Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

16 islamic political identity in turkeyApproaches to the Study of Political IslamThere are three main theoretical currents in the study of religion and politics:essentialist, contextualist, and constructivist. 1 Interactions between these threeapproaches have been multifarious and by no means always conXictual. By settingup these categories, I am aware that I slight subtle distinctions and simplifyprofound analyses of particular cases. However, in order to organize thevast body of social science literature on this subject, it is useful to demarcatethese three broad conceptual categories.Essentialism: The “Text” and Political DevelopmentsEssentialism seeks to reduce the diverse spectrum of human relations to a few“essential” causes and to identify certain deWning traits and texts as keys tounderstanding a particular religious or cultural community. 2 This tendency,which can be seen in the textualism of Bernard Lewis, played a dominant rolein the formation of modernization theory and the “cluster of absences” longnoted by development specialists. Tradition and modernity were counterpoised,and it was axiomatic for modernization theorists to view tradition as the mainculprit standing in the way of “progress.” The focus on the textual sources ofIslamic revivalism in much of contemporary scholarship implies that Muslimsdo not reimagine and rearticulate what it means to be a Muslim in rapidlydeveloping societies but only act on Wxed Islamic principles. Lewis, forexample, argues that Islam is a Wxed and enduring tradition and culturalsystem. 3 Bassam Tibi’s book Islam and the Cultural Accommodation of SocialChange is another example of this tendency to Wx a purported Islamic essence;Tibi argues that “Islam” is a set of Wxed texts, doctrines, and practices by whicha Muslim sense of self is determined. 4 Religious discourse, for Tibi, seeminglyis produced in a vacuum, hermetically sealed from changing contexts and interpretations.In the end, he creates a model of a homo Islamicus who is ahistoricaland similar to a fundamentalist caricature of “true” Islam. The essentialistsattribute agency to Islam as an institution and as a set of Wxed doctrines butnegate the interactive agency of Muslims themselves. Tibi, for example, concludesthat political Islam “provides no innovative prospects for the future butis solely a vision of the future as a restoration of the past. . . . Political Islammay therefore—with some restrictions—be interpreted as a backward-orientedutopia.” 5 Lewis, like Tibi, has tended to assume that “Islam rather than anyother element is the ultimate basis of identity, of loyalty, of authority.” 6 Islamicidentity is viewed as being a primordial, essentially political, all-encompassing,and determining force. 7 Similarly, Emmanuel Sivan claims that “Islamicrevival—while activist and militant—is thus essentially defensive; a sort ofholding operation against modernity.” 8 Sivan sees the problem in the antimodernnature of Islam and concludes that Islamic groups are “all united byintense hatred of the ‘evil of evils,’ modernity. Modernity is inherently aliento Islam.” 9