Anthropology of Islamic Knowledge - SIPA

Ahmet Yukleyen, PhD.
Sociology and Anthropology Department
University of Mississippi
Anthropology of Islamic Authority and Knowledge in Europe
Introduction
Since September 11, 2001, stigmatization and categorization of Islam in the
European public sphere as an undifferentiated and inherently antithetical religion to
democratic civility has increased. This brings urgency to examining the dynamics of
change and continuity in Islam as a living discursive tradition (Asad 1993; MacIntyre
1981:223). Immigrants originating from Muslim majority countries have religious
organizations that negotiate a European Muslim identity. They are reconstructing the
Islamic tradition 1 to shape their future as not only Muslims in Europe but increasingly
Muslims of Europe.
Islam in Europe does not develop in a monolithic form, whether antagonistic to
“given” European values or assimilated into a privatized and individualized religion as
the term “Euro-Islam” (Tibi 1998) suggests. Rather transnational Islamic communities
established multiple forms such as; civil, mystical, political, and revolutionary Islam
among others. Their initially strategy was to change politics in their countries of origin,
but now they concentrate on what it means to be European Muslims (Ramadan 1999).
They reinterpret Islam as they negotiate between the expectations of Muslims and non-
Muslim state and society. Islamic communities face external pressures from
governments’ growing demands for conformity and internal challenges of religious
1 The meaning of tradition here is contrasted neither with reason and modernity nor
change. Instead, it refers to an unfolding narrative which motivates actors with references
from the past to shape their future (MacIntyre 1981:223; Amir-Moazami and Salvatore
2003:55).
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authorization to maintain commitment to “central” tenets of the Islamic tradition while
adapting “peripheral” ones to their de facto European home.
This paper compares the construction of religious authority among three Turkish
Islamic communities—the Gülen, Süleymanlı, and Kaplan communities—to understand
the production of their civil, mystical, and revolutionary Islam respectively, in Europe.
Religious authorization in these communities indicates how they produce Islamic
knowledge. Religious authority refers to the power to define what constitutes “True
Islam,” the proper way of interpreting and practicing Islam. The adaptive capacity of
their Islamic interpretations depends on how religious authority is socially organized and
distributed by the various media of these Islamic communities.
This comparison results in anthropology of Islamic authority and knowledge
production in Islamic communities, which has often been neglected in the literature in
favor of each individual speaking for her Islam. This individualization of religious
authority can lead to liberalization of Islam in Europe (Cesari 2004:43-64), but not
necessarily (Peter 2006). Moreover, the continuation of Islamic communities with anti-
democratic and militant messages (i.e. Hizb-ut Tahrir) requires examining communal
authorization of Islam. The scholarly emphasis on how Islam is adapting should be
balanced with how some Muslims regard this adaptation as an integral part of Islamic
tradition as simultaneously universal and flexible. As Frank Peter succinctly puts it: “just
as any study of individualization needs to be based on a certain understanding of
institutionalized Islam, concepts of tradition cannot do without a reflection on religious
authority” (Peter 2006:113).
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The following section engages with the theoretical debates on religious authority
and how Fredrik Barth’s anthropology of knowledge approach (Barth 1994, 2002) is
useful to theorize diversity and flexibility within the Islamic tradition. The comparative
analysis of the religious authority of the three Turkish Islamic communities with
ethnographic data would build on his theory. Barth privileges the process of validation in
the continuation of each “tradition of knowledge,” which leaves out other processes of
empowerment. However, there are additional processes such as prioritization,
confirmation, and elimination whereby religious authority constructs coherence among its
religious interpretations, which creates forms of Islam. I will conclude by comparing how
each Islamic community and their form of Islam adapts to or resists its European setting
through the examples of interfaith dialogue and jihad.
Theorizing Diversity in Islam
There are two extremes approaches to conceptualize diverse Islamic movements
and their interpretations of Islam in local contexts. One extreme represents “Islam as a
seamless essence” and the other “as a plastic congeries of beliefs and practices”
(Eickelman 1982:1). The complex relationship between Islam and a new social context
requires analytical models beyond these two extremes, because Islam is not merely a set
of religious doctrines replicated in new settings, nor is it a haphazard set of practices
reproduced anew by individuals who call themselves “Muslims” in each setting. Rather,
there are intermediary Islamic authorities negotiating between religious doctrines and
Muslim experience, which allows adaptation without necessarily breaking away from the
tradition.
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The theoretical challenge is to conceptualize how, despite widespread inner
diversity; Muslims maintain a common “Islamic” denominator. In other words, what
makes each organization or movement claim to be “Islamic” in the face of different,
competing, and sometimes conflicting claims about what “Islam” is? One approach is to
suggest that there are endless Islams and that each one is equally valuable to describe (El-
Zein 1977). In this approach, there are no common analytical criteria that make an
interpretation “Islamic.” Michael Gilsenan (1982) applies the anthropologically sound
criterion that Islam is what Muslims say it is. However, some Muslims would claim that
what others consider as Islam is not Islam at all (Asad 1986:2). So, the question arises:
how can anthropologists conceptualize this diversity within Islam without essentializing
or proposing endless Islams?
This article suggests a framework of analysis to conceptualize the inner diversity
of Islam by building on the “Anthropology of Knowledge” approach (Barth 1994, 2002).
Barth theorizes cultural complexity in multicultural societies through the interaction of
various “traditions of knowledge” (i.e. magic, religion, and science), whereas here the
application is to understand the diversity within a single tradition of knowledge, namely
Islam. Each Islamic community claims religious authority, which can be analyzed
through the interaction of central religious assertions, a particular social organization that
embody these assertions, and distribute them through various media. This interaction
creates the legitimacy of power to define an interpretation of Islam as authoritative and
respectable. The religious authority creates a level of coherence among disparate Islamic
interpretations through processes of validation, prioritization, confirmation, and
elimination, resulting in forms of Islam such as civil, mystical, and revolutionary.
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The anthropology of Islamic authority and knowledge approach avoids both the
extreme relativism of “Islam is anything one makes of it” and the essentialist Islam
sought in religious texts and “given” Muslim history (Lewis 2002). Instead it argues that
diversity within Islam results from the different ways in which religious authority is
constructed, the relations among authorities speaking for Islam, and their relations with
the larger context. Since there is no single religious authority in Islam to define what
Islam is for all Muslims, there is a diversity of religious authorities and their forms of
Islam, which are constrained through internal composition and external conditions. I will
briefly mention the latter and expand on internal religious authorization of Islamic
communities in Europe.
Construction of Religious Authority and Knowledge
There are competing voices that speak in the name of Islam, such as intellectuals,
charismatic preachers, educational institutions, media, Islamic organizations and
communities in Europe (Cesari 2004). Islamic communities incorporate several of these
voices, which make them very influential in shaping Muslim religiosity in Europe.
Islamic community (cemaat in Turkish) refers to a socio-religious group that produces,
follows, and supports a coherent interpretation of Islam through its activities and
institutions including associations, federations, foundations, schools, and mosques within
civil society independent from the state. Islamic communities often have an umbrella
organization; such as a registered foundation, association, or federation that represents all
the institutions of the community.
The larger context of Islamic communities in Europe has lineal and lateral
relations. The lineal relationship refers to Islamic communities acting as mediators
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etween the European states and Muslim minority (Waardenburg 1991). Muslims seek
the religious authority of these communities for their social and religious needs and
demands. Islamic communities respond to their needs and demands, which provides them
with financial and volunteer support from Muslims. These communities also negotiate
Muslims’ demands with the state authorities and the state’s policies, which influence
their strategies and activities (Fetzer and Soper 2005). Islamic communities seek state
recognition of Islam by establishing national Muslim representative bodies, which fails
due to lack of political will and/or disputes among Islamic communities.
In terms of the lateral relations, Islamic communities compete with one another
for the contributions of Muslims and state subsidies. If some activists and followers are
not content with their religious communities, they switch to others. Islamic communities
also compete for state recognition to acquire subsidies and legitimization from the state.
Islamic communities compete for these resources when they develop their projects.
However, their religious authority also legitimizes and prioritizes their religious activism
within the tradition of Islam. Thus, the competitive capacity of Islamic communities
among themselves and arbitrative role between the state and Muslims depends on their
internal religious authorization.
The internal composition of religious authority in each Islamic community is
created through the inter-dependence of religious assertions, social organization, and
media of representation. This is a circular analytical model and the starting point of the
analysis does not change the result. I will begin with the religious assertions of Islamic
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communities, which derive from the Islamic tradition because its continuity within the
process of Muslim adaptation in Europe is often underestimated. 2
The religious assertions of Islamic communities rest on two major sources: Quran,
the revealed word of God and the Hadith, the written records of the tradition of Prophet
Muhammad. There are additional sources such as ijma (consensus), and qiyas (logical
analogy) but Muslims predominantly refer to the Quran and Hadith to reconstruct Islamic
tradition and orthopraxis. Islamic communities share references to the Quran and Hadith
as their common denominator, however, they develop different forms of Islam because
different assertions leads to differences in social organization and media.
Religious assertions are no longer elusive ideas when individuals organize
themselves around them. Individuals who fill in socially organized positions define,
monitor, and discipline the terms of the debate on religious ideas, thereby creating
standards of priority and validity for their Islamic interpretation. Boundary maintenance
involving self-selection and disciplinary practices excludes the challengers of the
religious discourse from the social organization. The inclusion of conformists and
exclusion of challengers provides coherence to the assertions. For instance, the literature
on the adaptation of Islam in Europe has focused on the role of second generation
Muslims acquiring leadership position in Islamic communities in shifting the orientation
of the religious discourse and activities from the country of origin to Europe (Canatan
2001; Sunier 1996).
Socially organized individuals communicate these religious assertions to others
through various media, which creates an aura of certainty among the followers who begin
2 See Amir-Moazami and Salvatore (2003) for an example of how Islamic tradition is
relevant to understanding Muslim gender relations in Europe.
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to believe that their religious interpretation is Islam, as such. The characteristics of social
organization (centralized, decentralized, hierarchical, egalitarian, and outward-inward
orientation etc.) determine the most effective media to distribute religious knowledge.
For instance, internet provides a fast and affordable medium of communication for
transnational Islamic communities. It is especially convenient for underground or banned
Islamic communities, such as Hizb-ut Tahrir and Kaplan community to propagate their
message while protecting their social organization (Federal Ministry of the Interior
2006:215, 233).
The impact of new media on Muslim religious authority has been grave
(Eickelman and Anderson 1999). However, the power of media on religious authorization
and knowledge production in Islamic communities has to be analyzed through its impact
on the social organization and religious discourse. The introduction of internet has
provided greater individual access to knowledge, but personal trust based face-to-face
interaction has not yet been replaced by cyberspace. Islamic communities run both
websites and organize meetings shapes the religiosity of followers more powerfully.
Moreover, the complexity of religious discussions and vast amount of information
available on the internet creates the difficulty of sorting them out. Nevertheless, easy
access to religious knowledge can illustrate the level of arbitrariness in the central
assertions of each Islamic community and the plausibility of alternative Islamic
interpretations.
Studies on Muslim religious authority have analyzed the separate impact of these
three dimensions—religious assertions, social organization, and media—on Islamic
interpretation. However, the power of religious authorization to articulate a coherent form
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of Islam fully develops when their inter-determination is analyzed in each social action
(Barth 2002:3). An anthropology of Islamic authority and knowledge provides the
ethnographic detail of how this happens. The central activities of transmitting religious
knowledge in Islamic communities provide the most illustrative examples. Islamic
communities create the authority to discipline their followers and thus persuade them to
accept their interpretation as “true Islam” through these activities. In the following
section, I will illustrate how the Gülen, Süleymanlı, and Kaplan communities construct
their religious authority and knowledge and transmits it through reading circles,
communal rituals, and public meetings, respectively.
Religious Authority of Turkish Islamic Communities
There are more than half a dozen Islamic communities active among more than
four million 3 Turkish Muslims in Western Europe. They are institutionalized through
mosques, foundations, media outlets, and schools throughout Europe since the mid-
1970s. They have founded umbrella organization with headquarters in Germany, the first
country to invite “guest workers” from Turkey in 1961 and where more than two-thirds
of the 3.3 million Muslim populations have Turkish origins, 2.5 million. 4 This makes
3 This is according to the report of Turkish Studies Center in Essen, Germany titled
“Economic data on Turks in Europe” in 2006. Source: Milliyet, January 12, 2007.
4 The largest Islamic community in terms of affiliated mosque numbers among Turkish
Muslims in Europe is Turkish Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (Türkisch-Islamische
Union der Anstalt für Religion e.V.) with a hundred thousand members and 750 local
associations running their mosques in Germany has official links to the Directorate of
Religious Affairs in Turkey. Islam Community Milli Görüş (Islamische Gemeinschaft
Milli Görüş e.V.) is the strongest carrier of political Islam with seventy thousand
followers running 270 local mosque associations. Turkish nationalists are organized as
Union of Turkish-Islam in Europe (Union der Türkisch-Islamischen Kulturvereine in
Europa e.V.) also controls 122 mosques with eleven thousand members, which involves
following the principles of orthodox Islam with an added nationalist bend. These figures
are from Atilgan (1999).
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Turkish Muslims and their Islamic communities the dominant factor in the making of
Islam in Germany.
Various other factors in addition to religious authority formation cause the
diversification of religious interpretations among Muslims in Europe; such as the country
of origin, sect, and school of law. However, the Gülen, Süleymanlı, and Kaplan
communities have all these dimensions in common. They are all originated or established
by individuals from Turkey, Sunni, and they follow predominantly Hanefi school of law.
I choose these three communities because the contrast in their religious authority
illustrates the production of coherence in their civil, mystical, and revolutionary forms of
Islam. These forms represent the most adaptive, stagnant, to most resistant interpretations
of Turkish Islam in Europe respectively.
The comparison of these three communities and their forms of Islam leads to two
major points. Firstly, religious authority is constructed through the inter-determination of
religious assertions, social organization, and media during the production of religious
knowledge in Islamic communities. I will introduce how each of these dimensions
separately influences the others and then how they inter-determine one another in the
major activity of religious knowledge production and transmission in each Islamic
community. Secondly, whether the “outcome” of Islamic reinterpretation helps the
community to adapt to the European setting or not depends on how their religious authority
is constructed. I will compare how religious authorities of these communities approach to
interfaith dialogue and jihad to examine the (mal)adaptation of Islam in Europe.
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The Gülen Community and Civil Islam
