1 00:00:00,920 --> 00:00:07,530 One. I think it's time to start. I know it's really exciting to be able to be here today for me. 2 00:00:08,060 --> 00:00:12,990 I would like to welcome everyone to the Middle East Centre at Saint Anthony's. 3 00:00:13,110 --> 00:00:17,420 We're very excited today because we have Professor Malik as they go. 4 00:00:17,700 --> 00:00:26,010 Uh, and she is here to discuss her latest book that has just come out in the UK on the 21st of May, if I'm not mistaken. 5 00:00:26,670 --> 00:00:35,520 And the title of a book is The Making of the Modern Muslim State Islam and Governance in the Middle East and North Africa. 6 00:00:35,880 --> 00:00:44,740 The book is published by Princeton University Press. And you have the code, and it's, uh, you can get a 30% discount. 7 00:00:44,760 --> 00:00:49,410 It's just fantastic. So please let us know if you would like to find out more about the codes. 8 00:00:49,920 --> 00:00:58,270 Professor Ziggo is Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Professor in Contemporary Islamic thought and life in the Department of Vignette, 9 00:00:58,290 --> 00:01:02,040 Eastern Languages and Civilisation at Harvard University. 10 00:01:03,330 --> 00:01:08,850 She has published numerous books and articles on Islam and politics. 11 00:01:09,150 --> 00:01:14,180 They include a book published by Science Po on the lemma of Isaiah. 12 00:01:14,550 --> 00:01:22,500 And I think that's definitely a. You've also published an article about the school, uh, kind, uh, a variation of the book. 13 00:01:22,740 --> 00:01:25,840 It's an excellent article. I've learned so much from that article. 14 00:01:25,860 --> 00:01:34,410 In fact, I think I've used your article in my teaching as well as when I was doing my Ph.D. or so excited to refer to that article. 15 00:01:34,740 --> 00:01:39,360 I'm a big fan of those work, as you can tell, so this is really exciting for me. 16 00:01:39,750 --> 00:01:46,410 She's also the author of Islamism in Morocco Religion, Authoritarianism and Electoral Politics. 17 00:01:46,740 --> 00:01:50,170 And like everyone else, I'm thrilled to have you here. 18 00:01:50,190 --> 00:01:55,440 Thank you so much for coming and for visiting us. We feel so lucky that you're here with us today. 19 00:01:55,860 --> 00:01:59,700 And without further delay. I invite professor to go to discuss. 20 00:02:00,090 --> 00:02:04,410 Okay. Well, thank you so much for this, uh, very kind introduction. 21 00:02:04,860 --> 00:02:14,640 Thank you. Uh, like Han for inviting me. I want to also, uh, thank you, Jean Rogan, for inviting me to present my book here at the Media Centre. 22 00:02:15,090 --> 00:02:23,040 Uh, I am delighted and honoured. Uh, I would also like to thank Caroline Davis for organising this event and my travel to come here. 23 00:02:23,340 --> 00:02:31,380 Thank you all for being here. There are some friends in this room that I'm delighted to see and have supported me over the years, and I am grateful. 24 00:02:32,430 --> 00:02:36,750 Okay, so the questions I ask in the book are the following. 25 00:02:37,320 --> 00:02:45,900 First, how has the role of Islam in governance been conceived in the Middle East and North Africa in the modern period by modern period? 26 00:02:45,930 --> 00:02:51,450 I read in strictly chronological period, that is the 19th to the 21st centuries. 27 00:02:51,900 --> 00:02:56,610 Second, how has it been implemented in concrete terms? 28 00:02:56,820 --> 00:03:04,080 By concrete I also mean material terms. And third, what may have changed from pre-modern times? 29 00:03:06,190 --> 00:03:08,710 So how do I respond to these questions in the book? 30 00:03:08,950 --> 00:03:18,820 I find that in continuities with the past, in modern times, the state is generally expected to be the custodian of Islam as the preferred religion. 31 00:03:19,240 --> 00:03:27,640 This means that one of its duties is to preserve the religion that is Islam, the Muslim community and Islamic institutions. 32 00:03:28,060 --> 00:03:33,900 The first principle is the preservation of the religion, for example by guaranteeing worship, 33 00:03:33,910 --> 00:03:38,379 the celebration of Muslim holidays or the organisation of the pilgrimage, 34 00:03:38,380 --> 00:03:45,400 but also by disseminating and enforcing specific interpretations of Islam or limiting freedom of expression. 35 00:03:45,910 --> 00:03:49,720 The second principle is the preservation of the Muslim community, 36 00:03:50,110 --> 00:03:58,000 for example by defending its borders or shoring it up against erosion through forbidding or preventing Muslims conversions. 37 00:03:58,520 --> 00:04:09,550 Third is the preservation of Islamic institutions, for example by upholding Islamic courts or funding Islamic education and places of worship. 38 00:04:09,940 --> 00:04:16,630 I show that this duty is tied to sovereignty, even if exercised by a non-Muslim ruler. 39 00:04:16,930 --> 00:04:21,340 For instance, as I show in chapter two in French occupied Tunisia, 40 00:04:21,580 --> 00:04:29,500 some Tunisians asked what they and French authorities called Islamic friends to be the custodian of Islam. 41 00:04:30,490 --> 00:04:39,190 In fact, in the 1920s there were three competing students of Islam in Tunisia Islamic France, the Tunisian monarch, 42 00:04:39,190 --> 00:04:47,530 the bay and a sovereign independent Tunisia, the state that was exercising sovereignty or aspiring to exercise. 