Fotini Tsibiridou

Rationalizing Popular Islam among the Slav Speaking Pomaks in Greece: Religious Experiences and Politics of Religion

Fotini Tsibiridou - Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki (Greece), ft@uom.gr

The study explores the conjunction of popular Islam with the Bektashi Sufi and Sunni traditions. The fieldwork of the Slav speaking Pomaks was conducted in the mountainous area ofRhodopi, in Greek Thrace. The analysis of this case study in the area populated by Slav speaking populations (the Pomaks) helps to understand critically the modalities of each religious tradition as well as their interconnections. As many examples show, the Muslim traditions seem to have different and often contrasting origins: while the Sufis and the popular Islam promote the principle of unity between human beings and nature, the Sunnis construct themselves around a constant and agonizing production of orthopraxy and in open dialogue with power. The dilemma between popular practices and Islamic scholarly tradition is further complicated by the impact of western theology, scientific worldviews, and the Pomaks' status of a linguistic as well as religious minority within Orthodox Greek environment. The transition from popular practices to more rationalized forms of religiosity generates a new field of dynamic confrontations.

Keywords: Sunni Islam, Sufi traditions, Bektashi, religiosity, popular Islam, politics of religion, Pomaks, Greek Thrace, Balkans.

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Religious experience and policy in the field of religion: introductory remarks in a comparative perspective

This research belongs to the discipline "anthropology of religion" 1, which in a particular socio-historical context is always focused, on the one hand, on the study of the experience of religiosity, and on the other hand, on the policy in the field of religion. In any case, as the methodology of anthropological research shows, these two levels are constantly moving into each other. Anthropological deconstruction seeks to shed light on the religious experience of individuals and how this experience relates to public religious policies. In addition, when referring directly to the topic of this work, when speaking about "religious experience", we must take into account the relationship between school Muslim theology, which goes "from above" and tends to dominate, and the practices of popular Islam, which go "from below". It should be noted that Muslim folk practices, as is the case everywhere in the Balkans, interact with folk practices, and sometimes even with Orthodox Christianity.2 At the same time, when discussing policy in the field of religion, it is necessary to take into account the nature of the connection between religious identity and other constructs of social and national identity, that is, in the terms of M. Moss, broader "I-technologies"3. Whatever the approach, it is necessary to identify the grammar or metaphysics of tradition that stimulates, motivates and articulates, but also defines, in combination with other sources, specific types of religiosity.4
1. См. Bowie, F. (2000) The Anthropology of Religion: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.

2. Norris, H. -T. (1993) Islam in the Balkans: Religion and Society between Europe and the Arab World. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.

3. См. эссе Марселя Mocca: Mauss, M. (1979) "A Category of the Human Mind: the Notion of Person; the Notion of Self", in Mauss, M. Sociology and Psychology, pp. 1 - 25. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Так же см. Carrithers, M., Collins, S. and Lukes, S. (eds) (1985) The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History. Cambridge University Press.

4. See the following works for the broader context of Muslim studies: Mahmood, S. (2009)" Religious Reason and Secular Affect: An Incommensurable Divide?", Critical Inquiry 35: 836-862; Asad, T. (2003) Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press; Asad, T. (1986) The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam. Washington:

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Turning to the example of the Muslim population of the Balkans, we achieve historical contextualization in situ. The comparative analysis of different Muslim traditions in the Balkans is particularly important: the focus is on the actions of individuals who practice different versions of the Muslim tradition in global or local contexts, and mainly in the political sphere, that is, through power relations.5 One striking example is Sufi traditions, which sometimes submit to religious rationalization in line with Sunnism, and sometimes rely on political power to resist the dominant variant of Sunnism and the associated system of power.6
Since the end of the 18th century, Sufi traditions have been undergoing a modernist rationalization and restructuring, both in their Sunni and Shiite forms (as, for example, in Albania) .7 Furthermore, as marginalized and discriminated communities are increasingly clearly retreating under the pressure of rationalization, religious identity is increasingly identified with national or ethnic identity.8 Islam interpreted in this framework is becoming, especially after the 1990s, a trivial reality.

