Articles

Lala Lajpat Rai is increasingly viewed in historiography as a “Hindu nationalist” with a strong affinity with Savarkarite Hindutva. This article demonstrates that during the Khilafat movement, Lajpat Rai articulated a secular Indian nationalism that was sensitive to Muslim religiosity and Indian Muslims’ extraterritorial sympathies toward the caliphate and the Muslim world. Pigeonholing the entire thought of Lajpat Rai as “Hindu nationalism” obscures a historical-intellectual juncture when a Hindu political figure like him enthusiastically supported pan-Islamism as necessary for Indian nationalism. This article complicates scholarship that portrays Hindu responses to the Khilafat movement as consisting solely of fear and counter-consolidation. More importantly, by unveiling Rai's Khilafat-era nationalism, it uncovers the intellectual and political possibility of firmly holding a Hindu identity and articulating conceptions of Indian nationhood that are at ease with Islam and the wider Muslim world.

Bhargav, Vanya Vaidehi. “A Hindu Champion of Pan-Islamism: Lajpat Rai and the Khilafat Movement.” Journal of Asian Studies (2022): 1–17.

My contribution will focus on secular and non-religious worldviews and will aim to reconstruct secular relationships with the world that develop from lived values and their transmission in the family. I will try to show in detail how a non-religious habitus develops in socialization over several generations, becomes entrenched in later biographical positioning, and shapes how a person relates to the world, including their view of religion. After a brief outline of the religious field in Germany, I will concentrate on a family case whose first generation (grandparents) grew up in the GDR. This family has had no religious socialization or child baptisms for three generations and secularity has become a positive point of reference for how its members justify their own life patterns. For the members of this non-religious family, religion still becomes selectively relevant. Using concrete situations and contexts where the family has contact with religion, I will show how these encounters become a marker for drawing boundaries. In conclusion, I will follow Quack and Schuh’s distinction between “indifference to religiosity” on the one hand, and “indifference to religion” on the other, and argue that indifference to religiosity, but not indifference to religion, can be clearly identified

Gärtner, Christel. "Secularity as a Point of Reference: Specific Features of a Non-Religious and Secularized Worldview in a Family across Three Generations." Religions 13, no. 477 (2022).

In a recent publication, I introduced the theoretical framework of neosecularisation with regard to the Orthodox Church and society in Bulgaria. I argued that neosecularisation, as a complex process of decline of religion’s importance and the hold of religious authority over the social system, while genealogically different from communist secularisation, explicates patterns of continuity with the communist past. Important aspects of this continuity include the persistent grassroots feminisation of the Church and the co-optation of the Church by the state. Drawing on those theoretical insights, in this paper, I seek to understand the rise of anti-gender politics in Bulgaria since 2018 in relation to the condition of neosecularisation and its impact on the Church. I argue that (neo)secularisation remains a much feared “threat” for the Church and plays a role in ecclesiastical anti-gender mobilisation. However, the Church is not a major factor in anti-gender politics in Bulgaria; the roles of far-right nationalists and certain transnationally connected evangelical actors are to be seriously considered. Furthermore, anti-genderism cannot be understood merely as a religious or cultural backlash. It needs to be discussed as a larger protest movement against liberal democracy’s failure to live up to its promises and against the pathologies of neoliberal globalisation, a movement in which the Orthodox Church is only tangentially involved

Merdjanova, Ina. “The Orthodox Church, Neosecularisation, and the Rise of Anti-Gender Politics in Bulgaria.” Religions 13, no. 4 (2022): 359.

Based on ethnographic research conducted in a number of Orthodox parishes in Bucharest, this article discusses different conceptions of har among Bucharest Orthodox believers, practitioners, and clerics. Har stands for ‘grace’, ‘charisma’ or ‘gift’ depending on the context. An ethnographically grounded analysis of this emic concept, I argue, is essential for two main reasons. First, understanding grace through gratuity allows us to grasp diverse forms of religious change, such as committed church attendance and the detachment from communal religious life, in contemporary Romania. Second, seeing through the looking glass of Orthodox practice allows for unexplored insights into the workings of charismatic authority. The article ends with a seeming paradox: grace is ‘something extra’, an addition which is best grasped apophatically, that is, through subtraction.

