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Roundtable on Living Neoliberalism: Negotiating Markets and
Morality Outside the West
A Just Economy? Unifying and
Dividing the Islamic Intellectual
Field in Neoliberal Turkey
Gizem Zencirci*
In this paper, I argue that the relationship between religion and neo-
liberalism in non-Western contexts cannot be understood without paying
attention to the contested, dynamic, and fluid production of local know-
ledge. In order to substantiate this argument, I trace debates about de-
velopment, equality, class, labor, and wealth that circulate in the Islamic
intellectual field in Turkey. Specifically, I analyze the viewpoints of three
contemporary Turkish Muslim intellectuals who make different claims
about Islam’s economic teachings. Mustafa Özel proposes “entrepreneurial
Islam” as an alternative to state-regulated capitalism, Ihsan Eliaçık argues
that “social Islam” ordains Muslims to redistribute wealth, whereas Lütfi
Bergen suggests that “pastoral Islam” precedes Western capitalist mod-
ernity. I find that the disputed notion of a just economy is what unifies and
divides this intellectual field as a constitutive question that is disagreed
upon. This article thus calls for a recognition of the contingency, multipli-
city, and indeterminacy of Islamic-neoliberal assemblages.
*Gizem Zencirci, Department of Political Science, Providence College, 1 Cunningham Square,
Providence, RI 02908, USA. Email: fzencirc@providence.edu. I thank the editors of this special issue,
Kirsten Wesselhoeft and Deonnie Moodie, and the editor and reviewers at the Journal of the American
Academy of Religion for a remarkably constructive editorial and review process. I also would like to thank
Alev Çınar, Talha Köseoğlu, Halil Ibrahim Yenigün, and participants at the Political Thought in Turkey
Workshop for their helpful comments. Lastly, I thank Patrick Shea for his valuable research support.
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, September 2021, Vol. 89, No. 3, pp. 1–862
https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfab078
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