Mapping Out Late Ottoman Terms for Religion and Irreligion

By Ayşe Polat

For a genealogical mapping of the conceptions of religion and secular in the late Ottoman Empire, Ottoman Turkish

periodicals comprise a valuable source to investigate. A considerable number of  late Ottoman periodicals can be characterized as

“thick journals”¹  that published in-depth essays on literature, philosophy,  politics, and religion among others. By using two

online databases² that enable a keyword search in Ottoman periodicals, this blog essay identifies chief peculiarities behind the

intellectual and linguistic constructions of religion and secular in the late Ottoman and early Turkish Republican periods.³

Albeit oddly obvious, late Ottoman periodical essayists used exclusively the term din to denote religion. While Ottoman Turkish

has borrowed or Ottomanized many Arabic and Persian terms, it is remarkable that, despite current language Turkification

attempts, din has survived almost as the only word to imply religion. (The same is not true for its opposite construct, irreligion, as

will be explained below.) Furthermore, while din was singled out, it signified and attained a distinctive meaning. One of the most

illustrative examples of this fact is an essay penned by the prominent scholar Aksekili Ahmed Hamdi. In the introduction to his

periodical serial on materialists (maddiyyun), A. Ahmed Hamdi elaborates on religion and irreligion, choosing to put the word din

in quotation marks.⁴ His punctuational preference seems to have embodied his attempt to convey to readers that he was using the

familiar term din in a peculiarly new way.

Similar to the observations of critical and anthropological scholars on the modern conceptions of religion, religion (din) was

defined in the Ottoman periodical essays first and foremost as a belief system. While particular aspects of Islam and Muslim

societies were placed under scrutiny and critical assessment in numerous essays, writings on religion targeted a phenomenon

conceived to be broader than Islam. The truth and authenticity of the category of religion were conceived in several periodical

publications as exceeding any one single religion, including Islam. Religion was represented to have existed throughout human

history, constituting an essential element of human experience, cultures, and societies. One strongest advocate of this conception

was essays penned by the Egyptian Muslim reformist Farid Wajdi (Ferid Vecdi, in Tr.), Hadika-i Fikriyye (the Garden of Ideas). It

was translated into Ottoman Turkish and published in the influential journal Sırat-ı Müstakim (the Straight Path). In these series,

Wajdi elaborated on different stages of faith in human history, portraying religion as a universal category of human experience

generated by a natural disposition for belief. As religion and religiosity were naturalized and proposed as innate inclinations, acts of

worship and rituals were also approached as serving humankind, considered to be good and beneficial for human beings for

purification as well as relief.⁵ While Wajdi highlighted individual and psychological contributions of religion as a belief system,

many other intellectuals joined him, underlining the role of religion in promoting social order and communal attachment as well as

prioritizing collective good and religiosity over individual and personal acts of piety.

Talal Asad’s characterization of religion and secular as Siamese twins⁶ seems to be that of religion and irreligion (dinsizlik) in the

late Ottoman context. Religion and irreligion were defined, contrasted, and carefully distinguished from one another. The two

binaries were juxtaposed and rendered to constitute one another. In the construal of religion as an abstract category of faith,

irreligion emerged as the key binary opposite. Accordingly, for instance, since religion was elaborated as natural, irreligion (dinsizlik) was portrayed as a mental or psychological abnormality or disease; lacking any spiritual, moral, or social benefit.⁷ The

expression dinsizlik was also much more polemical in usage than din. Intellectuals accused one another with being irreligious or

advocating irreligion, based on their claims to promote “true understanding” and correct practicing of Islam.⁸ Therefore, dinsizlik

entailed not merely the denial of the abstract category of religion  but targeted particular religions (Islam in this case), implying,

depending on one’s stance, deviations from established doctrines and practices versus the pursuit of false beliefs and invalid rituals.

In other words, dinsizlik was not simply atheism; it rather articulated polemical claims for correct dogma and practices.

