Tag: imam hatip schools

  • Brian’s Coffeehouse: Turkey’s Imam-Hatip Schools

    Brian’s Coffeehouse: Turkey’s Imam-Hatip Schools

    Turkey’s Imam-Hatip Schools

    Turkey’s education system contains various pre-professional schools, including a network for training mosque imams and preachers (hatips).  These “imam-hatip schools” have come to be used by many Turks as a way to see that their kids are educated in an environment that encourages religious values, much like the niche occupied by religious schools in the United States.  The Islamist political movement which currently controls the national government is dominated by imam-hatip school graduates, and has pursued policies favorable to these institutions.  Other Turks, on the other hand, see them as a particularly dangerous threat to the country’s 20th-century history of militant secularism.

    Iren Ozgur has published a useful study of these schools, their students, and the parents who send their kids there.  One thing that it highlighted for me is just how socially divided Turkey is over the issue of religion in public life.  In the introduction, she describes how the imam-hatip students are bound together by the experience of hostility and discrimination on the part of secular society enhances their sense of solidarity, and in practice their lifelong support for each other.  This hostility is a two-way street, however:

    The Imam-Hatip school community can be so insular that those who no longer associate with it can find it difficult to maintain their ties with other members.  Ahmet Hakan told me that once he began working for a secularist media group and “hanging out in secularist neighborhoods,” he was ostracized by members of the community for his “out of the ordinary” lifestyle.  Ahmet Hakan’s feelings were justified.  Individuals within the Imam-Hatip school community voiced their disappointment and antipathy toward him and others who had left the community.

    The other conclusion I drew from this book, and which may be stated overtly in the work itself, though I can’t find it now, is that the schools in the present form seem to arise out of Turkey’s religious milieu rather than create it.  During periods when there were debilitating handicaps put on imam-hatip graduates, parents simply hired private religious tutors to make up for the lost inclusion of Islamic values in the curriculum.  I think if there is any strengthening effect of the students’ religious orientation, it is that they are not forced into the secular milieu at all to become familiar with it.  This element, especially when combined with the mutual discrimination between the religious and secular wings of society only enforces and perpetuates those divisions.

    Labels: Books, Turkey

    POSTED BY BRIAN ULRICH

    via Brian’s Coffeehouse: Turkey’s Imam-Hatip Schools.

  • School Reopens In Turkey Amid Protests – Is Education Reform Promoting Islam?

    School Reopens In Turkey Amid Protests – Is Education Reform Promoting Islam?

    School Reopens In Turkey Amid Protests – Is Education Reform Promoting Islam?

    School Reopens In Turkey Amid Protests – Is Education Reform Promoting Islam? Back to school in Istanbul – ( np&djjewell at flickr) RADIKAL/Worldcrunch

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    ISTANBUL – As children in Istanbul packed their bags this week to start a new school year, protests broke out against the controversial “4+4+4” education reform, recently implemented by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

    Large crowds gathered outside the Istanbul imam hatip religious schools on Fatih Street to protest the new education system that extends mandatory education to 12 years: four years of primary school, four years of middle school, followed by four years of either secondary school or vocational training.

    People opposing the reform fear that the new system will increase the number of children attending the imam hatip religious schools, which qualify as vocational training.

    Members of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) have also criticized the reform for depriving children of a basic scientific and humanities education. Students will be allowed to drop out of school after eight years, which critics say will only encourage child labor and prevent girls from pursuing higher education.

    Protests also broke out in the capital city of Ankara this weekend, and up to 14 people were arrested for holding unpermitted demonstrations for the cause.

    Nearly 17 million students and 800,000 teachers began Monday to implement the new education system.

    The reforms are the brainchild of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who slammed the previous education system for having “non-democratic” origins. In 1997, after the military overthrew an Islamist government, new secular leaders shut down many of the religious imam hatip schools.

    Classes such as “The Koran and the Life of the Prophet Muhammad” have been added to the secondary school curriculum, and female students will be allowed to wear the headscarf during these classes.

    “Human rights, citizenship and democracy” and “games and physical activities” have been added as compulsory classes. Texts books have been adapted for the new curriculum and 187 million copies will be delivered to students for free.

    via School Reopens In Turkey Amid Protests – Is Education Reform Promoting Islam? – Worldcrunch – All News is Global.

  • The Region: Turkey trots toward Islamism

    The Region: Turkey trots toward Islamism

    By BARRY RUBIN
    06/17/2012 22:03

    The spending, restrictions and anti-intellectual policies might undermine Turkish democracy, stability and economic progress.

    Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas
    The Turkish regime is gradually suppressing freedom as its society moves steadily toward a more hardline Islamic identity. Keep in mind that Turkey has been a very self-consciously modern and secular country. While there were always restrictions on freedom – especially regarding the expression of Kurdish nationalism – it was miles ahead of the usual Middle Eastern standards in that regard. And Istanbul was the ultimate expression of modern, secular Turkey.

