Radio Islam and Agencies | 06 August 2017

The current Turkish government is “determined to raise generations acquainted with their religion, history and culture,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said last week at the opening of Istanbul’s Yıldız Hamidiye Mosque after a four-year restoration period. 

“This is not the government’s job on its own. [It should be done] together, with mothers and fathers. We will continue to work hard to raise generations that know who they are, where they come from, where they stand, and where they are going. There may be shortcomings in this regard, but the core of the believer is solid. I believe we’ll overcome our shortcomings in a short period of time,” Erdoğan stated.

“We will start to get results in this matter when we see our mosques full of youths. We’ll work nonstop to improve both our physical and spiritual infrastructure. We are obliged to accomplish this not only for ourselves but also for all our brothers and sisters who are looking to us and who have turned their hearts to us,” he added. 

Erdoğan, at the ceremony, also touched on the July 15, 2016 coup attempt, saying that the coup plotters had deliberately targeted mosques in an attempt to “silence the recitation of the ezan [Muslim call to prayer].” 

“Those attacking our country and nation are firstly targeting our sanctuaries. On July 15, [2016], our modest mosque at the Special Operations Command [in Ankara’s Gölbaşı district] and the Millet Mosque at the Presidential Complex in Beştepe were bombed with warplanes. Also in Istanbul, many mosques where prayers were being recited were shot at by the coup plotters. In [the Aegean province of] İzmir, a mosque where prayers were being recited was also loutishly attacked. These attacks are not coincidental,” he said.

Erdoğan was speaking after performing Friday prayers at the newly restored Yıldız Hamidiye Mosque, originally commissioned by Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid II and built between 1884 and 1886. 

“Some 132 years have passed since its construction,” he said, referring to the mosque during his speech. “Let the Yıldız Hamidiye Mosque, renovated after a 132-year period and opened once again, be enjoyed by our country and the whole Islamic world. It is a stunning artefact for Istanbul.” 

The mosque is situated near the Yıldız Palace in the city’s Beşiktaş district.

Educational evolution

In a separate development, the Turkish government in July announced a new school curriculum that excluded Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Education Minister Ismet Yilmaz said the main elements of evolution already underpinned the science curriculum, but there would be no mention of Darwin’s landmark theory until university.

“Because it is above the students’ level and not directly related, the theory of evolution is not part” of the school curriculum, Yilmaz told a news conference.

The curriculum, effective from the start of the 2017-2018 school year, also obliges Turkey’s growing number of “Imam Hatip” religious schools to teach the concept of jihad as patriotic in spirit.

“It is also our duty to fix what has been perceived as wrong. This is why the Islamic law class and basic fundamental religion lectures will include (lessons on) jihad,” Yilmaz told reporters. “The real meaning of jihad is loving your nation.”

Under the AKP, which came to power in 2002, the number of “Imam Hatip” religious schools has grown exponentially. Erdogan, who has roots in an Islamic activist movement, attended one such school.

He has spent his career striving to bring Islam back into public life in constitutionally secular Turkey and has cast himself as the liberator of millions of religious Turks whose rights and welfare were neglected by a secular elite.

Secular Turks see Erdogan as attempting to roll back the work of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the Western-facing founder of modern Turkey who sought to erase Islam from the country’s public life.