Markus Dressler | Universität Leipzig (original) (raw)

Articles by Markus Dressler

Volume II The Middle East and North Africa , 2024

In the common narrative, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is considered inhospitabl... more In the common narrative, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is considered inhospitable to secularism, especially regarding the normative relationship between religion and politics. Depictions of Islam as a comprehensive way of life that, unlike Christianity, comprises both the spiritual and material aspects of human relations, or a belief system that lays claim to both religion and state, are commonplace in the contemporary public sphere. Academic iterations of this view and critical assessments thereof are presented in the first volume in our series. The present volume includes, in addition to academic discussions, views forwarded by intellectuals from the region. It stems from a pragmatic division of the sources, as explained in the General Introduction to the series, without discounting the theoretical relevance of texts assembled in this volume or, for that matter, the practical purchase of the texts collected in volume 1. We also refer our readers to that same General Introduction for a more comprehensive discussion of 'secularity' (and of 'the global') that underlies all seven volumes in the series. There remain, however, several points that pertain specifically to the study of secularity in the MENA region and merit further scrutiny. This, firstly, concerns the differences between 'secularism' and 'secularity' as laid out in HCAS Multiple Secularities. I While secularism refers to a political ideology that aims at a greater separation of religion and the secular, especially, but not exclusively in the political sphere, secularity refers to epistemic distinctions and institutional differentiations in relation to religion. Actors may argue from either end of the spectrum, that is, both for greater separation and further connection between the spheres. Moreover, distinctions relating to religion may overlap with the distinction between...

The Oxford Handbook of Religion in Turkey , 2024

Abstract This chapter analyzes the formation of the concept of Turkish Islam in the final two d... more Abstract

This chapter analyzes the formation of the concept of Turkish Islam in the final two decades of the Ottoman Empire and its consolidation as a main marker of national identity in the early Republic of Turkey. It discusses the contours of Turkish nationalism and its ambivalent relation to religion and Islam, which was heavily shaped by the violent political turmoil during the transition period from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish nation-state. The nation-building process was from the beginning marked by complex relations between the new state’s Muslim and Turkish subjects, on the one hand, and their respective non-Muslim and non-Turkish others on the other hand. While the non-Muslims were as “minorities” positioned outside Turkish nationhood, the relationship that the Sunni-Muslim Turkish majority developed in relation to its non-Turkish and non-Sunni coreligionists, mainly Alevis and Kurds, was marked by ambivalence. To the extent that the social contours of Turkish nationhood were defined by religion, non-Sunni and non-Turkish Muslims could be integrated. Nevertheless, their ethnic and/or religious otherness could be used to put their loyalty to the Turkish nation-state in doubt and historically led to a politics of assimilation in the name of ethnoreligious homogeneity. The chapter argues that Turkish Islam is primarily a political and not a religious concept.

Not only parts of the European public, but also many secularly-oriented citizens in Turkey percei... more Not only parts of the European public, but also many secularly-oriented citizens in Turkey perceive the AKP's Islamization politics and its flirtation with neo-imperial political imaginaries as a threat. 1 Often the resulting unease is connected to the erosion of democracy and continued state repression against opposition members of various factions, which have-as in other countries with rightwing populist leadership-divided the country. In reaction to the reconversion of the Hagia Sophia into a mosque in July 2020, other patterns of interpretation were foregrounded in Turkey. Critical voices mostly saw the act as a populist attempt to divert attention from an economic crisis that has been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, steadily declining poll ratings, and signs of disintegration within the ruling party AKP. The reconversion was intended to bind right-wing conservative and nationalist milieus more closely to Erdoğan and the AKP. Others articulate their objections from a pluralist perspective on history and in solidarity with religious minorities-whose numbers have shrunk considerably, but who are still connected to memories of a more diverse past. Those who approach the issue from this perspective defend Hagia Sophia's status as a museum, or even advocate for the return of the building to the Greek Orthodox Church (e.g., member of parliament Hüda Kaya from the pro-Kurdish HDP).These latter voices were marginal, however, and I take this as prompt to reflect on the subdued voices and silences in the public debate on the reconversion of the Hagia Sophia.

