Abstract
The author focuses on an informal Sufi group of women in Istanbul, with only peripheral connections to the traditional established orders. The women in the group studied instead have organized their activities in the form of a religious endowment offering regular prayer meetings and basic religious education and charity work to other women in their neighbourhood. The group is an example of the many independent religious non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have emerged in Turkey since the early 1980s. By offering social space for networking, a ritually proper place for joint worship and access to theological knowledge, the group has given individual women access to religious authority otherwise restricted to men in this local environment.