Religious Education

The official journal of the Religious Education Association

ISSN: 0034-4087 (Print) 1547-3201 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/urea20

Academic Expertise, Public Knowledge, and the

Identity of Islamic Religious Education

Mualla Selçuk

To cite this article: Mualla Selçuk (2013) Academic Expertise, Public Knowledge, and
the Identity of Islamic Religious Education, Religious Education, 108:3, 255-258, DOI:
10.1080/00344087.2013.783313

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00344087.2013.783313

Published online: 03 Jun 2013.

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Download by: [The University of Edinburgh] Date: 14 February 2016, At: 18:27
 ACADEMIC EXPERTISE, PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE, AND
THE IDENTITY OF ISLAMIC RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

Mualla Selçuk
Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey

My conviction is that the task of Islamic religious education is to

enable each pupil to discover the individual whom God intended him
or her to become. Therefore, I have always advocated an education
that nurtures the pupils’ minds and hearts in God’s wisdom; so they
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can grow in what we call musālama (i.e., a peaceful relationship with

God, with oneself, with others, and the creation).
When my academic studies began at Ankara University Divinity
Faculty in October 1983, religious education was a very young dis-
cipline in Turkey. Just one year before, it had been established as a
compulsory subject with its content defined in public documents. In
addition to their theological education, in order to qualify as teach-
ers for religious education, our students now had courses in learning
theory, educational policy, educational psychology, and sociology. The
first class I held was comparative education. I was only two or three
years older than my students; but it was crucial for me to be thrown so
quickly into teaching, and I still remember my delight and enthusiasm.
As my lecturing went on, however, I could not help saying to
myself, “I wonder just how many of these courses my students will
remember? And moreover, will they be able to integrate their peda-
gogical formation with their theological background when they teach
Islam in schools?”
What I discovered was a lack of cooperation between religious
and secular pedagogy. How to transmit received doctrines of a partic-
ular understanding of Islam to the next generation? That was religious
pedagogy’s main question, and the reason of its isolation; but religious
education had now started to be part of our schools’ core curricu-
lum. So it needed to contribute to personality development of pupils,
just like the secular subjects. Therefore I became interested in the
mentality of secular pedagogy, which puts the development of human
abilities in the center. I do not see why science may not have an author-
ity as general public commitment in teaching religion as it has in other
subjects. The role of science is, here, to shed light on our attempts at

Religious Education Copyright 

C The Religious Education Association

Vol. 108 No. 3 May–June ISSN: 0034-4087 print

DOI: 10.1080/00344087.2013.783313

255
 256 IDENTITY OF ISLAMIC RE

teaching and learning religion. Only thus we can liberate us from our
traditional “You Sit Still and I Instill” approach. The students were ex-
pected to follow the beliefs and practices simply because they are told
to do so; questioning, critical examination, personal involvement, and
independent appropriation had no place. If students inquired, their
questions were taken as an act of protest. The impression children got
was that Islam is information you memorize.
While education had been reduced to learning of specific codes
of Muslim structures, Islam in reality praises and honors faith inquiry
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(tahqı̄q fı̄ l-imān). The Holy Qur’an highlights the importance of sci-
entific thought and condemns the unquestioning imitation of one’s
forefathers (taqlı̄d fı̄ l-imān).
Consequently I focused my Ph.D. research on religion in the
service of individual formation. The development of the human person
and social science took a central place. I presented religious education
according to the developmental stages and experiences of children.
Thus they can be encouraged to use their full potential to question
and understand the meaning of being a Muslim. When my thesis was
published in the late eighties by the Foundation of Religious Affairs,
it caused a public debate.
For the first time (but not the last!) I found myself in the middle
of the tensions between religious and secular worldviews. Those who
see theology as a method and criterion in itself condemned any usage
of procedures and principles from secular disciplines. According to
them, theology alone should determine the structure of education
and its content. From another side I was criticized for not restricting
myself to traditional context but rather using the findings of research
from different religions and cultures as a point of reference.
Some expressed their concern that Islam might lose the control
of religious instruction, which could no longer serve for deepening
the faith but might be used for cultural formation or simply pragmatic
purposes such as making good citizens or even nationalists. Others
understood my thesis as a kind of indoctrination against secularism.
I have always tried to take those reactions seriously, even those that
may have been a questioning of my sincerity in belief. Those critics
were for me like “signs of the time,” the time in need of adequate
attention and more promising efforts in scholarly understanding of
religion. My approach was different from many traditional Muslims;
not, however, my loving devotion to God and my sincere commitment
to Islam.
 MUALLA SELÇUK 257

