua Hendrick, Lea Nocera, Semih Sakallı, Maria Concetta Tedesco, Fabio Vicini
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Francesco BACHIS | Sull'orlo del pregiudizio. Razzismo e islamofobia in una prospettiva antropologica, Cagliari, Aipsa Edizioni, 2018, pp. 174. Il libro di Francesco Bachis si propone di decifrare ed esplorare i processi di razzizzazione... more
Francesco BACHIS | Sull'orlo del pregiudizio. Razzismo e islamofobia in una prospettiva antropologica, Cagliari, Aipsa Edizioni, 2018, pp. 174. Il libro di Francesco Bachis si propone di decifrare ed esplorare i processi di razzizzazione che stanno alla base della produzione di discorsi pubblici circa la figura del migrante (sempre più spesso, musulmano), in Italia così come in un panorama europeo più ampio. Lo fa focalizzandosi sulle pratiche discorsive in ambito politico, giornalistico e della rete in relazione a quattro casi specifici, ognuno trattato in uno dei capitoli del libro. La prospettiva an-tropologica del lavoro non risiede quindi nell'osservazione degli effetti so-ciali e istituzionali che il razzismo esercita sui migranti, ma nel tentativo analitico di "scavare all'interno dei discorsi, sviscerarne le premesse, le con-dizioni storico-politiche, [e] la performatività" (p. 11). Nello scandagliare questi casi, Bachis ripercorre le trame dell'evoluzione del discorso razzizzan-te, le sue metamorfosi ed inversioni nel discorso pubblico contemporaneo, nonché le modalità tramite cui esso crea-performativamente-l'opposizio-ne fra un "noi" e un "loro". Tramite un'analisi dettagliata delle tecniche di produzione di ciascuno dei discorsi presi in considerazione, il testo dimostra che seppur espresse in for-me nuove come il razzismo e il fondamentalismo culturale, le dinamiche di razzizzazione continuano a mantenere un rapporto simbiotico tanto con le gerarchizzazioni proprie del razzismo biologico "classico", quanto col diffe-renzialismo culturalista novecentesco-che intendeva superare il primo, ma che ha spesso finito per reificare la cultura così rendendola altrettanto gene-rativa di opposizioni e gerarchizzazioni. In quest'ottica il lavoro di Bachis pone l'attenzione sulle linee di continuità esistenti tra il razzismo biologico e il fondamentalismo culturale attuale dimostrando come anche l'eventuale superamento del primo sul piano scientifico-aspetto ancora tutto da prova-re, dato il riemergere di studi di antropologia fisica che rievocano le fonda-menta biologiche della nozione di razza-"non sia di per sé una garanzia del superamento della sua operatività 'strutturata e strutturante' nelle relazioni sociali" (p. 23). This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Fabio Vicini
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How do anthropologists approach experiences of transcendence in Muslim communities? In what ways can Muslim ontologies be taken more seriously in anthropological accounts? What potential do our own momentary encounters with transcendence... more
How do anthropologists approach experiences of transcendence in Muslim communities? In what ways can Muslim ontologies be taken more seriously in anthropological accounts? What potential do our own momentary encounters with transcendence as anthropologists have in addressing anthropological research on Islam and other religious traditions more broadly? With these questions in mind, we inaugurated the 1st European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) Muslim Worlds Network workshop “Rethinking anthropology in light of ‘Muslim Worlds’” at the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul on 7-8 September 2023. Departing from the long-held anthropological approach in which experiences of transcendence have been studied from the perspective of belief, we invited the workshop participants to reflect instead on the forms of knowledge disclosed by their encounters with transcendence, God, and non-immediately-perceptible realities in the field.
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As they fight for control of main institutional bodies by allocating their sympathizers to key positions in the bureaucracy and the judiciary, it is clear that both the AKP and the Gülen community have surrendered to an unwritten rule of... more
As they fight for control of main institutional bodies by allocating their sympathizers to key positions in the bureaucracy and the judiciary, it is clear that both the AKP and the Gülen community have surrendered to an unwritten rule of Turkish politics according to which groups in power feel legitimized to demand sole control of institutions. As this was the way the secularist camp ruled the country for almost ninety years, it is quite ironic that the two forces that had joined to defeat it are now inclined to do the same. While some important steps have been taken by the AKP to acknowledge traditionally oppressed social groups—above all, the Kurdish people—these will prove ephemeral if they are not translated into a real strategy for establishing transparent rules that regulate people's access to basic services, rights, and opportunities for civic participation, both within and outside public institutions.
