9 - Occultism in an Islamic context: the case of modern Turkey from the nineteenth century to the present time

Summary

Islam is an Abrahamic religion which shares with Judaism and Christianity many eschatological, cosmological, psychological and soteriological ideas. Furthermore, Islam played a major role in transmitting to the Christian world the Greek philosophy; that is, not only Platonism, Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism, but also hermetism, theurgy, alchemy and astrology. But there are not exact equivalents in Islam of the Western concepts of esotericism (the inner) and occultism (the hidden), although one particular current of thought, the Batinism (Arabic: Batiniyya), which has emerged in the eighth century, fits more or less the definitions of Western esotericism as conceptualized by several scholars. Moreover, Batinism actually integrates the idea of secrecy and inwardness (its name derives from the Arabic batin, “inner”, “inward”, “hidden”). And several Turkish spiritual movements more or less linked to this historical Batinism have been regarded by Western esotericists and occultists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as Muslim esoteric trends, and vice versa.

The introductory section of this chapter will be dedicated to a definition of Batinism, a current of thought that is intimately linked to Sufism, though not identical with it. The transformations underwent by Batinism in the Ottoman Empire, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the Empire faced the challenge of Western-imported modernity and Western occultism, may be compared with the history of Western occultism, though there is not a clear-cut division in Islam between esotericism/Batinism and occultism.