Writing Religion: The Making of Turkish Alevi Islam

ISBN-13: 9780190234096 / Angielski / Miękka / 2015 / 346 str.

Markus Dressler

Opis

In the late 1980s, the Alevis, at that time thought to be largely assimilated into the secular Turkish mainstream, began to assert their difference as they never had before. The question of Alevism's origins and its relation to Islam and to Turkish culture became a highly contested issue. According to the dominant understanding, Alevism is part of the Islamic tradition, although located on its margins. It is further assumed that Alevism is intrinsically related to Anatolian and Turkish culture, carrying an ancient Turkish heritage, leading back into pre-Islamic Central Asian Turkish pasts.

Dressler argues that this knowledge about the Alevis-their demarcation as "heterodox" but Muslim and their status as carriers of Turkish culture-is in fact of rather recent origins. It was formulated within the complex historical dynamics of the late Ottoman Empire and the first years of the Turkish Republic in the context of Turkish nation-building and its goal of ethno-religious homogeneity.

Recenzje

This thought-provoking and provocative but historically sensitive contribution is the best examination I have seen of the political foundation for the Kizilbas communities renamed 'Alevis.' Dressler's interpretation will be a prime resource for both scholarship and public policy concerning the religio-secular debate in Turkey.

O autorze

Markus Dressler is currently Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Göttingen.