Islamic Sharia faculties in Turkey Are they doing their role to the fullest? : Yassin Aktay

Can Islamic sciences today fulfill its mission of educating religious scholars who are needed by the Muslim community?

When we talk about religious scholars, we mean the literal meaning of this word, as their task becomes to teach and teach science, history, jurisprudence and Islamic faith to a society that knows Islam, believes in it and carries its beliefs; Although at the basic level, with the aim of enlightening society in line with this knowledge, and leading and directing it when it needs to.

In this article, an explanation of this great role that should be played by the faculties of Islamic studies in Turkey.

Faculties of Islamic sciences in Turkey are a center of academic activity, and they are rarely able to provide what is expected of them from graduating real religious scholars, so the question is: What is their essence? And what is its framework?

A big difference between the attitude of the one who reads the Qur’an only in prayer, that each letter in it is read as the fixed and unchanging word of God and that it is a living message addressed to him that he is working to implement in his life, and who reads it like any normal text and performs all kinds of analyzes on it.

In 1993 I was trying to find answers to these questions in my master's thesis titled "Intellectual and Political Discussions on the Academicization of Religious Knowledge", which I completed under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Bhatin Akshit, and as a field study of my dissertation; I was in the Faculty of Islamic Sciences of Ankara University studying the history of its founding and its current work.

There is a big difference between academic religious knowledge and religious knowledge that is followed by assimilation and application, meaning that the transfer of religious knowledge from the field of abstract knowledge of the student to the area of ​​assimilation and the ability to communicate it to the other requires great effort and diligent work to ensure that this happens, but this transfer may not necessarily happen to everyone. However, there is a clear difference between the task of academic knowledge and the knowledge of a person who believes in a religion and takes knowledge of that religion as a command or slogan, application and transmission.

It is a difference between the attitude of the one who reads the Qur’an only in prayer, reading each letter in it as the fixed and unchanging word of God and that it is a living message directed to him that he works to implement in his life, and the one who reads it like any normal text and performs all kinds of analyzes on it.

People who read the text of the Qur’an and believe in it in this second way have many academic readings that have discovered semantic dimensions, linguistic and rhetorical properties, textual relationships, and features that people who read the text of the Qur’an in normal ways do not realize, and they are also studies that deserve to be included in the sciences of the Qur’an in some way. on it; Some of these studies have been conducted by people who do not believe that the Qur'an is the word of God.

The Qur’an is in the hands of all mankind, and it is open to everyone to read and study, and some people will understand it in this way, and others will understand it in a different way, and some of them will read it with faith, and others will read it without belief and denial; According to their previous beliefs.

We realize from this that the disagreement that arises among Muslims as a result of their reading of orientalists’ statements about the Qur’an and its interpretation, I do not find it logical, and it is a serious problem, so what can be expected of a person who does not believe in this religion at all when he reads and analyzes the Qur’an? What kind of conclusions can he reach? Therefore, I find it one of the things that a Muslim may see while wearing an academic hat, but he should not build perceptions and arguments according to it, because a Muslim should see and read the Qur’an from a spiritual religious perspective and not from a purely academic point of view.

In today's world, contacts are increasing between sects and cultures and we face these differences intensely every day, and when society imagines that trying to understand this difference and deal with it and confront it with argument, evidence and knowledge as a betrayal of religious beliefs, it is worth making more effort to clarify these concepts and that it is a major task for scholars Debt.

Returning to the academic part of the work, the believing academic embodies this body of knowledge in order to carry out an academic study of a religion he believes in, i.e. he is expected to be able to take this difficult approach, to be able to apply the academic scientific method in scientific research without being disgraced He wears the mantle of religion he believes in, but to what extent can he carry it out?

there; In Islamic law faculties the academic process of religious knowledge begins with a sense of all the difficulties it encounters, and while they try to maintain this approach between the academic worldview and the religious one, some go to see themselves as detached from this perception, and some see their previous prejudices and interpretations as part of the inspiration, even without That he realize the consequences of this interpretation, and he will see the objection to his interpretation as an objection to religion, and his reaction will be purely religious language.

And if this state of indistinguishability between academic language and religious language continues in this way, there will come a day when we will not be able to distinguish between them, and this may be repeated at every level of academic study, under the guise of non-religious “scientific” language.

And this series of practices - noted by the famous historian and philosopher of science Paul K. Feyerabend in his book The Church of Science is nothing but the religiousization of science, and the fact that evolution has found its place as a matter of faith rather than an object of science is an excellent example of this, and this is not our subject now.

Our topic today is what we expect from faculties of Islamic sciences, from their academics and graduates, or in other words: What do we expect from a religious scholar who graduated in this great edifice? Do we expect him to teach us faith and the practice of religion? And if we have such an expectation, are we ready to accept the guidance and advice of this teacher?

When the religious scholar reveals through his research and investigations that what we know of religion has gradually become our own historical interpretations or become infected with innovations and superstitions, the opposing reactions he faces show that society is not empty either, and at this stage the relationship between the religious scholar and his group becomes a serious issue that deserves Pay attention to it and stand there.

Although the religious scholar needs to realize that the community is waiting for a teacher of the Qur’an, in terms of fulfilling the duty that the Muslim people expect from the religious world, there are two more important messages that must be felt by the religious scholar:

First: The history of Islamic science colleges in Turkey and the definition of the task imposed on them, as they operate today much differently from vision and expectations.

Second: Its mission as a scientific institution within the framework of a university is to apply the positive science model that leads to real intellectual and religious development.

It is clear that religious science colleges today are at a completely different stage in this task; Not only in Turkey but also in the Christian and Jewish worlds. And before I expect anything from the world of religion, there must be curricula and ways in those colleges that qualify him to do this task to the fullest, and this alone will make these colleges maintain their structure, status, and role that they are always expected to play, which in turn will ensure the preservation of Religious cohesion of the community even when disagreement. (Yassin Aktay - Turkish academic, politician and writer)