Center for Contemporary Arab Studies - Georgetown University; Anjum, O. (2007) "Islam as a Discursive Tradition. Talal Asad and His Interlocutors", Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and Middle East 27 (3): 656 - 672.

5. From the general literature on the topic, see: Popovic, A. (1986) L' Islam Balkanique: les musulmans du sud-est Europe dans la period post-Ottomane. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz; Popovic, A. (1994) Les Derviches Balkaniques hier and aujourd'hui. Istanbul: Isis.; Norris, H. -T. (1993) Islam in the Balkans: Religion and Society between Europe and the Arab World.

6. For a preliminary analysis, see: Tsibiridou, F. (2014) "IslamicTradition and Minority Condition in the Balkan framework; Fieldwork Motivations in a Comparative Perspective", in Contemporary Islam: Dynamics of Muslim Life. Springer Publishers (in print).

7. De Rapper, G. (2002) "Culture and the Reinvention of Myth in a Border Area", in S.Schwandner-Sievers, B.J.Fisher (eds) Albanian Identities. Myth and History, pp. 190 - 200. London: Hurst & Co; Doja, A. (2001) The Politics of Religion in the Reconstruction of Identities: The Albanian Situation. Tirana: AIIS Press [English-Albanian Bilingual Reprint], [http://archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00486061, accessed on 14.06.2014]; Doja, A. (2003) "Confraternal Religion: From Liberation Theology to Political Reversal", History and Anthropology 14 (4): 349 - 381; Doja, A. (2006) "Spiritual Surrender: From Companionship to Hierarchy in the History of Bektashism", NUMEN -International Review for the History of Religions 53 (4): 448 - 510; Doja, A. (2008) Bektashism in Albania: Political History of a Religious Movement. Tirana: AIIS (Albanian Institute for International Studies).

8. Aminov, A (1997) Turkish and Other Muslim Minorities of Bulgaria. London, Hursh&Co.

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technology of formation of individual and collective identity 9.

In this context, in the context of late modernity, two or three competing policies are emerging in the wider Balkan area, coming "from above", at the initiative of the elites: the first, in Albania, can be called a Shiite policy supported by Iran; the second is based on the so-called "Wahhabi intermezzo"10; the third, trying to connect the two countries with each other. the old principles of Sufism with a modern Protestant ethic, aims to return to the Ottoman-Balkan version of. Needless to say, all these trends in religious policies conducted "from above" do not necessarily lead to a similar and predictable experience of religiosity coming "from below". Such religiosity can be "grasped" precisely with the help of the methods of the anthropology of religion, exploring the vital, embodied experience, those "I-technologies" that serve as the basis for social ties formed in global and local contexts at the level of economics, politics and communications in a broad sense.

9. Bougarel, X. (2005) "The Role of Balkan Muslims in Building a European Islam", in EPC Issue Paper 43 [www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Digital-Library/Publications/Detail/? id=l7029, accessed on 14/06/2014]; Clayer, N. (2006a) "L'islam balkanique aujourd'hui entre science et recherche de valeurs", in G. Fussman Croyance, raison et deraison, Colloque annuel, pp.319 - 339. Paris: Odile Jacob.; Clayer, N. (2008) "Behind the Veil. The Reform of Islam in Inter-War Albania or the Search for a 'Modern' and 'European' Islam", in N. Clayer and E.Germain (eds) Islam in Inter-War Europe, pp. 128 - 155. London: Hurst; Clayer, N. (2011) "Adapting Islam to Europe: The Albanian Example", in Halshs-00578 757-version 1, 22 mar 2011 [http://hal.inria. fr/docs/oo/57/87/57/PDF/clayer-adaptislam-final. pdf, accessed on 14/06/2014]; Kostovicova, D. & Bojlcic-Dzelilovic, V. (2006) "Europeanizing the Balkans: Rethinking the Post-Communist and Post-Conflict Transition", Ethnopolitics 5 (3): 223 - 241.

10. Oktem, K. (2010) New Islamic Actors after the Wahhabi Intermezzo: Turkey's Return to the Muslim Balkans. European Studies Centre, University of Oxford; Helsinki Charter (2011) Radical Groups in the Balkans: The Case of Wahhabi Jasareuic. Helsinki Bulletin.

