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Erdogan’s new Turkey requires all students to study the Qur’an

Sep 15, 2014 8:40 pm By Robert Spencer

TurkeyQuranA major overhaul of the educational system is one of the first acts of the new President Erdogan, and Turkish secularism suffers another major blow. Here is the latest on Turkey’s rapid re-Islamization: “Erdogan’s new Turkey to requires [sic] all students to study the Qur’an,” by NAT da Polis, Asia News, September 15, 2014 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Istanbul (AsiaNews) – Turkey’s newly elected President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, aided by his faithful new Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, begins his term of office with a major overhaul of the country’s education system.

Although adopted a year ago, the reform plan, which has largely gone unnoticed, begins this year and extends Islamic religious education to all school grades. Only religious high schools (Imam Hatip Lisesi) offered such an education as part of their training programme for the country’s Muslim clergy. At the same time, the reform extends compulsory schooling from Grade 8 to Grade 12.

Erdogan’s new Turkey, which plans to celebrate the centenary of the secular Turkish Republic founded by Kemal Ataturk in 2023, is making Islamic religious education compulsory in both primary and secondary school, for 12 grades. Until recently, the latter was available only in religious high schools starting in Grade 9.

Another significant change is that religious school graduates can now apply to university faculties that train students for top public administration positions. Even Turkey’s current president, who studied Business Administration and not political science, was kept out because he was graduate of a religious school.

It seems clear that the school system AKP leaders dream about and planned for is inspired by existing religious high schools.

The next step in the reform involves teaching Arabic, even as a second language, to enable students to understand the Qur’an, as Turkish lacks words that help understand the Holy Book.

However, Turkey’s Armenian and Orthodox schools are not required to provide Islamic religious education to their students who number 2,000 and 250 respectively.

By contrast, those who do not want to attend public schools to avoid religious education will have to go to private schools, which are a privilege of the wealthy because of high tuition fees.

People have to get used to the idea that 52 per cent of Turks, plus another 10 per cent from the ultranationalist Turkish party, believe in Erdogan’s Islam, this according to the newspaper Radikal.

Recently in Anatolia, a local school principal, whose tasks also includes assigning students to classes, required Jewish students to register for Islamic religious courses because of their Turkish-sounding names.

Historically in fact, many Jews (and members of other ethnic groups and religions) chose to Turkify and Islamise their names and surnames out of sheer need for survival in view of the rules established following the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923, based on the notion that Turkey was ethnically homogenous as a Turkish and Muslim nation.

Following an outcry from world Jewish leaders, Turkish authorities suspended the measure in the case of Turkish Jews.

However, many wonder about what will happen to the 200,000 Christian refugees from Syria who are at present in Turkey and their children who will soon start school in Turkey.

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Comments

  1. Rob says

    Sep 15, 2014 at 8:53 pm

    ..and these guys are in NATO and are being readied for entry into the EU!

    • Shabnam says

      Sep 15, 2014 at 10:04 pm

      Because Turkish people have become rich with the Iranians’ money and now will seek for the Islamic State…

    • umbra says

      Sep 16, 2014 at 1:50 am

      NATO and EU’s response … SNAFU.

    • Neil jennison says

      Sep 16, 2014 at 6:54 am

      My first thoughts exactly…..then I moved to the fact they are trying to join the EU.

      70 000 000 Muslims about to get the freedom to live in the UK !

    • Oddsbods says

      Sep 16, 2014 at 3:05 pm

      The USA really wanted to get Turkey into NATO and would love to have Turkey in the EU against the wishes of some EU member states, especially Germany. It was regarded as a “Buffer” against Islam and a bargaining partner with good connections in the Middle East, That will prove to be another bad strategy.

  2. Angemon says

    Sep 15, 2014 at 9:04 pm

    Another significant change is that religious school graduates can now apply to university faculties that train students for top public administration positions. Even Turkey’s current president, who studied Business Administration and not political science, was kept out because he was graduate of a religious school.

