Muslim Sociality and Mass Mediation

Abstract

Since 1994, around the time when the Refah Party won many important municipal elections in Turkey (including Istanbul and Ankara), the branch of the Naqshbandi order we have been examining had owned and run a radio station, AKRA.¹ In the atmosphere following the military’s ultimatum of February 28 (1997), Esad hoja relocated to Australia, from where he made trips to Europe and North America, but never to Turkey. Esad hoja’s move to Australia brought to a head questions regarding the structure, functioning, and even purpose of a Sufi order in the late twentieth century and focused discussions in the community about the role of broadcast media in the life of that and other Muslim communities. Esad hoja’s move to Australia, and the conjuncture of economic, political, and technological contexts in which this happened, thus accompanied profound transformations in the structure and functioning of this order and in its relationship to broader Turkish society; indeed, I will argue that these transformations mirror transformations in Turkish society itself, specifically in regards to modes of religiosity, sociality, and those particular sociopolitical forms known as the public and civil society.