As if They Will Never Die: Islamism’s Dream of Capital Accumulation

Piousness is not a wisdom that guides the individual only in matters pertaining to the afterlife. On the contrary, every religion is a theory formulated to organize the profane world. Depending on the conditions of the times and community, this theory manifests itself in every field of daily life and foremost in economic relationships; thus, the faith is reinforced or dissolved. In Turkey, Islamism, which has been on the rise since the 1990s, has been through an adventure in which the profane religious experience found a field of application on the state scale during AKP rule. The “solidarity pools” created by the sects on the margins of the economy constitute the basis of this adventure. However, as the scale expands, major accidents become inevitable both in itikat (conviction) and in the administration of the profane world.