Secularization of the Muslim mind: Defining the Muslim reformation among Volga-Urals Muslims (between late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries)

This dissertation is an analysis of the modernization of Muslim societies in Russia during the 18th and 19th centuries in the context of events leading up to and influencing this process. It is also an explication of how history can be understood as an ongoing battle among epistemologies. My position is that the greater intellectual "weapons" (i.e. technology) of the scientific enlightenment encroached on and eventually overwhelmed the mystical thinking of religion, reducing the latter to a subsidiary role in social values and calling for adaptation to retain religious authority.;The first part of this thesis will focus on modernization theories. For this purpose, 'secularization of mind' will be explicated. Secondly, an account will be given of the historical relationship between Tsarist Russia and Muslims in the region following by the development process of institutional modernization among Russian Muslims. In third part, shift from the ideas of introversion and nostalgia towards a tajdid renovation and 'reform from within' in the context of 'Islamic discourse'. Finally, ideas of modernization of the 'Islamic discourse' and the modernist Islam representing 'the partite conscious' with double reality are the four phases of the 'secularization of Muslim mind'. Developments and process of modernization date back to late 18th-century Russian policies towards Muslims. Establishment of religious authority for Volga-Urals Muslims, Religious scholars' positions towards this establishment, social and economic developments of institutional and societal level and finally political engagements and ideological polarizations among the intellectuals are the four phases of the Muslim modernization. Starting from Russian influenced institutional phase, Muslim modernization goes along with the intellectual reformation phase. Third level is the social and economic change. Finally, as a consequence of preceding three phases political movements emerged. Jadidism, Qadimism and other social/political movements appear as the last phase of the entire process.