    And that’s the reason why the islamic world trailed behind Europe (well, one of them)- one considers reading the quran as education, the other considers math, physics, chemistry, etc as education.

    The next step in the reform involves teaching Arabic, even as a second language, to enable students to understand the Qur’an, as Turkish lacks words that help understand the Holy Book.

    Turks never had any issues understanding the quran and islam – historically, each new elected sultan meant a new wage of jihad against Christian Europe, at least until they were left in the dust of industrialized Europe.

    However, many wonder about what will happen to the 200,000 Christian refugees from Syria who are at present in Turkey and their children who will soon start school in Turkey.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janissaries

    “According to military historian Michael Antonucci and economic historians Glenn Hubbard and Tim Kane, the Turkish administrators would scour their regions (but especially the Balkans) every five years for the strongest sons of the sultan’s Christian subjects. These boys (usually between the ages of 6 and 14) were then taken from their parents and given to Turkish families in the provinces to learn Turkish language and customs, and the rules of Islam. The recruits were indoctrinated into Islam, forced into circumcision and supervised 24 hours a day by eunuchs. They were subjected to severe discipline, being prohibited from growing a beard, taking up a skill other than soldiering, and marrying.“

  3. Wellington says

    Sep 15, 2014 at 9:43 pm

    Erdogan’s Turkey plans to celebrate the centenary of the founding of the secular Turkish Republic while at the same time making Islamic religious education compulsory?

    OK then. No conflict, no contradiction here, now is there? Hey, I don’t see any. Who but some bigoted Islamophobe would?

  4. citycat says

    Sep 15, 2014 at 11:39 pm

    All students must mind melt with Islam or face early reincarnation that might be Muslim if the World does not fight the good fight

  5. SallyA says

    Sep 16, 2014 at 12:23 am

    @ All – Thank you for writing comments here. This is a little OT; relates slightly to this post and also to the Ted Cruz post. I hadn’t planned to comment any more, time really not permitting, but I just want to say that the overall process of reading the articles and comments is fascinating and educational. Even the snark and minor skirmishes among some of the regular commenters are fascinating. I learn so much!

    Ironically, the notes made about the Koran and comparisons with the Jewish tribal scriptures incorporated into the Christian Bible, as well as the appalling Islam apologists among top Christian leaders, had led me to question church membership or any form of religion dependent on any book. Instead I’m opting to be a Jesus follower, simple, because I have nothing in common with ME “Patriarchs” from ancient ME churches who have been dhimmi for so long to Islamic majorities that they won’t stand with Israel. I have nothing to do with Catholic bishops or the pope who tells lies about Islam. I have nothing to do with book-based religious education, because slavishly following any book that’s many centuries old from less aware times can only hamstring human development.

    Not that I haven’t studied Koran and Bible, even some of the Talmud, Upanishads, Sutras, and so on. But in the end books that were written by warring tribal people or people who believed the earth was flat — or arguable misogynists like Shaul/Paul (even though he can be deconstructed for our times) —- and trying to make the words of the book one’s God makes no sense to me.

    Islam is obviously a religion of very damaged human beings based on their centuries-long global conduct, and much of the damage comes from the directions for deceit, violence and misogyny within the book they’ve mentally programmed themselves with. From all written on JW, Islam is the worst example of religious “addiction” diverting people from living humanely, joyously, creatively or kindly, when Muslims’ own emotional damage is so great that they act like monsters (deceitful or deadly). The adherents of Islam are far too gone, far too damaged in their inhumanity to change in all but a tiny percentage of cases. Fundy Christianity would say it’s the devil. It acts the same, whatever the reason.

