European Journal of Scientific Research - EuroJournals

Islam and Education from Religious Man’s Perspectives 373
sources including a website on Cypriot Information Resource “the word Muslim means one who has
surrendered to God’s will”. God’s will consist of five pillars of Islam which are daily prayers, fasting
during Ramadan, almsgiving, visiting Mecca and to believe in God and Muhammad as his messenger.
However, the understanding of the word “Muslim” is completely different for people living in TRNC.
“What is meant by the word “Muslim?” is one of the research questions. As the focus of this paper is
describing Islam and education from Imam’s perspectives, I felt the need to clarify these terms first
according to Imam’s definitions. Within the light of these clarifications, I tried to display a more
conscious interpretation of the data.
Like the word “Muslim”, the word “Education” is a very broad concept and it can be
interpreted in a variety of ways. A check on some Islamic resources reveals various interpretations with
regard to Islam. Seyh Nazim is a very important religious figure in Cyprus who points out that
knowledge comes from heaven. For Seyh Nazim and his followers, the most ambiguous issue is to see
how an educated person can claim that there is no God. During a discussion, Seyh says that the world
is covered by ignorance and at the top of this ignorance are those people who deny the existence of
God. (Atay, 1996, p.184). “What is meant by the word education?” is another research question.
Although the devout Muslims define being Muslim as mentioned earlier, many Turkish
Cypriots, specifically those who are academics claim that they do not have time to practice their
religion due to their educational requirements but their heart is clean and that is the most important
thing for a Muslim. At this point an important question arises: “Is clean heart really the most
important thing for a Muslim?”
Apparently, the number of educated people increases day by day and according to several
official researches, education is causing people move away from religion. For example, Carkoglu
&Toprak(2000) found that while the education level of people increase, the number of people who
claim that they are not religious increases. Is this true? At this point I added a new research question as
“Do you think university and above education is causing people to move away from religion? If yes,
what sort of people? Why?”
There is a belief that education causes modernization and there has always been a conflict
between tradition and modernization. Like in many parts of the world, TRNC is also abandoning some
of its old traditions to be able to adapt modernity and global ascendancy of the West. As reported in an
article on Reframing Orientalism: Weber and Islam, the incorporation of “Muslim society” into the
“global society” of the past two hundred years is felt among Turkish people. This incorporation has
caused a rise in secularization and modern interpretations of Islam. Another article on cosmopolitan
virtue() further discusses the issue of secularization and relates it to educational systems by claiming
that “It is clearly true that Islamic fundamentalism has rejected differentiation by attempting to enforce
religious law over the operations of secular institutions such as educational systems.” These different
observations about globalization are insightful but do we know how do Imams in TRNC define the
words “globalization” and “modernization” and if they think globalization and modernization are
causing people towards or away from religion?
Islamic religion is the second most important religion in the world. A website on religion states
that ”Everyone in TRNC has the right of religious freedom in teaching, worship and observance,
without any interference from the state.” Although Turkish Cypriots reflect Islamic tradition for about
400 years through celebrating bairams, the value given to religious practices required by Islam is
decreasing everyday. The same website adds that “Approximately 10 % of the population in the north
attends religious services regularly” and Muslims make up 99% of the TRNC. Considering this
percentage, several questions can be asked such as “Are we starting to loose any of our values? Which
ones? Why?”, “What can be done by the religious establishments to overcome this problem?” , “What
percentage of the mosques capacity are full?” and “When do the people go to mosque nowadays?”
One website on Turkish Society points out that Ataturk’s reforms brought modernity for
Turkish culture by claiming that “Under Ataturk’s leadership, the ideological, secularist and modernist
urban elite ended state support and patronage of Islamic institutions and attempted to make religion a
matter of solely of private conscience”. The same site adds that Ataturk’s reforms created two different