Belief in God, Religion and Secularism: Self-Identifications of Jewish-Muslim Mixed-Married Couples in Contemporary Turkey

This study destabilizes the dichotomous approach in secularization theories and in intermarriage literature, which views contemporary identities either as secular or religious, through the analysis of Jewish-Muslim mixed-married couples’ perceptions of their religious backgrounds in the officially secular state of Turkey. In-depth interviews with Jewish-Muslim mixed-married couples show that these individuals distinguish between “religion” as externally defined religious rules and “faith” as an unmediated relationship between God and the individual to explain their connection to their religious backgrounds and to identify themselves as secular. Thereby, they establish a hybrid position which I conceptualize as “faithful secularity” that incorporates both belief in God and secularity within the Turkish context. Unlike Jewish partners, Muslim partners have difficulty perceiving their religious background as one that goes beyond the religious identity; therefore, the distinction between religion and faith becomes particularly helpful for mixed-married Muslims to situate themselves with respect to their Muslim background. The concurrently secular and faithful identities of these Jewish-Muslim mixed-married couples break the artificial dichotomy between secularity and religiosity and pave the way for a new theory of secularization.