The Rifaiyye is a Turkish Sufi society founded by Kenan Rifai at the end of 19th century, and currently led by an unveiled female sheikha Cemalnur Sargut. The Rifai tradition has been irrevocably transformed in parallel with the modernization processes since late Ottoman era by reforming their Sufi practices and institutions, while maintaining their Sufi mores on spirituality, personhood, and community. They reformed Sufism by divorcing its moral foundation from the traditional ceremonial Sufi practices like dhkir and institutional structures of Sufi lodges, which were deemed as disposable means for cultivating ethical subjectivity. They have founded numerous civil society associations that aimed to preserve the Turkish cultural heritage in the areas of classical Turkish music, art, architecture, language, literature and history. The current shayka Cemalnur has unprecedentedly initiated academic enterprises on Sufism by organizing international symposiums, endowing university chairs in the University of North Carolina in the US and Peking University in China, as well as establishing Sufi Research Institutes in Kyoto University in Japan and Uskudar University in Turkey. The fact that a Sufi master founded the first academic Sufi research institute under a secular university in Turkey illustrates the ways in which Sufism became not only more acceptable in popular culture, but also re-gained legitimacy and prestige as it is now carried into academia in secular Turkey where Sufism is still legally banned. It also challenged the monopoly the Divinity Schools in Turkey on the academic studies of Sufism. Rather than following the traditional Sufi structure of a sacred space of tekke, people now started to receive certificates and graduate degrees on Sufism in a secular university and expanding their knowledge in Sufi tradition without necessarily declaring loyalty to a specific brotherhood. What happens to the status of Sufi identity when articulated in the academic settings? How does the institutional reform and the change of pedagogical settings inform the ways in which the Rifais cultivate their Sufi subjectivity? What is at stake in carrying a spiritual doctrine and practice into the modern positivist setting of the academia? How does a prescriptive normative Sufi discourse is taught by a non-academic Sufi sheikh in the critical and scientific setting of academic classroom?

This paper studies the global networks of Islamic learning by focusing on the Turkish schools and scholarships in sub-Saharan Africa. In tandem with the Justice and Development Party’s foreign policy towards Africa, these schools and scholarships have proliferated since the early 2000s. All across the continent, boarding schools funded and operated by Turkish Sufi communities teach religious curricula imported from Turkey along with the secular curriculum of the host country’s formal education system. Graduates of these schools sometimes continue religious education either in a formal high school or university in Turkey with funds from the Turkish state, or in an informal program run by Sufi communities. Through a multisited ethnography in Turkey, Tanzania and Senegal, I analyze the theories and practices of Islamic knowledge, the Turkish-Islamic civilizing mission and the subjectivities it intends to produce. My research findings show that the Turkish educators do not only see themselves as introducing better educational models for teaching Qur’an, Islamic sciences and secular subjects, but also teaching adab (proper behavior and conduct) where it is considered non-existing. Embracing the local Sufi traditions against the Salafi ideology yet aiming to transform the practices and expressions of religiosity emanating from these traditions, the objective of these educational endeavors is to introduce “Turkish Islam” to African students. This discussion makes a critical contribution to the study of neoliberal globalization, state-religion relations, and Islamic education in the Middle East and Africa, by bringing to light the racial, ideological and economic projects that undergird these very processes.

The paper explores how succession of leadership is negotiated in the contemporary moment in Sufi communities in Afghanistan. Based on 22 months of in-country ethnographic field research (2016-2018) among all three major Sufi associational communities (tariqas/turuq) active in Afghanistan, the paper explores a specific Sufi group and their path to establish a new tariqa after the death of their leader/pir. The paper draws both on original field work based on qualitative interviews and participant observation as well as on archival material and analysis of the group's own writing and literature. Where do the possibilities and limits lie in envisioning a new path for Sufism in the modern world without being accused of innovation by outside groups or other Sufis? How is tradition constructed and re-envisioned in the collective history writing and self-publishing of this community? What is the place of secrecy and public image among various Sufi and non-Sufi groups, religious foundations and councils? And what place do religio-cultural configurations such as dreams take in divining authority and leadership, or circumventing it? The paper takes a comparative view, both historically in terms of patterns of succession as well as ethnographically to other groups which negotiated succession after the place of the pir was vacated. It looks at the rules of the game and how far they can be bent with adapting to new leaders both in terms of levels of orthodoxy and questions of gender, before someone points them out as broken.

This paper explores the ways in which the Turkish art of ebru (paper marbling) has been increasingly reimagined by the artists as a Sufi practice of ethical self-formation in contemporary Turkey. This movement has happened under the AKP’s push for a return to neo-Ottoman traditions. Drawing upon fieldwork in Istanbul, I seek to understand how ebru developed from its status in Ottoman Turkey as an art form that decorated manuscripts and served as a background to calligraphic pieces into a stand-alone genre of art in modern Turkey, referred to by many as a “Sufi” art form. I argue that, partly through the efforts of the Turkish government and institutions that seek to advance neo-Ottoman traditions, including artistic and spiritual traditions, ebru has reached a place of prominence in Turkish culture. By surveying how ebru evolved into such an important art form in Turkey, how ebru artists understand the aesthetic expressions through the lens of Sufism both in the practice of the art and visual symbolism, and finally how the government’s neo-Ottoman agenda has worked to promote traditional arts such as ebru, I set out to delineate the intersecting dynamics of art, culture, and religion in the context of modern Turkey. Ebru is one of the numerous traditional Turkish art forms that artists, institutions, and the government are working hard to revive with the goal of preserving and promoting Turkish culture and heritage. In situating this study, I draw from studies of material religion and aesthetics from multiple disciplines. The practice of ebru is directly influenced by the state’s adaptation of “acceptable” Sufism, which has resulted in its elevation of an important art form in Turkey. Apart from teaching the techniques of the art, ebru artists also instill an ethical disposition in their students and claim that they only give ecazets (certificates of mastery) to students who master both the art form and ethical requirements to carry on the art. Traditional Turkish art is one of the many symbols of piety promoted by the AKP and religious segments of society and therefore has received heightened attention and emphasis, even as artists adapt it and merge it with modern art genres. In this context, Sufi practices and ideas have made their way beyond the lodge in the form of art as they have become part of religious and spiritually-inclined segments of Turkish society.