Die Welt des Islams, 2022

During its last century, the Ottoman Empire faced strong contestation of its political order, whi... more During its last century, the Ottoman Empire faced strong contestation of its political order, which had undergone radical changes that are generally discussed in relation to modernisation. Against this background, key social and political concepts in Ottoman Turkish shed old meanings and acquired new ones. This article examines the trajectory of the term millet in this period as a case study. Drawing on political and lexicographic texts from the Tanzimat era and afterwards, the article discusses the semantic shifts through which millet, traditionally closely related to din/religion, acquired connotations of a political community, not the least proto-national ones. This led to a polysemy that remained relatively stable until the end of the Ottoman era, when the political meaning of the term millet as “nation” gained dominance. This secularisation of the term reached its peak in the early Turkish republic, although the older, religious connotations of the term were never totally forgotten and are still evoked in conservative religious discourse.

This chapter argues that the instances of violence that Alevis experienced in the Turkish republi... more This chapter argues that the instances of violence that Alevis experienced in the Turkish republic, both physical and epistemic, need to be analysed within the broader historical dynamics of nation building since the late nineteenth century. In the last decades of the Ottoman Empire, Kızılbaş-Alevis became the target of a politics of social engineering, as did other social groups who, for a combination of religious, ethnic, and political reasons, were seen as outside the core of new imaginations of a Muslim and Turkish nationhood. Questions of religious sameness and difference played a constitutive role in this politics. Throughout the history of the Turkish republic, with harbingers in the Young Turk period, nationalist discourses of various shades (from secularist to Islamist) retained a suspicion against the Kızılbaş-Alevis with regard to the degree of their integration/assimilation into Turkish–Muslim nationhood. Those discourses drew on notions of Turkish and Islamic unity, as well as political loyalty towards the state. The incidents of anti-Alevi violence in the course of the republic can be understood as a reflection of this incomplete integration/assimilation, and of the continuing Alevi difference that was perceived by various majoritarian currents as a problem that needed to be dealt with.

Religiöse Symbolik, nationalistische Rhetorik und neoimperale Visionen: Zur Inszenierung der Rekonversion der Hagia Sophia im Juli 2020, 2021

Dieser Aufsatz diskutiert verschiedene dominante (religiöse bis nationalistische) türkische Inter... more Dieser Aufsatz diskutiert verschiedene dominante (religiöse bis nationalistische) türkische Interpretationen der Rekonversion der Hagia Sophia im Juli 2020. In der Debatte um die Rekonversion wurden türkisch-muslimische Ansprüche auf das Gebäude sehr unterschiedlich begründet: Argumente stützten sich auf die politische Souveränität des Landes, national-religiös begründete Vorrechte ebenso wie auf einen rein säkularen Kulturerbe-Diskurs. Im Schatten des neo-osmanischen muslimischen Nationalismus, der die Debatte dominierte, thematisiert der Aufsatz außerdem das überraschende Schweigen anderer von dem Ereignis betroffener Akteure, wie der griechisch-orthodoxen Gemeinde Istanbuls und des säkularistischen Lagers.

This paper takes the social constructivist approach, formulated by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckma... more This paper takes the social constructivist approach, formulated by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, as a starting point for an investigation into epistemology and theorizing in the contemporary study of religion. It discusses various strands of scholarship in dialogue with social constructivism and questions in particular the reductionism of radical constructivist positions. Exploring the boundaries of the classical social constructivist paradigm, the article argues that students of religion should consider the implication of social, historical, embodied and material structures in the production of knowledge about religion. For that purpose, it draws on various soft realist approaches to stress the importance of remaining attentive to positionality (reflecting on the sites from where we theorize) and contextuality (reflecting on the inter-relation of discourse and materiality) in theorizing “religion”. Finally, the article suggests that soft realist positions can be integrated in a slightly broadened social constructivist framework for the study of religion.

Working Paper Series of the Centre for Advanced Studies “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities“, 2019

This article discusses four concepts: religionization, religio-secularization, religio-secularism... more This article discusses four concepts: religionization, religio-secularization,
religio-secularism, and religion-making. These concepts are proposed as
heuristic devices for the analysis of the processes through which social
networks, practices, and discourses come to be understood as ‘religious’
or ‘religion.’

