Rethinking Islam and liberal democracy: Islamist women in Turkish politics

Abstract

Yesim Arat’s work, Rethinking Islam and Liberal Democracy: Islamist Women in Turkish Politics, is a welcome addition to the remarkably rich academic discourse on Islam in contemporary Turkey. Several excellent social scientists both in Turkey and abroad have contributed to elevating the discussion on Islam in modern Turkey to a complex and sophisticated level. For example, Jenny White’s award-winning work, Islamist Mobilization in Turkey: A Study in Vernacular Politics (2002), is an ethnography of Istanbul which maps the origins and continuing appeal of Islamic politics in Turkish society. Esra Ozyurek’s notable work, Nostalgia for the Modern: State Secularism and Everyday Politics in Turkey (2006), demonstrates how power struggles between secular and Islamist political movements are reconfi guring popular notions of citizenship and the sacred in Turkey. Th e work under review not only engages the available scholarship, it adds a new dimension to the discussion. Based on a study of women activists of the Islamist Refah (Welfare) Party in Turkey, Rethinking Islam and Liberal Democracy examines the relationship between secularism and Islam in a liberal democracy. Th e author attempts to understand the women activists of the Refah Party using qualitative methods via in-depth interviews. She argues that, although the Refah Party women’s organizations only came into being in 1989 and were shut down in 1998 along with the party by a constitutional court decision, they played an important role in bringing their party to power and engaging a large female constituency in politics (1). Arat’s work is particularly valuable because, in tracing the “cross-fertilization” between Islamists and their secular adversaries, she provides an im-