Religion is increasingly playing an important role in politics and public life worldwide. Many societies today have to adjust to the growing relevance of religion in global affairs, national political debates, and the everyday public spaces of cities within which religious plurality exists. Despite the increasing influence of religious voices globally, there remains a critical gap in knowledge regarding how attitudes towards the changing role of religion may vary, who drives these changes, and what implications they may have for pluralism in diverse societies. This research project will help to fill this crucial gap by examining attitudes and practices concerning the shifting role of religion in public life. How can different moral systems and lifestyles be accommodated within a pluralistic public? What the renewed role of religion in public life means for secularism and pluralism is especially crucial for the Muslim world, where the role of Islam in public life is continuously evolving. In many Muslim societies, there is a notable trend away from the establishment of an Islamic state towards intensifying Islamic values and practices in public life. This project will assess how the renewed role of Islam in society formulates the problem of pluralism in Muslim democracies. The results will have implications beyond the Islamic world as well. The project will contribute basic understanding with respect to the geographies of religion, pluralism, and public life and offer new information and insights for discussions regarding the changing nature of secularism and the political role of religion worldwide.
This project will provide insight into the public role of religion and secularism worldwide through an empirical investigation of the varying practices and attitudes concerning the public role of Islam in Turkey. The investigators will assess how attitudes regarding the reconfiguration of Islam and secularism vary across Turkish society, and they will evaluate how the devout Sunni Muslim sector, which constitutes about half of the Turkish population, is participating in this reconfiguration. They will conduct a nationwide survey to identify and assess the spectrum of attitudes towards and practices of the shifting dynamics of Islam and secularism in public life. The investigators will conduct in-depth qualitative research using focus groups and interviews with moderately to highly devout individuals in two representative Turkish cities to obtain new insights into the values and everyday practices of the politically and culturally influential devout sector of society. This project thereby will provide assessments of Turkish society's internal variability and what this variability means for the changing role of Islam in public life in Turkey and other Muslim nations. Because Turkey is a key U.S. ally and an influential political and economic player in the Middle East and Central Asia, this project will contribute beneficial knowledge as the U.S. and other nations seek to understand and more effectively interact with Muslim nations that are envisioning and enacting a pluralistic public sphere within which both religious and secular values and lifestyles have a place
