The problem of populism in the university and in religious discourse

The comparison between faculties of theology and madrasas, when made on the question of which one is closer to the people, runs into a handicap: the problem of populism in scholarship and in truth. While we were discussing these subjects in one forum, a justified warning came from Prof. Dr. Ömer Demir, one of our most valuable political scientists and economists. It was a warning about the danger that, in the relationship between the university and the public, sliding too far into populism may sacrifice to populism the truths that science or philosophy could bring forth. In our country, since 1933, the mission of the university, or of all educational institutions, to transform the people under an Enlightenment despotism has been so prominent that one of the greatest motivations of the later counter-reforms directed at the university was to open the university to the people.

Let us accept that a great distance has been covered in this direction. So much so that now, perhaps, the opposite problem has begun to be seriously felt. As Demir also puts it, in establishing a healthy university-public relationship, "there is not, on one side, a 'people' or 'nation' whose every act is reasonable and legitimate, and on the other side, 'other' institutions. Educational institutions work so that the people (or a part of them) may learn and adopt things they never knew or heard before. What is essential is not the 'popularization' of the university but the people becoming university-educated. University administrations eager to be too involved in the internal affairs of the provinces increase the risk of drawing their institutions away from being good universities. Those who are different and dissenting find a place to shelter more in universities than among the people. In short, the task of solving problems through the university requires being as distant as it requires being intertwined."

The freedom and autonomy of the university are of course necessary not for imposing every piece of knowledge produced within it on the people in a one-sided way, but for finding a ground suitable for even the most dissenting ideas, those that may be produced in the name of science and thought and that, perhaps after passing through certain filters, may become the property of humanity, may break new ground and bring about paradigmatic transformations, to flourish and thrive. Perhaps from this angle it may be considered excusable and even necessary for university campuses to be somewhat detached from the routines of the city or society. It is also possible for some madrasa teachers to show this much through their practices of seclusion and retreat.

Here, a very different history could be written for the Islamic world regarding the differences Vahdettin İnce sets out in favor of madrasas, in the name of being closer to the people. In "İslam Dünyasının Meseleleri" (The Problems of the Islamic World), Erol Güngör attempted such a history from the standpoint of how Iran and Turkey adapted to modernization. In Turkey, basic and higher religious education, which since the Ottoman era had always been intertwined with the state and carried out under its supervision, suffered a rupture with the Republic, but from the 1950s onward, with the opening of the Imam-Hatip schools and the faculties of theology and with the functioning of the Diyanet institution, it continued in the same way, though with a different synthesis.

In fact, the religious life envisaged for Turkey in the first years of the Republic was a wholly positivism-substituted life without Islam. But this did not take hold. A serious difference arose between the religious institutions and practices that were intended and planned and those that emerged. In any case, religious education took place under the supervision and patronage of the state. Yet within that patronage and supervision, the model in keeping with the initial founding ideal has always repeated itself, if only slightly. The frightening ideas and discourses we see today from some theologians point precisely to the religion-ideology horizon that the single-party regime made a condition for seeing when it allowed theology faculties to open.

What was aimed at in translating the Noble Qur'an into Turkish was not for people to see the beauty of Islam and become better believing Muslims, but on the contrary for them to see the nonsense (!) that they claimed it contained and to turn away from religion. There was such an ignorant self-confidence behind the Turkification of the Qur'an. In this blind self-confidence, it may not even have occurred to anyone to ask why this effect did not arise among the great majority who read the Qur'an in Arabic and already understood it.

Anyway. Setting aside the disadvantages of religious education carried out in Turkey after the 1950s under the state's supervision and patronage, and of religious personnel depending on the state rather than the people, Erol Güngör underlines an advantage that, compared with Iran, would never come to mind. It is this: in Iran the institution of the religious scholars, resting entirely on the people, was exempt from state pressure to which it would otherwise be subject, but this time it had to be so close to the beliefs of the people and so faithful to those beliefs that this prevented it from seeing and giving their due to the abandoned or neglected truths within religion. Instead of teaching the people the bookish truths of religion, the mullahs found themselves in a position of leading the collective rituals of the superstitions invented by the people. Of course, unless the mullahs themselves invented some of these superstitions.

According to Güngör, the Iranian madrasa model is the best example of how religious education fails to produce a freer and more beneficial experience where it is tied and subordinate to the people. Of course, this is also somewhat in comparison with Turkey, which rests first on the state and then, through democratic processes and under the state's guarantee, on the people.

Thus a practice emerged that had been caught in the worst conditions of madrasa and religious populism. One could dwell at length on what kinds of consequences this produced or may produce. This was not what was aimed at in Turkey, but in the end such a situation came out of the relations among religion, people, and state. What was expected of the theology faculties for many years was not to be people who believe in religion, but to be philosophers, historians, or sociologists of religion who could put forward the "truth" (!) that religion is superstition.

Today, people suited to precisely this purpose can emerge among theologians. But the course that Islamic higher education is taking today and the point it has reached are certainly very far from this aim of certain people. It has found its own model, peculiar to Turkey. It stands in an autonomous place that is quite well protected both against populism and against state interventions. As much as possible, of course.