Islam in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives - Islamic Books ...

Islam after Empire 6 7such things as the availability of alcohol, sexual content in the media, reformof divorce laws, or treaties with countries that abuse local Muslims.S i g n i f i c a n t l y, such criticisms often come from the state’s own religious personnelas well as from independent organizations and individuals. Some ofE g y p t ’s state-trained religious scholars ally themselves with the Muslim Brotherhood or, occasionally, even with small splinter militant groups. Shaykh UmarAbd al-Rahman, currently in a Minnesota prison for conspiracy in the 1993World Trade Center bombing case, is one such example. The independenceof Egypt’s judiciary allowed for Islamist judges to gain considerable influencein guiding cultural and political policy in disputes between secularist and Islamistgroups. Ironically, the century-long process of enhancing programs ofreligious education in government-funded public schools and the more recentefforts of states to respond to Islamist challenges with religious propaganda oftheir own have increased rather than diminished the tendency of major politicalgroups to promote their positions in Islamic terms. Particularly wherethere is social fragmentation due to tribal differences, such as in Jordan orYemen, or sustained geographical mobility in the form of refugees or populationsrelocated in programs of urban renewal, other sorts of social and culturalidentities have had trouble taking hold. Islam thus becomes a common languageof protest and political mobilization for a broad range of groups.This is even true of Tu r k e y ’s continued use of both Muslim ethnic identityand political secularism in the construction and maintenance of its modernnational identity. For decades, the country has experienced periods of democratizationpunctuated by military coups as the army responds to perceivedthreats from communist or Islamist sources. As far back as the 1950s, though,the government began to reintroduce religious studies to secular schools, andit later allowed the rapid expansion of a parallel set of religious schools knownas Imam-Hatip institutions. In the 1970s, anticommunist concerns led the governmentto support Islamic organizations, and the market-oriented reforms ofthe 1980s saw politicians realizing that “state planning of religious and morallife was . . . the prerequisite for promoting a national culture that could secureunity of purpose and homogeneity of ideas” (Sakallioglu 1996, 245). In 1991,General Kenan Evren, president of the Turkish Republic from 1982 to 1989,explained the reasoning behind the state’s interest in religious education:[R]eligious education cannot be given to children by every family. In fact, even ifthe family tried to do so, this would be improper since it may be taught wrongly,incompletely or through the family’s own point of view. I asked you before not tosend your children to illegal Qur’anic courses. Thus, we made this a provision ofthe constitution. In this way, religion will be taught to our children by the state instate schools. Are we now against the cause of secularism or serving it? Of coursewe are serving it. Secularism does not mean depriving Turkish citizens of reli-