11. I am referring to the Fethullah Gulen movement. See Vicini, P. (2007) Gullen's Rethinking of Islamic Pattern and Its Socio-Political Effects. London, UK. См. также Bougarel, X. "The Role of Balkan Muslims in Building a European Islam"; Clayer, N. L'islam balkanique aujourd'hui entre science et recherche de valeurs; Clayer, N. "Saints and Sufis in Post-Communist Albania"; Duijzings, G. (2000) "The Making of Egyptians in Kosovo and Macedonia", in G. Duijzings Religion and Politics of Identity in Kosovo, pp. 132 - 156. New York: ColumbiaU P.; Schwartz, S. (2010) The Heritage of Ottoman Islam in the Balkans. Illyria [New York] [Presented to Indiana University Bloomington Conference The Turks and Islam, September 12, 2010, revised January 2012] [http://www.islamicpluralism.org/1663/the-heritage-of-ottoman-islam-in-the-balkans, accessed on 14.06.2014].

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In this article, however, we set a somewhat different goal: to find out how, in the previous period - during the last two decades of the twentieth century - and outside the post - conflict post-socialist environment, as in the former Yugoslavia12-the modernization and rationalization of religion took place in the mountainous region of Thrace ,where Slavic speakers had long lived pomaki. We will look at the relationship between two traditions: the bektashiya, a Sufi order embedded in the practices of popular Islam, and Sunni practices associated with central power structures. These issues will be considered from a historical perspective and in the context of both local and supralocal connections. Dynamic "tradition management" 13 creates a grammar in which relationships and habitus fit (and rewrite); at the same time, these practices, in turn, modify the very grammar of the tradition.

The presented anthropological analysis is based on previously collected ethnographic materials14, which indicates the flexibility with which the local Muslim population perceives religion as a practically realizable embodied experience15. In the first part of the article, I will focus on the ways of interpreting religiosity in popular Bektashi practices (although there is some contradiction here: after all, the Bektashiya order itself claims to be a "school" rather than a popular organization). Bektashiyas are usually perceived negatively, and they are sometimes called kyzylbashi (redheads). Among the brotherhood's followers, Muslim practices are usually intertwined with shamanic ones.,

12. Of course, the change of government in the former socialist Balkan countries, as well as the war in Bosnia and Kosovo, were events that had a direct impact on the Muslim minority population of Greek Thrace. All these changes in the Balkans have marked a reformatting of national and religious identity, mainly in accordance with the dominant Turkish models.

13. Majid, А. (2000) Unveiling Traditions: Postcolonial Islam in a Polycentric World. Duke University Press.

14. Tsibiridou, F. (2000) Les Pomak dans la Thrace grecque. Discours ethnique et pratiques socioculturelles. Paris: L' Harmattan; Tsibiridou, F. (2005) "'Comment peut-on etre Pomak' en Grece aujourd'hui?" Ethnologie Frangaise XXXV (2): 291 - 304; Tsibiridou, F. (2007) "'Silence' as an Idiom of Marginality among the Greek Pomaks", in K. Steinke &. Ch. Voss (eds) The Pomaks in Greece and Bulgaria. A Model Case for Borderland Minorities in the Balkans, pp. 49 - 73. Miinchen: Verlag Otto Sangher.

15. Mahmood, S. Religious Reason and Secular Affect: An Incommensurable Divide?

16. In the framework of ecstatic practices.

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and sometimes-with Orthodox people. And all these practices are interwoven into a complex and fluid power/knowledge game in conditions of social poverty, that is, in conditions where the community occupies a minority position and has a marginal position in the modern nation-state.17
Further, since the politics of nation-building and state-building, as well as the processes of minoritization, are involved in this game, in the second part of the article I will consider why religious politics is important for the formation of religious feelings and modern identity. In the case of Greece, minority status is determined by the absence of the Greek language and Orthodox Christianity - two dominant features of Greek nationality. The situation in this mountainous region of Thrace, which has developed since 1920, requires a revision of the dynamics of power relations in the sphere of popular religiosity, as well as in the field of social interactions. Ethnographic data, as it seems to us, refute some common ideas about modern forms of religiosity, in particular, in Islam, as well as the prevailing views on the heterodoxy of the Bektashi version of Sufism in this region.