Tateo, Giuseppe. "The Orthodox Charismatic Gift." The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 40, no. 1 (Spring 2022): 68-83.

The scholarship on Alevis and Kurds in Turkey has grown over the last three decades. The politicisation of Alevism and Kurdishness has also increased the visibility of Kurdish Alevis. In this context, Dersim (formally Tunceli) comes to the fore with a new Kurdish Alevi identity, with similarities with other Alevi communities and specific oral traditions, sacred place (jiare) practices, religious organisations, discourses and rituals. Nowadays, Kurdish Alevis mostly define themselves as Kurds, but their cultural heritage features many differences from other Kurdish communities. The purpose of this chapter is to understand Alevism (as associated with Kurdish identity) in Tunceli where – in relation to the Sunni population – Alevis constitute the majority (whilst Alevis are the biggest religious minority in Turkey). This approach will present an alternative picture of the relations between Alevi and Sunni communities.

Dreßler, Markus. “What Is Alevism? Contemporary Debates Vis-À-Vis Historical and Systematic Considerations.” In The Alevis in Modern Turkey and the Diaspora: Recognition, Mobilisation and Transformation, edited by Derya Ozkul, and Hege I. Markussen. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022.

"The scholarship on Alevis and Kurds in Turkey has grown over the last three decades. The politicisation of Alevism and Kurdishness has also increased the visibility of Kurdish Alevis. In this context, Dersim (formally Tunceli) comes to the fore with a new Kurdish Alevi identity, with similarities with other Alevi communities and specific oral traditions, sacred place (jiare) practices, religious organisations, discourses and rituals. Nowadays, Kurdish Alevis mostly define themselves as Kurds, but their cultural heritage features many differences from other Kurdish communities. The purpose of this chapter is to understand Alevism (as associated with Kurdish identity) in Tunceli where – in relation to the Sunni population – Alevis constitute the majority (whilst Alevis are the biggest religious minority in Turkey). This approach will present an alternative picture of the relations between Alevi and Sunni communities."

Gültekin, Ahmet K. “Thinking of Alevism as a ‘Majority’: Alevi and Sunni Communities in Dersim.” In The Alevis in Modern Turkey and the Diaspora: Recognition, Mobilisation and Transformation, edited by Derya Ozkul, and Hege I. Markussen, 101–26. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022.

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. 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.

Dreßler, Markus. “The Reconversion of the Hagia Sophia: Silences and Unheard Voices.” Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association 8, no. 1 (2021): 209–13.

Global Modernity from Coloniality to Pandemic explores issues related to the global crises of our time: reason, science, and the environment by revisiting the notions of modernity, modernism, and modernization, which can no longer be considered purely Western or strictly secular. The book poses questions about viewing modernity today from the vantage point of traditionally disparate disciplines – engaging scholars from sociology to science, philosophy to robotics, medicine to visual culture, mathematics to cultural theory, biology to environmental studies. Leading sociologist Alain Touraine contributes a new text in which he reflects on the role of women, refugees and migrants, and the future of democracy. In their conclusion, the editors posit a fundamental ethical distinction between modernization and modernity and call for a new understanding of modernity that is globally distributed, informed by the voices of many, and concerned with crises that threaten all of us at the level of the species – a modernity-to-come.

Darwish, Housamedden. “The (In)Compatibility of Islam with Modernity: (Mis)Understandings of Secularity/Secularism in the Arab and Islamicate Worlds.” In Global Modernity from Coloniality to Pandemic: A Cross-Disciplinary Perspektive, edited by Hatem Akil, and Simone Maddanu. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022.

