The Book and the Roses: Sufi Women, Visibility, and Zikir in Contemporary Istanbul (review)

Catharina Raudvere's highly informative study is a valuable contribution to the sparse information we have about Sufi women's faith and practice. It follows a short list of publications that reflect the ambiguous and complex nature of women's participation in Muslim and/or Sufi rituals. Among these are Elizabeth Fernea's Guests of the Sheik (1965) in Iraq, Marjo Buitelaar's Fasting and Feasting in Morocco (1993), Shakina Reinhertz's Women Called to the Path of Rumi (2001) in Turkey, and Mary Elaine Hegland's essay on "Shi'a Women's Rituals in Northwest Pakistan" (2003). In The Book and the Roses, Raudvere assumes the reader has prior knowledge of Sufism, Islam's mystical tradition. The key words in the title refer to the Qur'an as scriptural basis and roses as mystical love, both of which guide Sufis in daily life. Raudvere recounts and effectively evaluates the recent resurgence of Islam in Turkey, the practice of Sufism by the Gönenli women living in Istanbul, and the zikir prayer of remembrance—the repetitive act of chanting "the most beautiful names of God," which is a form of spiritual training to approach God.

During the early years of the Turkish Republic, the political climate had a profound impact on the religious climate. With the abolition of the sultanate and the end of the caliphate in 1923–24 came a shift in legislative power from religious institutions to representative parliamentarianism, and Muslim organizations came under strict state control. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's goal was to make religion superfluous in a modern society. When Sufi orders were abolished in 1925 as part of his reforms, those in Istanbul either dispersed or went underground, and Sufi dervishes were marginalized, women even more so. It is against this backdrop that Gönenli Mehmet Efendi (1901–91) received his authorization from the newly established (1924) Directorate of Religious Affairs to hold public prayer meetings. Raudvere writes that he nurtured an image of himself as an independent preacher with no claims to formal relations to a Muslim group, and one who specifically spoke to women. Although Gönenli's followers were not initiated into any Sufi order, Raudvere suspects a link to the Halveti Cerrahi order.

In 1995, the mostly educated, twenty-five- to forty-year-old middle-class women under study assumed command of their faith and ritual lives and carved out a "proper" space for themselves by establishing an endowment in Gönenli's name. They thus gained visibility, recognition, legitimacy, and influence as Muslim/Sufi women. This is in keeping with the practice of Sufi lodges in Ottoman times that were organized as endowments through which dervishes carried out their educational, health, and charitable services. Approved as an endowment, the Gönenli group gained both control and freedom to carry out its activities without breaking any injunctions regarding "suitable" behavior for Muslim women. Today the women teach, run a pastry shop and a library, and hold the weekly zikir prayer circle that is their core ritual. They define themselves as keepers of traditional values who wish to live like the pioneers of Islam, but who are apolitical. However, Raudvere convincingly argues that these women are indeed political, as they offer a counter-discourse as against mainstream secularist views, a perception that is reinforced by the endowment's location in Fatih, a deeply pious section of Istanbul and a stronghold of the Islamist party.

Raudvere grapples skillfully with the sensitive issue of how to analyze religious expression. In her well-balanced study she combines a review of relevant literature on Muslim/Sufi women's practices inside and outside of Turkey and data gathered during fieldwork in Istanbul from 1993 to 1998. She offers sound and detailed but, in places, repetitive and exhaustive scholarship and data on the history of how a private prayer circle of women established an endowment. She also makes abundant use of Turkish terms, which can cause the non-Turkish-speaking reader to feel...