    Thus, a minor incident is of immense psychological importance. Here’s one of many. A woman wearing sweatpants sought to board a public bus and a dozen or more passengers blocked her way. One man said, “Look at her. Her head is not covered, shame!” Nobody on the bus came to her defense and the driver did nothing.

    Why is this especially significant? Because the implication is that head covering for women should be mandatory in public and that those who advocate such measures will use intimidation to achieve this goal, unafraid of any possible consequences. On the contrary, it is those who would advocate freedom of choice who are intimidated.

    Then there’s the new law requiring that every shopping mall, movie theater and indeed every public facility in the country have a Muslim prayer room. One newspaper columnist who ridiculed this idea wrote, “Have you ever heard any conservative or religious person in this country complaining: ‘I can’t live my religion if there are no [mosques] in opera or ballet houses?’”

    In other words, such legislation is not happening because there is a burning need for such things but because the government is Islamizing the country. It should be pointed out that anyone who wants to pray could easily find an existing mosque not far away and, indeed, a dedicated room isn’t even a requirement for Muslim prayer.

    OF COURSE, it should be understood that the government is offering a lot of incentives for becoming not just a practicing Muslim but an Islamist. Consider. You want a high-level career, especially in government. Do you go to an academic high school with a tough curriculum or to an Islamic school which focuses not only on religion but on an Islamist interpretation?

    The number of students attending such religious (imam-hatip) schools has tripled in 10 years, rising to seven percent. The gap is narrowing, especially true for “regular” students since enrollment at open admissions schools fell from 50% to about 25 percent. The rest go to selective schools (21%) or vocational schools (50%).

    The government has now decreed that Islamic schools be accorded equal status with academic schools for purposes of admission to university and also that Islamic junior high schools will be established. These decisions will accelerate the relative growth of education that indoctrinates students with the regime’s ideology.

    THEN THERE’S Prime Minister Recep Erdogan’s announcement that virtually all abortions will be banned, even if the woman was raped.

    The court-authorized prosecution of a famous Turkish concert pianist, Fazil Say, for sending tweets critical of Islam is another sign of the times. So is the sentencing of a student to eight years’ imprisonment solely for the crime of holding up a sign demanding free education at an Erdogan rally. So is the sentencing of a former top general to one year in prison for telling a villager in a personal conversation that the regime had sold out the country.

    Most recently, the government has decreed that it will choose two-thirds of the Turkish Academy of Sciences’ members. Until now, the existing members chose the new ones, and one-third of them resigned in protest.

    Then there’s the foreign policy realm, where there are also dozens of examples of the regime’s Islamist orientation. The basic trend is anti-American, ferociously anti-Israel, and supporting Iran and radical Islamist movements. Despite differences with Tehran over Syria – the Turkish regime wants a Sunni Islamist government there; Iran wants to keep its allied incumbents in power – the two countries are constantly expanding their trade to hitherto unprecedented levels.

    When a US airstrike against terrorists went astray and 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed, Erdogan quickly demanded a US apology and called the dead “our martyrs.” It symbolized his eagerness to take the side of any Islamic country or movement against the United States. The Turkish regime has ignored, with US permission, the sanctions on Iran and the media in both countries is full of reports about their ever-tightening relations. The large portion of the Turkish media controlled by the regime systematically spreads anti- Americanism and public opinion polls show ever-rising hostility to the United States.

    Toward Israel, the regime is so unrelentingly hostile that the leader of the opposition asked whether Erdogan intended to go to war against that country. It has now decided to file criminal charges against Israeli officials involved in the attempt to stop the ship Mavi Marmara from running the blockade on the Gaza Strip, a situation in which Turkish jihadists were killed after assaulting Israeli soldiers. It should be noted that the Turkish government was directly involved in working with a terrorist group – defined as such by the United States and Germany – in mounting that deliberate provocation.

    Since then, Erdogan has had three non-negotiable demands: that Israel apologize, admitting it committed a crime; that reparations be paid to the families of the dead extremists on the basis of Israeli guilt; and that Israel stop all sanctions on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. In response, Israel offered to express regrets and pay compensation on a humanitarian basis. Erdogan has refused all compromise – as indicated especially by his third demand – and has no desire to settle the issue.

    Erdogan’s anti-Israel campaign has continued with such actions as insisting that NATO installations in Turkey not provide information to Israel, that Israel be excluded from joint maneuvers in which it formerly participated, and that Israel not be permitted to attend a NATO meeting and an international counter-terrorism conference. (The real problem with the counter-terrorism group is that the Obama administration made Turkey the co-director and didn’t even include Israel as a member when it launched the project last September 11.)

    I have no problem if individual Turks want to be more pious in their religious observance. The problem is that this quickly slides over into intolerance, repression, extremism and a radical foreign policy. Moreover, in the long run the spending, restrictions and anti-intellectual policies might undermine Turkish democracy, stability and economic progress.

