The Appeal of Islamic Politics: Ritual and Dialogue in a Poor District of Turkey

The author explores the reasons underlying the growing effectiveness of Islamic movements by studying ethnographically the interaction between the religious movement and the people in a squatter district of Istanbul, Turkey. The empirical analysis examines how the state and the Islamists impact the lives of the residents, and how secularizing and ritualizing interventions are incorporated and resisted. These interventions and the resulting resistance generate hybrid subjects who embody traces of many conflicting discourses and practices. The Islamist party is widely supported, not because it expresses an Islamic essence or enacts strategic framing, but because it is able to reflect and refract the dialogic religious field produced by the interactions between the residents, the state, and Islamism.