2023 Volume 58 Pages 63-77
This monograph examines the religious other and the experience of religious coexistence in Anatolia (now Türkiye). It explores the perspective of the philosophy of coexistence encapsulated within “seventy-two millets” (seventy-two religious communities) — a term first utilised by Yunus Emre (born c.1240–44; death c.1320–21), a famous Turkishspeaking Sufi poet in Central Anatolia —, which refers to Muslims and non-Muslims peacefully living together with dignity and equality.
The monograph first identifies the inefficiency of previous arguments on the peaceful coexistence in Turkish societies as experienced under the Ottoman Empire’s “the system of religious communities,” in which the Sultan was paid tax to grant every religious community autonomy via self-governance with respect to education; this system has only been examined through the lens of political history. It, then, continues to explore a noninstitutionalised aspect of the peaceful coexistence experienced by the Empire’s subjects from the perspective of intellectual history.
After examining Yunus Emre’s philosophy of religious coexistence by dividing it into four features — ontology, “seventy-two religious communities,” “unity of religions,” and “love” — the monograph concludes that his idea of coexistence has three characteristics: the notion of coexistence firmly backed by “the theory of the unity of being,” “human love” as the possible reason for coexisting in peace, and a kind of “tolerant theology” that perceives all believers of all religions and faiths equally as creatures of the Creator, for the sake of His love.