The article discusses the connection between theory formation and historical research in the study of religion. It presupposes that the study of religion is conceived of as an empirical discipline. The empirical basis of theories is provide  primarily by historical research, including research in the very recent past, that is, the present time. Research in the history of religions, therefore, is an indispensable part of the study of religion. However, in recent discussions on the methods, aims, and theoretical presuppositions of the discipline, research in the history of religions largely is ignored. To shed some light on this blind spot, the article builds on the philosophy of science of Critical Realism. While the first part deals with the role of historical research in theoretical discourses of the discipline, the second part explains fundamental ontological and epistemological positions of Critical Realism and their implications for empirical research. On this basis, some methodological problems of theory formation in the study of religion are discussed in the third part. In particular, it is argued that it is impossible to validate empirically theories of religion that aim to explain what religion is. The concluding part sketches ways of theory formation in the study of religion that does not take religion as the explanandum but as the theoretical perspective that guides research.

Responses (Published in Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaften 29, no. 2 (2021))

Mark Q. Gardiner and Steven Engler: "Allies in the Fullness of Theory." (pp. 259–67)
Stausberg, Michael: "The Abyss of Intransitivity: On Critical Realism and Theories of Religion." (pp. 268–74)
Becker, Carmen: "Returning to the Empirical after the Discursive Turn? A Response to Hubert Seiwert." (pp. 275–80)
Schmidt-Leukel, Perry: "Religion: Historical Fact or Interpretive Theory? A Response to Hubert Seiwert." (pp. 281–84)
Taves, Ann: "Religion, Religious: Can Anti-Definitionalists Stay Tethered to the Study of Religion?" (pp. 285–89)
Seiwert, Hubert: "Reply to the Responses." (pp. 290–98)

Seiwert, Hubert. “Theory of Religion and Historical Research. A Critical Realist Perspective on the Study of Religion as an Empirical Discipline.” Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft 28, no. 2 (2020): 207–36.

The phenomenon of ‘legal pluralism’ in India is conditioned and facilitated by the democratic state’s commitment to protect religious freedom and uphold sociocultural diversity. Community-based adjudicating institutions such as the Darul Qaza (also known as Sharia court) function within this constitutional framework but every citizen also has the right to approach a state court as and when they deem necessary. So far, the discourse on Islam, personal law, and the secular state has revolved around parliamentary debates, judicial activism, and legislative changes where the focus has been on the question of Uniform Civil Code (UCC) and gender justice. The discussion on personal law has rarely paid serious academic attention to the complexities of kinship conflicts embedded in affective as well as economic and legal matrix or more importantly how they are resolved. Drawing on an ethnographic study of the jurisprudential practices of Sharia courts in Uttar Pradesh, India, the paper offers a lens to understand how conflict resolution in family matters takes place in a legal plural landscape ensconced between citizenship rights and community practices. We argue that understanding this process also offers important insights on the shifting meaning of secularism^1,2 in contemporary India.

Ghosh, Suchandra, and Anindita Chakrabarti. "Religion-based ‘Personal’ Law, Legal Pluralism and Secularity: A Field View of Adjudication under Muslim Personal Law in India." Oxford Journal of Law and Religion 10, no. 2 (2021): 254–74.

Inspired by Chiara Bottici’s conceptual triad of imagination, imaginary, and the imaginal, the chapter analyses the ideological framework of the Muslim Brotherhood as an example of Islamic politics. More precisely, it looks at the way in which its founder Hasan al-Banna (1906-1948) constructed the imaginal politics of an Islamic system. The chapter presents Hasan al-Banna as both an imagining actor and an individual subjected to the contextual power of the social imaginaries of his times.

Jung, Dietrich, and Ahmed Abou El Zalaf. "Islamic Politics of Imagination: The Case of the Muslim Brotherhood." In Debating Imaginal Politics: Dialgues with Chiara Bottici, edited by Suzi Adams, and Jeremy C.A. Smith, 121-142. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021.

