What is it about?
How the discourse on 'Salafism' has impacted Turkey no less than other countries, and how it can be traced in public discussion, academic output and media since 1980 - when the Evren military regime reoriented Turkey towards Saudi Arabia as a bastion of conservative, not political, Islam.
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Why is it important?
Turkey has been almost entirely absent from the growing literature on Salafism. This article explains why Turkey has been absent and why this has been a mistake.
Perspectives
There is no intent in this article to essentialize Islam today through the Salafi label, in fact it analyses the contested genealogy of 'Salafism' in the 20th century before we get to today's understanding by Salafis of what they belief and what they practice. In this context, Turkish scholars have grappled with how to define Salafism. Understandings of transformations in contemporary Turkish Islam must taken into account external influences that would be defined as Salafi. I hope that it lead that it encourages new ways of thinking about different aspects of Islam in Turkey today.
Andrew Hammond
University of Oxford
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: SALAFI THOUGHT IN TURKISH PUBLIC DISCOURSE SINCE 1980, International Journal of Middle East Studies, July 2017, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/s0020743817000319.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Producing Salafism: From Invented Tradition to State Agitprop
Rather than an ideology, or school of jurisprudence or creed, with a long historical pedigree, Salafism as it is understood today emerged in the 1960s through the work of religious scholar Nasir al-Din al-Albani during his time in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi state and ulama were reluctant to attach themselves fully to the Salafi label. How it has become useful in the context of marketing Saudi foreign policy.
Rereading Jihadi Texts: Between subalternity and policy discourse
The category 'Jihadism' has become a popular in policy, media and even academic discourse on Islam in recent years. Seen through a security lens, however, this discourse largely fails to analyze the underlying historical and social, economic and political circumstances that produce the phenomena in question.
Introduction to Popular Culture in North Africa and the Middle East
An introductory essay looking at questions of definition and identity in the Middle East region, through the taxonomies of 'Arab' and others, and surveying literature on various aspects of politic, history and and culture. It is intended as material for Middle East Studies courses.
Contributors
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