From Rumi to Buddha: Charting Alternative Spiritualities in Contemporary Türkiye

An anthology of diverse theoretical and methodological approaches to new spiritualities, this volume brings together interdisciplinary case studies from literature, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and religious studies. It focuses on a range of figures, movements, concepts, and practices associated with non-traditional spiritualities in contemporary Türkiye, examining how novel, eclectic, quasi-desacralized, and self-oriented forms of spirituality are increasingly favored over traditional ones. Grounded in the current cultural context, the contributors explore how spiritualities originally inspired by Southeast Asian traditions, Shamanic practices, and other sources are first transformed into Western forms, then adapted into Muslim-Turkish settings. The term ＂alternative＂ highlights the creative, eclectic, non-traditional, or even anti-religious nature of such practices. As the first volume of its kind, this book is an essential resource for scholars of new religious movements and alternative spiritualities in Türkiye.

Betül Avcı is Associate Professor and Chair of both Cultural Studies and Humanities at Boğaziçi University, İstanbul. She holds degrees in English Literature, History of Religions, and Islamic Studies, and earned her S.T.D. in Missiology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. Her research focuses on Muslim-Christian relations, alternative spiritualities, and the intercultural dynamics of identity. She is currently engaged in research on the nationalist foundations of the history of religions in modern Türkiye and on Muslim responses to modern ideas of progress. She has taught and published widely on Muslim-Christian relations, intellectual biographies, and alternative spiritualities.

H. Şule Albayrak is Associate Professor of Sociology of Religion in the Faculty of Theology at Marmara University, İstanbul. She lectures on topics including modernization, secularization, religion-state relations, and Islam in the modern world. She is the author of two books: Christian Fundamentalism (Hıristiyan Fundamentalizmi, 2007) and Religion-State Relations in the U.S. (ABD’de Din Devlet İlişkileri, 2018). She has also edited Being Woman: Religion, Tradition, Modernity, and Beyond (Kadın Olmak: İslam, Gelenek, Modernite ve Ötesi, 2019) and Privacy in All Its Aspects (Tüm Yönleriyle Mahremiyet, 2022).