This chapter explores the nexus of scholarship and politics in the work of Mehmed Fuad Köprülü. I... more This chapter explores the nexus of scholarship and politics in the work of Mehmed Fuad Köprülü. It pays particular attention to his conceptualization of Alevism as an Islamic “heterodox” and essentially a Turkish formation. This conceptualization homogenized the knowledge about Alevism and made possible the assimilation of the Alevis into Turkish nationhood in line with the larger project of nation-building in the early period of the Turkish Republic. Against this historical background, the chapter analyses the processes in which the terms ‘Alevi’ and ‘Alevilik’ gained their contemporary meanings as umbrella terms for a variety of ocak-centered communities. For new trajectories in the field of Alevi studies beyond nationalist and modernist frameworks to emerge, I argue that understanding critical historicization of modern knowledge about Alevism and a critical dialogue with its own scholarly legacy are preconditions.

Keywords: Alevism, Alevi Studies, Mehmed Fuad Köprülü, historiography, nation-building, Turkish history

HSR, 2019

»Islamicate Secularities: Neue Perspektiven auf ein umstrittenes Kon-zept«. In the colonial era, ... more »Islamicate Secularities: Neue Perspektiven auf ein umstrittenes Kon-zept«. In the colonial era, new distinctions and differentiations between religious and non-religious spheres took shape within inner-Islamic discourses, partly as a product of encounters with Western knowledge. This introduction conceptualizes these distinctions and differentiations in relation to Islam, drawing on Marshall Hodgson's concept of the Islamicate, which we employ for our heuristic notion of Islamicate secularities. It charts the paradigmatic conflicts that shape the contested fields of Islamic and secularity/secularism studies. The introduction discusses the epistemological and political context of these debates, and argues that theoretical and normative conflicts should not hinder further empirical inquiries into forms of secularity in Islamicate contexts. It also explores promising theoretical and methodological approaches for further explorations. Particular emphasis is laid on the historical trajectories and conditions, close in time or distant, that have played a role in the formation of contemporary Islamicate secularities.

ZfR, 2019

English Abstract: Drawing on the example of the discursive field of Islam, this article poses t... more English Abstract:
Drawing on the example of the discursive field of Islam, this article poses the question of how scholarly discourse can represent object language discourses of religious distinction. This necessarily requires engagement with the intricate dynamics between object language and metalanguage. As a first step, the article discusses Talal Asad's conception of Islamic orthodoxy and its underlying concept of discursive tradition. Drawing on examples from North American Sufi discourses and the modern Turkish discourse on religion, the text discusses, as a second step, the dynamics of object language boundary construction and the confinement of "Islam" that it produces. The final part of the article introduces, in contradistinction to the static family tree model, a dynamic concept of religious tradition, which enables us to focus on the overlaps and interactions between religious formations of low density and on processes of religionization.

English summary:
Any engagement with groups at the margins of the Islamic discursive tradition requires consideration of the issue of the Islamicity of certain practices, ideas, and entire communities that are or have been contested among Muslims in different times and places. Negotiations of the boundaries of Islam and disputes about the acceptability of certain interpretations as “Islamic” are, however, not only part of emic discourses, but are also reflected in etic discourses on Islam. At the outset, this paper is concerned with the question of how to meaningfully represent, from a metalanguage position, object language discourses of religious differentiation within the Islamic tradition. This necessarily requires engagement with the intricate dynamics between object language and metalanguage. As a first step, the article discusses Talal Asad’s conception of Islamic orthodoxy and its underlying concept of discursive tradition. The focus here is on how to develop a metalanguage about Islam as a historical reality, without intervening normatively in the discourse on Islam. While the discursive framing of Islam constituted an important intervention in the academic study of Islam, Asad’s recognition of Quran and Hadith as authoritative reference points for the negotiation of Islamic orthodoxy in Muslim discourses has not remained unchallenged. The article explores this criticism and argues for a dynamic and open concept of religious tradition that does not presuppose specific authoritative reference points for the definition of a particular religion. Discussing examples from North American Sufi discourses and the modern Turkish discourse on religion, with particular attention to the Alevi case, the text examines, as a second step, dynamics of object language boundary setting and discursive confinements of “Islam” as they are produced at the boundaries of the Islamic tradition. Drawing on Bourdieu’s notion of the religious field and the constitutive role of heresy in the formation of religious orthodoxy, this section addresses the dynamics through which Islam is being reified in two specific religio-political fields. This necessitates engagement with the socio-historical environment in which inner-religious negotiations of the true meaning of religion and the limits of the licit take place. Both the North American and the Turkish examples reveal that emic discourses are often deeply ambiguous about boundaries and much more dynamic than many etic categorizations of religion. A static concept of religion allows for three main ways of positioning marginal groups in relation to a given religious field: inside, outside, and in-between. Since such a positioning (often articulated with notions such as heterodoxy and syncretism) depends on a reification of the reference point through which this positioning is undertaken, its analytical value is debatable. Inspired by the work of Daniel Boyarin, the final step of the article introduces a dynamic concept of religious tradition in contradistinction to the static family tree approach. The focus is thereby on entanglements as well as the varying degrees of social and discursive densification of religious traditions. The notion of densification places the focus on the level of consciousness that a tradition has developed with regard to its limits and the extent to which it has solidified its social boundaries. The heuristic goal of this conceptualization is to enable the etic representation of socially and conceptually less densified formations and to distinguish them from traditions with a higher degree of densification (religions). The distinction between religious traditions and religions according to their degree of densification allows for a more dynamic analysis of processes of religionization than comparatively static notions of syncretism, orthodoxy/heterodoxy, and so forth, which ultimately remain connected to the family tree model of religion. The proposed dynamic notion of religious tradition follows scholarship that shifts the perspective from boundaries to contact zones (Pratt) and from influences to conversations (Boyarin). Against the diachronic and synchronic hierarchization inherent in the family tree model, it allows for articulation of the messiness that can constitute the relationship between (religious) traditions, especially those with a low degree of densification.