17. Some points should be briefly explained here. Ritual specialists who perform healing and witchcraft practices (old women who remove the evil eye, healers-bektashiya), even those who practice "black" magic (old women, Sunni teacher - khoja) are known for their charisma (in this context, the concept of charisma (charisma) includes such phenomena as karamat (miraculous phenomena that happen to "special" people or are performed by them) and baraka (grace)). For more information, see Werbner, P. and Basu, H. (1998) Embedding Charisma. Modernity, Locality, and Performance of Emotion in Sufi Cults, pp. 3 - 27. London and New York: Routledge. In the minds of humans, they have enough power to both provoke bad events and free the human body and mind from bad energy. However, in the context of social poverty, old women who remove the evil eye and bektashiya healers gain power through the charisma of "exchange" (in the Sufi sense) to a much greater extent than Sunni khojas and women engaged in witchcraft who are aimed at generating profit (material or social capital in the form of influence and the ability to manipulate people). In conditions of social poverty and being in a minority position, people's ideas and practices tend to equate in their interpretations both charismatic ritual specialists (healing, giving, distributing) inspired by Sufi principles, and powerful and dangerous ones (old women and Sunni Khojas) motivated by the desire for mercantile manipulation of people and the acquisition of material benefits. Tsibiridou, F. Les Pomak dans la Thrace grecque. Discours ethnique et pratiques socioculturelles.

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Popular Islam as an Embodied Religious and Social Experience: in the Shadow of the Bektashi Tradition

We must begin our analysis by describing the characteristics of popular Islam, which is overshadowed by the Bektashi heritage of Thrace. First, this Thracian bektashiya tradition includes more social and embodied practices than spiritual and school practices. Secondly, the so-called bektashiya tradition plays an important role in the politics of otherness, exclusivity, and various types of "inner orientalism"18. Finally, the Bektashi tradition in Thrace exists at the sociopolitical level of widespread power practices that result in silence. Silence as the prevailing form of communication is accepted by the community living in a complex, multiethnic region and having the status of a minority, with complex internal divisions reflected in a series of names: Muslims, Christians, Kyzylbash, Alevis, Greeks, Turks, Pomaks, poor, rich, outcasts," those very people", " other/others " 19.

People living in the Rhodope Mountains and not belonging to the Bektashiya, before the era of modernization, practiced folk Islam based on the principle of the unity of man and nature, without dogmatic differences, "living" religiosity physically and materially, in the context of social interactions and interchange. It was a kind of syncretism, in which religiosity was formed as a comprehensive cosmology that combines the integrity of the human body with the structure of the social personality. This is why cosmology is here linked to social reality: It is directly related to illness and health and aims to regulate social life in a spirit of equality. In this context, practices of negative interdependence, or "reciprocity" - negative reciprocity ("evil eye" and other magical actions), are perceived as mechanisms of control and (re -) control of the situation.understanding various forms of power (secular, religious, cosmological). An important level of observation is the local habitus of sociality

18. Todorova, M. (1997) Imagining the Balkans. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

19. Tsibiridou, F. "'Comment peut-on etre Pomak' en Grece aujourd'hui?"

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and religiosity, which has developed on the basis of these practices of negative interdependence 20.

Let's take a closer look at these practices.

Practices of negative reciprocity. In the mountains of Thrace, "jealousy and envy" (zilia and kiskan) are the leading motivations that justify the practice of reciprocity. In these practices, customs related to witchcraft originate, for example::

- control over the circulation of benefits (for example, djadilik 21);

- control of sexual relations (karatchalik practices aimed at breaking the bond between men and women);

- control over a person's social behavior (pravina). The intervention of "certain women "(sic) or certain religious authorities (khojas) who perform certain customary actions can make victims antisocial, asexual, or hypersexual, and thus lead to abnormal social behavior and psychological problems. In the few cases where this happens to women, they become mentally ill ("crazy").

If someone wants to achieve the rejection of social benefits or, conversely, to make up for them, he must turn to people who have power (me dinami / te dunami / me Suva/tiri [Greek. 'with power'] is a term used in Greece) who are considered to have the necessary verbal skills and knowledge to achieve these goals. Such" knowledgeable people " are considered to be religious authorities (khojas) who cause or remove damage, and old women who practice jadylyk. The same category of people with knowledge or power should include Bektashi healers (muskadji), whose spells help people avoid the tricks and traps set by the jinn; these also include old women who can heal from the consequences of unintentional behavior.

