m. s¸
¨
ukr
¨
uhan
˙
io
˘
glu
of the new constitution.
90
But this victory on paper did not prevent the CUP
from pushing mainstream Islamists and the ulema into the background.
Although the CUP approved the revised constitution, it also implemented a
series of legal initiatives that followed a clear secularising agenda. One example
is the limitation of the power of the s¸eriat courts, beginning in 1909; another
is the Temporary Family Law of 1917, which granted Muslim women a partial
right of divorce based upon a liberal interpretation of Hanbali law, and lim-
ited polygamy by allowing women to stipulate monogamy as a condition in
their marriage contracts. These reforms were spearheaded by a faction of the
CUP led by members and Ziya G
¨
okalp. Labelled ‘Turkist-Islamists’ by their
opponents, these thinkers promoted the notion of a modern Islam limited
to private faith and ritual.
91
They believed that many obsolete Islamic prac-
tices, such as polygamy, could be eliminated through liberal interpretation of
traditional sources by the ulu’l-al-amr (those vested with authority), and the
supplementation of classical law with ‘urf (custom).
92
Despite vehement rejec-
tions from mainstream Islamists,
93
CUP policy as a whole tended to follow
this particular brand of Islamism, which carried the transformative potential
to foster modern morals for a modern society.
In spite of the strong secularist tendencies of many of its leading members,
the CUP opposed the new Westernisation movement that emerged as a by-
product of late Ottoman materialism. The spread of a popularised version
of mid-nineteenth-century German Vulg
¨
armaterialismus among the Ottoman
elites under the ‘pious sultan’ Abd
¨
ulhamid II was an astonishing develop-
ment. The Ottoman scientistic discourse spread from Beirut and Cairo to the
Ottoman capital, where, under the constraints of censorship, its proponents,
intellectuals and dilettantes, only hinted at the conflict between religion and
science. Evading the censor by hiding under the innocuous mantle of sci-
ence, the promoters of Vulg
¨
armaterialismus not only translated into Turkish
important parts of leading German theoretician Ludwig B
¨
uchner’s magnum
opus Kraft und Stoff, but turned many popular journals into Ottoman versions
of Science pour tous or Die Natur. The revolution provided them, for the first
time, with the opportunity to express the materialist gospel openly. A full
90 Tevfik Tarık (ed.), Mu’addel Kanun-i Esas
ˆ
ıve
˙
Intihab-ı Meb’usan Kanunu (Istanbul:
˙
Ikbal
K
¨
ut
¨
ubhanesi, 1327 [1912]), pp. 3–11.
91 Ziya G
¨
okalp, ‘Dinin ıc¸tima’
ˆ
ı hidmetleri’,
˙
Isl
ˆ
am Mecmuası 34 (13 August [1915]), pp. 741–3;
36 (10 September [1915]), pp. 773–6;and37 (24 September [1915]), pp. 791–6.
92 See, for example, Mansuriz
ˆ
ade Sa‘id, ‘
˙
Isl
ˆ
am kadını: ta‘add
¨
ud-i zevc
ˆ
at
˙
Isl
ˆ
amiyetde men‘
olunabilir’,
˙
Isl
ˆ
am Mecmuası 8 [1914], pp. 333–8.
93 See, for example, Ahmed Na‘im, ‘M
¨
udafa‘at-ı diniye’, Sebil’
¨
ur-Res¸ad 298 [28 May 1914],
pp. 216–21 and 300 [11 June 1914], pp. 248–50.
104