The debates around my Ph.D. thesis only clarified my hope to be

a great lecturer, respected for my dedication to the enhancement of
student-centered learning in religion.
The following years were highly active: teaching, learning, and
researching on the foundations, the scope, and the methodology of
Islamic religious education. This phase of grounding became the cat-
alyst for my subsequent change of career. In 1998, I was appointed a
General Director responsible for religious education in public schools
in the Ministry of National Education. A few years later, I also be-
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came a Board member of the High Religious Council. I was the first
female ever to take on those administrative positions. At that time, all
I wanted was to get the chance to contribute to the layout of religious
education from a scientific perspective; but now I come to understand
what an honor it was to be selected.
Up to 2002, I worked for the development of the religious edu-
cation curricula of all Turkish school types, including the specialized
high schools for imams and preachers. There were great expectations
around the curricula updating, which had remained unchanged for al-
most 18 years. This created a huge public pressure by media, religious
groups, and secular institutions.
Academic experts in basic Islamic disciplines, religious education
and social sciences joined me in the updating process, which thus be-
came an interdisciplinary venture. Both theology and social sciences
had foundational authority in it. We saw that theology and social sci-
ences were able to enter into a reciprocal relationship of listening,
informing, and transforming each other. I dare say it was a revolution-
ary movement in the identity of religious education from learning in
religion to learning about and from religion.
Of course, many school teachers did not even want to consider
the revised curriculum, the materials and teaching aids, although the
changes would speed up the pupils’ learning and broaden their un-
derstanding of Islam.
A symposium on search for new approaches, with distinguished
colleagues from abroad, was organized under my initiative in 2001. It
was meant to open a debate regarding religious education in Turkey
and to show a perspective for future action. The symposium served as
a platform for a kind of self-testing and judging of religious education
efforts put on so far; but it also functioned as a vital reminder that
there is a place not only for the best of social sciences but also for
critical reasoning in religious education.
 258 IDENTITY OF ISLAMIC RE

After some other innovative projects that involved the partners of

education, religious educators gradually came to realize that the tradi-
tional approach was no longer sufficient. Most of the researches done
at the universities refused to build merely on a transmissional model;
rather, they favored a dialectical response, which paves the way to
the usage of critical reasoning and contemporary academic expertise.
Still, however, a lot remains unaccomplished. A major issue is the
role of religion in the public sphere. Here, the implementation pro-
cess did not succeed in answering a core question: how can people
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with different understandings of religion hold to their beliefs, and still

participate in public life together? Obviously, this continues to be a big
challenge in a democratic and secular society with a Muslims majority.
So far, this challenge has been taken merely by educational efforts.
The researches place emphasis on teaching techniques of social co-
hesion rather than content. Although some theological researches are
attempting to fill in the gap, they were so far not able to transform the
teaching and learning settings; what is needed is a language by which
one can enter the public sphere religiously. Polarizing faith-based
claims are still prevalent, irrespective of the plurality within religion.
The sociopolitical and cultural basis of such simplistic closures is evi-
dent, and poses another educational challenge.
If religious education is to emerge as an academically respectable
field, as scientific in its own right, it needs to be more than educational
efforts. I see a promising future in hermeneutical religious pedagogy.
What I mean is a pedagogy that cooperates with social sciences and
critical reason to examine our religious sources, cultural heritage and
lived-life of the tradition in order to serve the identity formation of
each person today. I am writing this while turning the pages of my last
book, co-authored with two experts of critical Islamic theology: The
Quran and the Individual. A Response to the Radical Discourse (2010).
My journey to find a room for science in religious education con-
tinues with curiosity, gratitude, and with trust in the God of Mercy
(ar-Rahmān ar-Rahı̄m).

Mualla Selçuk is Professor of Religious Education in the Divinity Faculty of

Ankara University in Ankara, Turkey. E-mail: selcuk@divinity.ankara.edu.tr

REFERENCE

Selçuk, M., H. Albayrak, and N. Bozkurt. 2010. The Quran and the individual. A response to the
radical discourse (Kuran ve Birey Radikal Söylem Üstüne). Ankara: Turhan Kitabevi.