The Birth of the Prophet: Ritual and Gender in Turkish Islam

Gender identity and the rituals of food in a Jordanian community

“…As a result they also control the access to the supernatural through food. In Jordan, I have not come across anything like the religious meal rituals described for Turkish women (Tapper 1987), nor like the wa 'da, the ritual offering of food to the saints in Algeria in which the sisters of the brotherhoods play a large role (Jansen 1987: 80).…”

A different story of secularism: The censorship of religion in Turkish films of the 1960s and early 1970s

“…24 As Lewis remarks, folk Islam found its chief expression in tarikats, to which 'the common people turned for help and guidance where orthodox Islam was lacking or deficient ' (1968: 404-405). For years, as opposed to official Islam, tarikats represented peripheral and mystical Islam and were dismissed by the secular state for propagating 'incorrect' and 'ignorant superstitions' (Tapper and Tapper, 1987). For the Kemalists, tarikats were an 'evil legacy from the past' (Lewis, 1968: 412) and the common people's, especially peasants', investments in them and in superstitions was a sign of their 'primitiveness' and 'backwardness', which could be eliminated by education and modernization resting on positive science (Tapper, 1991).…”

Islam obscured: the rhetoric of anthropological representation

“…For prayer, see Bowen (1989);and Mahmoud (2001b). For Egyptian mawlid, see Abu-Zahra (1997:205-230) and for Turkish mevlûd, see Tapper and Tapper (1987); and the critique by Abu-Zahra (1997:41-49). Mortuary rituals in Egypt and Tunisia are discussed by Abu-Zahra (1997:49071).…”