Ankara School

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The Ankara School , often school of Ankara called, is the self-designation of a group of Turkish theologians who pursue a liberal, western-influenced Islamic theology.

history

In 1948 the demand “We need a theology like in the West!” Was loud in the Turkish parliament . As a result, an Islamic theological faculty was founded in Ankara in 1949 according to Western academic standards. It is the first of its kind in the entire Islamic world. Annemarie Schimmel also taught in 1954 in Ankara. Another two dozen faculties were founded in the following years, following the example of the Ankaran faculty throughout Turkey.

A number of theologians who advocated liberal reforms of Islam have already emerged from this environment. Including u. a. Mehmet Aydın , who was later minister under Gül and Erdoğan from 2002 to 2011. Probably the best-known Turkish reform theologian is Yaşar Nuri Öztürk , who is often included in the Ankaran school , but is not part of this movement. Burhanettin Tatar is also not a member of the Ankaran School , although she has already published in the Ankaran School's magazine .

In the course of the 1990s, a new theological school of thought developed at the Ankara Faculty , which calls itself the Ankaran School and is publicly represented with three book series and the magazine İslamiyât . Felix Körner characterizes it as follows: “High level, steep theses, courageous acceptance of new approaches, including western ones .” Körner sees three influences to which the new movement owes: First, two theology professors at the theological faculty in Ankara: Mehmet Said Hatiboğlu and Hüseyin Atay. Then many followers of the Ankaran School studied at western universities for a time. And finally, the influence of Fazlur Rahman . The Ankaran school has meanwhile moved away from the self-designation “Islamic modernists” .

Representatives and positions

Important representatives of the Ankaran school are Ömer Özsoy and Mehmet Paçacı .

The Qur'an is not viewed as a timeless revelation , but as God's actual speech to a specific group of people at a specific time. As a result, the over-historical message of the Koran can only be understood by placing its text in this historical context. This approach allows a distinction between historical, nowadays no longer literally binding individual regulations and the timeless normative content of the Koran. However, the demarcation between the historically outdated and the timelessly valid always remains difficult.

About Özsoy's theological positions on Koran exegesis it is said u. a .: “Only about ten percent of what the Koran wants to say can also be found in the text, the rest is in need of interpretation against the background of the respective time. Özsoy therefore does not consider the Koran to be timeless and universally valid. And with this historical-critical perspective, the Koran expert offends conservative Muslims, who basically claim all Koranic instructions for the present. "

criticism

In 2008, Felix Körner SJ, who had done a lot to make the Ankaraner school known in Germany, sharply criticized its reform approaches. About Özsoy's historicization of the Koran, he said that it was no longer a self-interpretation of a scriptural religion, but a “historically disguised consensus ethos”. And further: All reform approaches would deprive the Koran of its reformatory power.

See also

literature

  • Felix Körner SJ: Revisionist Koran Hermeneutics in Contemporary Turkish Theology. Rethinking Islam , Würzburg: Ergon-Verlag 2004. ISBN 978-3-89913-373-8
  • Felix Körner SJ: Old text - new context. Koran hermeneutics in Turkey today. Selected texts , Herder Verlag 2006.
  • Recep Şentürk : Islamic Reformist Discourses and Intellectuals in Turkey - Permanent Religion with Dynamic Law , book chapter in: Shireen Hunter: Reformist Voices of Islam: Mediating Islam and Modernity Routledge 2014, p. 227 ff.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Felix Körner SJ: Old text - new context. Koran hermeneutics in Turkey today. Selected texts , Herder Verlag 2006, p. 11
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Günter Lerch: Islam in the Modern Federal Agency for Civic Education June 29, 2006; also in: Elke Ariëns, Helmut König, Manfred Sicking (eds.): Questions of Faith in Europe: Religion and Politics in Conflict 2014, pp. 149 ff .; here p. 157 f.
  3. ^ Felix Körner SJ: Old text - new context. Koran hermeneutics in Turkey today. Selected texts , Herder Verlag 2006, p. 13 f.
  4. ^ Felix Körner SJ: Old text - new context. Koran hermeneutics in Turkey today. Selected texts , Herder Verlag 2006, pp. 11 f., 13
  5. ↑ Arian Fariborz: Portrait of the Turkish Koran expert Ömer Özsoy: Modern understanding of Islam instead of missionary thought Qantara.de 06/09/2008
  6. ↑ Ehrhard Brunn: Symposium Series “The Spiritual Legacy of Islam” - Koran Scientific Approaches to the Test Qantara.de July 14, 2008