The Gülen community constructs and disseminates civil Islam, 5 which presents
religion as the source of personal moral code of behavior and spiritual motivation to
contribute to social and public issues within democratic and secular public life. 6
Fethullah Gülen, follower of Said Nursi’s (1878-1960) revivalist faith movement (Mardin
1989), founded his own community by establishing educational and media institutions to
promote interfaith dialogue and tolerance formulating a civil form of Islam. I will
introduce the religious assertions, social organization, and media and then how they inter-
determine one another in reading circles, the Gülen community’s central activity of
religious knowledge to produce civil Islam.
The writings of Said Nursi and Fethullah Gülen form the central religious
assertions and discourse of this community. Their primary assertion is that, in the age of
skepticism, materialism, and positivist rationalism, the primary concern for Muslims is to
strengthen belief in God. This is the legacy of Nursi’s approach, which continues in
Gülen’s writings. Nursi went through two periods in his life, Old and New Said. The
personal identity transition from Old to New Said is the myth of origin of the Nur
movement and its various communities. In the former, he was active in politics to
reinstate the message of Islam in society and in the latter; he focused only on writing and
spreading his exegesis of the Quran, Risale-i Nur Külliyatı (Collection of Epistles of
Light) to strengthen the faith of believers. Nursi believed that science and religion do not
contradict, but strengthen one another. His strategy was to respond to materialist
philosophy by contemplating the intelligent design of the universe, which he called the
5 See Hefner (2000) for a discussion of civil Islam in Indonesia.
6 See Yavuz and Esposito eds. (2003) for an extensive analysis of the Gülen community.
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Big Book of Universe (Kitab-ı Kebir-i Kainat) and treated as one of the strongest
evidence of God along with the Quran and Prophet Muhammad.
Gülen and Nursi never met, but the former became a committed follower of the
latter by reading Risale-i Nur and joining the inner circle of his early followers. Nursi’s
followers divided after his death in 1960 and Gülen established his own community of
followers to institutionalize Nursi’s vision through educational institutionalization. He
began with a student dormitory in Izmir, an Aegean port city of Turkey, in 1966. He
mobilized college students and middle-class merchants to set up educational institutions
as an effective and charismatic preacher with an emotional zeal. His educational projects
now include tutoring centers, student dormitories, high schools, and universities. Gülen
has elaborated on Nursi’s approach in his sermons and writings. In other words, Gülen
acquired his religious authority not through his spiritual or genealogical relationship to
Nursi, but through intellectual commitment to internalize and put Nursi’s religious
approach, as he understood it, into practice through institutionalization in education and
media.
Gülen’s charisma and religious message based on Risale-i Nur appealed to young
college students. Gülen’s early pupils became the core coordinators of his growing
network of educational institutions. Their zeal and self-sacrifice expanded the community
rapidly in the 1980s during which they expanded into Europe where it runs more than a
hundred tutoring centers only in Germany and a daily European edition of the daily
newspaper Zaman with forty thousand subscribers across Europe. Gülen did not only
engage his followers in an intellectual debate, but also called for religious activism in
reaching out to others, because the goal is getting the message of faith to others and not
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working for the salvation of one’s self only. This requires constant activism with strong
commitment and devotion to the ideals of the movement.
Social Network Organization: The assertions in prioritizing the iman (faith) of
the individual and Islamic activism, referred to as hizmet (literally service), as the means
to reach out to all Muslims and non-Muslims create the basis of Gülen community’s
social organization. Gülen carved his own followers from the Nur movement and formed
his community but they continue to use Risale-i Nur with Gülen’s commentaries as their
interpretative framework to (in)validate practices and beliefs as Islamic or not.
The basis of the Gülen community’s social organization is to gain activists who
internalize the message of Risale-i Nur through intensive individual reading and group
discussions. According to the most senior follower and an early pupil of Gülen in
Germany, one has to read Risale-i Nur at least three times in order to become a şakirt,
literally, a student of the Quran, the term Nursi coined for his followers. When I asked on
the order of religious sources according to their importance in Gülen community, he
replied as Quran, Hadith, Risale-i Nur, and Gülen’s books. These sources provide a
shared religious discourse among the network of followers as a communicative medium.
As a charismatic leader Gülen has become the central figure in this network and
Gülen’s early pupils became his close associates and seniors of the community. However,
there is no strict hierarchy among his followers and they have a social network
organization (Agai 2004). There are senior activists and pupils of Gülen who have greater
influence over other followers, but local activists decide and implement their own
agenda. Moreover, personal links and the trust that individual activists develop with each
other create lateral relationships as well.
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The emphasis in Gülen’s message in outreaching to other fellow Muslims to
strengthen their belief in God and non-Muslims through interfaith dialogue has created an
outward orientation. This makes the boundaries of their community penetrable because
the community seeks new followers and activists, which makes it welcoming. The Gülen
community’s network has thick boundary, which means that the standards for inclusion
and exclusion of an individual in the community are slow and ambiguous. This increases
the number of those on the boundary of the community’s social network organization,
which explains the reason for the great lag between the estimates of Gülen community
followers that vary from four hundred thousand to five million in Turkey (Yavuz 2003).
Just as central assertions on the priority of education and faith-based activism
(iman hizmeti) have formed Gülen’s followers, the characteristics of his community’s
social organization influences their religious interpretation in return. Since the boundary
of the community is thick, the activists of Gülen community develop religious discourse
that appeals to all, followers as well as outsiders. In particular, their religious discourse is
shifting from presenting the distinctive rituals and beliefs of Islam to common human
values such as love, peace, dialogue, and tolerance; and “Islam as the highest expression
of humanity” as the senior Gülen community leader in Germany put it. The global
expansion of Gülen community’s social organization via education and inter-religious
dialogue since the 1990s firstly on the national level in Turkey and then on the global
level to all believers via interfaith dialogue has strengthened the emphasis on these
human values as central themes. These are presented as common grounds on which
Muslims can cooperate with non-Muslims.
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This fluid global network structure of Gülen community requires media of
representation that can provide common standards for Gülen’s Islamic discourse. The
Gülen community uses various media to maintain multiple communication channels with
their followers. First and foremost, the Gülen community’s interpretive framework of the
Islamic tradition is Risale-i Nur and Gülen’s books. The form of a book, which can be
carried, reproduced, and translated, allowed their ideas to travel great distances. The
authority of the written word on Islam appealed to the increasingly urbanizing and literate
Turkish middle class. The call for reasoning and argument for reconciliation of science
and religion appealed particularly to the university students especially in the fields of
engineering, medicine, and the natural sciences. The emotional mosque sermons
throughout the 1980s in which Gülen invoked the heroic lives of Prophet Muhammad and
his companions was a powerful personal means that bonded Gülen’s charisma with his
followers. He did not limit himself to students but also reached out to the general public
in the form of conferences, talks in cafes, and public lectures. These interactions with the
entrepreneurs, petite bourgeoisie, workers, and craftsmen provided him the financial
sources that supported the community’s institutionalization in Turkey and elsewhere.
Gülen’s message reached Europe firstly in video and audio tape recordings in the
early 1980s. Gülen’s intensive discursive style of as an emotional preacher, who often
burst into tears, motivated his listeners for religious voluntarism and activism. These
tapes made Gülen’s message accessible to many and visualized his charisma without
meeting him in person. This has also centralized Gülen as the source of religious
authority for the community. His mosque sermons ended in June 1991, but the
community’s various media outlet (Zaman daily newspaper, STV global broadcasting,
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and journals) publishes Gülen’s article and streams his sermons. His writings are
translated into multiple languages and there are websites in which his current sermons
and talks are available after he moved to the United States in 1999. 7
These media of representation maintains Gülen’s charisma as the major building
block that maintains his network of followers in tact. Gülen is the discursive center of the
community, but his social network operates locally. Nevertheless, the dependency on
Gülen as the charismatic leader could also threaten the unity of the community after him.
His followers are worried about his age (born in 1938) and unstable health, for which he
is under constant medical attention at a retreat camp in Pennsylvania.
The Reading Circle: Despite the diversification of the media through which
religious interpretation is conveyed to socially situated individuals, each Islamic
community develops a particular method of producing and disseminating its message. For
the Gülen community, this is the ders (also called sohbet) reading circle in which groups
meet to read, interpret, and discuss Risale-i Nur and Gülen’s writings. These activities
authorize civil Islam through the production and dissemination of religious knowledge.
In these reading circles, novices as well as seniors meet at a follower’s private
house or a larger hall of an educational facility affiliated with the Gülen community.
These are weekly gatherings and often take place on the weekends. The leader brings in
books by Nursi and Gülen to read and explain the meaning to the rest. However, the
listeners are not completely passive either. They bring in the book for that week and
comment as the leader reads and interprets it.
7 http://www.fethullahGülen.org and http://www.herkul.org
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One of my Gülen community informants invited me to join a ders on a Saturday
evening at the house of a follower. The Gülen community organizes separate religious
gatherings for the young, adults, men, and women. There are two major components of
these gatherings: (1) socialization accompanied with eating and drinking and (2) reading
from the writings of Nursi and Gülen. These weekly gatherings serve as the places where
followers learn about Islam through the writings of these leaders. They strengthen their
commitment to their interpretation of Islam by reiterating the particular religious agenda
expressed in the writings of these leaders. They also connect the religious message in
these writings with their current conditions.
The reading circles also expand the social organization of the community. The
committed followers invite new members through their personal networks of friends,
neighbors, relatives, and colleagues. If the group gets too large to meet in one home, then
they split, which expands their circles of followers. This network of circles is used for
other activities, such as fund raising, voluntary work, and finding new subscribers for the
community’s publications. In other words, these reading circles do not only increase
religious consciousness, but also create Gülen community’s social network.
The reading circle as a medium of presenting Nursi’s interpretation of the Quran
and Hadith re-confirms the social organization and central religious assertions of the
community. The ideas and spiritual status of the leaders are reaffirmed during the reading
circle in which criticism of Nursi and Gülen’s ideas are avoided. The coordinator of each
ders circle makes the message relevant to the lives of the listeners, which promotes a
decentralized network-like structure. The priority of the Gülen community is to reach out
to outsiders, so everyone is welcome to these circles, which makes the boundaries of the
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community thick and penetrable. This openness makes the religious discourse to be as
ecumenical as possible vis a vis other Islamic communities and non-Muslims.
To sum up, the religious assertions, networks of social organization, and media of
communication create religious authority that is outward oriented and decentralized,
prioritizing belief over the political or ritualistic aspects of Islam. By choosing Nursi and
Gülen’s writings as the basic texts in reading circles, followers leave out other religious
interpretations. Their religious agenda is primarily concerned with educating young
Muslims to be pious and successful in the world. They educate this youth in their network
of education centres and student dorms. The ideal Muslim youth exemplifies moral
characters, discipline, and success in life in order to bear witness to the truth of Islam in
deeds and not just words.
Gülen’s religious discourse derives from Risale-i Nur and idealization of the life
of Prophet Muhammad and his companions to emulate for Muslims as perfect examples.
Their civil Islam prioritizes strengthening faith of individuals over political means,
reconciliation of science and religion, and the necessity to reach out to others shape the
characteristics of the social organization. The boundaries of the community become
flexible, penetrable, and thick; network-like organization provides more room for
individual and local adaptation; the charisma of the leader both motivates the individual
activists and holds the community together. The Gülen community’s various forms of
mass media allow individual access to the views of the leader, but also create a common
discourse of civil Islam shared by all followers.
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The Süleymanlı and Mystical Islam
The Süleymanlı community is the strongest carrier of mystical Islam among
Turkish Muslims in Europe. It promotes personal spiritual advancement through rituals
and activism in Quranic recitation. Initiates use ritualistic elements, such as zikir
(remembrance of God’s names) from the Naqshibandiyya Sufi order (tarikat, in Turkish),
but differ from traditional orders in several ways. They do not have a living sheikh, but
an organizational leader. Despite the founder Süleyman Hilmi Tunahan’s (1888-1959)
death, his followers consider him as still having tasarruf (the capacity of spiritual
guidance). The fact that they also specialize on teaching Quranic recitation as a collective
religious mission distinguishes them from other Sufi orders active among Turkish
Muslims.
The Süleymanlı follow the Sufi assertion that everything including the Quran has
zahiri, an outer meaning and batıni, an inner meaning. The true meaning of the Quran is
its inner meaning, which is accessible only to those who are spiritually advanced.
Individual study of the Quran and Hadith would increase knowledge but not spirituality,
which is necessary for salvation. Spiritual development requires guidance of a sheikh,
Sufi master. The Süleymanlı believe that Tunahan is the sheikh of the times authorized to
spiritually improve his disciples and provide access to the batıni, true meaning of Islam.
Tunahan was a member of the late Ottoman ulema, learned scholars of Islam,
with degrees in theology and law. However, his spiritual powers come through a
genealogy of spiritual masters, which goes back to Prophet Muhammad. God has
transmitted His divine light (nur), to the Prophet Muhammad who is the source of all
divine light on earth. The Prophet, in turn, has transmitted this light to his companion
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Abu Bakr, and the chain continues through the centuries, ending with Tunahan, the thirty-
third and last member of this chain of spiritual masters. They call this the Golden Chain
(Altun Silsile) and Tunahan belongs to the Naqshibandiyya order’s silsile. These spiritual
masters provide the means to reach divine light, which brings spiritual purity and access
to the inner and true meaning of the Quran for the disciple.
The spiritual chain of Sufi masters is the source of Tunahan’s religious authority.
The Süleymanlı legitimize the intermediary role of Sufi masters to religious truth, which
could potentially challenge the principle of tawhid (the unity of God) and the direct
relationship between God and the believer in Sunni orthodoxy, through the analogy of an
electricity system. The voltage at the power house is high and there are regulators that
arrange it to the level of home use. Just like this, divine light is so powerful that we need
Sufi masters as intermediaries to regulate it for individual usage. They compare this to
the Prophets who bring the message of God to the people. They argue that if there were
no intermediaries between God and human beings, it would not be possible to understand
His will. These assertions about the spiritual role of Sufi masters are institutionalized in
social organizations called tarikat, or Sufi orders. Süleymanlı social organization utilizes
the legacy of Sufi orders to socially organize their community.
Centralized Organization: The Süleymanlı mystical assertions that Tunahan is
the last member of the Naqshibandiyya silsile and the spiritual master of the times, are
maintained through a centralized social organization based on thin group boundary,
centralized, and hierarchical organization. The Sufi assertions that true Islamic
knowledge is only accessible to those initiated into the order form the basis of the
Süleymanlı community’s social organization. Süleymanlı community’s group boundaries
20