43 00:04:47,530 --> 00:04:50,650 It was expected to be the custodian of Islam. 44 00:04:51,190 --> 00:04:59,710 Moreover, this duty is only one of the state's duties, and it is performed through a state partnership with Olam. 45 00:05:00,340 --> 00:05:02,290 This partnership has endured, 46 00:05:02,290 --> 00:05:13,600 not withstanding fluctuations in the relative strength of any of the partners in its institutional forms and in the vocabulary used to designate. 47 00:05:15,970 --> 00:05:21,130 This does not mean that the state does not protect other religions. 48 00:05:21,700 --> 00:05:30,590 Only that Islam is protected more than the others. It does not mean that there are no domains of equality between Muslims and non-Muslims. 49 00:05:30,610 --> 00:05:35,230 In fact, we do find such domains in modern and pre-modern times. 50 00:05:35,680 --> 00:05:40,990 And it does not mean that religious and political authority are necessarily conflated. 51 00:05:41,260 --> 00:05:50,230 They may or may not be, but it implies that we generally find no separation between Islam and the state, 52 00:05:50,590 --> 00:05:56,710 and no state neutrality toward religions as an aspiration or concrete reality. 53 00:05:57,190 --> 00:06:02,770 But sometimes we find the aspirations to separate Islam and politics. 54 00:06:03,190 --> 00:06:10,240 This has created some confusion in the literature, which argues on that basis that such states are secular. 55 00:06:10,840 --> 00:06:16,419 However, separating Islam and politics often serves to ensure a state monopoly on religious 56 00:06:16,420 --> 00:06:21,850 affairs and sometimes keep at bay the political ambitions of the religious minorities, 57 00:06:21,850 --> 00:06:25,660 as such to ensure that the state remains Muslim. 58 00:06:27,970 --> 00:06:32,590 In the book I retrace the continuity of the Sacred Studentship of Islam. 59 00:06:32,900 --> 00:06:36,520 Essai for short, in the midst of two transformations. 60 00:06:37,060 --> 00:06:42,880 One was the importation of new techniques of governance, which was not unprecedented. 61 00:06:43,270 --> 00:06:48,489 Indeed, there have been significant changes to techniques of governance before the 19th century. 62 00:06:48,490 --> 00:06:56,740 Reforms. The advent of the tansy march in the 19th century should not obfuscate earlier series of reforms or attempts to reform. 63 00:06:57,190 --> 00:07:02,290 However, the importation of constitutions as an institutional form was new. 64 00:07:03,010 --> 00:07:13,149 The other transformation was the expansion of the size and reach of the states in the 19th to from the 19th to the 21st century, 65 00:07:13,150 --> 00:07:16,960 which was truly unprecedented in its magnitude. 66 00:07:21,240 --> 00:07:26,790 So I find that there has been a broad agreement across the political spectrum on 67 00:07:26,790 --> 00:07:31,020 the necessity of the state custodianship of Islam as the preferred religion, 68 00:07:31,350 --> 00:07:38,640 but also, and this is particularly important for my argument, vigorous debates about its meaning and extent. 69 00:07:39,180 --> 00:07:41,819 By attending to the long history of these debates, 70 00:07:41,820 --> 00:07:47,790 we can make legible the political cleavage about the role of Islam in governance in the modern Middle East. 71 00:07:49,680 --> 00:07:53,400 I want to add important points about this broad agreement. 72 00:07:53,880 --> 00:08:01,590 The state custodianship of Islam is an empirical regularity, not an essential feature and not inevitable. 73 00:08:02,130 --> 00:08:06,270 There are several exceptions among Muslim majority countries around the world, 74 00:08:06,280 --> 00:08:11,910 albeit only one in the Middle East today, Lebanon, which is particularly religiously fragmented. 75 00:08:12,120 --> 00:08:22,650 And I will say a few words later about it. I do not argue that Islam is an inherently political religion, or more political than other religions, 76 00:08:22,950 --> 00:08:27,870 or that the political in Muslim states is inherently or predominantly religious. 77 00:08:28,200 --> 00:08:35,010 In fact, I provide a quantitative evaluation of the well bounded domain of states involvement in religion, 78 00:08:35,580 --> 00:08:45,210 public religious expenditures relative to non-religious ones in modern but also pre-modern times, which shows just the opposite. 79 00:08:45,780 --> 00:08:53,579 I also do not make predictions as to whether the expectation that the state is or be the custodian 80 00:08:53,580 --> 00:08:59,220 of Islam as a preferred religion will continue to be prevalent in most must have majority polities. 81 00:09:00,000 --> 00:09:04,050 So in the future, its historical persistence notwithstanding, 82 00:09:04,890 --> 00:09:11,190 I argue that it has been a matter of choice vigorously discussed as to its meaning and extent. 83 00:09:11,340 --> 00:09:17,610 In fact, this choice has been made in the modern period in full awareness of the wide 84 00:09:17,610 --> 00:09:21,960 array of alternative potential options as to the role of religion in governance. 85 00:09:22,380 --> 00:09:25,620 Different choices could therefore be made in the future. 86 00:09:26,370 --> 00:09:33,090 I also find that some voices call or have called for a change in this respect, 87 00:09:33,480 --> 00:09:39,300 although they are rare and seldom express themselves in formal deliberative arenas. 