Research Interests: Sociology of islam, Turkey, Islam in Turkey, History of Turkey and Middle east, Modern Turkey, and 9 moreAnthropology of Turkey, Political Islam in Turkey, Islamism, History of Modern Turkey, Turkey (Anthropology), Education System in Turkey, Anthropology of Islam, Political Islam in Turkey and Middel East, and Post-Islamism
Ad oggi, a poco più di una settimana dallo sgombero di Gezi Parkı e a tre settimane dallo scoppio della rivolta, diversi gruppi di persone si stanno incontrando in alcuni parchi della città, diversi da Gezi, dove si organizzano in... more
Ad oggi, a poco più di una settimana dallo sgombero di Gezi Parkı e a tre settimane dallo scoppio della rivolta, diversi gruppi di persone si stanno incontrando in alcuni parchi della città, diversi da Gezi, dove si organizzano in assemblee popolari e sperimentano metodi di democrazia diretta. Ed è proprio a questo che bisogna guardare per cercare di capire lo spirito che è nato al parco Gezi, quello che è stato e quello che può essere, in potenza, per lo sviluppo di una rinnovata società civile in Turchia.
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Dr. Vicini has written a thoughtful, provocative and theoretically engaged study of education and Islam. Based on extensive and immersive fieldwork, the dissertation offers a rich exploration of "ways of living Islam and educating younger... more
Dr. Vicini has written a thoughtful, provocative and theoretically engaged study of education and Islam. Based on extensive and immersive fieldwork, the dissertation offers a rich exploration of "ways of living Islam and educating younger students" (8). Its impressive interdisciplinary approach joins anthropological observation and interaction with close textual and genealogical analysis, devoting particular attention to the key Nur text, the Risale-i Nur. The dissertation illuminates the capacity of student religious communities to provide not only security, self-fashioning and a source of identity, but also alternative ways of reasoning and engaging the world.
2013 Review committee:
Andrew Flibbert, Trinity College (Chair)
Linda Darling, University of Arizona
Ali Mirsepassi, New York University
2013 Review committee:
Andrew Flibbert, Trinity College (Chair)
Linda Darling, University of Arizona
Ali Mirsepassi, New York University
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Sociology, Social Theory, Sociology of Religion, Ethics, Free Will, Moral Responsibility, and 65 moreCultural Sociology, Sociology of Education, Middle East Studies, Religious Education, Virtue Ethics, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Anthropology of the Body, Reading Habits/Attitudes, Islamic Contemporary Studies, Islamic Philosophy, Islamic Education, Sociology of islam, Turkish and Middle East Studies, Turkish History, Reading, Theology and Culture, Turkey, Islamic Studies, Sufism, Contemporary Movements and Trends in Islam, Pierre Bourdieu, Sociology of the Body, Practical Reasoning, Islam in Turkey, Islam, Youth Civic Engagement, Contemporary Sufism, Free Will, Moral Philosophy, Moral Education, Modern Turkey, Moral and Cognitive Reasoning, Legal Reasoning, Anthropology of Turkey, Civic Engagement, Cultural Anthropology, Religious Experience, Turkey (Anthropology), Free Will and Moral Responsibility, Bourdieu, Contemporary Islamic Thought, Contemporary Islam, Gulen Movement, Talal Asad, Anthropology of ethics and morality, Middle East, Islam and Modernity, Religious Studies, Contemporary Islamic Studies, Antropología cultural, Anthropology of Islam, Socio-Cultural Anthropology, Reading Education, Theology and Religious Studies, Islamic religious education, Sociological and anthropological theory, Theology and Religion, Moral Authority, Anthropological Theory, Contemporary Islamic Thougt, Anthropology of Religion, Cultural Antropology, McIntyre, Contemporary Islamic Movement, and Religious education in Turkey
In this lecture, we begin with the observation that field encounters with not-immediately-perceptible reality, the realm of God, the invisible, and the otherworldlyhave often been disregarded or considered insignificant in anthropological... more
In this lecture, we begin with the observation that field encounters with not-immediately-perceptible reality, the realm of God, the invisible, and the otherworldlyhave often been disregarded or considered insignificant in anthropological accounts.We argue that this is largely due to the difficulty anthropology continues to face inrelinquishing its secular vestiges as well as the related idea of knowledge upon whichthe discipline has established itself - in the good company of all other humanities andsocial sciences. In conversation with the ontological turn and other recent trends inanthropology, we propose that Muslim ontologies provide a unique lens throughwhich to formulate a more nuanced anthropological vocabulary regarding religiousexperience and our understanding of the transcendent. By advocating for a moreprofound reconsideration of how the encounter with other modes of knowing in thefield might impact the discipline, we will explore what we term "vertical knowledge"and related modalities of gaining insights rooted in the ephemerality of experienceand states of surrender. These aspects are seen as revelatory and potentiallytransformative for our ways, as anthropologists, of conceiving knowledge, especially inthe field of religion.
