AT THE CROSSROADS OF SECULARISM AND ISLAMISM

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This dissertation examines the Imam-Hatip (preacher-prayer leader) schools in Turkey from 1995 to 1997. The Imam-Hatip schools are secondary elective vocational education institutions under the supervision and control of the Ministry of Education and the Directorate of Religious Affairs. The Imam-Hatip schools were initially established in the 1950s to prepare students both for such professional positions as religious functionary or Koran instructor. Over the years, the Imam-Hatip schools have transformed into more mainstream educational institutions that cater primarily to the children of conservative and religious parents.
Contemporary controversies surrounding the Imam-Hatip schools in particular and religious schooling in general exemplify and highlight the cultural and intellectual battles between the Kemalists (those who advocate the secular ideology of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk) and the Islamists (those who are committed to the Muslim way of life) regarding religion’s rightful place in Turkish society. The ethnographic accounts of the inner dynamics of the Imam-Hatip schools reveal that there are inherent discrepancies between the normative teachings of Islam and what the students actually incorporate within and outside the school setting. Furthermore, because the process of socialization in the Imam-Hatip school transmits a dual orientation of secularism and Islamism through both curricular and non-curricular activities, a constant process of negotiation has to take place. In short, the students attending these schools have to deal with a complex reality requiring them to choose between, if not reconcile, the existence of competing outlooks on life.
This dissertation documents the transformation in character and meaning of the Imam-Hatip schools in Turkey during the Republican era together with more recent political developments with respect to education policies, legal challenges, and governmental interventions, while concurrently examining the perspectives of students, teachers, and parents. By so doing, it offers insight into broader societal ramifications of religious socialization in these schools. Furthermore, by overlapping the development of the Imam-Hatip schools with the contraction and expansion of religion in the course of the Turkish republic’s history, the thesis sheds light on how secularist policies and religious demands have been constantly negotiated and compromised.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• TABLE OF CONTENTS = 4
• ABSTRACT = 7
• INTRODUCTION = 1
• CHAPTER 1. Doing Fieldwork in the Imam-Hatip School = 9
• 1.1. Cultural politics and religious schooling: The Imam-Hatip school in a broader social context = 9
• 1.2. Conducting fieldwork: approach and methodology = 12
• 1.3 Fieldwork experience: Practical issues, expectations, and limitations = 17
• 1.4. Situating the ethnographer: An exercise in constructive negotiation among significant subjects = 19
• CHAPTER 2. Understanding Islam, Understanding the School = 25
• 2.1. One Islam or many Islams? = 25
• 2.2. Modernization, social change, and the project of modernity = 31
• 2.3. Between tradition and modernity = 35
• 2.4. The function of education and the instrumentality of the school = 41
• CHAPTER 3. Historical Analysis of Cultural Politics in the Republic of Turkey = 53
• 3.1. The Kemalist revolution = 53
• 3.2. Intellectual foundations of Kemalism = 58
• 3.3. The Ottoman legacies of the republic = 62
• 3.4. Turkish nationalism = 64
• 3.5. The secular ideology of Kemalism and its stance on Islam = 67
• 3.6. The changing sociopolitical landscape = 71
• 3.7. The Kemalist education reform and its repercussions = 82
• 3.8. The establishment and proliferation of the Imam-Hatip schools = 86
• CHAPTER 4. Religion’s Rightful Place: Voices and Views = 93
• 4.1. Repercussions of the Kemalist hegemony = 93
• 4.2. Economic conditions and the Islamic alternative = 100
• 4.3. The project of modernity and its skeptics = 104
• 4.4. Parents, the community, and the Imam-Hatip school = 112
• 4.5. At the namaz: learning while worshipping = 118
• 4.6. The Koran class: cultural notions of religious knowledge = 120
• 4.7. Students of Islam, defenders of the Islamic faith = 130
• 4.8. Who wants to become an imam? = 141
• 4.9. Secular culture and religious schooling: the identity crisis = 145
• 4.10. Conversations in the teachers’ lounge = 153
• 4.11. Vocational education and the hidden curriculum = 159
• CHAPTER 5. Religious Education and the Issue of Gender = 165
• 5.1. Are Muslim female students taught to advocate their own repression? = 165
• 5.2. Symbolism of the headscarf issue = 174
• 5.3. Gender segregation in the Imam-Hatip school = 180
• 5.4. Voices outside the school: the girls speak = 186
• CONCLUSION = 192
• APPENDIX = 200
• BIBLIOGRAPHY = 205