are thin because insiders and outsiders are clearly marked. The initiated members are the
insiders that have access to the batıni meaning whereas uninitiated outsiders, called
zahiri, can only get the zahiri meaning of the Quran. There is a clear distinction between
initiates and outsiders just as there is between the batıni and zahiri meaning of the Quran.
If someone is sympathetic to the Süleymanlı he/she would be called a muhibban
(sympathizer), but if he/she is not initiated, he is not ihvan (ehavat for women) an
initiated disciple.
Süleymanlı has a hierarchical social structure, which is marked by different levels
of ritual initiation. In order to become Süleymanlı, one has to go through an initiation
ceremony during which licensed seniors describe the daily zikir (reciting God’s names)
and reveal the secret knowledge of rabıta. Rabıta is a meditative exercise that connects
the initiated to the sheikh who, in turn, transfers nur (divine light) from his heart to the
disciple’s heart. This exercise increases one’s spiritual level and hence grants one access
to the batıni. Initiated members do not talk among themselves about how to perform
rabıta, and only senior disciples are authorized to teach rabıta to novices. This gives
senior disciples power over the others because only they can initiate new disciples. The
Süleymanlı’s mystical religious assertions about Tunahan’s spiritual powers and rabıta
result in a strictly hierarchical and clearly delineated group.
The internal hierarchy and strict control of membership provides the social
organization in which the assertions about the spiritual status of Tunahan and mysticism
are confirmed. The first and foremost condition of initiation is the belief that Tunahan is
the Mürşid-i Kamil, the last and highest spiritual master of the times. The uninitiated
novice is expected to show his commitment to the community and Tunahan’s spiritual
21

