Islamist Legal Hybridity on Government and Opposition

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the AKP’s use of Islamist legal hybridity to attack its perceived enemies, particularly its political opposition within Turkey. This politico-legal strategy of the AKP involves the instrumentalization of religious informal laws and religious opinion leaders. The chapter investigates the role of informal Islamist laws, the Diyanet, and other AKP supporting religious scholars have played in the marginalization and repression of political opposition in Turkey, by issuing fatwas that have delegitimized the concerns of critical voices, leading to their demonization and at times criminalization. The chapter, first of all, examines how the Islamist informal legality propagates the idea that voting for Erdoğan and the AKP is an Islamic obligation in Islamic law. This is followed by another section of Islamist informal law’s verdict on the illegality of criticizing the AKP government in Islam. The next subsection discusses the Islamist informal law’s ban on voting for the opposition which is declared infidel. Then, how the informal law delegitimizes the opposition and demonizes them is discussed. Finally, the chapter examines the Islamist informal law permitting and even encouraging seizing the properties of the dissidents, killing them, and enslaving their wives and daughters as concubines.