Islamic schools in the Modern Turkey, faith, politics, and education

Abstract

IREN OZGUR, Islamic Schools in Modern Turkey: Faith, Politics and Education (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Pp. 256. $ 104.99 cloth.In recent months and years, Turkey's religious vocational (Imam Hatip) schools have featured prominently in the perennial debates surrounding the role of Islam in Turkish national life. Established in the early years of the Republic for the purpose of training religious functionaries (imams and hatips, or preachers), many of the schools were closed intermittently during the middle years of the twentieth century, but re-emerged under Turgut Ozal's premiership in the 1980s. Since the AKP came to power in 2002, however, they have exploded in number with an estimated increase of over 200 percent in the intervening years. No longer do the schools serve their original function of training a (male-only) cadre for service in the religious vocations. Indeed, they now teach more female students than male and are becoming an increasingly normative part of the Turkish educational system. Those of a more secularist orientation have objected to this shift, reluctant to see the imam Hatip schools being repositioned as providers of mainstream religious education in the context of President Erdogan's "new Turkey."Somewhat surprisingly, given the size and breadth of the sociological literature on modem Turkey, iren Ozgur's book is the first comprehensive study of the imam Hatip school system in English. It is therefore an immensely timely and very welcome contribution. The book is meticulously researched and rich in empirical content. The author carried out field research between 2005 and 2009, mostly at schools in istanbul but also, to a lesser degree, in Ankara, Konya and Samsun where she was able to gain access through personal contacts (p. 21). She presents her reader with a thorough analysis of the internal mechanisms of the imam Hatip schools, including the processes by which students are socialized both religiously and politically. She also situates the schools within the wider context of the Turkish Islamist movement and shows very successfully how the schools interact with similarly oriented political and civil-society groups.Chapter 1 provides a historical overview of the imam Hatip schools from their foundation in 1924 to the present day. Ozgur shows how, in the multi-party era beginning in 1950, the schools' fortunes have waxed and waned according to the religious tenor of particular governments. In the anti-Islamist atmosphere surrounding the 1997 "soft coup," the schools' reach was scaled down and a coefficient factor was legislated, making it practically impossible for imam Hatip graduates to gain entry to university faculties besides Divinity. This legislation was reversed by the AKP government in 2011, thus bringing the schools back into the mainstream and sealing their already-resurgent popularity amongst religiously minded constituents. Enrolment figures, we are told, have risen from 71,100 in 2003 to 235,000 in 2011 (p. 63).In chapter 2, Ozgur brings her ethnographic data to light in exploring the internal mechanisms of the schools. Here, she focuses in detail on the school curriculum and to the teaching of religion, which focuses on lessons in the Qur'an and in Arabic. The school curriculum is divided between "cultural" (secular) classes and "vocational" (religious) classes, in the same way as that of mainstream high schools in Turkey. The difference lies not in the content but in the weighting of the classes, with students at imam Hatip schools exposed to far more religious instruction than their counterparts elsewhere (p.68). In addition to this analysis of the official channels for learning Islam, Ozgur also explores the ways in which religion is practiced during the school day. She frames her discussion of both official and unofficial practices in the language of Bourdieu's concept of habitus, concluding that, "imam-hatiplis believe that the conduct of their public and private lives should adhere, to the greatest extent possible, to the Qur'an and the Prophet's example" (p. …