This chapter canvasses coalitions for and against pluralism that emerged with the foundation of the Republic of Turkey. It shows that while the early nation-builders pursued a unitary, ethno-nationalist project, Kemalism also entailed an “embedded liberalism” inherited from late Ottoman modernization, including resources for eventual democratization. Throughout the twentieth century, political actors sought to mobilize these resources toward pluralizing the political system across a series of critical junctures (e.g., the 1920s’ cultural revolution; the 1950 transition to multiparty democracy; successive coups in 1960, 1971, and 1980; and a 1997 “postmodern coup.”) Across these junctures, the chapter argues, there were only two pronounced periods of secularist/Islamist cleavages. More often, conflict was driven by significant, cross-camp cooperation and intra-camp rivalry. Tracing when and why pluralizing and anti-pluralist alignments succeeded or failed, the chapter captures a key dynamic: the installation of an ethno(-religious nationalist project – the Turkish-Islamic Synthesis (TIS) – as national project, even as ideas and actors invested in pluralization continued to mobilize.

The chapter chronicles the emergence of religious minorities in late colonial constitutional politics. Efforts to actualize the missionary dream of winning souls took the form of self-determination advocacy in the late colonial years with Protestant advocates constructing the religious minorities as the group seeking self-determination. Although the religious minorities emerged to resist colonial rule, paradoxically, making that identity affirmed the Muslim-non-Muslim classification central to colonial governance. By telling a story of the oppression of Christians and diverse indigenous faiths based on their status as non-Muslims, Protestant advocates constructed an identity centered on its antithesis to Islam. That binary failed to capture the complex forms of exclusion that colonial governance of religion entailed. Although it purported to be inclusive of all non-Muslim concerns, self-determination advocacy overwhelmingly privileged the Protestant experience. Moreover, the religious minorities' identity excluded Muslim populations marginalized in the colonial state. The ultimate consequence was that the religious minorities project opened new doors to inequality.

Chapter 6 first examines contention over the scope of local political representation. Covering the six rounds of city council elections from the first in 1999 to the sixth in 2021, the chapter shows how candidates and parties have been prevented from participating in city council elections through formal and informal processes of disqualification. It also shows how central government supervision and national administrative law constrains the range of local legislation the city councils can pass. I also show that the intergovernmental system is highly regulated and that central government-appointed representatives have broad power over elected officials at the province, district, city, and village level. This chapter concludes by pointing to the mixed legacy of the local electoral and political system created in 1999. On the one hand, central government bureaucracy and national-level laws blocked municipal governments from passing local legislation on most issues or raise the revenue necessary for fulfilling their legal mandates. For example, the first Tehran City Council failed to pass a Tehran Municipal Charter enshrining greater democratic rights for local civil society and autonomy vis-á-vis central government. On the other hand, elected local government became institutionalized as a coherent but subordinate component of the Islamic state. Within these narrow limits, thousands of creative and dedicated municipal councilors and employees did their best to represent their local constituencies and manage their cities.

Research has proliferated on several topics that have invited new methodological approaches: the rural setting, gendered relations between men and women, communal status of minorities (Christians and Jews), and religious diversity among Muslims, in particular among those who identified as Sufi mystics. New sources and revisionist interpretations of them continue to transform the field of Mamluk Studies. Yet in many instances, findings on these subjects are confined to discoveries of information on discrete conditions or isolated events that do not lend themselves to comprehensive analysis. They often depend on a single source or fragmentary data set, and require imaginative speculation to formulate hypotheses that apply to questions about their broader contexts in society. The chapter will outline the state of research on these subjects and their potential to open new lines of inquiry by highlighting examples that have influenced revisionist interpretations.

Chapter 7 brings religious and racial minorities to the forefront by investigating the relationship between adherence to American religious exceptionalism and the attitudes of Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOCs) and non-Christians. The premise of this chapter is that racial and religious minorities have been the victims of those championing religious exceptionalism, thus it is imperative to establish if religious and racial minorities’ adherence to American religious exceptionalism leads to outcomes that align with those in the racially and religiously dominant group. The authors establish throughout this chapter how racial and religious minorities have used the language of American religious exceptionalism to frame challenges to the status quo. Then, statistical tests are provided to examine whether and in what ways racial and religious disciples of American religious exceptionalism apply this ideology to their political attitudes and behaviors. Is it the same way as their White Christian counterparts? This chapter suggests that it is certainly not the same for those who sit at the periphery of the hypothetical church of American religious exceptionalism.

Are group identities associated with pro- or anti-democratic orientations? We focus on the relationship between religious identity and genuine support for democracy, which refers to citizens’ endorsement of norms and procedures associated with democratic governance. We suggest that the effect of religious identity on genuine support for democracy is conditional on whether individuals belong to a minority religious tradition and the extent to which minority religions are treated differentially by the state. Using data from the World Values Surveys, we show that, while the strength of religious identity is associated with reduced genuine support for democracy, this negative effect is less pronounced for members of minority religious groups, especially when these groups face differential treatment by the state. We also find that members of minority religions are more committed to democratic norms than members of majority religions as their group identity becomes stronger and as their differential treatment by the state increases.

Chapter one analyses the geneses of ethno-nationalism in postcolonial states by highlighting the three key elements of ethno-nationalist politics: the modernist response to primordial attachments in the process of nation-building, the active role and passive consequences of colonialism, and the influence of bourgeois and petty bourgeois classes under capitalism. Critically engaging with seminal scholarship in relevant fields by Clifford Geertz, Donald Horowitz, Antonio Gramsci, and Partha Chatterjee, my analysis in this chapter underscores that ethno-nationalism in postcolonial states is, to a great extent, the outcome of a combined force of all three elements. While the three elements highlighted in my analysis of ethno-nationalism are not exclusive aspects, ethno-nationalism in postcolonial states primarily draws on the elements of nation-building, colonialism, and capitalism. I substantiate this claim with the case of anticolonial nationalist movements in India. I demonstrate how conditions created by colonialism, capitalism, and the modernist vision of the nascent Indian state gave the nationalist movement an ethno-nationalist character that ultimately led to the partition of the country along religious lines.

This chapter discusses religious traditions that had their origin in Kurdish-speaking regions, notably Yezidism and Yarsanism (the religion of the Yaresan, Ahl-e Haqq, or Kaka’i), with some reference to the Alevis of the Dersim (Tunceli) area, the Shabak and the development of a Kurdish Zoroastrian community in the Kurdish Autonomous Region. The chapter offers an outline of the characteristics of the main traditions discussed here, points to similarities between them and describes their recent history in the homelands, particularly after the IS attacks that began in 2014.

This chapter considers how Spinoza’s treatment of scriptural origins in the Theological-Political Treatise is used to found his political argument. It argues that concepts of secularity and secularization have been inaccurately applied to Spinoza’s discussion of the Bible’s textual history, and that Spinoza cannot be viewed simply as a debunker of Scripture, even as his treatment of Scripture is theologically radical and has profound political implications. It shows how his claim that the Bible’s origins lie in the human imagination undergirds his argument that religious belief can be separated from religious conduct, a distinction not only central to his argument for the political state’s control over religion, but also central to the secular states associated with modernity. The chapter proceeds to show the oppressive and illiberal implications of Spinoza’s political-theological argument for religious minorities. Spinoza’s non-traditional account of the Bible and religion thus both founds a distinction which proved fundamental to modern secularity, even as, it is argued, Spinoza’s theological-political argument itself resists a straightforward identification as secular.