Rethinking thedaˆr al‐harb: Social Change and Changing Perceptions of the West in Turkish Islam

Abstract

Since the end of the Cold War, many observers have directed their attention to what they perceive as the escalation of an older conflict between the West and Islam. The orientalist Bernard Lewis, for instance, builds much of his analysis on the classic Islamic contrast between daˆr al‐Islam and daˆr al‐harb (‘house of Islam’ and ‘house of war’), which, in his reading, demonstrates the inherent hostility of Islam toward non‐Muslims. Conflict, however, is only one aspect of the complex relationship of Islam to ‘Western’ society, and for the great majority of Muslims daˆr al‐Islam and daˆr al‐harb are no longer relevant categories for defining their relationship to non‐Muslim societies. Nevertheless, the problematic addressed by the conceptual opposition of daˆr al‐Islam/daˆr al‐harb points to an issue that has remained important to religious Muslims and has been answered in different ways at different times: in what kind of a society can one live a Muslim life? In Germany, many religious Muslims have recently undergone a significant shift toward a more ‘integrational’ stance. To understand this shift I examine the transnational experience of Turkish Muslims in Germany, particularly that of a ‘second generation’ of Turkish migrants, alongside recent developments in Turkey itself, where there has been an accelerated integration of Islam into modern Turkish society. In so doing, I sketch a historical process in which, for many religious Muslims in the Turkish Islamic tradition, liberal society has come to appear as a social context conducive to the practice of Islam.