status by participating in weekly hatim, the collective ritual of zikir, and fund-raising
activities.
Süleymanlı social organization involves internal hierarchy marked by different
levels of initiation. Only senior leaders know and can teach the particular type of rabıta
to initiate disciples to the next level. My Süleymanlı informant told me that the hocas, the
religiously trained leaders of the Süleymanlı, have a more elaborate way of doing rabıta.
They do it longer and in more elaborate ways, which gives them greater spiritual merits.
These different levels of initiation not only mark a member’s level of spirituality but also
form the basis of the social hierarchy. Those who are at the higher level of ritual initiation
have authority over their subordinates.
Internal hierarchy is institutionalized through the Süleymanlı system of religious
education. The young students who learn the recitation of Quran in Süleymanlı mosques
are initiated into the order. After the first level of initiation, successful students continue
learning Arabic in the centers such as the European headquarters in Cologne. As the last
stage, they go to İstanbul for eight months of intensive religious training. They study
Arabic and the classical texts of the Hanefi School of Law and learn from the pupils of
Tunahan the mystical exegesis of the Quran. Their completion of the program and the
spiritual approval of the leaders make them hodja (hoca in Turkish). Each of them is
appointed in İstanbul as the hodja to be the religious, organizational, and spiritual leader
of a Süleymanlı mosque where they organize and lead hatims.
The leader of the Süleymanlı community in İstanbul authorizes the religious
leadership of each Süleymanlı mosque, and this creates a centralized social structure.
Süleymanlı mosques in Europe are highly centralized and they take special pride in their
22

centralized structure. Each mosque raises funds and they are collected in their center and
redistributed to the branches that need it for renovation or for establishing a new branch.
Every mosque is accountable to the Süleymanlı national center in the country. 8 Each
mosque and its community work to fulfill the expectations of the center. The center
monitors the performance of the branches in raising funds, the number of Quranic course
students and initiated members. In annual meetings their performance is individually
evaluated and compared to their performance in the previous years and to other branches.
The religious authority of all the Süleymanlı is centralized in Istanbul, where
Tunahan is buried. The disciples in Europe are encouraged to pay at least annual visits
(ziyaret, in Turkish) to the tomb of Tunahan as a way to strengthen their capacity to do
rabıta. The leaders of the community after Tunahan have organizational capacity that
care for the Süleymanlı institutions including the monitoring of visitors to Tunahan’s
tomb. They strengthen their leadership through the centralized and hierarchical social
structure. For instance, the current leader, Ahmet Denizolgun, grandson of Tunahan,
argues that Tunahan himself is still organizationally and spiritually in charge of the
community. In this way, he is counter balancing objections to his leadership, which came
after rivalry with his brother Mehmet Denizolgun for leadership following the death of
Kemal Kaçar, Tunahan’s son-in-law and successor, in 2000.
This centralized and hierarchical social organization on the individual and
institutional level affirms the basic symbolic assertions about the centrality and
superiority of Tunahan’s spiritual power. The symbolic centrality of Tunahan as the
8 The Süleymanlı umbrella organization in Germany is Verband der Islamischen
Kulturzentren e.V. (VIKZ), which controls 300 mosques (Atilgan 1999:13).
23

