Islam, the State, and Education in the Late Ottoman Empire pdf

When understood on its own terms and not as part of a later agendato fit it into a broadly normative meta-narrative, the late Ottomanproject serves as a highly informative road only partially taken. Theradical Republican break with so many substantive and symbolicaspects of indigenous tradition— and the “natural” assumptions inher-ent in the Westernization and nationalist theory that undergirded it—consigned the late Ottoman approach to appear a forlorm outmodedoption while, however, the new system still benefited freely from all ofits infrastructural and organizational headway. Belated recognition ofthe rift in the social} historical fabric that Kemalism begot—and herewe have the source of bona fide bifurcation—prompts a closer look atthe late Ottoman alternative. This is not to suggest, as some wouldnaively like to believe, that Hamidian policy contains a solution for thecurrent impasse. But as an attempt to navigate the changing dispensawtion of the late nineteenth century, the unhesitating fusion of theWestern with the indigenous inherent in the Ottoman project holds