F. Turan, E. Temel, H. Korkmaz (Hrsg.), Ölümünün 50. Yılında Uluslararası M. Fuad Köprülü Türkoloji ve Beşeri Bilimler Sempozyumu Bildirileri, Istanbul: Kültür Sanat, 2017

Mehmed Fuad Köprülü has been praised as the most influential Turkish historian of the 20th centur... more Mehmed Fuad Köprülü has been praised as the most influential Turkish historian of the 20th century. His work was also deeply entangled in the process of Turkish nation-building, to which it contributed by providing a narrative of the longevity of Turkish culture. Contextualising and discussing Köprülü's ambivalent stance toward the Turkish History Thesis, this article sheds light on some underexposed aspects concerning the relationship between his scholarship and his nationalism. While the dominant view on Köprülü's historiography depicts him as either distant to the racist tenets of the Turkish History Thesis or understands his wavering with regard to racialism as opportunism, a closer look reveals that Köprülü's historical work has in fact, from the beginning, shown hints of a latent essentialism with regard to Turkish ethnicity and race that sits awkwardly with his otherwise rigid, almost positivist methodology. It is suggested that this ought to be understood as closely connected to his nationalism, which constituted an important subtext to his scholarship.

MEHMED FUAD KÖPRÜLÜ VE TÜRK TARİH TEZİ ÖZ
Mehmed Fuad Köprülü 20. yüzyılın en etkili Türk tarihçisi olarak değerlendirilmektedir. Çalışmalarındaki Türk kültürünün devamlılığına dair anlatımı Türk milliyetçiliğinin inşaa sürecine önemli bir katkıda bulunmuştur.
Bu makale, Köprülü'nün Türk Tarih Tezi'ne karşı çelişkili duruşunun kavramsallaştırılması ve tartışılması ile kendisinin bilimselliği ve milliyetçiliği arasındaki ilişkiye odaklanarak, bu ilişkinin karanlıkta kalmış bazı açılarına ışık tutmayı amaçlamaktadır. Köprülü'nün tarih yazıcılığı hakkındaki egemen olan görüş onu ya Türk Tarih Tezi'ndeki ırkçı eğilimlere mesafeli olarak tarif eder ya da kendisinin ırk konusundaki tereddütlü yaklaşımının belirsizliğini oportünizm olarak görür. Daha yakından bir bakış Köprülü'nün tarih çalışmasında Türk etnisite ve ırkına dair başından beri görülen örtülü özcü izler kendisinin gayet katı ve neredeyse pozitivist metodolojisiyle çeliştiğini gösteriyor. Milli ideali benimsemesinden kaynaklanan bu çelişkili yan, Köprülü'nün bilim anlayışına dair önemli bir alt metin olarak görülmeli.