central gate of access to divine light is confirmed in their centralized social organization.
The initiated disciples and higher initiates who complete their religious training and
receive their position as hodja affirm and spread Tunahan’s spiritual centrality in the
Süleymanlı run mosques across Europe.
The Süleymanlı use rituals (rabıta, initiation ritual, zikir, hatim) as their media to
distribute their mystical Islam. They are not as outward-oriented as the Gülen community
to increase initiated disciples, because they believe that joining their community is a gift
of God for the selected few. One can and should encourage his/her family members and
relatives to join, but the goal is not to reach out to the masses. This is one reason why the
Süleymanlı do not use mass media to spread their message. On the contrary, it is the
mystical rituals that attract new disciples.
Thus, according to the Süleymanlı the batıni meaning of Islam is accessible to the
selected few under the guidance of Tunahan through the mystical experience of rabıta.
The thin boundary, hierarchical, and centralized organizational structure with inward-
orientation of the Süleymanlı preserves its mystical message and appeal. The inter-
determination of Süleymanlı’s mystical assertions, centralized organization, and ritual
medium, which results in mystical Islam is transmitted and consolidated through
collective rituals called the hatim.
Hatim Communal Ritual: The Süleymanlı produce, disseminate, and represent
their religious authority and knowledge through collective rituals called hatim, which
affirm their basic religious assertions and social organization. The Süleymanlı have hatim
three times a week in Europe and participation is required for community inclusion. They
meet once at the house of an initiated member during the week and the other two
24

meetings are on the weekend at their mosque. The exact times of hatim slightly vary
according to the country and mosque depending on the members’ working hours.
I encountered the hatim in the Süleymanlı mosque I frequented, when eight
members of the congregation stayed after the communal evening prayer. They kneeled in
the corner of the mosque in the shape of a circle, their knees touching one another.
Everyone put on a blue takke, religious head cover for men. There was another person in
his early forties sitting outside the circle and he called me to kneel next to him and made
sure that our knees touched each other. I kept participating in hatims throughout my
fieldwork and learned that this ritual serves as the central communicative medium of
Süleymanlı religious authority in the production and transmission of mystical Islam.
The Süleymanlı hodja of the mosque or a pre-designated senior disciple is in
charge of the hatim. The leader of the hatim session counts the initiated members in the
inner circle and divides up a thousand Ihlas, a short chapter from the Quran, for silent
recitation during the ritual. There are a few versions of these hatim with minor variations.
Hatm-i Nakşi is the most common one, where there is silent zikir only. In Hatm-i Kadiri
there are additional out loud invocations of God’s mercy and blessings. There are
additional prayers of various prophets in Hatm-i Enbiya, but the ritual structure is the
same in all three versions.
The leader of the hatim begins with praises to the Prophet Muhammad. The most
significant step after this is rabıta. This step is signaled by the recitation of chapter 2,
verse 200 from the Quran invoking rabıta, which for the Süleymanlı refers to the
meditation of one’s sheikh. After this five to ten minutes long meditation, everyone in the
circle silently recites their share in a thousand Ihlas. The leader signals the pace and
25

transition from one to the next stage in the ritual. At the end, everyone holds up their
hands to make supplication and they breathe into their hands and pad their bodies with
them. The ritual ends when the leader concludes with a short prayer that God may accept
their hatim and prayers.
After this ritualistic stage is over, those in the circle relax their feet after kneeling
motionless for about half an hour. Often the leader of the hatim gives a five-to-thirty
minutes talk, which typically includes an interpretation of a verse from the Quran,
anecdotes from the lives of the prophets, spiritual masters, or Tunahan’s miracles. Before
they leave, the hodja asks and coordinates participants to volunteer for activities such as
fund raising, tutoring in Quranic recitation, maintenance of the mosque and the like or
announce an upcoming event.
Süleymanlı’s central activity is the hatim, in which their religious authority is
institutionalized through the interaction of central assertions, social organization, and
media. As a new student of understanding the Süleymanlı way, members were
encouraging me to join their path. When I asked them about written sources to read and
inform myself first, they replied that this path can not be learned through reading but only
through experience and full participation in the hatim. This requires accepting Tunahan
without any doubt as the last Mürşid-i Kamil, the highest spiritual master to guide
Muslims to salvation. They recognize that there are other Islamic scholars and spiritual
masters, but Tunahan is exalted as the only and last one that has the divine mission to
provide spiritual guidance. The novice is initiated into the community only after he or she
affirms Tunahan’s spiritual status.
26

Their basic assertion that Tunahan is the Mürşid-i Kamil is institutionalized
through the rituals of rabıta and hatim. The rituals of rabıta and hatim consolidate not
only Tunahan’s spiritual leadership, but also the social organization of the community.
Hatim ritual confirms the centralized and strictly hierarchical social organization of the
Süleymanlı. The leader of a hatim ritual who delivers the religious talk is a higher level
of initiate and graduate of the year-long seminary in Istanbul earning the title of hodja.
Hatim rituals confirm the internal hierarchy and transmit experiential mystical knowledge
through rabıta and authorize discursive religious knowledge. The performance of the
hatim also reaffirms the centralized social organization of the community because every
month the hatim is performed only at the national Süleymanlı center such as Utrecht and
Cologne and not in the branches.
Thus, the hatim ritual determines the characteristics of the social organization and
religious assertions of the community. This inter-determination creates the religious
authority and hence the religious knowledge, in this case, mystical Islam. The basic
assertion that the true meaning of Quran is accessible to those who are initiated by the
members of the silsile creates the boundary of the community as thin and impenetrable to
outsiders. The boundary of the community is formed through initiation rituals and
redrawn at each hatim through the seating arrangement. Only those who are initiated are
allowed to sit in the inner circle and uninitiated individuals make a second circle. It is
mystical religious knowledge that counts as true Islam, which is formulated in the rabıta
that is given to the initiated only and preserved as secret knowledge.
27

The Kaplan Community and Revolutionary Islam
The Kaplan community advocates a revolutionary Islam based on a radical and
militant course of action to replace the democratic and secular regime in Turkey with a
Caliphate based on shariah (Islamic law) (Atacan 1993; Schiffauer 2000). The Kaplan
community went as far as inciting hatred and justifying violence for a mass revolution in
Turkey to replace the secular democratic political system with a theocratic regime. The
German state banned the Kaplan community’s umbrella organization Union of Islamic
Associations and Communities (Verband der islamischen Vereine und Gemeinden e.V.)
in December 2001. Nevertheless, there are still 750 Kaplan community followers in
Germany (Federal Ministry of the Interior 2006:234) and during my fieldwork in 2004
there were active ex-Kaplan community mosques. I draw on the publications of the
Kaplan community and my observations of ex-Kaplan community members in Germany.
Cemalettin Kaplan (1926-1995), a former mufti of the Directorate of Religious
Affairs in Turkey fled to Europe after the military coup in 1981 for his revolutionary
ideas and served as the head of Guidance and Fatwa Commission (İrşad ve Fetva
Komisyonu Başkanı) of the political Islamic Milli Görüş community in Europe. He took
advantage of the internal disputes between the religious authority and the administrative
cadre in Milli Görüş leadership. 9 The youth branches were dissatisfied with the emphasis
on party politics and there was internal rivalry between religious and administrative
leaders. This divide would serve as the basis for Cemalettin Kaplans’ separation from
Milli Görüş and founding his community and revolutionary Islam.
9 Ümmet-i Muhammed, July 19, 1996, No. 146 p. 5.
28

In 1983, Cemalettin Kaplan split from Milli Görüş along with around twelve
thousand followers to mobilize all Islamic groups for an Islamic revolution in Turkey
(Mumcu 1987). In 1992, due to his failure to mobilize Muslims for this cause and internal
tensions, he declared a Caliphate State and himself as its Caliph, who unites religious and
political authority in Cologne. In 1995, he died and his son Metin Kaplan succeeded him
but his leadership was challenged within the community. After March 1999, Kaplan
community’s activities became severely limited because Metin Kaplan was arrested for
inciting the murder of his rival İbrahim Sofu, and sentenced to three years of
imprisonment. In December 2001, German authorities banned the Kaplan community and
on October 12, 2004 they extradited Metin Kaplan to Turkey, where he was charged with
and sentenced to life-time imprisonment for plotting against the democratic and secular
Turkish state. 10
The analysis of Islamic authority and knowledge production in Kaplan
community provides insights on how (1) revolutionary Islamist discourse justifies the use
of force for a religious cause and (2) its followers are isolated from larger society.
Cemaleddin Kaplan established a legalistic form of producing Islamic knowledge through
fatwa declarations. His charisma and high position in Milli Görüş’s organization won him
followers, but he began loosing followers, which dropped from twelve thousand to
hundreds in two decades. In order to prevent internal divisions in and separations from
his community, he claimed himself the Caliph, invoking a religio-political leadership
position of all Muslims, which was abolished with the establishment of the Turkish
10 Although the Kaplan community is banned, it is still a significant case for
understanding the production of revolutionary Islam, which Hizb-ut Tahrir still represents
in Europe (Wiktorowitz 2005).
29

