The place of the faculty of theology within the modern university

Judging by the reactions when we encounter theologians whom we think at times overstep the line, there seems to be clarity about what is expected of a theologian. The outrage that arises when one commits a violation of the rules in answering that expectation shows that there is a role definition, if only tacit, between the theologian and society or institutions. Yet when one looks at the history of the matter, things get a little complicated.

Because, as we have also mentioned before, the Faculty of Theology finds itself a place, above all, within a university roof under the influence of the positivist paradigm. This place also shows the existence of a rent that it has to pay, as it were. A university, of course, is not required or obliged to be positivist everywhere and on every ground. A university of a very different line can also develop in its own lane.

What we call a university is, in the end, a roof under which all the sciences are assessed according to their importance and organized and brought together within a certain hierarchical order. Nizam al-Mulk's madrasas, or al-Farabi's Enumeration of the Sciences, and the hierarchy of sciences designed in the German university tradition in Europe or later established by Auguste Comte, are quite different from one another, for example. We, however, are speaking of the network of established universities today, and of the fact that this university, too, has developed its own designed unity toward the multiversity according to the conditions of the day. In these universities it is the ordinary history of the university that different disciplines, fields and faculties, because they have different epistemological sources, conflict with one another, and also that they influence one another. In the end it is inevitable that there are incommensurable knowledges or ideas among these fields.

The Faculty of Theology is, above all, a field whose object, according to religious terminology, is the unseen (ghayb), and the only source of knowledge of the unseen is report. Although there are limited portions of it reachable by reason or science, an important part rests on faith in this report. As for the report, both its authenticity and its understanding, that is, its hermeneutics, constitute the most important part of the matter, and in this field there are difficulties, known to those who practice it, in sustaining a discipline while preserving a religion's own inner integrity and consistency. For Islamic civilization, which had transmitted the Islamic sciences from generation to generation within the madrasa system, let us admit, the experience of doing this work within the Faculty of Theology is new.

It relates both to a novelty tied to modernization in general and, especially for Turkey, to the traumatic effects experienced after the Republic.

After the proclamation of the Republic, a Faculty of Theology was also established within the Darülfünun, which was then Turkey's only university. But since this Faculty of Theology did not play the role expected of it in the famous "religious reform" attempt proposed in 1928, which created outrage in society, with Turkifying worship, making Islam resemble Christianity, putting pews and pianos in mosques and the like, it quickly began to fall from the eyes of the state's men.

The teachers of theology were unwilling to lead such a reform. True, it was not only the Faculty of Theology that fell from favor for failing to answer the expectation. The whole body of Darülfünun teachers, especially regarding the language and history reform, "behaved like a neutral observer," in the words of the then Minister of Education Reşit Galip. That is, they were content to watch the reforms being carried out like passive and neutral spectators. Yet what was expected of them was not only to accept the new history thesis and the language and culture theses that politics put before them but to be their ardent defenders. Because it could not answer these expectations, the Darülfünun was closed in the 1933 University Reform. Istanbul University was opened in its place. But in the new university no place at all was given to the Faculty of Theology. Even without them, at least part of the desired religious reform was carried out. The call to prayer was Turkified. The Arabic alphabet had in any case been banned, and printing and reading the Qur'an in Arabic letters was also banned.

Thus, in a process that would last 18 years, there remained in the country neither a Faculty of Theology nor an Imam-Hatip school to serve the people as imam or scholar in religious matters. The classical madrasas, already made illegal under the new administration, had also been locked. In many places the madrasas continued their activities, resisting as an underground popular movement.

In this period the pressures on religious education were not limited to the police force; a very intense propaganda apparatus was also operated that discredited and delegitimized concepts such as imam, muezzin, devout person, hajji and hoca in society. The clichés produced as the products of this propaganda still continue to feed discourses that we can now easily call Islamophobic.

What was targeted in this period was not religion as a dynamic compatible with modernity and nourishing social development. On the contrary, cadres who could not restrain themselves with this outlook were trying to create an atmosphere that would make people hate everything related to religion and aimed to erase religion entirely from society, and they largely succeeded.

Even so, in 1949, that is, at a time when the CHP was still in power but felt the possibilities of change from the approaching great elections at its neck, it was decided to reopen the Faculty of Theology and the Imam-Hatip Schools?

Why and how? Perhaps many people may see it as a requirement of logic that these institutions were reopened in the Democrat Party period. Yet these institutions were reopened by the CHP.

What were the reasons that led the CHP to begin again the religious education that it had for years made a bogeyman of, frightened the people with, and deemed reaction? Had the CHP's cadres changed, had it suddenly discovered a truth, been guided to the right path?

In fact, if we look at the debates that took place at the CHP Congress held in 1947 about the founding of the Faculties of Theology, we will better see with what intention today's Faculties of Theology were founded and what kind of fate they turned into.

So we will continue.