MS-SEA Reading Group Discussion – March 5, 2020
By Najwa Abdullah, National University of Singapore
As a prelude to our discussions on Islam and Muslim societies in Southeast Asia and beyond, earlier this year our reading group chose to discuss a few chapters from the book “Muslimism in Turkey and Beyond: Religion in the Modern World” by Neslihan Cevik (2016). Intrigued by Cevik’s neologism, we pondered on the vocabularies we have come across in describing contemporary Muslim societies and related affairs, wondering whether or not the most commonplace nomenclatures such Islamism, political Islam, and cultural Islam have done justice in capturing the diversity and complexity of Muslim experiences and societies around the world. Essentially, Cevik’s book interrogates the limits of such terms when they are used to describe Islamic movements and the Muslim subjects, especially when it concerns the realm of culture.
First, she outlines how those terms were derived from the standpoint of Western social science theories founded on the moment of the secular turn in Europe, in which to fulfill the telos and ideals of the Enlightenment, religious interests must be completely removed from the state. In that regard, the secularisation paradigm produces normative boundaries that continue to shape contemporary social theory and public policy on religion such as “religion versus modernity” and “cultural versus political” (Cevik, 2016: 11). In this point of view, a Muslim must either submit to or reject the modern ideals, and an Islamic movement must be either political or cultural. Political Islam or Islamism is associated with being anti-modern and averse to the cultural development of Islam. It limits itself to a certain set of doctrines that allows its adherents to pursue the agenda of taking over the nation-states. This way, it poses itself as “authentic” or “pristine”, and as a guardian of the true Islamic tradition. On the other hand, the idea of “cultural Islam” is propelled by the secularists. It entails Muslims deserting the political sphere and succumbing Islam to the grip of an inexorably secular state and public policy. Based on these standpoints, when a Muslim group demands a political change, they are a part of “political Islam” or Islamism. When they do not they must be apolitical, hence they can be lumped into the category “cultural Islam”. Interestingly, Cevik rightly points out that regardless of the fact that both Islamists and secularists use different approaches in understanding Muslims and Islamic movements, they essentially arrive at the same conclusion: that Islam and modernity are incommensurable and always at odds, and that any effort by Muslims to go beyond this binary is degeneration of Islam or simply a façade for Islamism (ibid, 10; 60-61).
Cevik argues that these approaches are not only inadequate to describe what happens on the ground but also misleading. An alternative framework to explain the conditions of Muslim societies is imperative since the world has witnessed how Muslim communities around the world, particularly Turkey, Indonesia, and Malaysia, have become the vanguard of democracy, which is one of the pillars of the Enlightenment. It is evident that since the 1960s religiosity has been growing –not declining—in many places, and from the 1980s onward religions and religious groups have gradually moved into the public space and taken on new public roles. The secularisation paradigm continues to depict this development as an anomaly, in the sense that it happens due to a failed attempt or incomplete process of modernisation (ibid, 7).
She, therefore, introduces a new concept to the field of sociology of religion, “Muslimism”, which enables us to rethink both categories of religion and modernity along new lines. With Turkey as a point of departure, Cevik describes Muslimism as “a new Islamic orthodoxy” that attends to the need of Muslims to preserve and free their iman (inner belief) from the external authorities such as the state or institutionalisation of religions, as well as to fulfill the modern aspirations (ibid, 18). With a vignette of a specific stratum of modern women organisations in Turkey, Cevik describes Muslimism as a ‘hybrid identity frame’ (ibid, 5) that blends religiosity and modernity, hence it paves the way for “guiltless modernity” (ibid, 29) to take shape, as it grasps various aspects of modern life while acquiescing to the sacred, moral order of Islam. Benefiting from democracy and economic affluence in the neoliberal world order, Muslimists are neither interested in political Islam nor community-oriented; rather, they are individual-centric. Their goal is not an establishment of an Islamic state or a homogenously Islamic community but rather the fulfillment of Muslims’ individual rights. Her empirical research centres on pious Muslim men and women find new ways to engage modernity in markets, everyday life, and politics. Her interview results show that they both endorse individual agency to preserve their voluntary commitment to Islam and adopt a clear political stance. For the Muslimists, both secularist and Islamist states pose danger to their Islamic beliefs and practices when they restrict their religious practices or confine Islam to only a certain set of doctrines. They believe true iman or faith can only thrive in a certain political environment. In this regard, liberal modernity, which extends freedom and liberty, allows for truly Islamic life. Muslimism puts a high premium on the cultural production of Islam to consolidate their cultural capital to navigate the modern world and societies. It exhibits both being embedded in cultural schema –doxa— and an emphasis on articulating practices –praxis. Examples of these are ranging from Islamic popular culture to grassroots-based Muslim organisations such as the Capital Women’s Platform (CWPA) and the Association of Human Rights and Solidarity for Oppressed People (MAZLUM-DER) in Turkey. Though they are more grounded in the social and cultural, the existence of this type of movement and group has, in one way or another, act as progressive civil forces, challenging the authoritarian states, expanding borders of the public sphere, and allying with democratic forces. In other words, they engender a new Islamic political ethos that encompasses modern political values, particularly individual rights and pluralism (ibid, 169-200). Therefore, drawing links between the sacred and self, as well as the cultural and political, Muslimism as a concept allows us to explore the questions on Muslim identities and societies beyond the limiting and reductive binaries of the cultural or secularist and Islamist.
Cevik, Neslihan. (2016). Muslimism in Turkey and Beyond: Religion in the Modern World. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.