Republic in 1924. This claim allowed him to monopolize and combine religious and
political authority.
The central religious assertions of Kaplan community’s revolutionary Islam have
been formulated during the community’s myth of origin. In 1983, he declared a
seventeen-page-long manifesto titled “Is the Way to State Tebliğ or Party?” that laid
down the principles of his revolutionary ideology. 11 His project relies on the unity of din
wa dawlah (religion and state) in Islam. They refer to verse 40, chapter 12 translated as
“sovereignty belongs to God” as their motto appearing frequently in their publication and
written on the walls Kaplan community mosques. Secular polities abridge God’s
sovereignty when people make their national laws regardless of God’s law, which leads
to the destruction of tawhid (the unity of God). Secular democratic regimes in Muslim-
majority countries have desecrated God’s sovereignty, which makes them idolatrous.
In other words, he argued that if Islam is divided; with worldly and state affairs
given to idols (i.e. democratic institutions and secular law) and the rest to God, the belief
of tawhid (the unity of God) is openly and publicly destroyed. This is a reproduction of
Sayyid Qutb’s idea of Jahiliyya (ignorance of the divine guidance). Qutb is often quoted
in Kaplan’s speeches and in the publications of the community. Kaplan calls the
Republican period in Turkey as the second Jahiliyya. 12 Since Islam is corrupted by these
regimes, it becomes a religious duty to fight them to reestablish tawhid by making
shariah the law of the state. This is the reasoning behind his fatwa that anyone who
separates religion and state becomes an apostate. 13
11 Reprinted in Ümmet-i Muhammed, October 8, 1998, No. 243, p. 9.
12 Reprinted in Asr-ı Saadet, September 10, 2003 No. 86, p. 16.
13 Tebliğ May 15, 1987 No. 39, p. 3.
30

Despite these shared rhetoric, the major commonality among Kaplan’s early
followers was dissatisfaction with party politics and internal strife within Milli Görüş.
When Kaplan offered revolution as an alternative, various issues became a point of
debate among the followers. Some believed in pursuing the model of Iranian Islamic
revolution, other leading members such as Ahmet Polat disagreed with Kaplan’s
ambitions as the supreme leader. In order to answer these challenges and create a set of
common principles among his followers, Kaplan founded the Union of Islamic
Communities and Associations in 1985 with fifteen principles.
The first article defines the mission, which is formulated as making Quran the
constitution, shariah the law, and Islam the state. Article seven recognizes the Iranian
revolution as Islamic and not sectarian adding that there is no opposition or surrender to
it. The last article is most significant of all because it lays the “criterion of Islamic
validity” for Kaplan community. It states that “Everything will be based on fatwa,” which
becomes the basic method of decision-making and production of Islamic knowledge in
the community. The declaration of these principles did not stop internal opposition and
the groups that supported the Iranian revolution and inclusive leadership departed from
Kaplan. This led Kaplan to shift strategies from an open revolutionary Islamist movement
to a closed community cult in order to prevent further dissolution (Schiffauer 2000:219).
The failure to achieve ideological uniformity through an open social organization,
led Kaplan to transform his social organization into a closed sect. In order to preserve the
inner discipline of his community he enhanced his power and his religious interpretations
became stricter to separate outsiders from insiders and challengers and conformers. This
31

process has reached its ultimate form when Kaplan adopted a social organization based
on a pseudo-state image of a Caliphate.
The Caliphate of Cologne: In 1992, Cemalettin Kaplan declared the Anatolia
Federal Islamic State (Anadolu Federe Islam Devleti) and himself as the Caliph when he
failed to mobilize other Islamic communities for this revolutionary cause. The declaration
of the Caliphate state provides the basis for the community’s social organization. He
elaborated on a state imagery in the Islamic discourse to consolidate his leadership,
internal hierarchy, and boundary maintenance.
Kaplan as the Caliph was the sole religious and political leader of the state-
community with absolute power. The revival of the Caliphate was important to keep the
community under uncontestable single-man rule because according to Islamic law a
second Caliph was not allowed if there is one already. This created a monopoly over
issuing fatwas, which have to be followed by the Kaplan community because the Caliph’s
fatwas have to be honored by Muslims.
He invoked the leadership of the prophet to the early Muslims in Medina to justify
his own ultimate leadership. During his talk with Turkish journalists, Kaplan expanded
on this. “There is an emir [religio-political leader] at the top, a sura [council], and jemaat
[Muslim community]. Sura is the bridge between emir and community… the decisions of
the council are not binding for the emir” (Atacan 1993:65). This meant in practice that
there was one-man rule that was Kaplan himself. The council had only a consultative role
and all power and responsibility lay on the emir until his death.
Kaplan strengthened the bonds between himself as the Caliph and his followers,
while isolating them from the larger society by asking for a pledge of allegiance (bağlılık
32

yemini, in Turkish) as the Caliph from his followers. He explained that pledging
allegiance was an Islamic practice according to the different Sunni schools of law. 14 He
added that it was not only permissible, but also necessary to build trust between leaders
and followers. In this way, he strengthened loyalty from his followers and legitimized his
revolutionary Islamist interpretation.
Kaplan redrew the boundaries of the community by declaring his Caliphate State.
The group isolated itself further from other Islamic organizations and became introverted.
He took precautions by strengthening and sharpening the boundaries among his followers
and outsiders. Kaplan preached endogamous marriage among his followers and avoiding
marriages with those who do not pledge allegiance to the Caliphate state (Schiffauer
2000:185). Muslims who did not submit to Kaplan’s Caliphate was not religiously
eligible for marriage because they were not fully Muslim.
He minimized his followers’ access to other Islamic interpretations by rejecting
the publications of other Islamic communities in his mosques. 15 He explained that they
had called on all Islamic communities to unite and work together. Unity is farz (religious
obligation), he argued, whereas factionalism is haram (religiously prohibited). 16 “The
other Islamic communities neither tell us our mistakes nor join us. Their response means
that they are not sincere and we would not allow them to propagate among our
followers.” 17 Moreover, reading other religious sources was also prohibited. My
informant Hasan, an ex-Kaplan activist, told me that at the initial stages of the movement,
14 Ümmet, July 15, 1988, No. 5, p. 5, 13.
15 Ümmet, December 15, 1988, No. 13, p. 13.
16 Ümmet-i Muhammed, July 8, 1989 No. 7, p. 11.
17 Ibid, p. 11.
33

all kinds of books were read and discussed, but then, because of the new restrictions,
followers had lost interest in reading and discussion altogether. 18
In order to monitor his followers and discard non-revolutionary Islamic
interpretations, Kaplan warned them of internal enemies and advised them to take the
following precautions. 19 They should read and remind themselves of the fifteen founding
principles. Nobody would be allowed to speak against them. Instead of discussing
debatable questions, they should ask the leadership and the answer would be published in
their publications. If anyone saw that these guidelines were not followed, they were
obliged to inform the center about it. This was not denunciation, but a sign of
commitment to the cause. These methods were used to monitor the community and create
an internal intelligence system. This closed social organization of Kaplan community
prevented followers from having access to alternative sources of religious knowledge to
challenge Kaplan’s monopoly on religious authority.
Thus, the revolutionary Islamist discourse and isolated social organization of
Kaplan community shape one another because no other media of representation other
than the community’s only official newsletter was allowed for followers. However, both
Cemalettin Kaplan and his son and successor Metin Kaplan used more dramatic public
meetings to motivate their followers for a revolutionary cause. The media of
communication creates an aura of authenticity to the message for it to be convincing and
compelling for followers. Kaplan community validated their interpretations in the form of
fatwas. The most significant stages in the Kaplan community have been marked with
such fatwa declarations in public meetings for community members.
18 Interview with author, July 4, 2004, Berlin.
19 Ümmet December 15, 1988, No. 13 p. 13.
34