88 00:09:39,750 --> 00:09:48,960 This reinforces the fact that what is prevalent today, as far as the role of Islam in governance is concerned, is by no means ineluctable. 89 00:09:51,150 --> 00:09:58,290 Since there is a broad agreement about the state custodianship of Islam and debates about its meaning and extent, 90 00:09:58,620 --> 00:10:06,540 there is a political cleavage about it. I find that it is organised around four interrelated recurring questions. 91 00:10:06,870 --> 00:10:09,929 First, the thickness of the state. Custodianship of Islam. 92 00:10:09,930 --> 00:10:14,940 That is, the extent to which Islamic principles constrain the state. 93 00:10:15,360 --> 00:10:23,249 It is the commitment of the state to Islamic principles in governance, e.g. in legislation or as a philosophy of governance. 94 00:10:23,250 --> 00:10:30,210 For instance, to call for the implementation of Sharia law is to call for a secure state custodianship of Islam. 95 00:10:30,690 --> 00:10:34,979 Second, the munificence of the state custodianship of Islam, that is, 96 00:10:34,980 --> 00:10:41,549 the extent of public religious provisions that the state should make available to Muslims e.g. mosques, 97 00:10:41,550 --> 00:10:45,420 imams, Islamic education, Islamic courts and personnel. 98 00:10:45,420 --> 00:10:52,440 Islamic forms of public assistance. It is the state's commitment to Islam from a material point of view. 99 00:10:53,250 --> 00:10:56,639 Third, there is the strength of the state, the stewardship of Islam. 100 00:10:56,640 --> 00:11:06,240 That is, the extent to which the state should constrain Islam and its institutions with its coercive and pedagogical apparatus, 101 00:11:06,240 --> 00:11:09,480 e.g. by imposing its own interpretations of Islam. 102 00:11:09,990 --> 00:11:14,940 And finally, there is the relationship between religion and politics. 103 00:11:15,360 --> 00:11:25,860 That is the issue of who can partake in implementing and discussing the state's custodianship of Islam, e.g. should engage with politics, 104 00:11:26,040 --> 00:11:33,540 for example when speaking truth to power and criticising the ruler for not fulfilling his duty to protect the religion, 105 00:11:33,540 --> 00:11:42,150 the community or its institutions. Also, can political competition be organised alongside sectarian lines? 106 00:11:42,510 --> 00:11:50,190 Or can political activism be based on religion? Can mosques serve as fora for political deliberations and competition? 107 00:11:50,700 --> 00:11:59,610 This categorisation, these four questions help make the debates about the role of Islam in governance legible and follow it through time. 108 00:12:00,000 --> 00:12:08,520 It helps separate what these debates owe to historical contingencies, from what they owe, to the persistence of core principles and questions. 109 00:12:10,340 --> 00:12:16,250 In response to this question. So we can discern two camps in a political cleavage. 110 00:12:16,340 --> 00:12:27,379 And I use the term two camps to follow chronicler Muhammad Biram in the 1850s in the regency of Tunis, who used the word for the kind in Arabic I use. 111 00:12:27,380 --> 00:12:34,970 Sometimes acronyms stick in the labels liberal and conservative to capture the gist of what these two camps stand for. 112 00:12:35,450 --> 00:12:40,189 In real life, we also find, of course, the labels Islamists versus secularists. 113 00:12:40,190 --> 00:12:45,950 But I avoid the term secularist because it implies a project of separation or neutrality. 114 00:12:46,460 --> 00:12:55,940 We also find inflammatory or self-serving labels, such as reactionaries versus progressives, enlightened nominal Muslims, and so on. 115 00:12:56,660 --> 00:13:00,890 All these labels are contextual and I do not pay undue attention to them. 116 00:13:01,850 --> 00:13:06,380 Also, the liberal and conservative stances on the cleavage are not fixed, 117 00:13:07,130 --> 00:13:13,190 but depend on the status quo, which evolves as a result of a tug of war between the two camps. 118 00:13:13,640 --> 00:13:17,870 Hence, we stances evolve through time and vary from place to place. 119 00:13:18,320 --> 00:13:21,630 We can find it in authoritarian and democratic contexts. 120 00:13:21,680 --> 00:13:30,440 Most contemporary authoritarian governments have imposed what I call an authoritarian synthesis of liberal and conservative senses. 121 00:13:31,190 --> 00:13:37,669 So why do liberals and conservatives, white conservatives argue for a secure state? 122 00:13:37,670 --> 00:13:44,510 Because studentship of Islam, whereas liberals advocate for a thinner one, that is, for fewer Islamic constraints on the state. 123 00:13:45,020 --> 00:13:49,290 Conservatives also argue for a more munificent state for students of Islam. 124 00:13:49,310 --> 00:13:55,070 They aim to expand the place of Islamic governance by increasing state funded religious provisions, 125 00:13:55,370 --> 00:14:02,210 whereas the liberals adversaries aim to decrease them on the issues of the strength of the state's custodianship of Islam. 126 00:14:02,910 --> 00:14:05,810 The picture is more complicated and contextual. 127 00:14:06,200 --> 00:14:14,270 Liberals who argue for a thinner and less munificent state stewardship of Islam, also often advocate for a stronger one, 128 00:14:14,540 --> 00:14:21,050 that is, for its coercive implementation, and would in that case be better described as illiberal progressives. 