Bir Dine Research Paper

CA
BRIAN SILVERSTEIN
University of Arizona

DISCIPLINES OF PRESENCE IN MODERN TURKEY: Discourse, Companionship, and the Mass Mediation of Islamic Practice

O ye who believe! Fear Allah and be with those who are true in word and deed. —Quran IX.119 Whoever makes himself like unto a people is one of them. —Hadith Discourse involved in practice is not the same as that involved in speaking about practice. It is a modern idea that a practitioner cannot know how to live religiously without being able to articulate that knowledge. —Talal Asad (1993:36) In recent years, and increasingly since the events of September 11, 2001, one hears in the media, in policy circles, and even in some academic environments almost exasperated discussions surrounding
Today only a small minority of people in Turkey are involved with a Sufi order, although there are no reliable statistics on the matter. Sufis acknowledge the “schools” of techniques to be several, reflected in the various emphases of the many different Sufi orders with different legitimate lineages. Analogies abound, likening the different orders, for instance, to the many spokes of a wheel all uniting at a single hub, the many paths to the one true God. The various orders tend to be respectful toward one another, and it has been common for practitioners to be affiliated with more than one order at a time (although this appears to be less common today). The extent to which heterodox practices and beliefs—which have garnered much attention in the West—have been prevalent among Sufis over the centuries is a point of some dispute among scholars. The term mysticism as a translation for tasawwuf , although a convenient shorthand, is technically problematic, as there is no theological “mystery” in Islam analogous
In Arabic the term sohbet itself derives from the same root as the word ashab or sahaba, “companions,” and the two terms participate in the same semantic extension. Sohbet is what, by definition, sahaba do. Thus the figure of the companion in Islam is modeled on the Companions of the Prophet, those who were closest to Him during His lifetime, sought out and frequently kept His company, and strove to assimilate His teachings. Their significance can hardly be overstated, as it was they who transmitted the hadith and the Quran before these were written down and compiled, ensuring a critical structural role for companionship and face-to-face speech—“presence”—in the transmission of Islamic knowledge (Messick 1993). In Sufism, those who attend the sohbet of a given sheikh—who is then known as their sheikh-i sohbet—are said to be his sahaba, and members of the cemaat would occasionally refer to an absent member or close sympathizer of the cemaat as a sahib in their conversations with me.29 The account of the companionship and sohbet between Abu Bakr and the Prophet is fairly common knowledge among Muslims; specific to some Sufi groups (including the one of my study) is the tradition that part of what the Prophet gave to Abu Bakr while in the cave were certain specific techniques of spiritual discipline, namely, silent (as opposed to voiced) zikr. The Iskender Pasha cemaat continues