Islamic Movement, Mobilization, and Authority

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the formation of associations by Turkish Islamic communities. Islamic mobilization relies on traditional, charismatic, and bureaucratic powers that operate through the dynamics of proximity and distance. Proximity has a diversity of relations enacted by multiple figures of religious authority in the mosque, the association, or the neighborhood. The distance shows multiple levels of political, religious, cultural, or symbolic connections to the native country and the Muslim world. Islamic rituals, characteristics of movements and communities, and their spheres of mobilization shape the forms of proximity and distance. Such a complex mobilization persists due to the permanence of religious rituals and practices in accordance with Islamic temporality.