129 00:14:21,410 --> 00:14:29,989 For instance, they often advocate for specifying and enforcing a correct Islam and for imposing limits on their conservative political adversaries, 130 00:14:29,990 --> 00:14:35,750 freedoms of expression and association, for example by outlawing the mixing of religion and politics. 131 00:14:36,320 --> 00:14:44,540 However, they seldom argue for separating Islam from the state or for state neutrality converging in this regard with conservatives. 132 00:14:45,110 --> 00:14:49,429 On the other hand, conservatives generally support mixing religion and politics, 133 00:14:49,430 --> 00:14:53,690 since they often argue that policies should be derived from religious doctrine. 134 00:14:54,110 --> 00:14:58,820 They might call for a weaker state custodianship of Islam when facing state repression, 135 00:14:59,180 --> 00:15:06,860 but they might advocate for a stronger one if the state abides by an Islamic philosophy of governance that is to their liking. 136 00:15:09,410 --> 00:15:20,050 Importantly, this political cleavage preceded the emergence of organised Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brothers, founded in 1928. 137 00:15:20,060 --> 00:15:25,190 In Egypt. They did not create it, spoiling a so-called liberal age. 138 00:15:25,490 --> 00:15:32,030 As conventional wisdom has it. I show in chapter four of the book that the Muslim brothers, in fact, 139 00:15:32,030 --> 00:15:42,200 joined a pre-existing political battle about the role of Islam in governance and that they reappropriated pre-existing conservative tropes, 140 00:15:42,200 --> 00:15:50,390 for instance. Islam is the religion of sorry, Islam is religion and state, or the Koran is our constitution. 141 00:15:50,570 --> 00:15:59,350 In a context of mass politics. How does this contrast with received wisdom? 142 00:15:59,890 --> 00:16:05,860 Political scientists and historians often reduce the relationship between Islam and politics 143 00:16:06,160 --> 00:16:13,750 to the antagonism between organised Islamist movements and supposedly secular states. 144 00:16:14,110 --> 00:16:22,270 They focus almost exclusively on such movements when studying Islam and politics, and ignore other protagonists. 145 00:16:22,750 --> 00:16:27,400 They do not replace Islamist movements in the long and broad genealogy of ideas. 146 00:16:27,760 --> 00:16:34,960 Therefore, they often strive to explain the emergence of Islamist movements by socio economic dysfunctions. 147 00:16:36,100 --> 00:16:40,870 I'm sorry, there is a problem with, I would say, by socio economic dysfunctions. 148 00:16:41,290 --> 00:16:47,290 Um, and instead I find that Islam is the Islamist project that is the expansion of the role of 149 00:16:47,290 --> 00:16:53,560 Islamic governance is in continuity with a conservative tradition of political thought. 150 00:16:56,290 --> 00:17:04,750 When the role of Islam in the state is acknowledged, it is assumed to be primarily for legitimacy, identity, or symbolic purposes. 151 00:17:05,350 --> 00:17:10,960 Instead, the state custodianship of Islam as a principle is a concrete state duty, 152 00:17:11,590 --> 00:17:20,170 e.g. in 1923 Egypt it is officially declared, and I quote, one of the accepted necessities of public order. 153 00:17:20,570 --> 00:17:22,300 That means a lot of these, 154 00:17:22,630 --> 00:17:31,870 and I'm and will sell them behalf to be sure it can be used as a political tool in sometimes shameless implementation of the cleavage. 155 00:17:31,870 --> 00:17:39,430 And there are some examples in chapter two of my book, which is set in colonial Tunisia and at independence. 156 00:17:41,470 --> 00:17:50,020 Some attribute the politicisation of Islam to colonisation, nationalism, the formation of nation states and modernisation. 157 00:17:50,020 --> 00:17:56,650 As these political contentions about the role of Islam in governance did not exist before these modern developments. 158 00:17:58,910 --> 00:18:01,850 Intellectual historians go slightly further back, 159 00:18:02,090 --> 00:18:11,250 but often see a puzzling bifurcation from reformist thinkers to Muslim fundamentalists, e.g. from Hamad Abdul Rashid Riddle, 160 00:18:11,570 --> 00:18:22,100 why they rarely focus on debates on governance with multiple sides involved e.g. they often only attend to liberal stances and they 161 00:18:22,100 --> 00:18:30,890 rarely focus on debates in real low key of deliberation e.g. they often look at writings by specific intellectual and political actors. 162 00:18:31,280 --> 00:18:37,130 What I hope the book shows is that focusing on a specific issue the role of Islam in governance, 163 00:18:37,430 --> 00:18:42,860 and following the history of intellectual and political disagreements on this issue. 164 00:18:43,250 --> 00:18:49,670 In real look, I have deliberation. Hence my choice to study constitutional debates tells us a different story. 165 00:18:50,150 --> 00:19:00,680 Rather than a puzzling bifurcation, we uncover an enduring political battle that I describe in the book through a number of examples. 166 00:19:03,250 --> 00:19:12,970 Cultural anthropologists claim that the Middle East has become subject to a ubiquitous and hegemonic Western liberal secularism in modern times, 167 00:19:13,270 --> 00:19:17,140 and that modern Middle Eastern states are therefore secular. 168 00:19:17,680 --> 00:19:21,700 They posit but do not explain nor document a rupture. 169 00:19:21,700 --> 00:19:27,040 In modern times, the claim that religious institutions have been calculated in modern times. 