Illiberalism in Political Islam as Emotion Rather Than Ideology: Moral Discourse on Alcohol and Blasphemy in Turkey
Based on ethnographic interviews with mainstream Islamist voters conducted in Turkey in 2010, this article argues that religion's influence on the form and substance of political opinion can be emotive rather than ideological. Focusing on the moral discourses subjects used to support or oppose...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2017
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| In: |
Politics, religion & ideology
Year: 2017, Volume: 18, Issue: 3, Pages: 309-330 |
| Further subjects: | B
Correction
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Based on ethnographic interviews with mainstream Islamist voters conducted in Turkey in 2010, this article argues that religion's influence on the form and substance of political opinion can be emotive rather than ideological. Focusing on the moral discourses subjects used to support or oppose legal restrictions on two religiously proscribed activities—consuming alcohol and blasphemy—I question the presumption that a religious ‘ideology' rooted in dogmatic adherence to explicit theological principles undergirds the more ‘illiberal' attitudes exhibited by Islamists. Beyond confirming many scholars’ findings that liberal positions can often be grounded in normative Islam, my analysis of these two ‘hot-button' religious issues reveals that the most substantively illiberal opinions are often constructed as logically unconnected to religion—even on irreducibly ‘religious' topics. Particularly, subjects universally constructed the necessity of prohibiting blasphemy as arising not from any divine mandate, but from a variety of nonreligious concerns, including with seemingly malapropos concepts like ‘democracy' and ‘tolerance.' I argue against understandings that limit political Islam’s ideational impact to an ideology people consciously accept or reject, instead favoring a conceptualization that allows religion to exert powerful influence through its complex and highly subjective emotive dimensions. |
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| ISSN: | 2156-7697 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Politics, religion & ideology
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/21567689.2017.1377615 |