*The Dönme: Jewish Converts, Muslim Revolutionaries, and Secular
Turks*,
by Marc David Baer.

This book tells the story of the Dönme, the descendents of Jews who
resided in
the Ottoman Empire and converted to Islam along with their messiah,
Rabbi
Shabbatai Tzevi, in the seventeenth century. For two centuries
following their
conversion, the Dönme were accepted as Muslims, and by the end of the
nineteenth century rose to the top of Salonican society. They
eventually became
the driving force behind the 1908 revolution that led to the overthrow
of the
Ottoman sultan and the establishment of a secular republic.

To their proponents, the Dönme are enlightened secularists and Turkish
nationalists who fought against the dark forces of superstition and
religious
obscurantism. To their opponents, they were simply crypto-Jews engaged
in a
plot to dissolve the Islamic empire. Both points of view assume the
Dönme were
anti-religious, whether couched as critique or praise. But it is time
that we
take these religious people seriously on their own terms. In the
Ottoman
Empire, the Dönme promoted morality, ethics, spirituality, and a
syncretistic
religion that reflected their origins at the intersection of Jewish
Kabbalah
and Islamic Sufism. This is the first book to tell their story, from
their
origins to their near total dissolution as they became secular Turks
in the
mid-twentieth century.