170 00:19:27,340 --> 00:19:33,250 We will see that this is not the case. Some even claim that religious minorities are a modern invention, 171 00:19:33,550 --> 00:19:40,780 and that Western liberal secularism is responsible for sectarianism and for the discrimination of religious minorities in the modern Middle East. 172 00:19:41,170 --> 00:19:45,040 I find instead that in modern times, as in pre-modern times, 173 00:19:45,040 --> 00:19:54,580 the issue of the organisation and management of religious differences and year keys under a muslim state have constituted a political and legal issue. 174 00:19:56,730 --> 00:20:05,400 Let me now turn to the organisation of the book. In chapter one, two, three, I examine the long history of constitutional debates in Tunisia. 175 00:20:05,760 --> 00:20:12,000 Its constitutional history is one of the oldest and longest among Muslim majority polities. 176 00:20:12,480 --> 00:20:19,840 This allows for the study of the constitutional debates about Islam and governance in a particularly wide variety of contexts. 177 00:20:19,860 --> 00:20:23,370 Pre-colonial colonial independent nation states. 178 00:20:23,370 --> 00:20:30,150 After a fight for independence, authoritarian governance and democratic transition, followed by a return to authoritarianism. 179 00:20:30,750 --> 00:20:35,880 Since Tunisia is often deemed one of the most religiously neutral polities of the Middle East, 180 00:20:36,270 --> 00:20:41,489 it is a particularly illuminating case to sustain my argument for the continuity of the 181 00:20:41,490 --> 00:20:46,860 state's custodianship of Islam as a preferred religion in most Muslim majority polities, 182 00:20:47,070 --> 00:20:51,330 and the persistence of a broad agreement about the necessity of this principle. 183 00:20:51,870 --> 00:20:54,270 How exceptional is Tunisia in this regard? 184 00:20:54,690 --> 00:21:04,170 To answer that, I analyse constitutional debates about Islam and governance that took place in the 1920s, a period often described as a liberal age, 185 00:21:04,440 --> 00:21:09,030 and contrasted with later periods of so-called revival or Islamization, 186 00:21:09,630 --> 00:21:18,240 when several Middle Eastern polities in the national first drafted constitutions for their newly sovereign or quasi sovereign states. 187 00:21:18,870 --> 00:21:27,210 1920 Greater Syria and 1926 Lebanon are distinctive because of their large population of non-Muslims. 188 00:21:27,540 --> 00:21:34,679 They allow me to study the impact of the demographic weight of religious minorities on the role religion can play in governance, 189 00:21:34,680 --> 00:21:38,160 and the extent to which there can be a state different religion. 190 00:21:39,420 --> 00:21:48,239 Also 1923 Egypt is important because of its paradigmatic status in the historiography, but also because, 191 00:21:48,240 --> 00:21:53,430 as I indicated already, it allows for a re-evaluation of the Muslim Brotherhood's novelty, 192 00:21:53,790 --> 00:22:03,810 and because in 19 2223 there were deep debates about the tension between the state custodianship of Islam as a preferred religion on the one hand, 193 00:22:04,170 --> 00:22:07,680 and freedom of religion and equality regardless of religion. 194 00:22:07,950 --> 00:22:12,570 On the other hand, in a country with about 10% non-Muslim Egyptians. 195 00:22:15,050 --> 00:22:18,390 I will not have time to delve into that part of the book. 196 00:22:18,410 --> 00:22:24,110 Chapters 1 to 4. Let me just say that we can observe that as of 2010, 197 00:22:24,470 --> 00:22:30,710 all Muslim majority Middle Eastern polities except for already mentioned Lebanon and including Turkey, 198 00:22:31,070 --> 00:22:37,700 despite its constitutional ization of likely secularism, have a state preferred religion, Islam. 199 00:22:37,910 --> 00:22:47,840 Overall, 88% of the population of Muslim majority polities around the world and 99% in the Middle East live under a state that favours Islam. 200 00:22:48,410 --> 00:22:53,660 The fact that there are exceptions to this empirical regularity shows that the state having a 201 00:22:53,660 --> 00:22:59,090 preferred religion is not an inevitable or essential feature of Muslim majority polities again. 202 00:22:59,690 --> 00:23:07,550 Moreover, this feature is not distinctive of these polities, since 45% of other policies have a state preferred religion. 203 00:23:08,270 --> 00:23:14,330 However, it is much more prevalent among Muslim majority polities, and especially so in the Middle East. 204 00:23:14,840 --> 00:23:23,450 What my analysis of constitutional debates since the 19th century shows is that this situation is not the result of a recent revival, 205 00:23:23,780 --> 00:23:27,890 but the long standing, concrete reality and aspiration. 206 00:23:30,810 --> 00:23:37,980 As a world wild, cross-sectional statistical analysis of the factors that might influence the odds of a state having a 207 00:23:37,980 --> 00:23:44,940 preferred religion strongly suggests that it is a variable of choice subject to certain constraints, 208 00:23:44,940 --> 00:23:48,420 notably the demographic weight of religious minorities. 