    Thank you for bringing me the realization that at a much lesser level institutional Judaism and institutional Christianity is also an addictive process (imho) by my ability now to see those other religions of the book through a lens of being a lesser evil by far than Islam, but still perhaps not at all what Jesus the reformer and social change agent intended to do when he started no institutional church (instead calling out people for God’s reign) and wrote no book. The parts of Torah Jesus approved are merely common humane morality, i.e., ten commandments. He disregarded a specific sabbath by eating in fields when people were hungry and disregarded dietary laws, for example. He seemed to want to reform Judaism, expand it for all people based on love and morality and deity’s providence.

    Maybe these tough times of Islamic depravity will help us consider if all religions of the book contravene anything that makes sense for humans going forward. In our time agnostic astrophysicists find cause for awe and wonder about the Creator, without regard to ancient books of primitive religious people. Maybe it’s time we co-create with our Creator, and maybe thinking outside the box will drive better solutions to the problem of Islam wanting to be a violent global theocracy by its unholy book (Koran, Hadiths, etc., all byzantine machinations of old books read and studied and taught by old dudes with old rumpled beards while they relegate little girls and all women to chattel sex-slave status).

    This whole JW process by learning more about Islam — and its virulent opposition to the point of genocide toward the predecessor religions of the book, Judaism and Christianity, all three derived from the same warring tribal geographic area of the world — now leads me to see by analogy institutional Judaism and Christianity as if lesser included offenses (by far lesser) within a criminal system of so-called Abrahamic institutional religions of which Islam is the oppressive principal potentate of pain.

    Pedophile priests, Chrislam pope, Mark Driscoll, maybe that’s all I need to say about churchianity. I understand that my position is not shared by most other Jesus followers and because we thankfully are not currently living under Sharia, I am ever so grateful that you have the unfettered freedom to believe as you choose, and that our children unlike those in Turkey are not force fed anybody’s religious book in public school.

    • Salah says

      Sep 16, 2014 at 2:03 am

      “..but still perhaps not at all what Jesus the reformer and social change agent intended to do when he started no institutional church..”

      “And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Matthew 16:18

    • Beagle says

      Sep 16, 2014 at 6:12 am

      “I am ever so grateful that you have the unfettered freedom to believe as you choose”
      — —
      Amen to that. I would not force the clutter in my head on anyone.

      • Beagle says

        Sep 16, 2014 at 6:18 am

        As soon as I typed that I realized it could be taken in two ways. I mean “my” as in mine, not yours. I was not being snarky or insulting.

        Curse you, imprecision of language!

    • Neil jennison says

      Sep 16, 2014 at 7:13 am

      You are of course entitled to believe what you want (at least until Sharia Law gets to the west), so I won’t comment on your somewhat flawed reasoning. In any case other have made valid criticisms for example that Jesus clearly DID intent setting up a Church.

      I will just ask the relevance of the paedophile priests?

      Priests commit crimes….people commit crimes…..priests are people. Jesus came to save sinners not the just. It amazes me that people can discount the message and purpose of the Church because some of its members fail to live up to its message.

      By all means criticise the Churches response. There is little doubt it has implemented God’s message of forgiveness of sinners at the expense of justice and the safety of children when they should not be mutually exclusive, but then again, humans get things wrong.

    • voegelinian says

      Sep 17, 2014 at 2:06 pm

      I think SallyA has learned the important things about the problem of Islam (viz., that the “adherents of Islam are far too gone, far too damaged in their inhumanity to change in all but a tiny percentage of cases. Fundy Christianity would say it’s the devil. It acts the same, whatever the reason”) — better apparently than quite a few veteran Jihad Watchers I could name; though it is unfortunate in some respects that she feels she has to throw the Book out with the bathwater, so to speak.

  6. Anon says

    Sep 16, 2014 at 1:11 am

    So much for the “no compulsion” claim (Quran 2:256). PBUH (the sound of spitting watermelon seeds).

