From religion engineering to the mission of the ulama: the faculty of theology

Faculties of theology in Turkey do not have a very long history. In 1933 there was an interruption, which would last until 1949, with the closure of the Faculty of Theology that existed within the Darülfünun and whose own history, under different names and forms, was in any case at most 33 years. The consequences of this interruption have been so bad that it would not be an exaggeration to say that its effect still continues.

The price of this interruption of the faculty of theology was without doubt paid by the Muslim public, already deprived of its ulema, but not only by them; the whole institution of the university also had to pay it. Because the absence of theology, which has always had a very important and indispensable place within the university scheme or hierarchy, played an important role in leaving all the sciences, first of all philosophy and the humanities, shallow, discontinuous and disconnected. The worst of it is that universities do not feel this lack at all, owing to the absence of theology or its failure to take the place it deserves.

The year 2009 is in fact both the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Marmara University Faculty of Theology (as the Higher Islamic Institute), and, in general, the 60th anniversary of the reopening of the faculties of theology after a 16-year interval. For this reason, last week symposia putting the state of theology faculties on the table were organized at the same time at both the Marmara Faculty of Theology and the Istanbul Faculty of Theology. Since I was invited to both as a speaker, I was unable to follow either from beginning to end, but in so far as I took part, I returned once again to where I had left off, the sociology of theology, the subject of the master's thesis I began at ODTÜ in 1991.

In 1933 the closure of the faculties of theology as a step of the university reform was justified by the claim that they had no students left. Yet, so that students would not be drawn to the theology faculties, every means had previously been used to discredit the institution of the clergy as much as possible, the employment route of theology graduates had been completely closed, and no attraction of being a theology student had been left. Frankly, what was aimed at by this was the dissolution of the institutional or organized structure of religion and the complete cancellation of the mechanism of religious leadership.

By contrast, the decision in 1949 to reopen the theology faculties, along with the Imam-Hatip Schools, means having to give up this policy or goal, and this decision was taken by the CHP itself. It is the democratization process itself that made them give up this goal. It was thought that democracy, by opening these schools, might block the approaching Democrat Party victory. Even so, those within the CHP who fiercely opposed the opening of these schools were persuaded by the assurance "that only a theology faculty in the form of a science of religion would be permitted." Here the member of theology was granted a kind of role of sociologist of theology. That is, it was the role of a scholar who did not have to believe in any particular religion, and who approached the history, psychology and sociology of people's beliefs from a certain objective distance. That is why the first generation of theologians are like orientalists looking at Islam from the outside.

Theology has in fact, from the first years of the Republic, always been a field in which the state's various expectations were very intense. Under the pressure to produce an interpretation of Islam compatible with modernity, Islam being held responsible in particular for the country's backwardness, all sorts of things were demanded and theologians were seen as a kind of religious engineers.

It can be said that these pressures and expectations continue to this day, changing and diversifying from time to time. But we can say that, in answer to these expectations of the state elites, the expectations of the people have outweighed them, and theology faculties have increasingly turned to meeting these expectations of the people. Prof. Şinasi Gündüz noted that today the internal expectations of religion itself or the expectations of the devout public determine the shaping of theology more. As Prof. İsmail Kara said, while the public wants to see in the theologian the image of its own ulema, it is preparing, or forcing, him for this mission in social-psychological terms.

Theological engineering has meant not leaving the development of religion to its own dynamics, and trying, as long as religion is seen as a useful instrument, to use it as a material for social operations. The theological engineers envisaged for such operations have recently also acquired, owing to the possibilities offered by the media, the dimension of being tele-theologians. However, although they aim to influence all Muslims, these tele-theologians are left at most alone with the small congregations they have formed for themselves. These congregations become ordinary by joining the procession of religious pluralism, as a kind of variety suited to the nature of the postmodern condition. Religion, for its part, frustrating such engineering efforts every time, establishes its own course and goes on.

Both symposia were very beneficial in advancing theology's thinking about itself. I congratulate Prof. Raşit Küçük, dean of the Marmara Faculty of Theology, and Prof. İlhan Kutluer, who organized the symposium, and Prof. Şinasi Gündüz, dean of the Istanbul Faculty of Theology, and their colleagues for their efforts.