209 00:23:48,840 --> 00:23:56,280 Neither GDP per capita average years of schooling, nor an index of political rights significantly influences these odds. 210 00:23:56,640 --> 00:24:05,430 Whereas the demographic weight of the religious majority does, it increases them in a substantial and statistically significant way. 211 00:24:05,910 --> 00:24:12,809 As I show in the first four chapters of the book, the anxieties of the majority of being governed by the minority, 212 00:24:12,810 --> 00:24:19,290 as such, more often than not trump those of the minorities of not having their rights protected. 213 00:24:21,400 --> 00:24:23,979 Let me now turn to chapter five, 214 00:24:23,980 --> 00:24:32,800 and I want to zoom up on that particular part of the book to the concrete implementation of the state custodianship of Islam. 215 00:24:33,370 --> 00:24:41,079 To do that, I estimated public religious expenditures, i.e. expenditures on public religious provisions, that is, 216 00:24:41,080 --> 00:24:49,030 religious goods made available to the public free of charge, not religious goods produced or distributed within the family. 217 00:24:49,930 --> 00:24:56,740 I do so since the late 19th century or early 20th centuries in four countries Tunisia, 218 00:24:57,010 --> 00:25:03,760 Egypt, Morocco and Turkey, plus an incursion into 1730 Tunisia and 10th century Iraq. 219 00:25:04,000 --> 00:25:09,250 And I analysed debates about their extent, content and form of delivery. 220 00:25:09,820 --> 00:25:16,090 These four countries have significant historical, political and social economic dissimilarities, 221 00:25:16,450 --> 00:25:21,010 as illustrated by their human and economic development trajectories, 222 00:25:21,310 --> 00:25:26,799 their contrasting histories of foreign occupation, and their contrasting political systems over time, 223 00:25:26,800 --> 00:25:30,190 such as monarchical, republican, democratic, and authoritarian. 224 00:25:30,700 --> 00:25:35,740 This notwithstanding, a similar picture emerges which I will talk about in a bit. 225 00:25:39,580 --> 00:25:47,440 Public. Religious provisions can be categorised as infrastructure and personnel dedicated to Islamic worship. 226 00:25:47,950 --> 00:25:56,049 Islamic education that is, specialised Islamic tracks, i.e. madrasas or modern incarnations thereof, 227 00:25:56,050 --> 00:26:02,590 whose primary purpose is the teaching of the Islamic sciences and Islamic instruction in modern schools, 228 00:26:02,980 --> 00:26:07,060 i.e. new schools created to teach important European knowledge. 229 00:26:07,450 --> 00:26:11,469 There is also infrastructure and personnel dedicated to Shariah, 230 00:26:11,470 --> 00:26:21,250 justice and then public works and assistance when delivered in an Islamic form, i.e. through public works, that is, Islamic endowments. 231 00:26:25,760 --> 00:26:35,960 And I estimate, aggregate public religious expenditures using printed and archival material, including yearly fine grained state budgets. 232 00:26:36,080 --> 00:26:45,680 Not restricting myself to ministries of religious affairs, as is commonly done, and including Islamic instruction in modern schools, 233 00:26:46,010 --> 00:26:53,570 using the fraction of the curriculum that is devoted to it and the percentage of enrolments Muslim students represent. 234 00:26:54,050 --> 00:27:02,240 I also use yearly madrassa and public works fine grained budgets when they are kept separate from the central state budget. 235 00:27:02,840 --> 00:27:10,100 I make sure to disaggregate expenditures on public religious provisions from those that go toward operating, 236 00:27:10,100 --> 00:27:13,550 maintaining and managing their revenue generating assets. 237 00:27:13,850 --> 00:27:18,890 These are significant, and at times we present the bulk of total workforce expenditures. 238 00:27:20,660 --> 00:27:26,239 I also estimate enrolments of Muslim students in state and state subsidised schools, 239 00:27:26,240 --> 00:27:31,970 both madrassas and modern schools, as well as hours of Islamic instruction dispensed in both. 240 00:27:32,390 --> 00:27:36,350 I do this for the same for countries over a slightly longer period. 241 00:27:36,950 --> 00:27:46,380 Note here that I am skewing the conventional dichotomy traditional and religious versus modern and secular schooling. 242 00:27:46,400 --> 00:27:53,450 Instead, I track the aggregate number of hours of Islamic instruction in both modern schools and madrassas. 243 00:27:53,840 --> 00:28:02,030 There is a summarised data appendix at the end of the book that explains what sources I use and how I estimated these quantities. 244 00:28:02,480 --> 00:28:06,140 If you are interested. So what are my findings? 245 00:28:06,650 --> 00:28:16,850 First of all, I find that public religious provisions have mainly been a state affair and that civil societies contribution is smaller. 246 00:28:18,650 --> 00:28:26,209 It is often claimed that private voluntary associations provide larger amounts of public provisions in the Middle East, 247 00:28:26,210 --> 00:28:33,830 especially in the religious domains. A claim that often accompanies narratives about an alleged withdrawal of the state. 248 00:28:34,340 --> 00:28:40,190 We will see that there is no evidence of withdrawal of the states in terms of religious expenditures. 249 00:28:41,180 --> 00:28:49,010 On this slide, you can see that even in Egypt, which has one of the oldest and most important private associations tradition, 250 00:28:49,400 --> 00:28:55,520 the relative contribution of these associations to public religious provisions has been very small, 251 00:28:55,850 --> 00:28:59,660 especially after deducting government aid and user fees. 252 00:29:00,020 --> 00:29:07,790 In addition, associations are usually not only significantly state subsidised in cash and other forms of aid, 253 00:29:08,030 --> 00:29:13,310 but they also are tightly regulated, guided and leveraged by the state. 