Religious directorate warns that HE runs counter to faith

Turkish left-wing newspaper BirGün reported last week that a book distributed to Turkish students free of charge by the state’s Directorate of Religious Affairs, or Diyanet, has warned that university education is counter to religious faith, reports Ahval.

“One can talk of a contradictory relationship between higher education and devoutness,” BirGün quoted the book, The Prophet and Youth, as saying. “It has been established that in secular areas, study at higher levels has a negative effect on piety in general terms, and on worship and religious faith specifically,” it said. The book, which BirGün said had been distributed at an expense of millions of lira, included statistics showing that students in higher education were 8% less likely to pray.

The description of the book by BirGün, as an attack on secular education in Turkey, highlights the long-running tensions between the country’s secularist circles and followers of the tradition of political Islam that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) emerged from. While Diyanet was established in 1924, a year after the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, as a secular institution designed to ensure state oversight of religious activities, critics have accused the AKP government of using the directorate to promote its own interpretation of Islam.
Full report on the Ahval site