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The paper explores the place that the imitation of the Prophet Muhammad’s exemplary conduct (sunna) takes in disciplinary and socializing practices of the Suffa community in Istanbul. This is one of the many contemporary branches of the... more
The paper explores the place that the imitation of the Prophet Muhammad’s exemplary conduct (sunna) takes in disciplinary and socializing practices of the Suffa community in Istanbul. This is one of the many contemporary branches of the Nur movement, probably the most important Islamic reformist movement of modern Turkey. Contrary to widespread journalistic views portraying the imitation of the sunna as the exclusive trait of radical “Salafi” groups, the paper relies on ethnographic materials gathered between 2009 and 2010 to illustrate the way hadith narratives shaped the life and conduct of this Sufi-inspired, yet inner-worldly oriented, community. In the meantime, it sheds light on the interaction of individual and collective dimensions of Prophetic piety within Suffa.
The paper does so by illustrating how beyond representing a model to be individually emulated by pious Muslims willing to discipline themselves to a righteous life, the Prophet’s exemplary conduct is also at the core of inter-communitarian practices whose final goal is to foster amity, solidarity, and brotherhood in religion. The sociological notion of brotherhood is used in the paper to soften the rigid link between discipline and subjectivity construction that is often established within the anthropological scholarship on Islam. Rather than simply marking the model of an idealized Muslim conduct, within the Suffa community, the sunna is indeed part of a broader pattern for inter-subjective engagement that my interlocutors saw as having also shaped the relationship between the Prophet Muhammad and his companions in the early times of Islam. In this regard, the case of the Suffa community points to the way, beyond self-fashioning processes, in which Prophetic piety has historically shaped and continue to sustain the collective dimension of Muslim life.
The paper does so by illustrating how beyond representing a model to be individually emulated by pious Muslims willing to discipline themselves to a righteous life, the Prophet’s exemplary conduct is also at the core of inter-communitarian practices whose final goal is to foster amity, solidarity, and brotherhood in religion. The sociological notion of brotherhood is used in the paper to soften the rigid link between discipline and subjectivity construction that is often established within the anthropological scholarship on Islam. Rather than simply marking the model of an idealized Muslim conduct, within the Suffa community, the sunna is indeed part of a broader pattern for inter-subjective engagement that my interlocutors saw as having also shaped the relationship between the Prophet Muhammad and his companions in the early times of Islam. In this regard, the case of the Suffa community points to the way, beyond self-fashioning processes, in which Prophetic piety has historically shaped and continue to sustain the collective dimension of Muslim life.
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This paper explores reading practices of Islamic texts within the Suffa vakfı, one Nur community in contemporary Istanbul. Based on fieldwork, it illustrates how descriptions of natural phenomena are an integral part of the community’s... more
This paper explores reading practices of Islamic texts within the Suffa vakfı, one Nur community in contemporary Istanbul. Based on fieldwork, it illustrates how descriptions of natural phenomena are an integral part of the community’s key text, the Risale-i Nur, a commentary of the Qur’an (tafsir) written by the Muslim theologian Said Nursi in the second quarter of the XX century.
