ABSTRACT
Religion does not wither away or disappear under the conditions of modernization, but as a rule it is profoundly transformed. This is aptly illustrated in the case of the Ali-oriented religions, which have been the topic of the conference papers here published. Former secluded communities with their esoteric teachings and secret rituals, by tradition only accessible to the initiated, have gained new visibility. The Alevi community was earlier a closed world with very limited interaction with the political and social centres of Ottoman society and later with the institutions of the Turkish Republic. For instance, marriage regulations were endogamous, not only normatively, and religious traditions were esoteric, and transmitted orally at secret rituals. These and other historical, social, and religious circumstances have lead to the shaping of concepts by which the Turkish Alevi have identified themselves, and have been identified by others, as a distinctive community.1 Similar conditions have formed concepts by which the predominantly Iranian Ahl-e Haqq and the Syrian have been identified, and by which they have have identified themselves and their relation to the state and to mainstream Islam.
