Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Citizenship and Religious Language Reforms

博士生尤努斯·多根·泰利埃尔（纽约城市大学-研究生中心），由迈克尔·布林博士监督，将调查宗教语言改革运动的影响如何以及为什么各不相同。 特别是，这项研究将侧重于阐明在穆斯林占多数的国家世俗主义的背景下，在地面上的政治，通过比较如何努力改革宗教语言展开，以及它们如何影响穆斯林的自我认同和世俗citizenity.The研究有一个比较的设计，这将对比两个宗教语言改革举措在土耳其。第一个是世纪末宗教学者和知识分子提出的一系列改革建议，他们在伊斯兰复兴主义日益流行的情况下，希望授权在礼拜中使用土耳其语作为对抗原教旨主义的手段。第二个是目前的多元文化国家政策，支持库尔德语的宗教用途。前者试图将伊斯兰信仰民族化，同时对穆斯林公民对民族国家的忠诚日益担忧，而后者旨在将庞大的库尔德穆斯林少数民族融入民族社区，强调伊斯兰教是社会的粘合剂。本研究将结合社会科学的研究方法，探讨这两个不同时期的宗教语言与公民身份的关系。这些研究包括参与者观察、对关键信息提供者的采访、档案研究和多媒体文本分析，这些研究将共同阐明普通穆斯林公民以及改革者自己促进、理解和谈论伊斯兰改革倡议的各种方式。这项研究很重要，因为它将有助于更好地理解如何、为什么、现代世俗政府选择支持宗教改革会带来什么样的后果。 这些发现还将为社会科学理论提供关于现代性构成的信息。资助这项研究也支持研究生的教育。

Doctoral student Yunus Dogan Telliel (City University of New York - Graduate Center), supervised by Dr. Michael Blim, will investigate how and why religious language reform movements vary in their effects. In particular, the study will focus on elucidating the contextual, on-the-ground politics of secularism in a Muslim-majority country by comparing how efforts to reform religious language unfold and how they affect Muslim self-identity and notions of secular citizenship.The research has a comparative design, which will contrast two religious language reform initiatives in Turkey. The first one is a set of reform proposals in the late 20th century put forth by religious scholars and intellectuals who, amid the growing popularity of Islamic revivalism, wished to authorize the use of Turkish in worshipping as a means of countering fundamentalism. The second is the current multiculturalist state policy that endorses the religious use of Kurdish. The former sought to nationalize Islamic faith, alongside rising worries about Muslim citizens' loyalty to the nation-state, while the latter aims to integrate the large Kurdish Muslim minority into the national community, emphasizing Islam as a social cement. To examine this relationship between vernacularized religious language and citizenship in these two different periods, the researcher will employ a combination of social scientific methods. These include participant observation, interviews with key informants, archival research, and multimedia text analysis, which together will elucidate the variable ways that Islamic reform initiatives have been promoted, understood, and talked about by ordinary Muslim citizens as well as reformers themselves.The research is important because it will contribute to better understanding of how, why, with what consequences modern secular governments may choose to support religious reform. The findings also will inform social science theory of what constitutes modernity. Funding this research also supports the education of a graduate student.