For people at Suffa reading the Risale implies to engage in an inductive kind of exercise based on meditative reflection (tefekkür) from which they conclude that God must exist given the pre-ordered and perfect functioning of existence. The paper points to how the continuous reliance on scientific descriptions of the natural world in reading meetings of the community (e.g. the fact that man’s memory is contained in a gland as big as a nut) is a way to disclose new hermeneutical openings that allow for both integrating science in religious discourse and reversing the materialistic assumptions upon which modernist discourse was formulated.
Addressing more specifically the issue of what epistemological questions arise from attempts to relate contemporary science to the scriptural tradition of Islam, the paper points to how the inclusion of a modernist epistemological emphasis on reasoning and science within reading practices of the Risale is accompanied by a heuristic reversal of the human-centered conclusions that are drawn from such modernist emphasis. In this direction, it sheds light on the combination of modern and long-standing religious forms of intellectual engagement in Islam.
For people at Suffa reading the Risale implies to engage in an inductive kind of exercise based on meditative reflection (tefekkür) from which they conclude that God must exist given the pre-ordered and perfect functioning of existence. The paper points to how the continuous reliance on scientific descriptions of the natural world in reading meetings of the community (e.g. the fact that man’s memory is contained in a gland as big as a nut) is a way to disclose new hermeneutical openings that allow for both integrating science in religious discourse and reversing the materialistic assumptions upon which modernist discourse was formulated.
Addressing more specifically the issue of what epistemological questions arise from attempts to relate contemporary science to the scriptural tradition of Islam, the paper points to how the inclusion of a modernist epistemological emphasis on reasoning and science within reading practices of the Risale is accompanied by a heuristic reversal of the human-centered conclusions that are drawn from such modernist emphasis. In this direction, it sheds light on the combination of modern and long-standing religious forms of intellectual engagement in Islam.
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The talk attempts to disentangle the relationship between Muslim life and intellectual engagement by focusing on reading practices of key religious texts within the Suffa vakfı, a Nur community in contemporary Istanbul. Based on... more
The talk attempts to disentangle the relationship between Muslim life and intellectual engagement by focusing on reading practices of key religious texts within the Suffa vakfı, a Nur community in contemporary Istanbul. Based on ethnographic research, it illustrates the intermingling of reading and meditative reflection within this community. This aspect is scrutinized in light of the reconfiguration of the place of reason and ‘feelings’ in Islamic practice in early twentieth century Turkey in response to the challenges posed by a modernist epistemology putting emphasis on the power of human reason. In this light, the talk addresses key debates in the anthropology of Islam, exploring new ways to look at Muslim religious practice beyond discipline and towards awareness and reflective processes.
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This paper explores the reading practices of a key religious text within the Suffa foundation, a branch of the Nur movement in Istanbul. Inspired by the message of Islamic scholar Said Nursi (1887-1960), this revivalist Islamic community... more
This paper explores the reading practices of a key religious text within the Suffa foundation, a branch of the Nur movement in Istanbul. Inspired by the message of Islamic scholar Said Nursi (1887-1960), this revivalist Islamic community has distanced itself from classical patterns of Islamic learning by deemphasizing masters’ authority and stressing shared brother-to-brother pedagogies centered on reading Nursi’s masterpiece, the Risale-i Nur. A simplified form of Quranic commentary (tefsir) written in the vernacular language and drenched in the Sufi and Islamicate cultural repertoires of Anatolia, the Risale is today collectively read in Nur circles and provides guidance for a large public of ordinary Turkish Muslims. Reading the Risale occupies a central place in the Nur pedagogical path and is expected to engender a specific reflective state (tefekkür) in the reader that, to some extent, converges with modern ideas of knowledge as achieved through intellectual efforts.
Drawing on ethnographic material from within the community, the paper highlights lines of both continuity and rupture between the reading-related intellectual exercise of tefekkür and the Islamic pedagogical tradition. I will argue that my interlocutors’ semantic and practical redefinition of tefekkür as a reason-based exercise represents an attempt to come to terms with modern epistemological and hermeneutical discourses, and that their redefinition of reading as a technique for keeping in pace with the times should be understood in a similar way. However, I will also show that Nur reflective exercises still rely on a specific “sensitivity of the heart” that matches with the ethical sensibility of Islamic tradition. Although recent anthropological studies of Islam often stress a dichotomy between religious-embodied practices and secular-intellectual practices, I argue that Nur reflective exercises cannot be easily accommodated within such a framework. While acknowledging that embodiment processes have an important place in religious education, the paper uses the Nur case to suggest that more attention to reading and other reflection-based techniques can enrich our understanding of religious formation and ethical thinking within the Islamic tradition and beyond.
