Articulating the Boundary between Secularism and Islamism: The Imam‐Hatip Schools of Turkey

Abstract

On the basis of an ethnographic analysis of an Imam‐Hatip vocational religious secondary school in Turkey, I examine teachers' and parents' expectations and the process of students' identity formation. Although the students attending the Imam‐Hatip school were expected to accept a reality infused with an Islamic worldview, their schooling experience actually strengthened the relational nature of identity formation in the context of Islamism and secularism, respectively.