Suchergebnisse

"Since the early 2000s, the Turkey's Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) has considerably increased the number of women employed as religious officers. The book sheds light on the significance of this policy and retraces the broader political framework in which the process has been taking shape. Drawing on extensive ethnographic observations of the activities conducted by Diyanet women preachers in Istanbul mosques, the work breaks new ground on two fronts: on the one side, it elucidates how women access to Diyanet bureaucracy has resulted in a slow but unavoidable transformation of gender roles within Islamic institutions. The emergence of a pious, modern and highly educated woman determined to gain visibility in the (religious) public realm informs about state's attempt to standardize a multifaceted female religious participation. On the other side, the book illuminates on a broader reformulation of the religious services for women and families as a pervasive moral support which penetrates and reshapes the spaces of the secular. In this vein, the work scrutinizes the feminization of the Diyanet as a prism through which the continuous evolutions of Turkish secularism are investigated"--

Tracing the centrality of women in the definition of Turkish secularism, this study investigates the 2003 decision to increase the number of women officers employed by the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet). It explores how, as professional religious officers, the female Diyanet preachers epitomize a pious, modern and highly educated woman whose role in society has been raised to prominence. Based on extensive fieldwork in Turkey, and drawing on a rich ethnography of the activities conducted by Diyanet women preachers in Istanbul, Chiara Maritato disentangles the state's attempt to standardize a multifaceted female religious participation. In using the feminization of the Diyanet as a prism through which to understand the significance of a renewed presence of Islam in the Turkish public realm, she casts light on a broader reformulation of religious services for women and families in Turkey, and pinpoints how this pervasive moral support has been able to penetrate and reshape even secular spaces.