Abstract
This chapter discusses The Imam’s take on the compatibility of Islam and modernity. It polarizes pure belief (authentic religion) and traditional Islam by contrasting a modern and a traditional cleric. It discusses how the dichotomy of the traditional and the modern plays out in the film and the paradoxes of Islamism as a modern political ideology. Drawing on Derrida, it analyses the parallax relationship between moderate and radical Islams and discusses the former as a ‘globalatinized phenomenon’, in Derrida’s terminology.
Keywords
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
Director: İsmail Güneş, Production: 2005, Release: 2005, Festival Screenings: None.
- 2.
Mustafa Cihat is a Turkish singer whose life trajectory somewhat parallels that of the film’s protagonist. Like Emre, he graduated from a vocational religious school but then chose a very different career path, in his case by forming a rock band.
- 3.
Following the 1980 coup, the new constitution introduced a ban on civil servants wearing a veil in state institutions. It was enforced among various occupational groups, including teachers, doctors who worked in public hospitals, lawyers and judges, but was lifted in 2013 by the Justice and Development Party.
- 4.
Trees are endowed with symbolic meaning in a number of ancient myths and religions (e.g. Turkic myths, Hinduism and Judaism). The concept of wishing trees can be traced back to shamanistic cultural traditions.
- 5.
The word ‘eren’, which is unique to Sufism, translates as ‘friend of God’.
References
Azman, Ayşe. 2008. ‘Niyazi Berkes: Ulusçuluk-Devletçilik Ekseninde Kemalist Çağdaşlaşma Modelinin İnşası’. Sosyoloji Dergisi, Vol. 3. No. 17, 31–47.
Başkaya, Fikret. 2013. Paradigmanın İflası: Resmi İdeolojinin Eleştirisine Giriş. İstanbul: Öteki Yayınevi/Felsefe Dizisi.
Berman, Marshall. 1988. All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity. London: Penguin Books.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1993. The Field of Cultural Production. New York: Columbia University Press.
Derrida, Jacques, Anidjar, Gil. 2010. Acts of Religion. London and New York: Routledge.
Göle, Nilüfer. 1997a. ‘The Quest for the Islamic Self within the Context of Modernity’. In Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey, edited by Sibel Bozdoğan and Reşat Kasaba. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press.
Göle, Nilüfer. 1997b. ‘Secularism and Islamism in Turkey: The Making of Elites and Counter-Elites’. Middle East Journal, Vol. 51. No. 1, 46–58.
İşiyok, Bilge. 2015. ‘The Imam’. Paper presented for the Master’s course ‘Cinema, Politics and Religion’, Sociology Department, Mardin Artuklu University, Turkey.
Mahçupyan, Etyen. 2014. Türkiye’ye İçeriden Bakış: Yükselen İslami Orta Sınıf. Ankara: TESEV
Parkins, Sue. 2009. Mobility and Modernity in Women’s Novels, 1850s–1930s: Women Moving Dangerously. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Raschke, Carl. 2000. The End of Theology. Aurora, CO: Davies Group, Scholars Press
Sarfati, Yusuf. 2012. ‘The Politics of Religious Education in Turkey’ in Religion, Education and Governance in the Middle East: between Tradition and Modernity, edited by Sai Felicia Krishna Hensel. London: Routledge
Tank, Pınar. 2006. ‘Dressing for the Occasion: Reconstructing Turkey’s Identity?’ South East European and Black Sea Studies. Vol. 6, No. 4.
Tibi, Bassam. 2002. The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Disorder. London: University of California Press.
Toprak, Binnaz. 2005. ‘Secularism and Islam: The Building of Modern Turkey’. Malacaster International, Vol. 15, http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1391&context=macintl, accessed on 29.11.17.
Urry, John. 2007. Mobilities. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Vattimo, G., 1999. Belief. L. D’Isanto and D. Webb, trans. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
Vattimo, Giovanni, Caputo, John. 2007. After the Death of God: Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics and Culture. New York: Columbia University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Thwaites Diken, E. (2018). The Imam (The İmam). In: The Spectacle of Politics and Religion in the Contemporary Turkish Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71700-5_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71700-5_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-71699-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-71700-5
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)