Drawing on ethnographic material from within the community, the paper highlights lines of both continuity and rupture between the reading-related intellectual exercise of tefekkür and the Islamic pedagogical tradition. I will argue that my interlocutors’ semantic and practical redefinition of tefekkür as a reason-based exercise represents an attempt to come to terms with modern epistemological and hermeneutical discourses, and that their redefinition of reading as a technique for keeping in pace with the times should be understood in a similar way. However, I will also show that Nur reflective exercises still rely on a specific “sensitivity of the heart” that matches with the ethical sensibility of Islamic tradition. Although recent anthropological studies of Islam often stress a dichotomy between religious-embodied practices and secular-intellectual practices, I argue that Nur reflective exercises cannot be easily accommodated within such a framework. While acknowledging that embodiment processes have an important place in religious education, the paper uses the Nur case to suggest that more attention to reading and other reflection-based techniques can enrich our understanding of religious formation and ethical thinking within the Islamic tradition and beyond.
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Research Interests:
In this talk I focus on temsiliyet or temsil etmek, a notion that is key in the Gülen community’s discourse, and in some measure even more pertinent than hizmet – that gives it its name – to understand its double nature as both a “local”... more
In this talk I focus on temsiliyet or temsil etmek, a notion that is key in the Gülen community’s discourse, and in some measure even more pertinent than hizmet – that gives it its name – to understand its double nature as both a “local” and a “global” actor. Roughly translatable into English as “representing” and, by extension, “to be an example,” with particular reference to the Gülen case temsiliyet stays for “representing Islam”: namely, advocating and spreading Islam through one’s example. As I will argue, the centrality of the notion is demonstrated by the fact that it stays at the interconnection of micro-pedagogical brother-to-brother practices within the community’s houses and its broader – and quite ambitious – mission of representing the “correct” and moderate face of Islam to the world.
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The paper explores how today notions of solidarity, mutual help and justice are rethought and promoted within Mazlumder and Deniz Feneri, two Muslim civil society organizations (STK, Sivil Toplum Kuruluşları) in contemporary Turkey. Its... more
The paper explores how today notions of solidarity, mutual help and justice are rethought and promoted within Mazlumder and Deniz Feneri, two Muslim civil society organizations (STK, Sivil Toplum Kuruluşları) in contemporary Turkey. Its starting assumption is that rather than determining the demise of religion, the secularization of Turkish society has meant the redefinition of the role, spaces and limits of Islam in public debate as well as personal experience. In particular, in conjunction with the opening to neoliberal economy in the 1980s and the development of a culture of “civil society” in the 1990s, Islam has progressively returned to the public sphere and become a central issue for defining moral authority and political legitimacy.
Based on ethnographic research and interviews with young volunteers and workers of these two organizations, the paper elucidates how Turkish Muslim STKs deal with Western legal traditions and the related market-driven political system in ambivalent ways. It will show that the accommodation of Muslim long-standing values with Western modern liberal traditions takes place through some controversial compromises, which are revealed by the difficulties these organizations have in dealing with contested issues such as gay rights and abortion. Moreover, through their reference to Islamic ideals they implicitly disapprove of liberal democratic society's stress on individualism, as well as of what they perceive as capitalism's inclination toward reproducing social divisiveness, inequality and unhappiness.
While elucidating these aspects the presentation aims to show how by recovering long-standing ideals of justice and solidarity Muslim STKs go beyond binary distinctions of an alleged purely secularist versus an Islamist vision that are still reproduced both in some important scholarships and within Turkish society itself. With their call for a revitalization of monotheistic religions' dynamism and stress on the common good, these organizations contribute to the remoralization of the public discourse in ways that are not necessarily in contradiction with secular demands, and rather engage with modern liberal traditions by claiming confrontation on the common ground of universal notions of human solidarity and justice.