20. "Mutual exchange" is a popular term from the field of economic anthropology, and in its negative meaning is usually used to describe destructive social mechanisms, such as black magic and witchcraft. Tsibiridou, F. Les Pomak dans la Thrace grecque. Discours ethnique etpratiques socioculturelles; Tsibiridou, F. "'Silence' as an Idiom of Marginality among the Greek Pomaks".

21. Jadylyk (from Jada (Turkish) - witch) - witchcraft.

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the evil eye (nazar). In the face of these diverse threats, social actors experience feelings of "fear and shame" and subject themselves to incessant self - control and abstinence, the purpose of which is to make sure that a person does not attract attention to himself: keep his mouth shut, show modesty and respect for tradition, demonstrate restraint and lack of aggression.

Evil spirits and self-control skills. According to one of my informants, who received a formal education, people in this area only care about jinn and peri-things that are materially similar to the human body. For the local theological and cosmological version of Islam, the relationship and personal contacts of a person with these spirits are fundamentally important. They are called "he" or " it "(in Greek, in the masculine gender [singular or plural] or in the neuter gender [singular]) and put the aggressiveness of men and women to the constant test. Here's how it works.

Evil spirits live in external spaces called kirda, vonka, or pot; these are any spaces outside the home-on the street or in the nearest neighborhood. These invisible forces can cause harm to the human body if people respond to their provocations with aggression or violation of certain rules. When these invisible spirits want to anger people, they take the form of small animals: a cat, a frog, a turtle, etc.

After certain violations, the jinn come and take possession of a certain organ of the body, causing illness (blindness, paralysis, stroke, etc.). Violations of the moral "magico-religious" code [my term. - F. C.] represent a violation of boundaries (physical, spatial, temporal, or moral) on the part of individuals-either because people do not take the trouble to make a verbal request to these beings, or, even worse, because they treat them unkindly. In self-defense, people say: "Don't pour water out of the door at night: you can scald them" (and therefore make them angry); "don't shake the tablecloth out of the door at night," and more importantly, "don't pee outside at night.": you can urinate on them, and that really pisses them off." Before doing anything like this, you should ask for permission by saying a prayer, bismila22. Even

22. Prayer formula that opens suras and is widely used in the cult practice of Islam: "In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful to all in this world

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if you're just going to touch something, you have to ask for permission. Sometimes "something " or" someone " comes and asks for food to test you. In this case, you must give "him" something to eat and let him go. The worst thing you can do is to hit "him": then you will immediately suffer misfortune. This can happen during the day, but most likely at night, around four o'clock in the morning 23.

Harmful to the integrity of the human body is considered to be the contact of the internal with the external: for example, the inner side of the body or at home with something that is outside of them. The only way to protect yourself is to resort to spells cast by the Bektashi muskaji (healers). They make muska (Turkish amulet) and karatchale (amulets made of a special kind of wood) and put inside the amulets sayings from ancient Egyptian astrological books, a crystal of copper sulfate and a piece of karachalic, literally - "black wood". Healers draw their power from the fact that they possess these books. As they say, " these people deal with them [with them = with "these" things, with "such" things]", "they speak the same language with them". In any case of illness, the patient should look for "someone even stronger than the healers": a special teacher (hoja) who is "strong enough and has the power" to heal. Thus, people are extremely attentive not only to their physical actions, but also to the ways of expressing themselves in conversation. All these precautions that make up a self-control skill shape social behavior and religious experience. The practice of the evil eye (nazar)also belongs to this context as the main habitus of social control and bodily Self-technologies operating on the edge of religious experience.

The primacy of the evil eye and social control. Nazar, which literally means "eye" (in Greek) or " gaze "(in Turkish), is associated with acts of involuntary envy and, in particular, with greed or longing (tahmakia), that is, with"a greedy person whose eyes are always insatiable". Nazar is a way of looking at someone, as a result of which this person loses the ability to interact socially. It is associated with desire and is considered an involuntary act. Even parents can, in spite of

and Merciful only to the believers at the End of the World!"

