Markus Dreßler (Leipzig University)

Din has been, due to its rootedness in the Quran and its centrality in Islamic religious discourse, a particularly sturdy concept. Drawing on the Ottoman-Turkish example, the paper will argue that in order to understand its transformations, which nevertheless occurred in the modern period, it is necessary to situate them both within (1) the longer trajectories of traditional Islamic discourses, as well as (2) semantic and conceptual changes particular to the modern period. 
The Islamic tradition constitutes until today the most important normative reference point for Muslim elaborations on the meanings of din. This background needs to be considered when investigating in the considerable correspondence that din acquired over time with the modern Western concept of religion, which became increasingly solidified since the 19th century. My contribution will chart this religionization of din in relation to the “secularization problematic of modern political thought” that made itself felt in Ottoman lands at least since the Tanzimat reform period and found its articulation in intensifying debates on the “the place and significance of religion under the changing conditions of modern life” (Davison 1995).
Since the religionization of din came along with new distinctions between din/religion and its thus secularized others, it serves as an example of secularity. Such secularity is especially lucid in the complex translations between political practices and concepts marked as “European” in relation to the practices and concepts that were in the same process reified as traditional “Ottoman” and/or “Islamic”.

Wolfgang Höpken (Leipzig University / KFG "Multiple Secularities")

The history of the post-Ottoman Bosnian Muslims can be read as a constant confrontation with secularity. Since the end of Ottoman rule in 1878 Bosnian Muslims up till today were challenged by the necessity to adjust to changing forms of a secularizing environment, forcing them to negotiate and re-negotiate the boundaries between their religious life and the various secular systems they had to live in. Three periods of time can be separated within this constant process of reacting to the challenge of secularity:
When Ottoman rule had ended, Bosnian Muslims during the period of Austrian-Habsburg rule, firstly, were forced to adjust their up until then strictly religious environment to an Empire, understanding itself as „christian“, but at the same time as a „modernizing“ one, confronting the Bosnian Muslims with a semi-colonial european „mission civilisatrice“. The confrontation with „european modernity„ thus became the major discoursive and practical challenge for Bosnian Muslims. Topics like the role of women, the relation betwen religion and the state, science and religion, the question of „loyalty“ towards their islamic religion and/or towards their christian and „western“ secular state were producing an intensive discourse among Bosnian intellectuals, reacting not only to „western“ arguments of reason, enlightenment and modernity, but being even more embedded in discourses in the islamic, in particular arabic and ottoman world at that time, thus trying to find a specific configuration between the religious and the secular, answering to the particular Bosnian situation.
Yugoslav Socialism, following World War II, produced a second challenge for Bosnian Muslims, now under the conditions of a strictly secular, even atheist state. While the question of modernity, which had occupied the debates during the Austrian rule, faded away as a result of an unquestioned concept of socialism, now the issue of ethnicity and religion became the most disputed topic. The concept of a „muslim nation“, promoted by the Communist Party, induced a controversial debate on how the borderlines between religion and a socialist and secular „muslim nation“ had to be drawn.
With the end of socialist Yugoslavia state and the independence of Bosnia in 1992/5 the third necessity to re-draw the boundaries between the religious and the secular came up, this time under the condition of liberal-democratic pluralism and the claim for being part of „Europe“ on the one, but at the same time increasingly being influenced by transnational debates and actor-networks of a global islamic revival on the other side. Issues, which had already been debated during the Austrian period came up again, like the relation between Islam and a european modernity and „western culture“, being now answered by a plurality of ideas from a strictly secular view over the idea of a specific „european islamic“ answer up to radical-islamic concepts. Also the question of ethnicity and religion, being at the core during the socialist period, gained a new momentum, reopening the question, if a „Muslim nation“ and a Muslim dominated Bosnian state can be thought as a secular one at all or has to be inherently linked to religion.

The Bosnian example and the concept of „multiple secularities“
The case of the Bosnian Muslims can be linked with the concept of „Multiple secularities“ in two directions:
First, it offers a particular  example for the multiplicity of secular-religious divide not only between „Europe“ and „Non-Europe“ , colonal and post-colonial, but going as much beyond the dichotomy of „Western“ vs. „Eastern European“ secularity, literature on European secularity is mostly based on. Casanova´s claim for „rethinking secularity beyond the West“ thus in the case of Bosnia gets a particular „inner-european“ dimension. At the same time it also enriches the ongoing debate about the relation between Islam and secularity  being  largely debated with regard to the non-European islamic world. Secondly,  the idea of secularity as a process of „boundary drawing“ within the concept of multiple secularities has proofen to be a prolific conceptional approach to structure the „long durée“ of post-ottoman Bosnian-Muslim history. Starting from the core-aspects of the ´multiple secularities concept´ of „institutional differentiations“ and „conceptional distinctions“ the „critical junctions“ of changing institutional and power-related configurations on the process of boundary drawing could be identified; discourses and taxonomies of the secular and the religous could be contextualized in local and transnational intellectual and conceptional contexts, both european and none-european ones. Having more recently widened the concept of „multiple secularities“  in our debates beyond the field of institutional differentiation and conceptional distinctions into the field of symbolic and material dimensions of the religous and secular divide, has offered also enrichening perspectives for the Bosnian case, where in the Austrian period (adding for ex. a more „christian“ and „european“ visibility to the traditional islamic public space) as well as in contemporary Bosnia (re-conquering the public by hegemonic islamic buildings) visibility and the materiality has become an important battlefield of drawing the boundaries.

Gökçen Beyinli-Dinç (Hamburg University)

The extensive research on Alevis mostly explains the exclusion, discrimination and violence they have faced in the history of the Republic of Turkey through the secular or religious policies of the Turkish state and related actors. My initial approach to my archival material on Alevis and Bektashis in Turkey was similar. I tried to situate my findings within this “binary” framework but hesitated to publish them because such an approach did not adequately explain the complexity of the whole story, and there were still “gaps” between empirical material and theory. In this presentation, I will elaborate on, first, how my view on the religious history of Turkey and the role of Alevis within it changed after I applied the concept of “multiple secularities” to my research. Secondly, I will talk about how the discussions at the colloquiums helped to sharpen my perspective, especially on the significance of the secular Law 677 which banned religious orders (tarikat) in Turkey in 1925. In this regard, I will finally discuss whether it is necessary to extend the concept of “multiple secularities” to include the drawing of boundaries within the “religious” in the context of a “secular” nation-state.