| religion activities of the men lowers their prestige both in their own eyes and in those of the men. As religious learning and piety are the most important paths to public esteem in the village, so their inaccessibility to women means both that no individual woman can achieve male respect in this way, and that the whole sex comes automatically at the lower end of this most important scale of estimation. 6. Religion and the Social Order. Islam is a complete system of life. The Koran, the traditions, and the commentators present a mass of detailed instructions on every aspect of human belief and behaviour. In a community, therefore, so thoroughly orthodox and solidly Moslem, |
| XIV.6 | p. 229 |
| one would expect religion to be all pervasive and to inform every department of life, and in the villages this is what one finds. The main terms of moral approval and disapproval are religious, “günah” , a sin, and “sevap”, meaning meritorious, pleasing to Allah. I do not mean that the ordinary words for good and bad “iyi”, and “fena”, or “kötü”, are not often used in moral senses both of people and of actions, only that the religious pair of words are in common usage, and are felt to be more fundamental. It might for example, in certain contexts, be possible to answer the question “Why is such an action good (iyi)?”, and be told that it is sevap, but something which is sevap cannot be further explained, except by quoting religious authority. The relation between religious belief and the behaviour of a group of people is highly complex and a discussion of it is full of semantic pitfalls. The word belief itself is unsatisfactory, since not only does “belief” in English cover a wide range of meanings but the application of its religious usage to another society’s religion may be to impose on a description, of that society English, or at least European, notions which have no place in it. This danger applies much less to an Islamic society than it might to others, since there does exist a body of theological and moral doctrine, which Moslems may be said to believe, and which influences both directly and indirectly their conduct. Moreover, the idea of believing is a fundamental in Islam as it is in Christianity. Moslems are the true believers and belief in the Prophet is a necessary condition of eternal salvation, as is in Christianity belief in the divinity of Christ. |
| When one says that a certain social institution is due to religious beliefs of a society, at least three distinct things might be meant. First, that a certain way of behaving is, or is thought by the society, to be the direct logical consequence of a certain proposition or command that is held to have been divinely revealed. Secondly, that certain behaviours result from values and habits formed by and carried |
| XIV.6 | p. 230 |
| over from behaviours which can be explained in the first way. Thirdly that certain ways of behaving result, in a practical way not connected with religious beliefs or attitudes from other ways of behaving which are the result of such beliefs or attitudes. Examples of all three of these types of relations between religion and other phenomena are found in the villages. The division of property between a man’s children is based on a direct instruction of Islamic law; the attitude of respect for education and for teachers which one finds throughout Turkey is borrowed from the respect was paid, before the introduction of secular education on western models, to learning as a mark of piety and religious dignity; and the present distribution of land in the villages, itself a direct result of Islamic command, in most cases precludes inherited privilege, with obvious consequences on village politics, and on social intercourse. Religious dogma prescribes specific consequences for disobedience of religious commands. Islamic cosmology includes a fiery punishment for those who have not acknowledged the Prophet, or who have heard and ignored his instructions. I was given an account of system of purgatory, by which believers might work off their sins, and attain at last to bliss. The villagers clearly believe this, and closely connect evil doing with suffering in the next life. It is difficult to assess strong this motive is likely to be in individual conduct - in a particular case, it might not function at all - but the reiteration that certain course of action is günah and will lead to posthumous punishment will dispose against it not only children but every one in the society. From the point of view of individual motivation, it is possible that the disapproval of the community, which underlies such reiteration - which is, one might almost say, symbolised by the religious mythology - may count for more than the actual fear of discomfort after death. This is a problem for social psychology, and I do not see how the issue could be empirically decided. But, generally, existence of and continual reference to these beliefs about |
| XIV.6 | 231 |
| hell fire does provide a sanction to enforce religious ordinances. There also seems to be, vaguer and not consistently carried through, a tendency to explain some misfortunes as the result of incurring Allah’s displeasure by irreligious conduct. Bilal, visiting me late one winter evening, slipped on a path of ice by my door, and was badly shaken up. He not only cut his hand, but seemed to be suffering from slight concussion, although he denied having banged his head. He suffered, after this, from fainting fits, and had to take to his bed for a few days. It was reported to me that the Upper Quarter, was saying that this was punishment for his befriending, or perhaps what they really meant was trying to monopolise the advantages of, a non-Moslem stranger. Even if in any specific cases such an explanation fails to gain general support, nevertheless, the type of explanation is accepted, and might therefore act as a deterrent. If, in some cases, misfortunes are held to have been the direct result of religious lapse, then fear of similar misfortune would be likely to discourage people from committing similar lapses. The villagers refer directly to religious authority to support almost every social rule. Their treatment of women I have already mentioned in the last chapter. They believe it to be the command of Allah that women should be segregated, and discount any utilitarian or humanitarian arguments for allowing them more freedom on these grounds. Equally, the duties towards kin and neighbours are often spoken of as religious duties. When the learned imams came to the village and lead the Friday ceremony, they stressed this duty among others. It is equally a religious duty to help the poor and needy, and to be kind and gentle to children. This does not, of course, prevent people from neglecting the needy or stop an angry adult from striking a child, but it does in part account for the willingness of most people, even the very poor, to give help in this way, and for the leniency generally shown to children, and the readiness of people to interfere to defend a child against an angry adult, regardless of the rights or wrongs of the case. |