254 00:29:13,970 --> 00:29:23,630 In the book, I provide analysis estimates for the contributions of private wells and Sufi brotherhoods in the first half of the 20th century. 255 00:29:25,450 --> 00:29:31,929 Second, the state's financial support can be decentralised via public works. 256 00:29:31,930 --> 00:29:39,430 We choose to be prevalent or centralised via direct payments from the state budget, which is prevalent today. 257 00:29:39,880 --> 00:29:47,320 However, centralisation waves or efforts are certainly not distinctive of the modern period. 258 00:29:47,890 --> 00:29:52,450 Public provisions by public works have been very much a state affair. 259 00:29:52,840 --> 00:29:56,350 They have been regulated and managed under the purview of the ruler. 260 00:29:56,800 --> 00:30:04,840 To be sure, they were funded not only by rulers and state officials, but also by private, that is, non-state individuals. 261 00:30:05,170 --> 00:30:07,660 However, their contribution was smaller. 262 00:30:07,930 --> 00:30:17,530 As I show in the book, we can see here that the public works used to provide a large fraction of public religious provisions, 263 00:30:17,530 --> 00:30:24,880 whereas today they are essentially delivered through direct state expenditures, that is, from the state treasuries. 264 00:30:25,210 --> 00:30:33,790 In other words, the state sustains religious institutions and their missions, whatever the institutional form or arrangement. 265 00:30:34,930 --> 00:30:40,690 As the general secretary of the Tunisian government wrote in 1950, and I quote, 266 00:30:40,990 --> 00:30:45,520 it is irrelevant whether the budget of the public works is balanced or not. 267 00:30:45,760 --> 00:30:50,290 Since the main thing is to know whether it exhibits a surplus or a deficit, 268 00:30:50,590 --> 00:30:57,220 so that the higher authority may use the surpluses or cover the shortfall as is its right. 269 00:30:57,580 --> 00:31:02,050 This illustrates not only that religious provisions are state affair, 270 00:31:02,410 --> 00:31:07,960 but also that they will be supplied whatever the circumstances and means of delivery. 271 00:31:09,010 --> 00:31:17,409 And more broadly, the state provides its support on its own terms, since it reorganises religious institutions, 272 00:31:17,410 --> 00:31:23,440 such as when Nasser massively expanded the scope and scale of an asset after 1961. 273 00:31:23,830 --> 00:31:27,790 It sometimes marginalises or eliminates some institutions, 274 00:31:27,790 --> 00:31:37,450 such as when Tunisia outlawed religious endowments public and private after independence, and it prioritises religious expenditures. 275 00:31:38,440 --> 00:31:43,770 Let me give you a small example of reprioritization of religious expenditures. 276 00:31:43,780 --> 00:31:49,989 In 1848, Tunis, in the context of the reorganisation of education, 277 00:31:49,990 --> 00:31:56,500 the ruler introduced a new category of professors called second class professors at the Zaytuna. 278 00:31:56,500 --> 00:32:01,210 The madrasa of the Grand Mosque can see here and increase their salaries. 279 00:32:01,930 --> 00:32:09,340 He used the surpluses of works dedicated to the recitation of prayers in praise of the prophet in the same grand mosque. 280 00:32:09,880 --> 00:32:19,180 However, it must have been insufficient because we are told by Ibn and Hodja that with time the prayers were forgotten, 281 00:32:19,180 --> 00:32:24,040 and the two professors who used to recite them joined the rest of the class, unquote. 282 00:32:24,850 --> 00:32:32,589 So let me note here that such representations and reorganisations of Islamic institutions more broadly are, 283 00:32:32,590 --> 00:32:35,950 of course, not distinctive of the modern period. 284 00:32:36,850 --> 00:32:42,660 So these frequent state interventions create political tensions and ambivalence. 285 00:32:42,670 --> 00:32:48,590 You have on the one side who want both autonomy and state financial support. 286 00:32:48,670 --> 00:32:54,430 They lament state control and the alleged hoarding of the real or imagined wealth of the works. 287 00:32:54,820 --> 00:33:02,290 They also sustain the fiction of a past autonomy, self-sufficiency and munificence of the Islamic endowments. 288 00:33:02,290 --> 00:33:07,900 But at the same time they want to be paid directly from the state treasury, not the wharfs. 289 00:33:08,620 --> 00:33:10,030 As for state officials, 290 00:33:10,240 --> 00:33:19,000 they seek to control religious institutions and support the fiction of their autonomy to keep the at a safe distance from politics, 291 00:33:19,330 --> 00:33:24,580 and to better manage the expectations of the Muslim community as to the munificence of the state, 292 00:33:24,580 --> 00:33:29,500 the studentship of Islam, and where the works have persisted even once more. 293 00:33:30,040 --> 00:33:37,530 They help the state support the fiction of autonomy, self-sufficiency and offices of religious institutions. 294 00:33:37,540 --> 00:33:40,629 For instance, Moroccan Islamic endowments. 