DİYANET İŞLERİ BAŞKANLIĞI VE ŞEYHÜL İSLAM MAKAMLIĞI ARASINDA KRİTİK BİR KARŞILAŞTIRMA

Abstract

After the 19 th century, a great number of religious institutions that manage religious affairs were established in many Muslim countries.These religious institutions bear official identity since they were established by states.Some academics, authors and intellectuals liken these institutions to the offices of Shaykh al-Islām that existed between 11 th and 18 th centuries and evaluate modern religious institutions as if the follow-up these religious offices.This results in some misunderstandings.The article compares the Presidency of Religious affairs in Turkey to the office of Shaykh al-Islām in the Ottoman Empire with the intent of obviating these misunderstandings.Before comparing these two religious institutions, the article presents brief explanations of their history, establishment and functions in their times, and then these two institutions are comparatively evaluated from two different perspectives.In the first instance, it is drawn a parallel between two in terms of their jurisdiction.In the second instance, the functions and roles of fatwās issued by the two are evaluated in their respective environments.The comparison and evaluation of the two institutions from these angles considerably help to scatter the misconceptions to which are led by those academics, authors and critics who establish strong similarities between past and modern religious institutions. SummaryAfter the early 19 th century, national religious institutions started to be established almost in every Muslim country with the intent of conducting religious affairs in their respective environments.These newly-established national religious institutions can be, in some sense, accepted as the maintenance of the offices of Shaykh al-Islām that existed in many Muslim sultanates to organise and manage religious, judicial and educational affairs of the societies of the period between the 11 th and 18 th centuries.Even though these modern religious institutions liken frequently to the offices of Shaykh al-Islām of the past, establishing such resemblances between them leads to some misconceptions.The article aims to scatter these misconceptions resulted from establishing such similarities by singling out the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı, or Diyanet) and its predecessor institution, the Ottoman Sultanate's office of Shaykh al-Islām as a case study.In 1923, the Republic of Turkey was founded subsequent to the collapse of the Ottoman Sultanate.The transition of the Muslim-majority Islamic Sultanate to the Muslim-majority secular democratic state brought many reforms with the establishment of Turkish Republic.The transformation of the Ottoman Sultanate's office of Shaykh al-Islām to the Diyanet on March 3, 1924 is one of historic reforms that blatantly symbolises the secular character of Turkish Republic because the management of religion was placed under the control of a constitutional public body that does not have any political influence and authority within the State's politics.Further reforms were implemented to consolidate the secularism principle espoused by Turkish Republic on the same day that the Diyanet was established.For instance, the Sharī'a Courts were closed down, the Caliphate and the office of Shaykh al-Islām were abolished, and the Unity of Education Law (Tevhid-i tedrisat kanunu) was enacted.All these radical reforms merely aim the separation of religion from political authority with the intent of establishing a secular state and transforming Turkey into a modern society.With the transformation of the office of Shaykh al-Islām into the Diyanet, many duties and tasks previously carried out by the office of Shaykh al-Islām were allocated to other institutions that were established after the demise of the Ottoman Sultanate.As the

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. DergiPark (Istanbul University), 2019 · DOI ↗