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| Another class of persons to whom religion is said to enjoin good treatment is strangers. Few rules of conduct are more emphasised than the rule of hospitality. Whether in fact it is correct to relate the emphasis on hospitality primarily to religion seems doubtful. Hospitality is an obvious example of a social institution with a clear functional role, providing as it does a way of getting round the severe practical difficulty of absence of |
| inns of any sort in the villages. It is also partly to be accounted for in terms of reciprocity, or rather of do-as-you-would-be-done-by, a long recognised social principle at least as important as that of reciprocity. In addition, strangers are always worth encouraging, since in a limited society they provide amusement, interest and knowledge of the outside world. But whatever other explanations one might invent, the villagers themselves explain that they are hospitable to strangers because it is sevap so to treat them. During the quarrel (reported in Chapter XI.2, and VI.1) between Ibrahim (AK1), and his wife on one side and Fatma (mother of AK 3), supported by Ibrahim’s sister (married to PB 2) on the other, about land which Fatma’s husband should have inherited from his father, elder brother of Ibrahim, Fatma, among the abuse which she heaped on her adversaries, accused them of being “gavur”, heathens, because they refused to acknowledge her right to the land. This particular insult stung them, but their reply, that a good Moslem looks after his own rights, was feeble compared to the force of Fatma’s accusation. This claim, to base the equal division of property, especially land, among the sons, or in some cases all the children, on religious authority is by no means confined to this one rather vivid example. They constantly quoted religious sanction for such division. Yet, not only did they often, as I have reported in Chapter XI.2., leave the daughters out all together, they never carried out the correct Islamic procedure, although they knew it, for if they included a daughter in the inheritance, she would take a full share equal to the son’s share, and not a half share, as laid down in Islamic law. They even said that it had never |
| XIV.6 | 233 |
| been their custom to do so. The inconsistency does not disturb them, they shrug their shoulders and say it is their custom. Yet they continue to quote in support of this custom the sanction of Islam. The effect of this division on the absence of marked stratification of village society I will return to below, but connected with this absence there goes a certain readiness to treat everyone with at least formal respect. I hesitate to speak of an egalitarian attitude, because of the associations of the word. Neither birth nor poverty form a bar to associating with neighbours in the odalar, nor is anyone refused admission, or treated with rudeness because of his position in the social scale. This attitude also has religious backing. “Bizim babamiz Ademdir” - “Adam is the father of us all”, from which, I suppose, the unspoken argument runs that ultimately we are all of one kabile, and therefore should treat each other with mutual affection and tolerance. |
| Direct religious authority is sometimes quoted against Republican reforms. I was startled to be informed one evening in an oda, that Ali Osman, whom I had regarded as a good Moslem and was certainly pious in many ways, would be one of the first to be killed and cast into hell on the arrival of the Mahdi. On enquiring the reason for this, I was told that he would be punished along with all who had to do with the introduction and teaching of the new writing. On another occasion Bilal in a more serious conversation, said that the new writing was against their religion. “Two writings will not do”, he said, “One of them is bound to die”. In another conversation, it was said that the old men would not take on the office of muhtar, because to do so meant associating with the new government which they regarded as irreligious. The examples of the explanation of attitudes and behaviour in terms of direct religious beliefs which I have quoted is not intended to be exhaustive, rather to demonstrate the extent and range of religious authority in the society in matters which might not be expected to lie within the field of religion, and |
| XIV.6 | 234 |
| to provide evidence for the all pervasiveness of Islam, which as I said at the beginning of this section is no more than the general character of Islam would justify one in expecting. Of the three ways which I distinguished in which religion might effect the general behaviour of society, I have only so far considered the first, behaviours which are based or thought to be based on direct religious command. The second, the transfer of attitudes or habits of thought formed in religious matters to other spheres where they do not logically belong, cannot be so fully illustrated. Literacy and education are held in high esteem in a partially illiterate Islamic society, because reading means primarily “okumak”, religious recitation, and learning means religious knowledge. These attitudes of respect for education and for teachers are partly transferred to the new secular learning of the new government schools. There is an inconsistency in the attitude to these government schools, because of the opposition, to which I referred just above, to the new writing, but the conflict is not an open one. Certainly anyone with university education carries a great deal of prestige in the villages. A similar attitude strengthens the loyalty of the villagers to the government. Theoretically, the civil and religious authorities are not |