RETHINKING ISLAM AND LIBERAL DEMOCRACY pdf download

Rethinking Islam and Liberal Democracy Islamist Women In Turkish Politics

RETHINKING ISLAM AND LIBERAL DEMOCRACY

This book is based on a study of the women activists of the Islamist Ref ah (Welfare) Party in Turkey.

The women’s organizations of Ref ah were established in 1989, six years after the party was founded, and closed in 1998 along with the party by a constitutional court decision.

 In their short life span, these organizations played a critical role in both bringing their party to power and engaging a large female constituency in politics.

Hundreds of women were working for the party and recruiting thousands of others to support it.

Refah received the highest percentage of votes in the 1995 elections (21.4 percent) and was the major partner of the governing coalition from June 1996 to July 1997.

For the first time in Turkish political life, a religiously-inspired political party had come to power. Moreover, Refah had an impact on politics as the precursor of the Adalet ve Kalkmma (Justice and Devel¬ opment) Party.

Adalet ve Kalkmma came to power after the November 2002 elections as a single-party government after a period of coalitions going back to 1991.

 If “the locus of study is not the object of study,” as Clifford Geertz reminds us, 3 then the Ladies’ Commissions of the Refah Party is only the locus of my work.

Within this locus, I try to understand the women activists of the Refah Party using qualitative methods, primarily via in-depth interviews.

 I trace who the women activists of the commissions were, how they were recruited into politics in the Islamist camp, how they recruited other women to vote for their party, and what their worldviews were. The object of my work, however, is broader.

Through this study, I examine the conflictual relationship between secularism and Islam in a liberal democracy.

 Islam versus liberal democracy and secularism versus Islam have long been linked as antithetical.

 This antithetical positioning conceals the extent to which these concepts can be part of one another in historically specific contexts. I trace this interdependence through the experiences of the people who live by them.

Refah women challenged the preconceived attributes that the secular establishment