Fatwa Declarations: Cemalettin Kaplan’s religious authority depended on the
way in which he communicated revolutionary Islam to his community, which was
isolated from outsiders. He communicated and validated his religious knowledge through
fatwas as the Caliph. These fatwas became binding for followers who pledge their
allegiance to the Caliph of the pseudo-Islamic state. He treated fatwas as the only criteria
to express and evaluate Islamic interpretation as opposed to non-legalistic and mystical
interpretations. As the Caliph, he issued fatwas not only to religiously justify his
decisions and actions, but also to mobilize Muslims to carry them out. He created a
monopoly on the production of Islamic knowledge and authority because he claimed to
embody religious and political leadership as the self-declared Caliph.
In order to create a thin group boundary with internal cohesion, Kaplan, the
Caliph issued the following fatwas in the only official publication of the community,
which had a fatwa section. 20 In some of these fatwas, visible markers of identity such as
the beard, sarık (religious headgear), and cloak for men and carsaf (all-enveloping attire
for women) were religiously encouraged. Rules of modesty and piety have become
stricter, for instance, wearing make-up is prohibited. Marriage with someone who has not
pledged allegiance to the Caliphate state was not allowed and declared against Islam.
These rules that relate to appearance marked and sharpened the boundaries of the Kaplan
community. However, fatwas that mark the milestones of the community were firstly
presented at the annual meetings, creating an ambiance that made the declared fatwa
effective and the pseudo Caliphate state visible.
20 Kaplan community’s weekly changed names after each raid of German authorities. It
had the following names in order: Tebliğ, Ümmet, Ümmet-i Muhammed, Asr-ı Saadet.
35

Cemaleddin Kaplan declared fatwa as the criterion of Islamic validity and his son
and successor Metin Kaplan followed the same path. The declaration of an Islamic state
and revival of the caliphate transformed fatwas from mere religious views to religio-
political decisions that have to be carried out by those who pledged allegiance to the
Caliph. Metin Kaplan, the second Caliph, took more radical decisions than his father,
which involved the religious justification to use violence.
The pledging of allegiance and tekfir (calling a Muslim apostate) served as tools
to shape the boundary of the community. They developed a simple, exclusivist, and
dichotomist discourse of “we” and “them”. However, Muslims’ access to alternative
religious views and the competition among multiple religious authorities in Europe has
undermined Kaplan community’s radical religious discourse. Internal disadvantages such
as weak leadership and external pressures from the state limited the impact of the Kaplan
community. During my research, ex-Kaplan community members were challenging the
authority of an imam in an ex-Kaplan community mosque comparing the imam’s
religious interpretations with the arguments of scholars appearing on Turkish satellite
television programs.
Thus, Kaplan community’s religious authority is based on the interaction of how
religious assertions, social organization, and media while constructing revolutionary
Islam. Metin Kaplan produced and maintained his religious discourse because he was the
only legitimate religious and political authority to make an Islamic interpretation on
behalf of the community. He organized public meetings where he declared his most
important fatwas marking the stages for an Islamic revolution in Turkey.
36

Interpreting Islam in Europe
Islamic communities process the interpretation and practice of Islam in Europe.
Their religious authority sets the agenda for the community, and provides a general
orientation for the community’s activities by validating, prioritizing, and eliminating
religious knowledge. There are three positions on the relationship of Islamic communities
and Europe: engaging, static, and conflictive; represented by the Gülen, Süleymanlı, and
Kaplan communities respectively.
The Gülen community’s priority is outreach activities, which is interested in
gaining more followers and improving a favorable image of Islam and Muslims in
Europe. They focus on educational activities and inter-religious dialogue to achieve their
goals. They focus on the second and third generation Turkish origin Muslim youth to
improve their school performance through student dorms, tutoring centers, and private
schools.
The outward orientation of the Gülen community is related to how they construct
their religious authority and knowledge. The Gülen community’s reading circles draw
connections between their religious messages and the lived experience of Muslims. They
are calling their followers to become self-confident and devout Muslims and to reach out
to non-Muslims and Muslims alike. They justify various integrationist practices through
Gülen’s call for temsil, which refers to representing Islam in deeds by bearing witness to
the truth of Islam in action as virtuous and pious Muslims rather than in words (i.e.
tebliğ).
The activists justify their presence in Europe and local leaders emphasize their
followers to learn European languages and the local customs as a necessary part of temsil
37

approach. Gülen community followers are encouraged to acquire European citizenship
and become involved in their local communities. They encourage the followers to bury
their dead in Europe rather than in Turkey. The temsil approach justifies young
generations’ identification with the larger society in the name of Islam. They believe that
if they are successful in life, beneficial to the larger society, and law-abiding citizens;
they can contribute to changing the negative image of Islam in Europe. They initiate
interfaith dialogue activities to become pro-active in promoting their cause.
Authorizing Interfaith Dialogue:
The Gülen community’s Islamic discourse and activism on interfaith dialogue has
provided a religiously justifiable venue to establish relations with the larger society in
Europe. Nevertheless, the meaning of interfaith dialogue varies among followers. Some
regard interfaith dialogue activities as effective public relations or merely a means to
reach out to non-Muslims whereas others are committed to it as a goal in and of itself.
The media used to distribute Gülen’s discourse on interfaith dialogue influences its
meaning for the local activists. For instance, a regional Gülen community activist in
Germany checks Gülen’s ideas on interfaith dialogue to make his mind on its Islamic
meaning and purpose. He opposes to other senior activists in the Gülen community on the
basis of this self-authorization. The mass and instant availability of Gülen’s religious
interpretations influences the development of his discourse and how his followers put
them into practice. Thus, the technological media of representation provides greater
autonomy for individual activists to make sense of Gülen’s message directly and
challenge the view of interlocutors.
38

In contrast to the Gülen community, the Süleymanlı has inward-oriented and
centralized religious authority, which makes their religious discourse less responsive to
the European setting. Süleymanlı are known for their close adherence to classical Islamic
law. They strictly follow Hanefi School of Law because Tunahan who believed that the
classical texts have addressed all the questions. So, they follow existing religious
opinions rather than engaging in ijtihad, to develop new religious opinions.
The Süleymanlı are inward oriented not interested in the developments of the
wider ummah. The religious agenda of the Süleymanlı excludes any Islamist ideas such
as controlling political power to reform society. This is because they believe that
Tunahan is the last Mürşid-i Kamil and the end of days is close. Their eschatological
scenario is based on Ismail Hakkı Bursevi’s tafsir, a mystical exegesis of the Quran,
which gives its batıni meaning. Accordingly, there is no point in trying to change the
world for better because the end of days is close. The only thing one can do is to prepare
one’s self, family, and relatives by becoming pious and committed followers of Tunahan.
Nevertheless, there has been a short-lived attempt within the Süleymanlı community to
go beyond one’s inner circle and reach out to the larger society in Europe.
Religious authority shapes religious interpretation by establishing its own
priorities in religious activities. The religious priority of the Süleymanlı has been to teach
Quranic recitation to Muslims and especially to children of Muslim parents. Tunahan first
initiated Quranic courses in response to the replacement of the Arabic alphabet with the
Latin in early Republican Turkey. Quranic courses have become the primary type of
activism in the Süleymanlı mosques in Europe. However, the founding of Islamic
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Academy of Villa Hahnenburg (Islamischen Akademie Villa Hahnenburg [ISLAH]) in
1999 was an attempt to diversify the Süleymanlı religious activities.
ISLAH engaged in activities which involved carrying their religious, cultural, and
apolitical discourses into the German public sphere (Karakaşoğlu-Aydın 1999:323-341).
ISLAH’s activities included talks that address themes such as politics, society, and the
place of Muslims in Europe. Titles of these talks include “Shariah and Democracy,”
“Islam in Germany,” “Any place [for Islam] in Europe?” and “History of Islam.” ISLAH
also engaged in inter-religious dialogue. They addressed topics such as “Understanding
Worship in Christianity and Islam,” “Resuming the Christian-Islamic Dialogue,” or
“Unity in Judaism.” ISLAH provided a venue from within the Süleymanlı community to
discuss and provide possibilities for the integration of Muslims in Germany.
However, the activities of ISLAH ended abruptly by an order from the center in
İstanbul in July 2000. The Süleymanlı activists in ISLAH were sent home and their
center has been turned into another Süleymanlı mosque where only Quranic courses take
place. The new leader Ahmet Denizolgun aimed to consolidate his control over the
Süleymanlı community and abolished ISLAH, arguing that their primary duty is to
provide Quranic courses and that this should remain so for all the Süleymanlı in Europe
(Jonker 2002:137). He used the hierarchical and centralized social structure to replace
local Süleymanlı leaders with his loyalists. This change prevented the activities of
ISLAH from engaging with and opening up to the larger German society. In other words,
Süleymanlı leaders value the preservation of the status quo more than change, which
results from their centralized and inward-oriented religious authority.
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The endurance of the Kaplan community as a conflictive relationship between
Muslims and the larger European society depended on total isolation from the larger
Muslim and non-Muslim society, which was accomplished through the self-declared
Caliph’s monopoly on issuing fatwas to isolate his followers from the larger society.
Their efforts for a revolutionary goal did not include a pragmatic approach to develop
relations with the European society. The revolutionary goal of changing a regime in the
country of origin works against developing strong ties in the host country, which one will
leave behind when the revolution takes place. Moreover, the obstacles on the path to
revolution in Turkey such as the intervention of German authorities made them enemies
as the following example of jihad declaration indicates.
Jihad Mobilization:
There are various meanings of jihad (literally struggle) in the Quran and Hadith
and the Islamic communities authorize it in their own ways. The concept of jihad has
been used by radical groups, such as the Kaplan community to justify violence and
resistance to the secular democratic state, whereas for the Gülen and Süleymanlı
communities, it means an inner struggle of the individual with her carnal desires to be
pious and trustworthy citizens and believers. They develop different Islamic
interpretations because they validate and prioritize religious knowledge in different ways.
These differences define how (in)flexible and (un)adaptive Islamic interpretations are in
each setting.
The religious justification of jihad in the sense of using force for a religious cause
is made possible by the particular religious authority construction exemplified in the
Kaplan community. The performance of the jihad fatwa’s declaration illustrates how it
41

