book review: between islam and the state

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DOI: 10.1177/0921374007080298 2007 19: 329Cultural Dynamics

Hafeez Jamali65501 08047ISBN 978

(pbk),Engagement. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007, 223 pp. $21.95 Book Review: Berna Turam : Between Islam and the State: The Politics of

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Book Review 329

B O O K R E V I E W

Berna TuramBetween Islam and the State: The Politics of Engagement. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007, 223 pp. $21.95 (pbk), ISBN 9780804755016.

Berna Turams Between Islam and the State: The Politics of Engagement is a political ethnography of everyday manifestations of an increasingly cooperative relationship between the Islamist movement and the secular Republican state in Turkey. Contrary to popular accounts that, depending on the commentators viewpoint, describe this relationship as either a confrontational one in which the Turkish state or the Islamist movement appears to be winning or as the fusion of Islam and the state, Turam argues that it can be best described as an ongoing process of partial engagement in which both state actors and Islamist leadership test the limits of their agreement on the states role in society and forge workable compromises. Through a review of historical evidence and her own multi-sited ethnographic work in Turkey, Kazakhstan and the United States with the members of the Islamist Gulen movement, she suggests that the engagement between Islamists and the state took place largely outside regular political channels in the associational public domain through the movements voluntary work in the educational sector. This rapprochement between Islam and the state in Turkey was facilitated by a minimal level of agreement between the two over basic tenets of the Republican nationalist project such as secular democracy (as opposed to an Islamic state), the necessary role of the armed forces in protecting the nation and a shared sense of belonging to the Turkish nation (as opposed to the global Islamic community or Ummah).

Turam argues that due to the Turkish militarys suspicion of Islamists political agenda in mainstream electoral politics and the monopoly of the civil society by Kemalist secularists, the followers of the Gulen movement, led by Fethullah Gulen, attempted to carve out a space for Islamist values and way of life in the inner spiritual domain of the nation while subscribing to liberal democratic principles of pluralism and religiousand cultural diversity through their interactions in the public domain. In

19(2/3): 329332. [DOI: 10.1177/0921374007080298] http://cdy.sagepub.comCopyright 2007 SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore)


330 Cultural Dynamics 19(2/3)

Chapter 3, she illustrates this bifurcation through the example of boarding schools set up and administered by members of the Gulen movement. In these schools, students are taught western science, computer skills and English language and are encouraged to embrace modern technology, secular values and competitive entrepreneurship in the classroom. She points out, however, that they follow a strict moral discipline and are expected to lead pious lives during their time outside the classroom in their residence in the schools dormitories. According to her, private life does not mean individual or familial privacy in the western sense. Rather it refers to the inner life of the community or Gemeinschaft. This division between inside and outside allows the movement to use its fundraisers and school system to help the poor and promote deserving students, thereby contributing to the upward mobility of its followers and earning nationwide recognition for its work while being sensitive to the concerns of Turkish state and secular civil society actors.

Turam maintains that Islamists dedication and voluntary work as well as their willingness to engage the state and civil society have earned them recognition in the eyes of the representatives of the state who no longer see their activities as a threat but rather as an opportunity for preparing morally superior and internationally competitive citizens at home and for projecting a better image of the nation abroad. In particular, the movements willingness to open up its educational and other philanthropic activities to the scrutiny of the courts and the powerful Turkish military has allayed state authorities fears. In this way, the movement accommodates the concerns of state actors and allows them to assert their right to scrutinize its activities while state actors acknowledge the movements legitimacy and independent sphere of action in return. She further argues that this model of non-confrontational engagement with the state is unique to the Turkish Islamist movement and it laid the groundwork for cooperation between Islamist political parties such as the incumbent Justice and Development Party (AKP) and state authorities at a time when elsewhere in the Middle East the state and Islamist movements have been locked in bitterconfrontation.

Successive chapters of this book chart the trajectory of encounters between the Islamist Gulen movement and the Turkish state in different domains. Chapter 2 describes how Islamists and the state negotiate the meaning of secularism by working out the boundaries of public and private spheres. Chapter 3 discusses contestation in the eld of education over the kind of values that were being taught to children. Chapter 4 highlights the cooperation between the state and Islamists in promoting the Turkish nation state and engendering pan-Turk politics in Central Asia. Chapter 5 points out the extent of agreement between the Islamist and Republican


Book Review 331

male elite over the role of women in the nationalist project despite their rhetorical differences. Chapter 6 describes how the AKP institutionalized the cooperation between Islam and the state in the political domain which led to the pro-Islamist partys rise to power in Turkey.

Turams analysis makes two important contributions to the available literature on the relationship between Islamist movements and the state in the Middle East. First, she challenges the myth of homogeneity and structural integrity of Islamist movements. She shows that the Islamic revivalist movement in Turkey was internally heterogeneous with some of its offshoots like Gulen deciding to cooperate with the state while others preferred to challenge it. The movements methods of engagement were locally speci c and the outcomes of this engagement were historically contingent and could not be predicted in advance. Second, drawing on Tocquevilles formulation of civil society, she highlights the vertical linkages between the Gulen movement and the state that led to their mutual recognition of each others role. Her analysis shows that these vertical channels linked rather than divided Islam and the state, thereby facilitating institutional reform and the consolidation of liberal democracy inTurkey.

However, there are some weaknesses in her argument which constrain her analysis. Despite her attempts to maintain a critical distance, she appears to be heavily invested in the liberal nationalist project in Turkey and elides a discussion of class and ethnic dimensions of the Islamstate encounter which obscure the problematic relationship of Turkey with its ethnic minorities and the implications of Islamists embrace of neoliberal policies for their grass-root followers in the rural hinterlands. In her grand narrative of Islam and the state, minorities of non-Turkish descent such as Armenians and Kurds only surface, if at all, in summary descriptions like population exchange and the elimination of Armenians, which re ect insensitivity to minority concerns.

In addition, her reliance on a liberal democratic notion of civil society leads to portrayal of the Islamstate encounter as essentially a cooperative one whereas historical and contemporary ethnographic evidence presented in her book could be interpreted as pointing to a quest for hegemony between different Islamist factions as well as between the Gulen movement and the state. Her approach also takes away from the violence and coercion exercised by the Turkish state in confronting different Islamist factions. One is tempted to ask of Turam whether she endorses a hegemonic compromise between one Islamist faction and the Turkish state just because both happen to subscribe to a secular liberal nationalist rhetoric and a neoliberal economic agenda. She also does not explore the cultish devotion of Gulen members to their leader, Fethullah Gulen, in the depth which it should have


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received, considering his paramount role in setting the direction of themovement.

This is an important text for students and scholars interested in understanding the relationship between Islam and the state in the Middle East but its conclusions should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Hafeez JamaliUniversity of Texas


book review: between islam and the state

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