A dependent theology in a free university?

While we were still debating whether YÖK, a product of the 12 September military coup, should be abolished, changed or left as it is, it took a step that made it urgent to take up the debate on the university in general, beyond YÖK, again in all its dimensions. YÖK intervened in the curricula of the faculties of theology, abolishing a series of courses, foremost among them philosophy and sociology, as it saw them unnecessary, and shaped the whole in detail.

In fact, what is happening these days at ODTÜ and many other universities has, from the opposite direction, shown in an instructive way how the weakening of central administration can, in the name of a contemporary value such as the "autonomous university," lead to the formation of dreadful archaic fiefdoms. That we swing between such extreme examples when debating the university in Turkey is without doubt an unfortunate situation for us.

Anyway... Let us come to our actual subject for today. To the determination of the curricula of the faculties of theology by YÖK... There are provisions concerning courses such as the history of tafsir, the history of hadith and the history of kalam, but what stands out is evidently the provision concerning philosophy courses.

As Prof. Durmuş Günay, the valued scholar among the members of YÖK who cast a dissenting vote against this decision, reminded, in fact "there is no provision in the YÖK law that would make intervention in the curriculum legitimate. Intervention in the curriculum is wrong at the root." The stranger side of the matter is that YÖK, although it is quite aware of its lack of authority in this regard when other fields are concerned, so easily claims for itself the right to intervene when it comes to the field of theology.

An interesting coincidence here is that the YÖK administration of 28 Şubat, too, did not meddle much in other fields while meddling far more freely in the theology curriculum, and that the practices of the two periods resemble each other in this respect. Indeed, former YÖK President Prof. Kemal Gürüz himself, although a chemist by profession, and although he politely refrained from speaking about chemistry because he could not follow developments in his own field sufficiently, entered theology debates very easily and could speak easily about Islamic philosophy (see the Abbas Güçlü TV program).

There can of course be very different reasons why the field of theology is more open to lay intervention than other fields. That is a separate subject of debate, but it is impossible not to see that YÖK's intervention in the curriculum with such ease today will strike a blow to the development of theological education.

If the matter is how much relationship an Islamic scholar should have with philosophy, let the theologians, the Muslim intellectuals and scholars debate and settle that among themselves. YÖK, which is distant from the discipline of theology in most respects, has no decision to give on this; it is not its place. In fact the leading figure of the famous historical debate on the relationship between Islam and philosophy is considered to be Imam Ghazali. His negative views on philosophy, especially his criticisms of the Peripatetic (Aristotelian) Muslim philosophers, are known through the Tehafüt el Felasife (The Incoherence of the Philosophers).

It is thought that this book of his cooled later generations of Muslims toward philosophy. This debate cannot be exhausted within the limits of this article, it is a long debate, but it is generally overlooked that one must know philosophy very well to understand what Ghazali really said about philosophy.

Moreover, it is again overlooked that he had learned philosophy to the very end in order to express the contradictions of the philosophers of Ghazali's time. What probably made Ghazali effective and strong was this, his very good knowledge of philosophy.

In the West too, faculties of theology or theological knowledge are highly valued units within the university structure. Quite apart from the existence of theologians who know philosophy very well, the fact that very good philosophers, groundbreaking philosophers, either came from a theological background or had very good theological knowledge is not much noticed by those among us who suppose they are doing philosophy, but it is a fact. Look, if you wish, at all the philosophers who made a name in the history of Western philosophy: you will find intense theological knowledge, jargon or consciousness.

Granted, the relationship between theology and philosophy is, in my view, a secondary subject in this debate. The truly important matter is that YÖK should not persist in the interventionist attitude toward the faculties of theology which it quite rightly does not display in other fields of science. Why the level of understanding reached on university freedom can be abandoned so quickly and so easily when the subject is theology...

Yet with the newly opened universities of the last ten years, a real higher education revolution is being experienced in Turkey today. But this at the same time makes debating and developing the meaning and practices of the concept of the university a heavy responsibility. The correspondingly increasing number of faculties of theology requires more thought on what kind of graduates they should train. YÖK's decision, which ended this debate in one stroke with a sharp regulation, does not solve the problems but deepens them further.

In fact, as far as I know, the annual meeting of deans of faculties of theology ought to hold special sessions on these matters and not leave the job to YÖK. Thus the faculties of theology could make the necessary arrangements among themselves with a logic of division of labor that is needed. The deans, among whom are people from all subdisciplines of theology, should take up this work, also heeding the competent intellectual debates revived on this occasion about theology.

Of course, for this, YÖK must first accept that this job does not belong to it and open this path.