Based on ethnographic research and interviews with young volunteers and workers of these two organizations, the paper elucidates how Turkish Muslim STKs deal with Western legal traditions and the related market-driven political system in ambivalent ways. It will show that the accommodation of Muslim long-standing values with Western modern liberal traditions takes place through some controversial compromises, which are revealed by the difficulties these organizations have in dealing with contested issues such as gay rights and abortion. Moreover, through their reference to Islamic ideals they implicitly disapprove of liberal democratic society's stress on individualism, as well as of what they perceive as capitalism's inclination toward reproducing social divisiveness, inequality and unhappiness.
While elucidating these aspects the presentation aims to show how by recovering long-standing ideals of justice and solidarity Muslim STKs go beyond binary distinctions of an alleged purely secularist versus an Islamist vision that are still reproduced both in some important scholarships and within Turkish society itself. With their call for a revitalization of monotheistic religions' dynamism and stress on the common good, these organizations contribute to the remoralization of the public discourse in ways that are not necessarily in contradiction with secular demands, and rather engage with modern liberal traditions by claiming confrontation on the common ground of universal notions of human solidarity and justice.
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The paper explores forms of moral reasoning related to the reading of some key texts within the Suffa community in Turkey. Particularly, it focuses on the method of meditative reflection on nature and existence (tefekkür) that the... more
The paper explores forms of moral reasoning related to the reading of some key texts within the Suffa community in Turkey. Particularly, it focuses on the method of meditative reflection on nature and existence (tefekkür) that the inspirer of the Nur group in Turkey - Said Nursi (1876-1960) - elaborated in relation to his Qur'anic commentary, the Risale-i Nur. In this work Nursi re-interpreted the neo-Sufi Nakshibandi Islamic traditions of the Turkish region in a reformist fashion, by merging the mystical poetical imaginaries and cosmologies of Anatolia with a modern understanding of nature. This allowed him to subvert the conventional Turkish secularists’ uses of science in the confutation of religion while, at the same time, offering Muslims with new avenues for cultivating their spirituality and for being faithful persons in a secularized society.
In particular, I will show how the practice of tefekkür although thought in opposition to ecstatic exercises such as Sufi dhikr, is anyway based on an essentially mystic vision of existence, structured around the dichotomy between manifest (zahiri) this-world reality and the true (batini) reality of God. While in their discourses community brothers might wink with complicity at modern psychological discourses and scientific language in general, and put a modernist emphasis on reasoning rather than on ecstatic practices, nevertheless their reflective method aims to make people gain awareness of the true Reality laying behind the veil of this-world appearances. Quoting both authoritative brothers' arguments and their reinterpretation by ordinary participants to community meetings, I will illustrate how during such meetings Nur brothers reflect upon their lives through the dense metaphors and poetical images offered by this cosmological framework.
In particular, I will show how the practice of tefekkür although thought in opposition to ecstatic exercises such as Sufi dhikr, is anyway based on an essentially mystic vision of existence, structured around the dichotomy between manifest (zahiri) this-world reality and the true (batini) reality of God. While in their discourses community brothers might wink with complicity at modern psychological discourses and scientific language in general, and put a modernist emphasis on reasoning rather than on ecstatic practices, nevertheless their reflective method aims to make people gain awareness of the true Reality laying behind the veil of this-world appearances. Quoting both authoritative brothers' arguments and their reinterpretation by ordinary participants to community meetings, I will illustrate how during such meetings Nur brothers reflect upon their lives through the dense metaphors and poetical images offered by this cosmological framework.
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Bu seminer Hinduizm, Budizm, Eski Yunan ve Roma İnanışları, Hristiyanlık ve Yahudilik gibi belli başlı dini geleneklerin tarihleri ve gelişimleri çerçevesinde din araştırmaları disiplininde yaygın olarak kullanılan temel teorik... more
Bu seminer Hinduizm, Budizm, Eski Yunan ve Roma İnanışları, Hristiyanlık ve Yahudilik gibi belli başlı dini geleneklerin tarihleri ve gelişimleri çerçevesinde din araştırmaları disiplininde yaygın olarak kullanılan temel teorik yaklaşımlara bir giriş mahiyetinde olacaktır.