was religiously authorized. Kaplan community’s meeting on May 3, 1998 was held to
celebrate the new Islamic year. According to the review of the meeting in the Kaplan
community’s weekly Ümmet-i Muhammed titled, “God willing, next year we are at
Ayasofya [in İstanbul, Turkey],” the Caliph Metin Kaplan declared a historical fatwa at
the end of his speech. 21
Metin Kaplan declared that they have come to the stage of barracks on the path to
an Islamic revolution. 22 The Caliphate State had soldiers and weapons like other worldly
states. 23 He declared that this is the last meeting in Germany and that the next meeting
would be at Ayasofya mosque 24 in İstanbul. He continued “Yes, it is time to strike; both
in Turkey and in Europe! Its fatwa is right here! [emphasis added] We will issue a very
important fatwa to the whole world. The enemies of Islam assume that they can attack
our religion, beliefs, and worship and we Muslims keep silent like sheep! Swear to God
we will raise our voices! (Audience cries out ‘God is the Greatest’) and we will raise it in
Germany! (Audience cheers ‘Say strike, we strike; say die, we die’).” 25
He ended with a fatwa that called everyone to “General Jihad Mobilization.” He
asked once again for everyone to stand up to respect the fatwa. He first read the fatwa in
Arabic and then in Turkish. 26 This fatwa declared that it was religiously permissible and
obligatory to fight against the regime in Turkey under the command of Caliph Metin
21 Ümmet-i Muhammed May 7, 1998, No. 221, p. 8-11.
22 Ümmet-i Muhammed, May 7, 1998, No. 221, p. 8-11.
23 Ümmet-i Muhammed June 18, 1998, No. 227, p. 9.
24 This is a former Byzantine Church, which was converted into a mosque when the
Ottomans conquered İstanbul in 1453. It was turned into a museum during the
Republican period, which acquired the symbolic meaning of islamization of the society
for Islamists by converting it once again into a mosque.
25 Ümmet-i Muhammed June 18, 1998, No. 227, p. 9.
26 The English translation of this fatwa is printed on Ümmet-i Muhammed No 238.
42

Kaplan to get these lands back and punish the betrayers who are the Kemalists. He added
that those who die in this fight would be martyrs and who survive gazi (veterans).
Metin Kaplan brought all three elements of religious authority to legitimate his
call for jihad. The public meeting provides an ambiance of excitement and motivation
among the followers while performing an effective declaration of fatwa as the Caliph of
an Islamic state. He convened his followers in a large indoor sports arena. The guest
speakers invited from various Muslim majority countries around the world such as
Sudan, Afghanistan, and Bosnia created an aura of an “Islamic State,” by paying their
respects to the Caliph Kaplan. This prepared the stage for the keynote speaker, Metin
Kaplan as the Caliph, who invited everyone to rise when the fatwa was read to sanctify it,
which distanced it from himself, its producer. The fatwa is printed in Turkish as well as
Arabic. During his speech, he first read it in Arabic to create a sense of authenticity and
then in Turkish so that the message was understood by the audience. This was
accompanied by cries of “God is Greatest!” to create an emotional fervor and increased
effectiveness. Thus, the monopoly over the production of fatwa allowed Metin Kaplan to
call his followers to collectively engage in fighting in the name of Islam.
Metin Kaplan’s call for jihad depends on the monopoly of the community leader
as the only legitimate authority to produce Islamic knowledge through fatwa declarations.
Nevertheless, Kaplan community failed to appeal to a wider audience. His voice became
more marginal as his followers decreased after his father’s death and internal rivalry. 27
Moreover, the increasing external pressure from the German state led to the banning of
27 Despite Metin Kaplan’s jihad mobilization, in a single event, Kaplan community
members plotting to blow up the mausoleum of Ataturk, founder of the Turkish Republic,
during the 75 th anniversary celebrations of the Republic were arrested in 1998 (Frantz
2002).
43

this community and his eventual extradition to Turkey. Nevertheless, their path indicates
how jihad is authorized within revolutionary Islam.
The role of Islamic communities in the reinterpretation of Islam in Europe, as the
interfaith dialogue and jihad examples illustrate, depends on how elements of tradition
referring to the Quran and Hadith are reformulated and authorized. The power of tradition
is embedded in how it is represented through various media within a social organization.
Interfaith dialogue appeals to a tradition of developing peaceful relations with People of
the Book (Ahl-al Kitab), but activists determine its meaning and practice in Europe in
accordance with their religious authorization. The meaning of jihad, which justifies using
force, exists in the tradition in so far as it is produced and distributed in Europe. Thus, the
concept of tradition and the authorization processes are equally indispensable to
understand the future of Islam in Europe.
Conclusion:
The flexibility and inner diversity of Islam as a religious tradition has proven its
endurance in different times and places, including Europe. Local conditions have shaped
the understanding and practice of Islam, in turn; it has shaped these local conditions
(Geertz 1968; Eickelman 1976). Analyzing the construction of religious authority among
Turkish Islamic communities allows us to examine the development of Islamic
interpretations and how Islam and Europe have shaped one another. The religious
authority of Islamic communities develops multiple forms of Islam through process of
validation, prioritization, confirmation, and elimination. The trajectory of Islam and
Islamic communities in Europe requires how religious knowledge is authorized among
Muslims and received in the larger society.
44

Some characteristics of religious authority (i.e. the Gülen community) make
Islamic communities adaptive to local conditions, while others do not (i.e. Kaplan
community) and yet others have mixed results (i.e. the Süleymanlı community). Islamic
communities that are more open to feedback from the grass-roots level, to interacting
with the “other,” and that have a decentralized organizational structure are more adaptive.
In contrast, Islamic communities that have a top-down approach to decision-making, that
are inward-oriented and avoid engagement with outsiders, and that have centralized
social structure are less adaptive to local conditions. Each Islamic community has a
different degree of adaptation depending on how it creates their religious authority. These
three cases illustrate the dynamics of Turkish Islam in Europe. However, there is need for
more comparative analysis of the religious authority and knowledge production of
Islamic communities active among North African and South Asian Muslims in Europe in
order to analyze the larger trajectory of Islam in Europe.
The production of religious authority and knowledge challenges the idea that there
is an inherent incompatibility between Islam and liberal democracy. The contextualist
approach illustrates the inner diversity and adaptability of Islam and its relationship to
modernity (Al-Azmeh 1996), liberalism (Kurzman 1998), and democracy (Hefner 2000).
In other words, Islam becomes what its adherents in Europe make of it. However, this
suggest not total relativism in which Islam is endlessly malleable, but a negotiation
between the universal principles of Islam and the particular circumstances of Muslims.
The anthropology of religious authorization in Islamic communities indicates that Islamic
tradition can contribute to as well as benefit from Muslim experience in Europe.
45

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