Resisting Ramadan, or the sociology of Ramadan

Ramazan comes every year, imposing its own atmosphere on the whole country and even the world, with all its acts of worship and its customary ways of living. In this respect it was inevitable that it should serve as an important wall against which the interventions carried out during the Republican period to remove religion entirely from political and social life ran up.

The secularization policies, by abolishing religious education in schools, closing the tekkes and zawiyas, reducing official support for institutions of religious leadership as far as possible, and completely banning the Arabic script and religious education, did not merely break the influence of religion on political life; in fact they aimed at destroying its visibility in social life altogether.

Thus Turkey, which for centuries had led the Muslims of the whole world and was their homeland, also became the center of a practice of purging Islam such as has been experienced in no other country.

In an environment where the Arabic call to prayer, and even reading and writing the Holy Qur'an in Arabic letters, was forbidden, continuing to be religious turned into a mission requiring a strong spirit of resistance and struggle. In such an environment it was of course not so easy for the masses to display this resistance. In this process, for many years generations were raised in schools with a consciousness alien to religion, even one that demeaned religious rituals.

The people of Turkey did not experience a secularization within their own dynamics, such as the one that industrialization, urbanization or rising levels of prosperity bring with them; on the contrary, they were subjected to very strict and oppressive top-down secularization policies that no sociological environment supported.

As a result of the pressures applied to everything peculiar to Muslims, to dress and attire, customs and traditions, the prayer, the call to prayer and the fast, the visibility of Islam was suppressed to a very great extent for a long period. Some people perhaps resisted this pressure, but an important mass also took part by consenting.

Hardship produces consent too, though not in everyone. With the support of those who consented, these policies also found a social base.

Despite the atmosphere created by all these pressures, Ramazan has nevertheless never failed to come each year and remind of its own atmosphere for a month, even to make its shadow felt over the general atmosphere. If one follows the expression "the resistance of Ramazan" in the book Ramazan in Istanbul from the Ottomans to the Republic by the French historian François Georgeon, which Mustafa Armağan took up in his column the other day, the secret of where the secularization programs of the Republican period crashed can, in my view, be found.

Georgeon says: "Ramazan resists and does not fail to stamp the life of the great city with the seal of its own period. It resists, and while resisting it spreads and adapts itself" (p. 248, İş Bankası Yayınları).

In fact, in the struggle conducted during the Republican period, leaving almost no gap, very few people remained who showed resistance in an individual sense. Although the stories of old teachers trying to secretly teach the Qur'an to their children in hidden corners, the subject of Rasim Özdenören's story "Gül Yetiştiren Adam" (The Man Who Raised Roses), are widespread, they form a very small minority within the whole population. These examples are far from being able to create an atmosphere in society as a whole.

But is Ramazan like that? It comes as a teacher in its own right who knows very well what it is doing, spreads and breathes its own air, and shakes even people who have surrendered to everything in many other areas, ensuring that they do not become completely severed from their roots. Night and day, clouds, rain and snow are not events that leave anyone outside. Ramazan too comes without leaving anyone outside.

There is no information that fasting was banned in this period, but working hours in official institutions were arranged without taking the fast and the iftar times into account at all. More precisely, no special arrangement was deliberately made for the fast, on the grounds that it would be contrary to secularism. Those who fasted were ignored in the canteens and no special arrangements were made for them at all. In many official or social settings, those who fasted were shunned and so on. In fact, when official policies were in this direction, it was inevitable that belittling, mocking and marginalizing religious people would in time extend to pressure, exclusion and discrimination. Although all of this of course made things harder for those who fasted, it could not destroy the fast, and could not prevent it from sustaining its own habitus in public settings outside official ones.

While such an atmosphere aimed at suppressing the fast was being fed in social life, the economic benefit generated by the fitre, zakat and infaq, which are part of Ramazan, was not overlooked. Indeed, this field, just like the sacrificial hides, looked quite attractive and attempts were made to encircle it through semi-official associations such as the Children's Protection Society, the Turkish Aeronautical Association and the Red Crescent. For a period this perhaps remained the state discourse's only interest in Ramazan.

The side of Ramazan that appeared attractive to the secularists was also the mahya lights on the mosques, and they tried to use these too as a medium for conveying their messages for their own political discourse, like today's billboards.

"We are not that much infidels, surely; just because we are not fasting, should we not get up for sahur either?"

That non-fasters also get up for sahur or join the iftar is one of the innocent folk ironies of the month of Ramazan. But the officiousness of secularist politicians, who fought religion on every front, being Muslim enough, and only enough, to set their eyes on the Ramazan fitre, zakat and sacrificial hides never looked innocent.

Thus, even in the period when all the effects and manifestations of religion in social life were being sought to be destroyed through political interventions, Ramazan displayed its efficacy as a resisting actor, separate from every single individual.

In one respect Ramazan, with all its acts of worship, is a perfect example of what the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls habitus, the standardized behaviors that construct consciousness and the world.

In fact, I wanted to look at the sociological study titled "Belief and Religiosity in Turkey in Numbers," carried out today by Dr. Zübeyir Nişancı and his colleagues, precisely in the light of the effect of these resisting habitus. Let this be an introduction; let us continue afterwards.