In addition to dinsizlik, others such as ilhad, la-dini(lik), and laik were used to denote irreligion and/or secular(ism). The crux of

several journalistic essays and polemics turned on the question of the meaning of these words; how they compared to a political

organization of the separation of religious and political domains. Indisputably, any of these words used for irreligion were not mere

linguistic representations. They embodied (and were embedded in) socio-political realities whose nature of ongoing

transformations were echoing back to the linguistic realm in the form of coining new words as well reinterpreting the meaning(s) of

existing ones. Among all these verbal expressions of irreligion, dinsizlik seems to be coined in late mid-to-the-end of the nineteenth

century to denote precisely the opposite of din. In certain articles, dinsizlik and ilhad were uttered as synonyms but the latter term

predates the former, disseminating in Islamic theology books since earlier centuries.⁹ Yet even the meaning of ilhad seems to be

altered from rebellious or blasphemous of a particular religion, Islam, to a broader one, denoting the rejection of religion and denial

of faith and belief in general. It should also be mentioned that the word dinsizlik is more Turkish than ilhad, with the preeminent

suffixes -siz and -lik creating a strong meaning of without religious-ness, or the state of lack of religion.

Circa mid-1920s la-dini(lik) and laik(lik) were developed (or attained wider circulation) to convey a more specific meaning of the

demarcation of the domains of religion and politics. Several essays were penned, discussing the nature and composition of the

separation of religion and politics, debating the implications of regulations and laws passed by the Turkish Republican regime.¹⁰ It

deserves mentioning that while la-dini was derived from the Arabic conjugation to mean no- or not- religious, among the Ottoman

Turkish periodical essays I examined I did not come across any reference to the Arabic word for the secular,ʿalmaniyya. The

Turkish word for secularism, laik(lik), was currently adapted rather from the French term laïcité.

Intellectuals, journalists, scholars writing in Ottoman Turkish did not come up with an “original” Turkish word for secular(ism);

however, their linguistic creations and adaptions reflect the imperial legacy of multiple bridges and dialogues built between Turkish

and Arabic as well as Ottoman and Western European powers. Yet, conversations with the West — as also reflected in Ottoman

Turkish periodicals’ references to the ideas of numerous European philosophers and scholars on religion, such as those of

G. Friedrich Hegel, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Scleiermacher, or Max Müller — attained a more one-directional character. The

Western European modernity was turning more powerful than ever at the turn of the twentieth century in determining the contours

of others' linguistic, social, and political experiences with religion and irreligion.  The Ottoman/Turkish case shows that the

genealogies of concepts for religion and irreligion or secular were interwoven into one another's trajectories in such complex ways

that even a complete linguistic account is hard to be achieved. This blog essay tried to shed some light in this respect in disclosing

the interwoven meaning sets of the linguistic constructs for religion and irreligion within the Ottoman Turkish intellectual and

sociopolitical scenery.

This blog post is based on a paper presented at the 'Religion as a Changing Category of Muslim Practice' workshop in May 2019. 

³I would like to express special thanks to Dr. Alexander Henley and Nabeelah Jaffer for organizing the “Religion as a Changing Category of Muslim Practice” workshop. Insightful questions and comments raised during the workshop have been useful and are addressed in this essay.

⁴Aksekili Ahmed Hamdi, “Maddiyyun ve Meslekleri 1,” Sebilürreşad 19–201 (28 Haziran 1328/11 July 1912): 357–358.

⁵Ferid Vecdi, “Din nedir?” Sırat-ı Müstakim 23 (15 Kanunusani 1324/28 January 1909): 361–362.

⁷See, for example, respectively, Giridi D.S.K., “ Dinsizlik de bir maraz-ı ruhidir,” Sırat-ı Müstakim 76 (4 Kanunusani 1325/17 January 1910): 375–376, Seyyid Nesib, “Dindar ile dinsizin cemiyet-i beşeriyedeki mevkileri,” Ceride-i İlmiye 61 (15 Ramazan 1338/2 June 1920): 1937–1942; Eşref Efendizade Şevketi, “Din ve dinsizlik,” Ceride-i İlmiye 42 (Rebiulahir 1337/January 1919).

⁸See, for instance, Hafiz Baki, “Mağlubiyetimizi dinsizlik ve adem-i tesettürde aramalıyız,” İtisam 41 (11 Eylül 1335/11 September 1919): 445-44; Kılıçzade Hakkı, “Küçük hikaye: dinsizler!” İctihad 65 (9 Mayıs 1329/22 May 1913): 1421–1422.

⁹İlhan Kutluer, “İlhad,” in Türkiye diyanet vakfı İslam ansiklopedisi, https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/ilhad#2-islam-dusuncesi (accessed on 1 August 2019).