Contemporary Rationalist Islam in Turkey: The Religious Opposition to Sunni Revival

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Nineteenth-century Istanbul was an intellectual hub of rich discussions about Islam, in which leading reformists had a significant role. Turkey today appears to be an intellectual vacuum to anyone searching for ongoing critical engagement with Islam. The main purpose of this book is to adjust this view of Turkey by showcasing the modern Turkish theologians who challenge mainstream Sunni interpretations of Islam. Labelling these theologians as rationalist rather than reformist, the author reveals that their theology is inherently anti-establishment and thus a religiously-oriented challenge to the hegemony of the state-sanctioned Islam: for the rationalists, Turkeys problems have their origins in the Sunni interpretation of Islam. Contemporary Rationalist Islam in Turkey analyses nine prominent scholars of Islam who provide a religious opposition to the Sunni revival in Turkey: Hseyin Atay, Yasar Nuri ztrk, M. Hayri Kirbasoglu, Ilhami Gler, R. Ihsan Eliaik, mer zsoy, Mustafa ztrk, Israfil Balci, and Mehmet Azimli. These scholars writings are almost exclusively published in Turkish, so this book makes their ideas available in English for the first time. It also examines the scope, methodology and argumentation of the scholars theology, categorizing their theological interpretations from historicist to universalist and from empiricist to rationalist. In identifying a new rationalist school of Turkish theology and outlining its different manifestations, the book breaks new ground. It fills a significant gap in the literature on Islamic studies and reveals an understudied dimension of Turkey and Turkish Islam beyond the well-known ideas of the AKP and the Gulenists.

Reviews

Contemporary Rationalist Islam in Turkey is a seminal and welcome contribution to public and university library Islamic Studies collections, highly recommended. * Midwest Book Review *

Author Bio

Gkhan Bacik is Professor of Political Science at Palacky University in the Czech Republic. He is the author of Islam and Muslim Resistance to Modernity in Turkey (2020) and Hybrid Sovereignty in the Arab Middle East: The Cases of Kuwait, Iraq and Jordan (2008), as well as numerous peer-reviewed articles. He previously worked as Associate Professor of International Relations at Ipek Universit, Turkey. His scholarship centers around contemporary politics of Islam and the Middle East.