Volume II The Middle East and North Africa , 2024

The Oxford Handbook of Religion in Turkey , 2024

Abstract This chapter analyzes the formation of the concept of Turkish Islam in the final two d... more Abstract

Die Welt des Islams, 2022

Religiöse Symbolik, nationalistische Rhetorik und neoimperale Visionen: Zur Inszenierung der Rekonversion der Hagia Sophia im Juli 2020, 2021

Working Paper Series of the Centre for Advanced Studies “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities“, 2019

Keywords: Alevism, Alevi Studies, Mehmed Fuad Köprülü, historiography, nation-building, Turkish history

HSR, 2019

ZfR, 2019

F. Turan, E. Temel, H. Korkmaz (Hrsg.), Ölümünün 50. Yılında Uluslararası M. Fuad Köprülü Türkoloji ve Beşeri Bilimler Sempozyumu Bildirileri, Istanbul: Kültür Sanat, 2017

Historical Social Research, 2019

Partly as a product of encounters with Europe, accelerated in the last roughly 150 years, Islamic... more Partly as a product of encounters with Europe, accelerated in the last roughly 150 years, Islamic societies developed new epistemic distinctions and structural differentiations between religious and non-religious spheres and practices. This special issue conceptualizes these distinctions and differentiations as “Islamicate secularities”, thereby connecting Marshall Hodgson’s notion of the “Islamicate” with the concept of “Multiple Secularities”. The individual contributions address the question of secularity in relation to Islam with a variety of spatial and temporal foci that range from Turkey to China and Indonesia, from the present to the colonial era and even pre-colonial contexts. The issue thus provides an array of perspectives on how Muslims have engaged with religion in relation to social and political conflicts and how this has led to contested reifications of ‘Islam’ and its boundaries, especially in relation to politics. As preliminary result, a tendency towards ‘soft distinctions’, kept under the umbrella of ‘Islam,’ emerges.
Engaging the epistemological and political context of debates on the contours of Islam in relation to the social and politics, the collection further provides insights into the theoretical and normative conflicts that shape debates on secularity and Islam in the early 21st century and thus offers stimuli for further innovative research.

Global Secularity. A Sourcebook, 2024

Open Access This volume collects reflections on secularity from the Middle East and North Africa... more Open Access

This volume collects reflections on secularity from the Middle East and North Africa. To highlight proximate connections as well as resonances with debates elsewhere, it includes premodern contributions from the region as well as Jewish thought from Europe that have provided significant references for modern appropriations of secularity.

The texts, for the most part previously untranslated, reflect commonalities within the region as well as its great diversity. Thus, while Islam is a common reference for most of our authors, the selections point to its varied invocations in the interest of differing political ends. Others write from a Christian or Jewish perspective, or subscribe to non-religious intellectual traditions. They range from premodern Muslim jurisprudents and philosophers to Ottoman statesmen, Arab socialist and nationalist intellectuals of the interwar period, Iranian revolutionaries, Israeli novelists, and finally, post-secular intellectuals, lay and religious, predominantly from the former Islamic heartland: modern Arab states and Iran. Several introductions weave together the swathe of topics raised in the discussions, beginning with a schematic presentation of the concerns that undergird the volume’s organization.

International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2009

Der Terrorangriff der Hamas vom 7. Oktober des letzten Jahres auf ein Musikfestival und jüdische ... more Der Terrorangriff der Hamas vom 7. Oktober des letzten Jahres auf ein Musikfestival und jüdische Dörfer nahe der Grenze Gazas sowie die sich anschließende und andauernde Offensive Israels bewegen die deutsche Öffentlichkeit. Die Debatte ist extrem polarisiert, wird oft sehr emotional geführt. Dies zeigt sich in der Verwendung bestimmter Schlüsselbegriffe und rhetorischer Figuren, über welche die jeweils eigene Position legitimiert und die Gegenpositionen delegitimiert werden: Genozidvorwürfe werden in beide Richtungen ausgetauscht und der Antisemitismusvorwurf findet sein rhetorisches Gegenüber im Begriff der Islamfeindlichkeit. Dadurch werden moralische Positionierungen vorgenommen: Wird der Hamas-Überfall bei Anklagen des israelischen Angriffs auf Gaza nicht erwähnt, dann wird dies schnell als stumme de-facto Rechtfertigung des Hamas-Terrors ausgelegt und mit Antisemitismus assoziiert (jüngst bei Reaktionen nach den Solidaritätserklärungen mit Gaza während der Berlinale). Umgekehrt wird Unterstützer:innen der israelischen Regierung unterstellt, sie verteidigten implizit eine Politik der Apartheid und Vertreibung...

