On May 4, 2024, we celebrated the launch of our new MA program in Critical Muslim Studies with a lecture and reception at Fulton Street Collective in Chicago. After a warm welcome from Shahreena Shahrani, our Outreach Coordinator, Executive Director Ibrahim Demir introduced the new program by answering the question, "What is Critical Muslim Studies?" Mucahit Bilici then offered a keynote address on "Post-Islamism and the Flight from Religion: Turkey's New Secularization."
Bilici, Associate Professor of Sociology at John Jay College, CUNY, began his lecture by noting that there is a mass departure from religion in Turkey today, with atheism possibly the fastest growing "religion." As previously-religious individuals become increasingly secular, observers on all sides ask: Why are so many people leaving Islam? What are their reasons, and why now? The analysis of the phenomenon of the "death of God" among Muslims in Turkey was followed by a lively audience discussion.
