Paper short abstract:

Among some Turkish Sunni Muslims, sincerity (ihlas) means acting with the sole intention of pleasing God. Focused on acts of forgiveness, this paper reflects on the forms of personhood and ethics, but also on the sentiments of suspicion, emerging from performances of ihlas.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on fieldwork among religious Sunni Muslims in Turkey, this paper explores a notion of sincerity (ihlas) which stipulates carrying out all acts – from doing the dishes to performing the pilgrimage – with the intention of pleasing God. Set against the backdrop of dramatic political polarization in Turkey, the paper attends to how the notion of ihlas encourages and shapes attempts to forgive former friends, who have been turned into political adversaries by widening societal cleavages. It shows such attempts at forgiveness as driven, not so much by a desire to restore relations, but by an aspiration to please God. From a post/protestant perspective, which takes sincerity to mean the alignment of one’s inner self with one’s outer utterances, such acts of forgiveness appears halfhearted and insincere. Yet, from the perspective of ihlas, forgiving others for the sake of God is at the heart of what sincerity is all about. From this ethnographically informed perspective, the paper reflects upon the notions of personhood and ethics that emerges from such performances of ihlas, as well as on the suspicion it engenders in outside observers and wider society.