Islam and Competing Nationalisms in the Middle East, 1876-1926

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiv

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2. Introduction

   • Kamal Soleimani

   Pages 1-17

3. Religious (Islamic) Thought, Nationalism, and the Politics of Caliphate

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 19-19

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   2. Nationalism and Religious Thought

      • Kamal Soleimani

      Pages 21-48

   3. The Politics of the Khilafa, Old and New

      • Kamal Soleimani

      Pages 49-69

4. Official Nationalism and Islamic Identity

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 71-71

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   2. Ottoman/Turkish “Official Nationalism”

      • Kamal Soleimani

      Pages 73-92

   3. Abdülhamid II’s Pan-Islamism/Nationalism

      • Kamal Soleimani

      Pages 93-154

5. Kurdish Nationalism and Exclusionary Islams

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 155-155

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   2. Exclusionary Islam and Kurdish Nationalism: The Case of the Naqshbandi Sheikh Ubeydullah of Nehri

      • Kamal Soleimani

      Pages 157-215

   3. Kurdish Nationalism and Khilafa in Nursi’s Pre-exile Writing

      • Kamal Soleimani

      Pages 217-239

   4. “Fully-fledged Nationalism in Religious Garb”: The Caliphate as the Site of Nationalist Rivalry

      • Kamal Soleimani

      Pages 241-276

   5. Conclusion

      • Kamal Soleimani

      Pages 277-284

6. Back Matter

   Pages 285-312

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Opposing a binary perspective that consolidates ethnicity, religion, and nationalism into separate spheres, this book demonstrates that neither nationalism nor religion can be studied in isolation in the Middle East. Religious interpretation, like other systems of meaning-production, is affected by its historical and political contexts, and the processes of interpretation and religious translation bleed into the institutional discourses and processes of nation-building. This book calls into question the foundational epistemologies of the nation-state by centering on the pivotal and intimate role Islam played in the emergence of the nation-state, showing the entanglements and reciprocities of nationalism and religious thought as they played out in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Middle East.

• Khilafa
• Ottoman
• Kurds
• Kuridsh
• Abdülhamid
• pan-Islamism
• Islamism
• Turks
• Ottoman Empire
• Islamic revivalism
• religion and society

“In contrast to theories of nationalism that downplay the significance of religion in the emergence of nationalist movements, Kamal argues that religion and nationalism have been closely intertwined in ways that had been obscured by the discourse of elites at the center of power, whose perspectives have, in turn, shaped subsequent scholarship. This book demonstrates a sophisticated knowledge of the theoretical literature on nationalism and makes an original contribution to this literature by challenging the Eurocentric assumption that nationalism is inevitably or even centrally linked to secularism. Soleimani develops the theoretically original idea of the ‘nationalist utterance’ as an Austinian performative, suggesting how nationalisms have legitimized themselves by taking on conventional rhetorical forms modeled on Western nationalisms even when the goals and structures oflocal nationalisms are quite different  . . .  an important contribution.” (Katherine Ewing, Professor of Religion, Columbia University, USA)

• New York, USA

  Kamal Soleimani

Kamal Soleimani is a historian of the Modern Middle East and Islamic world. His research interests include Islamic political history and Arab , Kurdish, Persian and Turkish nationalism. He received his PhD from Columbia University in New York, USA. He has taught at Turkish and US universities.

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