PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

The article deals with expressions of collective identities as illustrated by Milli Gorus, a Turkish Islamist group active in Europe. The political mission is a central part of Islamism's idea of salvation, with mass gatherings gaining a status close to genuinely religious rituals. The analysis focuses, on the one hand, on the expressions of political mass piety. On the other hand, it examines the discoursive links established between various elements derived from the fund of national und religious narratives, which provide the arena in which collective identities can emerge. However, the events of September 11 have considerably hampered the previous strategies of representation. Finally, the article discusses the strategies used by Milli Gorus to establish itself as a political voice in German political discourse. It demonstrates that there remains an unbridgeable gap between two contradictory self-images: between, on the one hand, the organisation's self-description oriented towards Turkish society and based on the concept of salvation, which cannot be communicated to the Western public, and, on the other hand, its public self-presentation as a kind of charity organisation.