Süresi: 10 Hafta
Süresi: 10 Hafta
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Research Interests:
This issue investigates the ways in which the Sufi repertoire of heuristic categories of intellectual and spiritual maturation (e.g. batin, spiritual growth, intuitional knowledge and inner awareness) may converge, intersect, and also... more
This issue investigates the ways in which the Sufi repertoire of heuristic categories of intellectual and spiritual maturation (e.g. batin, spiritual growth, intuitional knowledge and inner awareness) may converge, intersect, and also diverge from modern epistemologies of the inner self. In doing so, the contributions touch upon two questions in particular. On the one hand, they discuss the relation between selfhood and the transcendent, describing not only how the self is built but also how it is somehow unbuilt in the relationship with the divine: rather than defined through its ‘inner’ boundaries, the self is seen as emerging continuously on the background of a wider horizon of existence, that is, the transcendent dimension of life. On the other hand, the authors highlight the overlaps between notions belonging to the Islamic tradition and modern discourses on interiority, tracing out the specific social and micro-political issues that lie behind this entanglement through key experiential notions such as dhawq, love, imagination, dreams and visions. In such a way, the papers tell about the strive of translating transcendence into new forms of sociality which may subvert, substitute or be alternative to institutionalised, established mundane and also religious forms of interaction and inter-subjectivity.
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After an overview of how the secularization thesis has impacted the study of Islam in Europe and Italy, the paper explores the way new generations of Muslims in Northern Italy rediscover and reinterpret Islam through social media and... more
After an overview of how the secularization thesis has impacted the study of Islam in Europe and Italy, the paper explores the way new generations of Muslims in Northern Italy rediscover and reinterpret Islam through social media and Islamic youth groups. The article relies on interviews with Muslims raised in Italy who were born between the late 1990s and early 2000s as well as on materials drawn from social profiles and online discussion groups of Islamic youth groups that these young Muslims attend. The paper illustrates that, in line with long-standing trajectories within Islamic reformist thought, these \u201csecond generation\u201d Muslims aim to live Islam in a more conscious way than their parents and also the Muslims who live in their countries of origin. It finally argues that, as my interlocutors contribute to the definition of an \u201cItalian Islam\u201d, they claim recognition not only for their Muslim identity but also for the possibility of cultivating their Islamic ...
Research Interests:
The anthropology of Islam has reached an impasse. Dissatisfaction with existing theoretical frames pervades informal conversations and published critiques, yet current efforts at renewal have gained little traction. This will remain the... more
The anthropology of Islam has reached an impasse. Dissatisfaction with existing theoretical frames pervades informal conversations and published critiques, yet current efforts at renewal have gained little traction. This will remain the case, I suggest, until scholars reexamine both the intellectual impetus and geopolitical conditions of the field's emergence and consolidation in the latter half of the twentieth century. Drawing on my current book project, this talk revisits the decade from the Iranian Revolution to the end of the Cold War, a key period of Islamic revival and expanding global commerce and communications, on the one hand, and anthropologists' theorization of Islam's modernity and conceptual incorporation of Islamic texts, on the other. Examining the significance of writing to these movements and to this historical moment, I argue that the field's narrow treatment of writing as phonetic medium, and attendant study of Islamic texts "in context," wholly elides the foreignness of writing in Islamic traditions, which the media technologies and revivalist calls of the era amplified and expanded. The talk concludes with a discussion of writing's foreignness in relation to Islamic universalism and its modern global efflorescence.
Research Interests:
Attending to the heart is not easy but it might be useful and perhaps necessary in order to understand and counteract some of the tensions, the indifference, and the intercultural misunderstandings that characterize our contemporary... more
Attending to the heart is not easy but it might be useful and perhaps necessary in order to understand and counteract some of the tensions, the indifference, and the intercultural misunderstandings that characterize our contemporary world. Is it possible to give the qualities of the heart more space in research and teaching, in scientific criticism, and in our engagement with the communities and environments in which we live and work? Can the bodily, emotional, and spiritual heart be both an object of enquiry and a starting point for research? In this talk I introduce audiovisual, multimodal, and microphenomenological methods that I believe can help us to address these questions by deepening our understanding of the role of the senses, the body, and emotions in human life. I also invite for a short auto-elicitation exercise and present examples from ongoing research on the ways in which practitioners in Buddhist, Christian, and Muslim traditions relate to the heart and how in different ways they experience and seek to cultivate love in their lives. Taking inspiration from the exercise and these examples I hope to engage participants in a discussion about what an anthropology of and from the heart would look like.