The Hamas terrorist attack on a music festival and Jewish villages near the Gaza border on Octobe... more The Hamas terrorist attack on a music festival and Jewish villages near the Gaza border on October 7 last year and Israel’s subsequent and ongoing war on Hamas and Gaza have polarized the German public. This polarization is reflected in the use of certain key terms and rhetorical tropes, which are employed to legitimize one’s own position and delegitimize opposing positions. Accusations of genocide are exchanged in both directions and charges of anti-Semitism find their rhetorical counterpart in the concept of Islamophobia...

Multiple Secularities: Bulletin, 2020

RecentGlobe Blog 22, 2020

In diesem Blogeintrag erläutert der Religionswissenschaftler Markus Dreßler verschiedene Deutungs... more In diesem Blogeintrag erläutert der Religionswissenschaftler Markus Dreßler verschiedene Deutungsmöglichkeiten der Rückumwandlung der berühmten Hagia Sophia in eine Moschee und erklärt, warum die in westlichen Medien geführte Debatte aus seiner Sicht verkürzt ist. _____ ReCentGlobe widmet sich in einer breiten interdisziplinären Kooperation der Untersuchung von Globalisierungsprojekten in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart. Der Blog des Forschungszentrums gibt spannende Einblicke in seine Forschung und bietet eine Plattform für Austausch und Debatten.

Dr. Markus Dreßler studierte Religionswissenschaft und Islamkunde in Marburg und Giessen und prom... more Dr. Markus Dreßler studierte Religionswissenschaft und Islamkunde in Marburg und Giessen und promovierte am Max-Weber-Kolleg der Universität Erfurt. Seit 2013 lehrt er in Bayreuth. Seine Forschungsschwerpunkte sind neben dem modernen Alevitentum Religion und Politik, Säkularisierung und Nationalismus -mit geographischem Schwerpunkt auf der Türkei.

Workshop co-organized by the Institute for the Study of Religions, and the Centre for Advanced St... more Workshop co-organized by the Institute for the Study of Religions, and the Centre for Advanced Studies “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities” at Leipzig University, as well as the Chinese University of Hong Kong, scheduled for June 9-10, 2023 at Leipzig University.
This interdisciplinary workshop investigates the role of secularity – that is, conceptual distinctions and institutional differentiations between “religion” and its others – in the formation and normalization of Muslim minorities, with a focus on China. Recent developments in China give a strong impression of Muslim minorities being subjugated under a state-led secularist regime. Therein, Muslims are discursively disciplined by means of semantically overlapping binaries, such as religion/secular, legal/illicit, good/bad, local/foreign, and modern/traditional. While this scenario puts emphasis on the agency of the state, our workshop aims at exploring the roles of various actors (including but not limited to Muslims and state authorities) in resisting, appropriating, altering, and reproducing such binaries to sustain or upset established religious and secular fields. See: https://www.multiple-secularities.de/events/event/call-for-papers-international-workshop-muslim-minorities-and-questions-of-secularity-in-china-and-beyond/

CfP, 2022

We would like to extend an invitation to submit papers to a workshop on Alevi historiography at L... more We would like to extend an invitation to submit papers to a workshop on Alevi historiography at Leipzig University on 5-7 October 2023. The workshop is a first step towards the publication of an edited volume on Alevi historiography and all participants are expected to present drafts of chapters for the publication at the workshop. The invitation is extended to all scholars on Alevis and Alevism who are interested in critically engaging with historiographies surrounding Alevi communities and the field of Alevi studies.