Man könnte meinen, der von Christiane Frey, Uwe Hebekus und David Martyn vorgelegte Quellenband zu „Säkularisierung“ käme so verspätet wie die Zeitungen von gestern. Theorien der Säkularisierung, wie allgemeiner des Säkularen, sehen sich gegenwärtig heftiger Kritik ausgesetzt, die – anders als frühere Einwände – ihre analytische Leistungsfähigkeit fundamental in Frage stellen. Die Kritik kommt dabei heute vor allem von außerhalb der Soziologie und der Geschichtswissenschaft: aus der Anthropologie, den Postcolonial Studies und – teils mit ihnen verbunden – diversen Area Studies. Auch wenn sie manche besonders „hartleibigen“ Bereiche der Soziologie bisher wenig zu tangieren scheint, hat sie doch zu – teils reflektiert, teils willfährig erscheinenden – Revisionen und Anpassungen geführt, die es sinnvoll machen, sowohl Theorien der Säkularisierung als auch deren Kritik auf den Prüfstand zu stellen. Dafür braucht es theoriegeschichtliche Quellen. Einen wichtigen Teil dieser Quellen präsentiert, bis zu Augustinus zurückreichend, der vorgelegte Band. Und er präsentiert damit gleichzeitig eine Ideengeschichte der Säkularisierung.

Wohlrab-Sahr, Monika, and Florian Zemmin. “Die Relevanz Der Säkularisierungstheorie Im Globalen Zeitalter: Frey, Christiane/Hebekus, Uwe/Martyn, David (Hrsg.), Säkularisierung. Grundlagentexte zur Theoriegeschichte, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp Verlag 2020.” Soziologische Revue 44, no. 4 (2021): 506–17.

The staging of the funeral procession of Major General Qasem Soleimani (d. 3 January 2020) strengthened the Iranian state’s legitimation amidst the crisis related to intensified US sanctions. Images of his funeral parade across the country with its dense mourning crowd were circulated widely and commented on in both Iran’s official media and the international media. In response to these images, media commentaries engaged obsessively and exclusively with the biographical reviews that emphasised his heroic individuality and charismatic figure. This article engages critically with these reactions, while asking instead what his funeral tells us about the unfolding of the statist cult in Iran. I analyse two ethnographic scenes, one showing the entanglement of the official discourse of martyrdom with the statist culture, and the other, how the atmosphere of grief and
veneration during the martyrs’ funeral processions unsettle the dichotomies between compliance and resistance, orchestrated and emergent affects. These observations open a new vista on the mutual processes of singularity and the collective subjectivation that goes beyond one-sided causal explanations of heroic individuality on the one hand and blatantly dramatised expressions of the state’s religious policies on the other.

Chavoshian, Sana. “From Military Hero to Martyr: Crafting Singularity and the Formation of Muslim Collective Subjectivity in an Iranian Statist Ritual.” Asiatische Studien - Études Asiatiques 75, no. 3 (2021): 859–79.

This article aims to clarify the meaning of “renovation of religious discourse”, specifically by defining the disciplines of this renovation and their importance in determining its meaning. The disciplines play a pivotal role in determining the nature, meaning, and possibilities of renovating religious discourse. To demonstrate this thesis, the article will first make some conceptual distinctions between ‘discourse of religion’ and ‘religious discourse’, between ‘religion’ and ‘religiosity’, between ‘renovation in religious discourse’ and ‘renovation of religious discourse’. Secondly, it will make a distinction between internal and external disciplines. Internal disciplines lie within the religious text itself and in the hermeneutic circle between understanding parts of the text and understanding it as a whole, between understanding and pre-understanding, between the inside and the outside. In doing so, the paper focuses mainly on the role of the ruling political and economic powers and authorities. The paper concludes that renovating religious discourse is a political and institutional issue rather than a purely religious one related to individuals and that it is conditional on the state and its political system, the extent of its actual adoption of the concepts of ‘the state of citizenship and law’, democracy, and the extent to which it protects freedoms, differences, and pluralism.

Darwish, Housamedden. “On the Renovation of Religious Discourse: An Analysis of Concepts of Internal and External Disciplines.” Teosofi: Jurnal Tasawuf dan Pemikiran Islam 11, no. 2 (2021): 240–69.