23. Field materials of the author - interviews taken by the author in the Rhodope villages belonging to the municipality of Komotini and Evros.

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of their own free will, jinx their children. The evil eye is caused by the power of the "eye / gaze". To protect against the evil eye, people use "anything that can distract the eye": a red rag in tobacco fields and gardens, an animal's skull in a barnyard, and so on. A strong desire - the feeling that motivates the "evil eye" - can be generated by various types of deprivation. It is said that anyone who is unhappy runs the risk of "passing away with their eyes wide open" from desire. It is believed that sick people, cranks, people who are too religious, unsociable, and widows have the ability to deliberately evil eye. When there is reason to assume the action of the evil eye, under suspicion (as victims or suspects) are people who are fed by two women, and blue-eyed - and in total these can be up to 80 % of the population, as well as people who are dissatisfied. Generally speaking, people who are somewhat flawed and deprived of material or social benefits look suspicious. Conversely, "the healthy and good-natured do not need red rags" (they are not in danger of becoming either victims or culprits of the evil eye). Plants, animals, people -all living things are equally capable of being affected by the evil eye. For example, garden flowers and tobacco on plantations can wither and die, just as it happens to a person who has been jinxed. To protect themselves from the evil eye, people wear amulets called karachale: they consist of a black twig and a copper vitriol crystal called sintsae.

To" remove " the evil eye, its victims first turn to the mistress of the house, who will have to say basmala and powder the children's cheeks with the ashes of a burnt ram's horn. When it comes to animals, a mevlut is performed for them, a prayer that casts out spirits; it is recited by khoja. If the symptoms persist (dizziness, weakness, high fever, and insomnia in children), people go to one of the two women in the village who "pour lead" .24 This customary practice is applied to the entire body, from head to toe, and finally involves a ritual cleansing with water. It is believed that the noise made by cooling lead and cutting scissors takes away half the power of the evil eye; cleansing with water brings life back to the body.

24. Practice involves pouring hot lead into water, which makes a noise.

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In my opinion, the evil eye is a practice of negative reciprocity, carried out at the edge of religious experience in the context of poverty and deprivation. It involves a form of social control generated by desire and expressed either in the view of (what is perceived as) excess or in the view of (what is perceived as) lack. In any case, the energy of the evil eye has a short-term effect on the body of a person or plant. These bodies are protected by charms placed between the body and the outside world: charms that have the same spatial and symbolic effect as, for example, a woman who finds herself between a man and another woman in order to break up a couple. It should be noted that charms and this magical practice are designated by the same terms: karachale and karachalyk, respectively. In short, the practice of the evil eye reminds these people of the indissoluble unity between man and nature; it is a kind of religious habitus that we find in the Sufi tradition of the past.

Religious policy and minority status. Modernization and rationalization of Popular Islam in Greek Thrace

As part of the broad modernization process taking place in the mountainous regions of Greek Thrace at the end of the twentieth century, we must now consider the parameter of minority status, which is critical for both social transformation and religious experience. It is obvious that the status of a cultural minority is used for political purposes, which in this case is expressed in the desire to strengthen their positions on the part of charismatic healers and influential Sunni Khojas. In turn, we believe that under the growing pressure of these new power discourses, modernization processes are profoundly changing the meaning and forms of religious behavior and rituals.

Here I will try to show how the construction of minority Pomaks in mountainous Thrace was determined by broader historical and social processes. After the incorporation of Thrace into the Greek national state (1920) and the population exchange between Greece, Turkey, and Bulgaria, this Greek periphery was inhabited by