In the form of an online video conference, this workshop plans to engage with the Alevi deyiş/nef... more In the form of an online video conference, this workshop plans to engage with the Alevi deyiş/nefes tradition with a particular focus on its significance for the pir-talip relationship. We hope that the discussion of this relationship can open a productive horizon for a new conceptual engagement with Alevi poetic texts. The workshop will be bilingual (in English and Turkish). Conventional approaches that deal with the Alevi deyiş/nefes tradition usually discuss the "Aleviness" of these texts based on specific external and content-related characteristics. On the one hand, these approaches attribute the specific morphology of Alevi music and poetry to the "oral tradition" in which it has been embedded. On the other hand, they tend to emphasize the importance of music and poetry for the transmission of religious and cultural knowledge within a thematic framework specific to Alevism. However, the role of Alevi deyiş/nefes and the transmission of "Alevi" knowledge through them have rarely been studied from the point of view of media and literary studies. Our workshop would like to venture in this direction and to initiate a discussion that engages with the Alevi poetic tradition by asking to what extent the socio-religious relationship between pir and talip could be used (1) as a hermeneutic template to understand some of the basic features of what we may term with some caution the "Alevi poetic tradition", and (2) to make the textual morphology of deyiş/nefes accessible to heuristic interpretation. The didactic functions of deyiş/nefes can be explained in most concrete form through their role in the spiritual education process of the talip. They provide access to understanding the path (yol), which we in hindsight label "Alevi", its corresponding worldview, as well as

This workshop is directed at current and prospective Ph.D. students who have experienced difficul... more This workshop is directed at current and prospective Ph.D. students who have experienced difficulties in pursuing or continuing their dissertations due to political reasons and who have therefore left their country of origin, or are considering doing so. The workshop is motivated by the fact that organized support structures for Ph.D. students at-risk are very limited, despite the fact that Ph.D. students are due to their in-between status in the academic hierarchy in a very vulnerable position.
The primary purpose of the workshop at Leipzig University is to provide participants with two days of academic normality - a chance to present and discuss their projects among themselves, as well as with local students, and more experienced scholars. The secondary purpose is to create a space for networking and mentorship. A group of senior academics (from the fields of Sociology, History, Political Science, Religious Studies, Islamic Studies, Gender and Media Studies) will offer participants an opportunity to think about future academic possibilities.

Critical studies on secularism have since at least a decade wielded a considerable influence on t... more Critical studies on secularism have since at least a decade wielded a considerable influence on the academic study of Islam. Often inspired by scholarship in the footsteps of Edward Said and other figureheads of postcolonial studies, critiques have been launched against the essentialism and the political complicity of parts of Islamic Studies scholarship with colonial and imperialist projects. Moving methodologically and theoretically beyond the limits of postcolonial critique, the work of anthropologist Talal Asad has more recently inspired a new school of research that challenges previous frameworks of investigating religion. Asad directed attention to the way in which hegemonic knowledge about religion is structured by arrangements of power vested in a secular episteme.

CfP Workshop "Religion and Secularism as Problem Space in Postcolonial Occidentalist Discourses w... more CfP Workshop "Religion and Secularism as Problem Space in Postcolonial Occidentalist Discourses within the MENA Region", Leipzig University, 3-4 November 2022

The workshop aims to discuss the question of religion and secularity/secularism in (postcolonial) Occidentalist discourses and their critiques in the MENA region. The question of religion plays a pivotal role in both the Orientalist view of the “Orient” and the Occidentalist view of the “Occident”. While the Orientalist view is indebted to a binary perspective on religion and the secular, with stereotypical essentializations of the religious dimensions of the “Orient”, the Occidentalist view oscillates between two apparently contradictory reductions, which present the “Occident” alternatively as Christian or as secular. Furthermore, dominant Occidentalist discourses in the MENA region self-identify with Islam in a way that overlaps with Orientalist imaginaries of an essentially Islamic Orient.

Convenors:
Housamedden Darwish (CASHSS Multiple Secularities, Leipzig University)
Markus Dreßler (Institute for the Study of Religions/Modern Turkish Studies, Leipzig University)

Dieser Essay ist eine überabeitete Version eines Vortrags mit dem Titel "Aleviten und Alevitentum... more Dieser Essay ist eine überabeitete Version eines Vortrags mit dem Titel "Aleviten und Alevitentum: Überlegungen zu einem komplexen Forschungsfeld", der am 29.5.2019 in Hamburg beim von der Akademie der Weltreligionen der Universität Hamburg und der Alevitischen Gemeinde Deutschland organisierten Symposium "Alevitische Studien in Deutschland. Herausforderungen und Perspektiven" gehalten wurde.

