Panel: POST-TARIQA SUFISM AND CHALLENGES OF MODERNITY



27.6 - SPIRITUAL REFRAINS OF SUPPRESSIVE ECHOES: SECULARIZATION, SUFISM, AND MUSIC THERAPY IN TURKEY

AUTHORS:
Zagra S. ( Universität Leipzig, Religionswissenschaftliches Institut ~ Leipzig ~ Germany)
Text:
This paper explores the transformation of Sufi practices in Turkey following the dissolution of institutional Sufi structures under early Republican secularization, focusing on how these ruptures shaped contemporary, non-institutional forms of spiritual practice. Rather than centering on established tariqas, I examine the case of TÜMATA — a contemporary music therapy group that draws on Sufi repertoires and the ritual of sema — as a telling example of post-tariqa continuity. Rooted in the state's suppression of religious orders through Law 677 in 1925, Turkey's modernization reforms not only dismantled Sufi lodges but also reframed religion. While earlier responses to this suppression included the quiet reformation of orders like the Nakşibendis through foundations and informal gatherings, TÜMATA represents a more recent and nuanced development: the reconfiguration of the Sufi ritual of sema as a therapeutic and spiritual (but not religious) practice. Through textual and ethnographic readings, I show how TÜMATA strategically privileges the term manevi (spiritual) over dini (religious), rendering sema as a healing method compatible with both secular public discourse and global wellness cultures. This shift not only bypasses the constraints imposed by the secular state, but also participates in the wider post-tariqa landscape in which communal hierarchies give way to individualized, experience-oriented spiritual engagement. As such, TÜMATA exemplifies a form of discursive Sufism shaped by the long afterlife of secular reforms — one that survives not in spite of secularism, but through its conceptual and linguistic negotiations.