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Greek-speaking majority and predominantly Turkish-speaking Muslim minority. However, in reality, the" Muslim minority "officially recognized by the Treaty of Lausanne includes a group of Slavic-speaking Muslim populations originating in the Rhodope Mountains and known as "Pomaks" .25 In the context of nationalist confrontation, especially between Greece and Turkey, the population was in search of a new, modern civil and religious identity. If throughout the 20th century Muslim enclaves adopted a Turkish ethnic structure, then later, after the 1990s, the practice of national self-assertion led to the redefinition of the Muslim minority and to its division on the basis of either Turkish or emerging Pomak ethnicity.26
The immediate and long-term consequences of this political situation have transformed local religiosity, social interaction skills, and previous ways of attributing symbolic power. The Bektashi tradition, acting as the successor of popular Islam in the region, had to undergo a transformation by those new political players who were looking for ways to use it symbolically. For example, thanks to the ingenuity of modernizers who promoted Turkish national interests, local Bektashi festivals (panayir) were transformed into events that affirm national identity and Sunni orthopraxia. This latter included, among other things, the sponsorship of holidays by modern Turkish organizations (instead of the Bektashi chiefs-agha) and the construction of an additional Sunni mosque next to the Sufi tekke in Roussa.

All these changes have occurred as a result of profound changes in the daily life of people (mechanization of agricultural production and transport, urbanization, monetarism, ideology of consumption, etc.). Modernization among the Thracian minority for political reasons

25. Tsibiridou, F. Les Pomak dans la Thrace grecque. Discours ethnique et pratiques socioculturelles.

26. Pomak nationalism is supported by Greek nationalism because it is antagonistic to Turkish nationalism.

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it was delayed for almost forty years. This fact created a huge gap between the Christian majority and the Muslim minority, especially in the mountainous regions of Greek Thrace. Nevertheless, since the 1990s, the processes of massive modernization and intensive urbanization began to have a strong impact on the religiosity of the Muslim population. The religiosity of Muslims moving from mountainous regions to cities is built around the mechanisms of direct control by male religious leaders (Sunni Khojas). We can see that during the late urbanization of the 1990s, the practices described above, which involved women and Bektashi healers and which once influenced traditional mechanisms of identity and social control, are disappearing. The shift in the center of gravity from the religious power centered on women to the ethnocentric power of men implies a disciplinary adaptation to a more puritanical and modest type of behavior (orthopraxia), mainly on the part of women, who are increasingly covering themselves with a headscarf. The same shift also implies that both sexes of the Slavic-speaking Pomaks will acquire the dominant Turkish language.

In addition, the processes of modernization and urbanization, the withdrawal of the population from rural areas to cities means that traditional healers and witches lose their former roles as carriers of knowledge, who selflessly provided their services and maintained the traditional balance in a closed community. As people move to cities, these roles are reserved only for Sunni spiritual leaders. In some cases, they serve as modern urban shamans; in others, they control the orthopraxia of Islam (and therefore require believers to visit mainly central rather than local mosques in the neighborhood); and in others, they act as intermediaries between the people and the Committee on Minority Affairs or the Turkish Consulate in Komotini 27. they emphasize the strengthening of Turkish identity, and sometimes also act as guarantors and intermediaries

27. The Turkish consulate in the Greek Thracian capital of Komotini, which has been present here since the 1930s, not only incessantly generates nationalist antagonism between Greece and Turkey. It also serves as a center of attraction for the Muslim minority, contributing to the formation of Turkish national consciousness within the Greek national state.

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between officials from the Greek-Christian majority and people looking for work. In one way or another, they either benefit financially or multiply their symbolic capital - prestige and power.28
In this context, Islam began to acquire standard and rational characteristics of orthopraxia, corresponding to the official, dominant Islamic narrative of the Sunni urban tradition. The rural practices of popular Islam, including those adopted in backward mountain regions, came to be regarded as heretical. Any rural religious practice becomes a heresy that must be eliminated or reinterpreted within the framework of Sunni Islam. Orthopraxia, in turn, usually begins to serve Turkish nationalism, which means abandoning all previous Sufi meanings and practices, such as prestige and generosity (as was seen in the role of the Aga as sponsors of festivals), and the Sufi principle of the unity of man and nature. Thus, the minority state gave rise to policies that significantly affected not only the way people think about national ideologies, but also their personal subjective self-awareness, collective identity, and religious feelings.29
Concluding remarks

Taking into account the interrelationships between religious policy and religiosity, we need to take a more systematic look at the genealogy of practices common in a given religious tradition before the beginning of Westernization and modernization, and understand the mechanisms of social influence of religiosity in the past and today. In the given Balkan example, we can trace the transformation of Bektashi Sufi religiosity and popular Islam into Sunni Turkish orthopraxia. In the course of our research, we assume that the old practices of religiosity associated with agriculture, with the rural environment, allow people to maintain a closer relationship with the surrounding nature,

28. Tsibiridou, F. Les Pomak dans la Thrace grecque. Discours ethnique et pratiques socioculturelles.

29. Ibid; Tsibiridou, F. "Comment peut-on etre Pomak"; Tsibiridou, F. "'Silence' as an Idiom of Marginality among the Greek Pomaks".