    The writer is the director of Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center. He also publishes the Rubin Report blog http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/

  • Turkey: Prime Minister’s Erdogan’s Islamic reforms: less schooling, more Koran

    Turkey: Prime Minister’s Erdogan’s Islamic reforms: less schooling, more Koran

    Turkey: Prime Minister’s Erdogan’s Islamic reforms: less schooling, more Koran

    “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers.” Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan

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    Less school, more koran. Oh yes, that’s the ticket! We can expect that to work out wonderfully. And this is from the most moderate of the moderate Islamic countries, and Obama’s favorite ally, of course.

    Turkey, under Erdogan, has abandoned the separation of mosque and state, abandoned Ataturk, abandoned its ties with Israel, and increasingly pursues the delusion of a return of the Ottoman empire. While participating in a Middle East panel of the Academy of Achievement in Chicago in September of 2007, Erdogan warned against religious definitions of terrorism and specifically objected to the phrase “moderate Islam.” Erdogan said, “Turkey is not a country where moderate Islam is sovereign. First of all, the ‘moderate Islam’ concept is wrong. The word ‘Islam’ is a simple word — it is only Islam. If you say ‘moderate Islam,’ then an alternative is created.”

    Turkey: Erdogan’s reforms: less schooling, more Koran

    Muslim veil knocking at door of Parliament amid criticism February 24, 2012

    (ANSAmed) – ANKARA, FEBRUARY 24 – The goals of an education reform bill introduced by the Islamic party of Turkey’s Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan have been characterised by opposition parties as aiming to halve the length of compulsory schooling to promote more Koranic schools and veil wearing. The opposition secular press, trades unionists and other commentators, have for a month now, but especially over the past two days, been aiming their criticisms at the Islamic tendencies of the reforms of alleged faults in the country’s education system. Today the countries confederation of industry, the TUSIAD, has joined in the chorus of protest. The bill would in effect abolish the present laws obliging children to attend school for eight years, halving them to the period of primary education alone.

    Although this radical move is softened by the offer of distance learning, critics are calling it an incentive to quit school, especially in the less developed eastern areas of the country, and in cultural milieu where the ban on wearing the veil inside school premises meets strongest resistance. The ban comes from the secular, Western stamp given to Turkey’s constitution in the 1930s by the country’s founder Kemal Ataturk. A reduction in the number of years of compulsory education would also promote the so-called ”Imam Hatip Lisesi”, the religious Islamic schools, like the one in which Mr Erdogan was educated. Following its third electoral victory in succession, with nearly 50% of votes cast, Erdogan’s single-party pro-Islamic government has already abolished the minimum age requirement for attendance at such schools and this reform would encourage children to give up attending their secular secondary schools in favour of religious institutions which now would take over some of the functions of the grammar schools.

    Some areas of the secular press, such as the daily Milliyet, as well as pro-Islamic organs such as Yeni Safak and the official mouthpieces of Erdogan’s AKP party, stress how the reform aims at correcting what was in effect a penalisation inflicted on Koranic schools following the ”post modern” military coup of 1997, which overthrew Islamic premier Necmettin Erbakan, a role-model for Erdogan. Eight years of compulsory schooling was introduced then with the aim of undermining the Koranic institutions. The reform debate opens, indeed, as the 15th anniversary of that coup approaches (February 28), the highly secular daily Cumhuriyet wryly observes.

    Without returning to accusations of a ‘hidden agenda to re-Islamise Turkey, Cumhuriyet links the reforms to the a proposal recently expressed by the premier ”to raise a pious generation,” a ”religious youth”.

    via Turkey: Prime Minister’s Erdogan’s Islamic reforms: less schooling, more Koran – Atlas Shrugs.

  • Application from abroad to Turkish imam hatip schools increases

    Application from abroad to Turkish imam hatip schools increases

    A new imam hatip high school will be opened in Istanbul to educate foreign students for foreign students.

    The number of foreign students, who apply to study at imam hatip high schools in Turkey, is rising.

    Even a new imam hatip high school will be opened in Istanbul to educate foreign students.

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    National Education Ministry and Religious Affairs Foundation of Turkey initiated a project in 2006 which aims to meet the need for religious officials of Turks living in Balkans, Caucasus and

    Central Asia as well as the countries where Muslims are living. The project also targets to set up a sound and permanent dialogue and friendship bridge between Turkey and these countries.

    The applications have started for the foreign students who want to study at imam hatip high schools. The applications will be made at embassies or attache offices till July or August.

    Students from 71 countries including Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Togo, Ecuador, Chad, Gabon, Senegal, Mali, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia applied to enroll in imam hatip high schools this year. The quota is 250.

    Imam hatip high schools were originally founded in lieu of a vocational school to train government employed imams; after madrasas in Turkey were abolished by the Unification of Education Act (Tevhid-i Tedrisat Law) as a part of Ataturk’s reforms. However, unlike other vocational schools, their curricula contained just as much arts and science classes as normal high schools.

    Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan also graduated from one of these schools.

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