Architectures of interreligious tolerance: The infrastructural politics of place and space in Croatia and Turkey 1 (original) (raw)
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Labours of Inter-religious Tolerance Cultural and Spatial Intimacy in Croatia and Turkey
Based on ethnographic research in Croatia and Turkey, this article explores two projects of inter-religious tolerance in relation to broader logics of cultural and spatial intimacy. In the Croatian case, the focus is on the public discourse surrounding Rijeka's Nova Džamija [New Mosque] which pivoted on a perception of the shared victimization of Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosnians at the hands of Serbs during the wars of the 1990s. For Turkey, we focus on a project in Ankara that aims to provide a single site of worship for Sunni and Alevi Muslims, a 'mosque-cem house'. The analysis highlights some common formations of tolerance and cultural intimacy expressed by both projects, as well as the divergent spatial practices and modes of spatial intimacy that distinguish the two sites.
Reconsidering the spatiality of religion and the state: relationality and the mosque not built
Religion, State and Society, 47:4-5, 474-490, 2019
Interactions between religious groups and state actors in cities across Europe are increasingly marked by complex relations that transcend the limitations usually associated with ‘local’ context, religion, or politics. However, scholars often fail to adequately conceptualise the multiple connections between religion and the state across various spatial dimensions. This contribution addresses this lacuna by introducing a relational approach to understanding the nexus of space, religion, and state. It is argued that a relational understanding of space helps to avoid the fallacy of neglecting other spatial categories such as the translocal or the global. This contribution’s conceptual arguments are based on an investigation of the spatial implications of the puzzle of why one of the largest mosque projects in Germany, the Munich Forum for Islam, failed to materialise.
Allegations of ‘communitarian pressures’ remain to be at the center of social, political and cultural debates in Turkey. Such debates particularly increased after the rise to power of the AKP in 2002. Seminal sociologist Şerif Mardin argued that such communitarian pressures, dubbed as the “neighborhood pressure” (mahalle baskısı) constitute one of the dominant characteristics of the Turkish social texture whereby social difference is scrutinized by moralistic and watchful eyes of (Islamic) conservatism. While the neo-liberal ‘global city’ passionately promoted by the AKP increasingly strangles the ‘neighborhood,’ this latter at once seem to exert an intolerant oppression on social difference and multiculturalism, thus further eroding the bases of multi-confessional co-existence. As Istanbul gets ready to be the European Capital of Culture in 2010, it remains to be seen whether multiculturalism and multi-confessionality would only serve as rhetorical advertisement slogans to sell the city to a global clientele or could be revitalized as the bases of religious harmony, cross-borrowings and learning from one another. Perhaps, both the "neoliberal global city" and the "intolerant, repressive neighborhood" have a lot to learn from the Muslim women on headscarves visiting the First Tuesday Greek Orthodox Church in Kuzguncuk.
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2014
In this paper we focus on the Republican Mosque in Derinkuyu, Turkey, a Greek Orthodox church built in 1859 and transformed into a mosque in 1949 that still exhibits many obviously Christian structural features not found in most such converted churches. We utilize the concept of religioscape, defined as the distribution in spaces through time of the physical manifestations of specific religious traditions and of the populations that build them, to analyze the historical transformations of the building, and show that this incongruity marks a specific stage in the long-term competitive sharing of space by the two religiously defined communities concerned. This shared but contested space is larger than that of the building or even the town of Derinkuyu. We argue that syncretism without sharing correlates with a lack of need to show dominance symbolically, since the community that had lost the sacred building had been displaced as a group, and was no longer present to be impressed or intimidated.
Journal of Architectural and Planning …, 2011
This study examines contemporary meanings and uses of the mosque in Turkey by arguing that productive architectural plans require understanding both the socio-historical development of the mosque and the socio-political transformations that have led to the mosque's current position in society. Mosque space is conceptualized as a physical environment that cultivates the formation and transformation of individual, social, and collective memories. The study questions whether the mosque still exhibits the qualities of a social space and whether new and innovative mosque designs reflect -programmatically, architecturally, and spatiallytransformations related to their current uses and social meanings. These questions are explored through interviews, two questionnaires, and a worksheet, all of which involve a case study of Dogramacizade Mosque in Ankara. On one hand, the findings underscore the changing relationship between Muslim women and mosque space as a result of the transformation of congregations into citizens of a contemporary secular nation and suggest that spatial designs of mosques should take present-day behaviors and practices into consideration rather than ignoring this social aspect through which transformations occur. On the other hand, the collective memory of congregation members resists changing the allocation of prayer halls in the mosque. Members are in favor of continuing the traditional layout of separated spaces based on gender differences. The resistance implies that collective memory changes much slower than behaviors or lifestyles in terms of gender issues. Additionally, parallel to the findings, modernization of the mosque brings forth the idea of resurrecting the mosque's historical form as a social complex that fundamentally conflicts with secularity.