  7. donovan nuera says

    Sep 16, 2014 at 2:11 am

    Well…if Ergodan wants to go down that road, we need to outsmart him! Our goal should be to teach these oppressed Christians and Jews the truth about the Koran so that they can , during their Koran class, point out all the inconsistencies and idiocy of the Koran to their ummah classmates. (and secretly use their cameraphones to capture the expression on their teachers’ faces…)

    • gravenimage says

      Sep 18, 2014 at 6:14 pm

      donovan nuera wrote:

      Our goal should be to teach these oppressed Christians and Jews the truth about the Koran so that they can , during their Koran class, point out all the inconsistencies and idiocy of the Koran to their ummah classmates…
      ………………………………..

      I’m not sure you understand the degree to which any such thing would be hazardous to their health and safety.

      While it is not as bad as some further Islamized places, Infidels in Turkey are still oppressed and threatened dhimmis, and have to tread *very* carefully around the Muslim majority.

      “Fitzgerald: The murder of Hrant Dink”

      http://www.jihadwatch.org/2007/01/fitzgerald-the-murder-of-hrant-dink

      Hrant Dink was murdered for pushing Turkey to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide—questioning the Qur’an would be considered even more worthy of killing.

      And here are Turkish Muslims from a few years ago, threatening violence for an “insult” to the Qur’an that didn’t even take place in the country:

      “The Reaction Against The Insult of Quran From Jafari People in Turkey”

      http://www.zeynebiye.com/the-reaction-against-the-insult-of-quran-from-jafari-people-in-turkey_d75534.html

      The translation is a bit clunky, but the meaning is all too clear.

      How much worse would it be for an Infidel schoolchild in a Turkish classroom?

      Turkey does not—so far, at least—have actual blasphemy laws, but Article 216 of the Turkish Penal Code (“Provoking people to be rancorous and hostile”) criminalizes blasphemy and religious insult, and would likely put any critical student, Muslim or Infidel, at a great deal of risk.

  8. fair_dinkum says

    Sep 16, 2014 at 4:04 am

    lets hope they never gain a place in the EU.

  9. EmHotep says

    Sep 16, 2014 at 6:44 am

    Hello from Turkey,

    It’s becoming too late for the Turkish secular people and the region. Erdogan is a sharia lover more than saudis. Why don’t you stop him, everybody knows he is a thief and has a hidden agenda.

    World powers should do something before its too late.. SOS.

    • gravenimage says

      Sep 18, 2014 at 6:18 pm

      EmHotep, are you a Muslim, an Infidel, or a Muslim apostate? I’m sure readers here would be interested in learning about your background.

  10. Talal says

    Sep 16, 2014 at 8:24 am

    I think Turkey, and other governments, want to control how Quran is read and understood.

    You can read Quran translated to English here http://www.ClearQuran.com

    • gravenimage says

      Sep 18, 2014 at 6:22 pm

      Talal wrote:

      I think Turkey, and other governments, want to control how Quran is read and understood.
      …………………………..

      Note that Talal speaks approvingly of this sort of Islamic mind control. And why not? He has expressed his support for oppressive Shari’ah law before. *Ugh*.

  11. ApolloSpeaks says

    Sep 16, 2014 at 9:17 am

    WHERE IS TURKEY’S EL SISSI?

    Pray that he comes.

    http://www.apollospeaks.com

    • voegelinian says

      Sep 17, 2014 at 2:03 pm

      Sissi believes in Jihad; he’s just more deceptive than an Erdogan.

  12. Ibn Sufi al Kitab says

    Sep 16, 2014 at 1:57 pm

    Only 1600 verses of hate speech, supremacism, Jihad, adjurations to killing, murdering and conquering the Infidel. What can go wrong with studying Mein Koran ? Next up on Erdogan’s hit list: Mein Kampf.

    • gravenimage says

      Sep 18, 2014 at 6:28 pm

      Mein Kampf *is* very popular in Turkey:

      “Mein Kampf becomes bestseller in Turkey”

      http://www.jihadwatch.org/2005/03/mein-kampf-becomes-bestseller-in-turkey

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