3

Enjoining Good and

Forbidding Wrong

Unique to the mid- to late seventeenth century was how a religious

response amid crisis became the prevailing mode for ameliorating

the woes that beset Muslims. Reformist preachers served as media-

tors in the conversion of other Muslims to their understanding of

Islam, which in turn set in motion the concentric rings of conver-

sion about which this book is concerned. The preaching of Muham-

mad called on believers to reform themselves and their society, to

command right and forbid wrong. This serves both to distinguish

Muslims from other peoples and to unite the believers.^1 Within

each society in each and every era there arise individuals who try

to put Muslims back on the path of the Muslim ideal, to strive to

revive the faith when believers have slipped from it. In some peri-

ods pietists have allowed the ruler to “play the main role” in forbid-

ding wrong, while in others they have used Qur’anic prescriptions

to legitimize their opposition to rulers and authorities considered

unethical, or to oppose the practices of their neighbors, particularly

concerning wine, women, and song.^2 Religious trends cannot always

dependably be mapped onto sociopolitical trends. Many of the ideas

promoted by the Kadızadelis in the seventeenth century were fi rst

articulated in the previous century. What is crucial, however, are

those periods where religious movements became linked with

political power. The late seventeenth-century Ottoman Empire wit-

nessed an alliance of political power and religious zeal as the sultan