Sie alle sind wahrscheinlich zu einem gewissen Grad mit den jüngsten politischen Entwicklungen in... more Sie alle sind wahrscheinlich zu einem gewissen Grad mit den jüngsten politischen Entwicklungen in der Türkei vertraut, die ja auch hierzulande kritisch verfolgt werden. Während die türkische Regierungspartei AKP in ihren ersten zwei Amtsperioden eine demokratiefreundliche und liberale Politik verfolgte, markierte die kompromisslose Niederschlagung des Gezi-Protestes von 2013 eine drastische Änderung des Regierungsstils der AKP. Seither erleben wir eine Eskalation der Gewalt in der Türkei und eine systematische Domestizierung der politischen Öffentlichkeit. Parlamentarische und vor allem außerparlamentarische Kritiker der Regierung und Erdogans werden drangsaliert, eingesperrt, mundtot gemacht. Diese Kritiker wenden sich hauptsächlich gegen den Abbau der Demokratie und den Alleinherrschaftsanspruch Erdogans, gegen die Unnachgiebigkeit des Staates im Kurdenkonflikt, sowie einen Raubtierkapitalismus, der keine Rücksicht auf soziale Strukturen und die Ökologie des Landes nimmt. Mehr als 150 türkische Journalisten sitzen zurzeit im Gefängnis, zehntausende Akademiker und Lehrer verloren seit letztem Jahr ihre Stellen, hunderttausende der Gülen-Bewegung nahestehende Menschen, vom türkischen Staat für den Putschversuch im Juli letzten Jahres verantwortlich gemacht, wurden kriminalisiert, verloren ihre Stellen, zehntausende von ihnen sitzen im Gefängnis-oft ohne zu wissen, was genau ihnen vorgeworfen wird. Gleichzeitig zeigt sich der Staat weiterhin unnachgiebig gegenüber Forderungen nach einer politischen Lösung des Kurdenkonflikts-wer sich dafür einsetzt riskiert Diskriminierung, Jobverlust, Gefängnis. Aus gegebenem Anlass möchte ich besonders auf die Situation der Akademikerinnen in der Türkei eingehen. Die zahlenmäßig größte Gruppe verfolgter Akademikerinnen ist diejenige der echten und vermeintlichen Gülen-Anhänger-die meisten der mehr als 5000 Akademiker, die ihre Stellen nach dem Putschversuch durch Notstandsverordnungen verloren haben sind hierzu zu rechnen. In Anbetracht der Tatsache, dass mindestens 130.000 Beamte durch Notstandsverordnungen entlassen wurden, erscheint die Zahl 5000 nicht außerordentlich hoch. Bei den Akademikern für den Frieden, die ich persönlich auch unterstütze, liegt eine ganz andere Konstellation vor. " Wir, die Akademiker*innen und Wissenschaftler*innen dieses Landes werden nicht Teil dieses Verbrechens sein " – so begann die Petition, die im Januar 2016 zunächst von über 1100, dann von über 2200 Akademikern unterschrieben wurde. Es war dies ein Aufschrei der Empörung und der Anklage gegen die Kurdenpolitik des türkischen Staates, der seit dem Sommer 2015 mit zunehmender Brutalität in kurdischen Städten gegen echte und vermeintliche PKK-Sympathisanten vorging und dabei auch zivile Opfer in Kauf nahm, ganze Stadtteile dem Erdboden gleichmachte. Die Unterzeichnerinnen dieser Petition nannten sich "Akademiker für den Frieden". Sie erlebten vorübergehende Verhaftungen, unzählige Prozesse, offene und subtile Diskriminierung in der Öffentlichkeit und an türkischen Universitäten. Mehr als 330 der Unterzeichnerinnen haben bisher ihre Stellen verloren, die meisten unterliegen einem Ausreiseverbot, gegen viele laufen Ermittlungsverfahren. Vorwurf: Unterstützung einer terroristischen Organisation und Verunglimpfung der türkischen Staatsorgane. Diejenigen die noch nicht entlassen wurden leben täglich mit der Angst, dass es sie als nächste treffen könnte. Einige haben sich dem Druck des Staates und ihrer Universitäten gebeugt und aus Furcht vor Repressionen, Angst um ihren Beruf und um die Zukunft ihrer Kinder ihre Unterschriften zurückgezogen. Die meisten haben sich jedoch geweigert dies zu tun und nehmen die Konsequenzen in Kauf. Nach der Durchsetzung des Referendums am 1

In recent years Sufism has undergone something of a revival as a spiritual alternative to other m... more In recent years Sufism has undergone something of a revival as a spiritual alternative to other manifestations of Islam. This book investigates the development of Sufism in Western societies, with a regional focus on North America and Europe. Exploring a number of ...