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follow a more cyclical view of time. We also assume that, in short, Sufi folk beliefs and practices are gradually being transformed not only under the pressure of irreconcilable Sunni Orthopraxia and narrowly nationalistic Turkish preaching of urban Khoja, but mainly because people move to cities and lose direct contact with nature, and as a result, the unity of man and the environment is undermined.

On the other hand, due to practical considerations, the timing of the holidays plays an important role: since the festivities are moved to weekends to make them more accessible to participants, and the organization of these holidays passes to representatives of new associations associated with Turkish nationalism, the symbolic meanings attached in the bektashiya tradition to the veneration of the bab (heads of the Baba). communities), the redistribution of benefits within the community, the expression of respect for certain key personalities (for example, aga-sponsors of celebrations), gradually come to naught. However, such a shift in time opens up the possibility for new participants to appropriate the meaning of previous festivals, which are now considered "exotic" and" heretical " customs, subject to reinterpretation in the prevailing religious (Sunni) and political (within the framework of Turkish nationalism) discourses. The emergence of these new participants is closely linked to the end of dependence on the old social networks and the formation of new ones, which now include representatives of minorities along with urban politicians, specialists, journalists and scientists - external to Bektashiya and to Turkish-Muslim minorities in general).

All the religious policies outlined above lead to a change in religious experience through more individualized behaviors and ethics, as well as through ethnic collective claims. In addition, being a minority is a constant source of an inevitably ambivalent sense of fear and arrogance: being a Muslim in the midst of a dominant Christian environment, but close to a powerful Muslim country (Turkey) that bears a glimpse of the glory of the Ottoman Empire. Those inside

30. By Turkish-Muslim minorities, we mean here communities of Sunni Muslims who use the Turkish language in their daily communication. In general, they are not related to the Pomaks, who speak the Slavic language and inhabit mountainous areas.

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minorities already consider Turkish their native language, have a sense of superiority and are ready to share the national claims of their Turkish brothers. On the other hand, the same cannot be said for the Slavic-speaking Pomaks and other less numerous linguistic and social minorities (for example, the Roma). Most of them live in a situation of uncertainty: some end up being victims of stronger communities, others resist and identify with the modern version of Sufism (as in Turkey, these groups identify with the Alevis)31.Thus, in the context of the modernization process taking place in modern Greece, the state of the minority serves as a catalyst for both the reinterpretation of the Sufi tradition and its transformation into Sunni Orthopraxia.

In general, the Bektashi and other Sufi traditions of popular Islam, which are widespread among the Muslim population of Thrace, are gradually being transformed under the prevailing influence of modern Western ideas and concepts of religion.32 By strengthening orthopraxia and regulating minorities within the framework of the modernization policy pursued by the nation-state, religious and secular authorities seek to establish a new religiosity based primarily on fear and orthopraxia, rather than on the opposite sense of religion as a source of knowledge and resistance. At the same time, this new religiosity seems to represent a local version of Western modernization and embodies a modality of thinking, feeling and acting that draws a line between the body and the mind, between the majority and minorities. In this context, the previous Sufi understanding of the "embodied" religious experience, aimed at curbing aggression and preserving social equality, is forgotten. They are being replaced by new practices that fit into the Sunni Orthodox model, as well as modern communities based on national interests.

Translated from English by Galina Vdovina

31. An example is some educated Pomaks originating from former Kyzylbash communities. See Tsibiridou, F. Les Pomak dans la Thrace grecque. Discours ethnique etpratiques socioculturelles; Tsibiridou, F. "'Silence' as an Idiom of Marginality among the Greek Pomaks".

32. Majid, A. Unveiling Traditions: Postcolonial Islam in a Polycentric World; Asad, T. (2003) Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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