Some of you asked me what I’m actually studying here in Berlin. Good question. I’m basically looking at what the Turkish government has done to promote integration of its migrants into German society, with an emphasis on religious services. The Turkish government sends imams and other religious officials to Germany (and indeed around the world) to run a number of mosques and prepare sermons for Friday prayers. The name of their agency in Germany is the Turkish-Islamic Religious Institute (DITIB for short). DITIB’s primary objective is to meet the religious needs of Turkish immigrants, but they also want to preserve Turkish identity among immigrant children and block the growth of radical Islam. My focus is on the Islamic sermons used in the government-affiliated mosques.
A major goal of this project is to accurately describe the content of these sermons for a Western audience that likely knows little about day-to-day Islam. Beyond this, I’m interested in answering questions like the following: Can the Turkish government compete with independent Islamic associations who may better meet the needs of Anatolian migrants? How much pressure has Turkey’s EU candidacy placed on Turkish officials to present Islam in a positive light, and has this affected weekly sermons? As commentators begin to speak of parallel societies and a “new Berlin wall” forming between ethnic Germans and Muslim Turks, what measures are being taken in religious and cultural sectors to prevent riots like those seen in France in 2005? My study should help answer these questions by highlighting the role of an actor often overlooked in discussions of migration: the government of the sending country.
So what am I going to do?
Here’s what I plan to accomplish in the next two months.
- I will collect as many DITIB sermons as possible. These sermons will be compared with ~300 sermons read at Friday prayers in Turkey for my dissertation on Turkish Islamic sermons.
- I will interview the people responsible for producing the sermons. I want to understand how they choose topics, what the writing process is, what significance they think the sermons have, etc.
- I will interview DITIB officials such as imams and religious attaches to understand their role in Germany.
- I will interview German officials who interact with DITIB to better understand German policies regarding immigrant religious groups, especially Muslim ones.
- To the extent possible (it’s a bit sensitive these days), I will interview leaders and imams of independent Islamic associations to better understand their points of departure from DITIB. (If I’m really lucky I’ll be able to collect some of their sermons as well.)
That’s the long and the short of it. A slightly fancier account with additional information about my dissertation can be found in this brief, incomplete abstract (pdf file).
Questions? Comments? Let me know what you think.
10 comments ↓
Jim, this is an excellent blog! Good luck with your project. Sounds like you could write a more journalistic style book on your experience there in addition to the dissertation.
Hi Jim,
I was surprised to get your website, but this looks interesting. Turkey seems to be popular these days! I live in Russia, and last winter I worked as an English teacher in a school run jointly by the Turkish and Russian governments. They have one school in Moscow and one school in St. Petersburg. There is also a school like this in Ohio. (At least I think it is run by the Turkish government - perhaps by investors)
One of the things that was interesting about this school was that they are almost fanatically careful to separate church and state. They say this is very important in Turkey, and that the school could lose prestige and funding if it were known to affiliated with any religion.
I am interested if there are such school in Germany, and how it could be that a governemnt that has strict rules against the mixing of church and state ends up funding religion abroad.
Except for my experience in this school, I am somewhat ignorant of all else in Turkey, so I hope my comment is relevant somehow.
Lindy
Hey Worm,
Thanks! I gotta say that your blog on your research in China was my inspiration. You did a great job combining coverage of research with all your other activities. More than anything, I liked how your blog turned research into a public event when many find it so isolating. I think for all the procrastinators and perfectionists out there your site is an example of how to be publicly accountable for your time and display your work as it develops, without having a polished finished product in hand.
I learned it by watching you.
Jim
Hi Lindy,
That’s fascinating (and definitely relevant!). There were Turkish media reports this past February about those schools in Moscow and St. Petersburg that claimed the Russian government had shut them down and kicked all the teachers out of the country because they were fronts for the CIA and too religious to boot.
Well, it turned out that the stories were complete fabrications and subsequently interpreted as attacks against the larger network that sponsors those schools. In fact, there are something like 300 of these schools around the world and it’s no secret that they are affiliated with the supporters of Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish Islamic scholar and spiritual leader. (For more info on his movement, see: The Gülen Movement.) I think Gülen and his movement are intriguing and they always seem to come up in my research.
These schools exist in Germany, too, but I’m not sure where exactly. It’d be good to look them up.
The church/state separation issue in Turkey has always fascinated me. I learned years ago that religion is taught in public schools in Turkey, but what I didn’t realize for the longest time is that students are actually taught how to pray and how to be “good Muslims.” A class on world religions is one thing, but I couldn’t get my head around this. My dissertation topic emerged partly from wanting to sort out the issue of how a government balances its secular ideology with a strong religious identity.
Thanks for your comment,
Jim
Hi Jim,
It’s been fun to look at your Web site and get a better feel for what your project is all about. This description was concise and clear. It’s great to know what you’re up to. I like that idea of making research (and writing) public instead of the isolating experience it can be. It seems like the new blogging culture makes that possible (says the Ludite).
The College I work for put on a forum last fall about this topic–how technology is changing social interaction. Here’s the link to the transcript, in case you’re interested. Just click on the first one, “Smart Mobs.”
http://www.csbs.utah.edu/sicil.....ogies.html
I edited it, so if you find any errors, don’t let me know.
Stephanie
Hey Stephanie,
Thanks for your comment and the link. That was an interesting transcript. I’ve known of the phenomenon but I hadn’t heard of that author or the term Smart Mobs. I had a related experience yesterday when I got an email from someone posting on NowPublic (a “citizen journalist” site) asking if I would share some of my pictures of the Berlin Hauptbahnhof that I had posted on Flickr for a story he wrote. Later I noticed that several others had uploaded their photos for the same story. Pretty cool to see this cooperative network in action and to be a part of it, even in just a small way.
Jim
[...] Now, I’m in no position to root out Islamic extremism in Berlin and my project is certainly not designed to do so. Indeed, my focus is on the very moderate, “can’t we all just get along” sermons of the Turkish government, an entity that probably commands a small share of the Islamic religious market in Germany (although this remains to be seen). Uncovering extremist ideology might be more pressing in terms of policy and security, but I think it’s also important to understand how major players like DITIB shape the structure of migrant religious life. Hubert agrees with me on this, and he knows that there is only so much a person can do for one dissertation. However, he also wants to fill out more of the picture, especially since religion is going to become increasingly important to his research program in the coming years. [...]
[...] Habe gerade den Blog von Jim Gibbon entdeckt, der an einer Interessanten Dissertation arbeitet. Er untersucht, was die türkische Regierung tut, um die Integration seiner Migranten in die deutsche Gesellschaft zu fördern, mit einem besonderen Augenmerk auf die religiösen Angebote. Dazu untersucht er Freitagspredigten in Moscheen in Deutschland (jedoch nur in Moscheen, die zur Ditib gehören) und führt auch Interviews dazu, unter anderem mit den Imamen, durch. Mich würde das Ergebnis der Studie auch interessieren. Insbesondere der Punkt, was im allgemeinen gepredigt wird und dann natürlich auch, wie diese Predigten auf einen Außenstehenden wirken. Werde wohl öfter dort nachschauen. [...]
this is seems a very interesting research. i hope i can read what you come up with.
Thanks, super hero. I plan on posting results and papers on this site as they become available.
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