Sufism and Feminism in Turkey: The Case of Shayka Cemalnur Sargut

Show notes

Sufi Ethics and Feminist Politics in Turkey

Guest of this episode is Dr Feyza Burak-Adli, a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, who visited ZMO as a guest researcher in the unit “Contested Religion and Intellectual Culture”. She is a social anthropologist specializing in religion at the intersection of gender and class, and focuses on Muslim women’s ethical self-formation as it is informed by Sufism, Islamic feminism, and female religious authority in Turkey. In the episode, Feyza speaks about the Rifai order, a Sufi group in Turkey that is led by Shaykha Cemalnur Sargut, who is an unveiled female religious authority leading both men and women. What is the history of the Rifai order? How is Sufism practiced in secular Turkey where the Sufi orders are still legally banned? And, can the Shaykha be considered an Islamic feminist? Feyza also reflects on how her personal research interest developed based on her own story and shares insights on her fieldwork experience as a native ethnographer.