Eighth to the Sixteenth Century - Rashid Islamic Center

Islam and Modern Science: The Colonial Era • 161The nineteenth century witnessed a series of reforms, all aimedat modernizing Turkey. New schools were opened. Europeanlanguages were taught; scientific texts were translated into Turkish;the first modern census and survey was carried out in 1831. In 1845,a commission of seven eminent men was made in charge of proposingeducational reforms. Its report, submitted in August 1846, calledfor the establishment of an Ottoman state university, a network ofprimary and secondary schools, and a permanent Council of PublicInstruction.The Ottoman leaders of the nineteenth century were obsessedwith the idea of reform, but no matter how many reforms they carriedout the economic, political, and social difficulties of the empireremained unsolved. This process of reform produced some criticalminds bold enough to criticize their own rulers and society and callfor basic change, but it did not reform the society.With the major defeats suffered by the Ottomans during WorldWar I and after the signing of the treaty of Sèvres on August 10,1920, the Sultans had lost much public support. This led the wayfor the emergence of Mustafa Kemal Paşa, later known as KemalAtatürk (1881–1938), who launched a war of liberation to saveTurkey from falling into the hands of European powers. On March3, 1924, he abolished the Caliphate, banished all members of theOttoman Sultanate from the Turkish territory, and Turkey becamea secular republic. This was followed by the abolition of the Islamicinstitutions of the country: the office of the Shaykh al-Islam; theMinistry of Religious Law, religious schools and colleges; Islamiccourts. These actions created a great deal of resentment and publicoutcry. Demonstrations followed. Spontaneous armed groupsemerged. Now the Republic established in the name of freedomresorted to military action. Kurds, a very large number of citizensof the eastern provinces, leading religious scholars, old nobility, andeven young Turks who had been part of the Kemalist revolution butwho now differed with Kemal’s policies were subjected to atrocities.For Mustafa Kemal and his associates, civilization meant Europeancivilization, as one of Kemal’s close associates, Abdullah Cevdet,wrote in 1911 (Lewis 1961, 267). For them, everything related toIslam meant backwardness. They banned traditional dress. The fez,