The Loudspeaker of Faith in the Calm City: Islam and Urban Diversity in the Contemporary Balkans
In the far distance, as if through an acoustic veil, I can hear the muezzin calling for the evening prayer. Due to its conspicuous and iterative perfection, the call is easy to identify. It is the recorded ezan coming from the Ebu-Bekr mosque. In earlier times, as there were no loudspeakers on the minarets, while walking through the Rruga Philip Shiroka -one of the streets of the Catholic quarter, Truma -one could most probably hardly hear the muezzin at all. His chant would have been lost in the acoustic 'order' of this city, which has accommodated different sensory and temporal religious lifeworlds for a long time.' (Fieldnotes, 28.5.2012,
Modern urban planning, characterized by a rational, modernistic, centralistic and superimposed approaches to urban design, is becoming increasingly vulnerable (Roy and AlSayyad, 2004; Roy, 2005, 2009; Yiftachel, 2009a). Put plainly, the state through its various agencies is not the sole player that dictates current developments in the urban landscape. Rapid urban growth, widening diversity, shifting demographics, and increasing mobility are leading to the creation of new urban areas and phenomena. These are gradually transforming many cities around the world. In a continuously globalizing world and with the existence of a growing mixed urban population planning Cosmopolis becomes a task contested and challenged daily on various levels and by a multiplicity of forces from within and from without. The very idea – becoming the hallmark of postmodernist and critical urban planning under the title of ‘celebrating differences’ - is impinging on planners worldwide and amounts in many occasions to city’s strife and conflicts (Sandercock, 1998). In this socio-spatial arena, various minority groups whose voices were formerly weak or silent in urban politics are starting to build alternative landscapes, and through them to speak and to emerge as more powerful local players (Castell, 1983). These groups are voicing their claims against the power of contemporary nation-states that have planned cities based on neo-liberal logic, geared primarily to maximizing growth, cost efficiency and accumulation (Harvey, 1989). Religion has been identified as one compelling narrative that serves to mobilize such groups within cities (AlSayyad and Massoumi, 2010; Beaumont and Barker, 2011; Tong and Kong, 2000; Garbin, 2012). Religion provides a useful framework for competing narratives and spatial logic as well as for the construction of new political geographies in the city. Thus, various distinct groups weave new patterns into the urban landscape through religiously based identity politics (Hervieu-Leger, 2002, Orsi, 1985). In this chapter we ask: How does religion serve as a driver of urban transformation? We explore how religious practices, discourse and buildings are used by minorities to claim the city and to participate more fully in the urban sphere. We show that religion provides a useful framework for competing narratives and spatial logic as well as for the construction of new urban geopolitical geographies in the city. Thus, various distinct groups weave new patterns in urban space as ways of claiming the city through religiously based identity politics (Hervieu-Leger, 2002, Orsi, 1985). Following previous discussions on the spatial behaviour of religious minorities (Metcalf 1996; Dodds, 2002, among others), we critically reflect on the construction of religious buildings in urban spaces by minority groups, and their stories, constitutes a powerful strategy to reinforce identity and power. Their very presence in the city challenges the hegemonic forces there in. Further, religious buildings and discourse provide a focal point for the social integration of minority groups with other groups, and for the recognition of a minority group by the state.
The concept of post-secularism has come to signify a renewed attention to the role of religion within secular, democratic public spheres. Central to the project of post-secularism is the integration of religious ways of being within a public arena shared by others who may practice different faiths, practice the same faith differently, or be non-religious in outlook. As a secular state within which Sunni Islam has played an increasingly public role, Turkey is a prime site for studying new configurations of religion, politics, and public life. Our 2013 research with devout Sunni Muslim women in Istanbul demonstrates how the big questions of post-secularism and the problem of pluralism are posed and navigated within the quotidian geographies of homes, neighborhoods, and city spaces. Women grapple with the demands of a pluralistic public sphere on their own terms and in ways that traverse and call into question the distinction between public and private spaces. While mutual respect mediates relations with diverse others, women often find themselves up against the limits of respect, both in their intimate relations with Alevi friends and neighbors, and in the anonymous spaces of the city where they sometimes find themselves subject to secular hostility. The gendered moral order of public space that positions devout headscarf-wearing women in a particular way within diverse city spaces where others may be consuming alcohol or wearing revealing clothing further complicates the problem of pluralism in the city. We conclude that one does not perhaps arrive at post-secularism so much as struggle with its demands.
The Dilemma of Religious Space
predominantly Muslim society or preserved in their original froms and/or functions after the arrival of Islam, it is in such sites, structures and spaces that one may find some of the most potent applications of architecture to the articulation of cultural identity. This paper aims to make a foundation for the study of churches and synagogues in Muslim societies. Referring to specific historic cases, the authors clarify how the development and construction of these sacred spaces have been influenced by the social and political contexts. The design of churches and synogogues and their relationship with the urban fabric often depended on the political and religious context. During the times of fanaticism, non-Muslims' religious building became less visible either in terms of height, location, and even ornamentation. In general, most non-Muslim religious buildings adopted the local language of architecture and materials. The churches and synogogues and spaces that remain or emerge after the arrival of Islam provide art and architectural historians a basis upon which to form important questions about changing notions of the sacred over time and from one culture to another.