295 00:33:40,630 --> 00:33:51,250 Net revenues have only contributed about 5% of state religious expenditures in the last decades, but their accounts are hidden from public view. 296 00:33:51,550 --> 00:33:59,680 Whereas public religious provisions may be supported by direct payments from the state budget are advertised as coming from the West, 297 00:34:00,010 --> 00:34:05,260 as in this flashy brochure, with a monarch as the main protagonist surrounded by a llama, 298 00:34:05,260 --> 00:34:09,130 and officials during the Ramadan lessons in the king's palace. 299 00:34:11,480 --> 00:34:17,090 Let us now turn to the extent and evolution of public religious expenditures. 300 00:34:17,600 --> 00:34:24,290 First, public religious expenditures are relatively small, especially in relation to GDP. 301 00:34:24,590 --> 00:34:29,389 But on display as an important duty. This might come as a surprise, 302 00:34:29,390 --> 00:34:36,290 since scholars and political actors alike have often vastly exaggerated the economic importance of religious endowments, 303 00:34:36,590 --> 00:34:41,060 and especially the amount of public religious provisions they used to dispense. 304 00:34:41,840 --> 00:34:50,270 Second, public religious expenditures may have decreased as a fraction of total state expenditures in the long duration. 305 00:34:51,030 --> 00:35:00,229 Third, they drastically expanded in per capita real terms, i.e., adjusted for inflation in the modern period, 306 00:35:00,230 --> 00:35:06,260 with the drastic expansion of the size and reach of the state, especially in education. 307 00:35:07,070 --> 00:35:08,750 And that is central in my argument. 308 00:35:09,260 --> 00:35:16,549 Fourth, there are disputes between the two camps we talked about in the political cleavage, about the munificence of the state, 309 00:35:16,550 --> 00:35:24,170 custodianship of Islam, and therefore short term fluctuations that are often the result of tug of war between the two camps. 310 00:35:24,590 --> 00:35:30,410 These fluctuations certainly feed the narratives of each side of this cleavage. 311 00:35:31,310 --> 00:35:40,700 In his move, Umar Ibn Khaldun writes that the share of religious officials pay in the ruler's budget is generally small. 312 00:35:40,700 --> 00:35:50,030 He uses a highly since the ruler and I quote, gives them their share in accordance with the general needs and the demand of the population for them. 313 00:35:50,480 --> 00:35:55,940 He recounts that it was only after showing a sceptical contemporary stray leaves from the 314 00:35:55,940 --> 00:36:00,740 account books of the government offices in the palace of Abbasid Caliphate and Mahmud, 315 00:36:01,280 --> 00:36:04,909 that he was able to convince his interlocutor. 316 00:36:04,910 --> 00:36:12,710 And I have to say that my experience was not too dissimilar from his when working on this topic, and I hope I can convince you. 317 00:36:13,340 --> 00:36:18,739 As for the importance of the religious professions and institutions, Ibn Khaldun relates them, 318 00:36:18,740 --> 00:36:24,040 and I quote again to the ruler's duty to look after the public interest must always. 319 00:36:26,590 --> 00:36:31,790 So let me show you a few graphs to illustrate, uh, what I have just explained. 320 00:36:31,810 --> 00:36:40,750 So, as you can see here, as a percentage of GDP, state religious expenditures are and have been relatively small. 321 00:36:41,320 --> 00:36:50,290 My estimates for 18th and 19th century Tunisia are in the 0.3 to 0.4% range, close to where we are today. 322 00:36:50,890 --> 00:36:58,480 In the 20th century, they have fluctuated the trend between, for instance, close to 0% in 1940s Turkey, 323 00:36:58,810 --> 00:37:07,150 the result of the communist reforms to 1% in 2015, Egypt, after which they decreased under President Sisi. 324 00:37:07,810 --> 00:37:09,969 That is also where they are in 2020. 325 00:37:09,970 --> 00:37:19,240 Morocco, the result of more attention to religious infrastructure by the Moroccan monarchy after the Casablanca terrorist attacks of 2003. 326 00:37:19,960 --> 00:37:26,440 You can also see that in Tunisia, they peaked during colonisation at the eve of independence, 327 00:37:26,440 --> 00:37:33,370 and that would give us reforms half them, whereas in Morocco they doubled in the decade after independence. 328 00:37:33,970 --> 00:37:36,970 Also of note are the fluctuations in Egypt. 329 00:37:37,270 --> 00:37:45,339 We see a peak in the 1930s, a trough writer up right before the officers coup, followed by a peak up under Nasser. 330 00:37:45,340 --> 00:37:48,670 Although it is conventionally thought of as a secular rise. 331 00:37:49,330 --> 00:37:52,510 To put these numbers in perspective, in the US, 332 00:37:52,870 --> 00:37:59,679 expenditures on public religious provisions amount to 2% of GDP, but civil society is the main contributor. 333 00:37:59,680 --> 00:38:09,850 Of course. Finally, in this metric state, religious expenditures pretty much continues the increase in Turkey since the mid 1940s, 334 00:38:10,150 --> 00:38:13,960 with some reversals in the 1980s and 1990s. 335 00:38:14,320 --> 00:38:20,740 However, note that as we will see in the next slide, as a percentage of total state expenditures, 336 00:38:21,010 --> 00:38:24,730 they are today slightly below where they were in the early days of the report. 337 00:38:25,060 --> 00:38:31,060 So we're going to move to, uh, from statement of expenditures as a percentage of GDP to state, 338 00:38:31,060 --> 00:38:36,340 which is expenditures as, um, a percentage of total state expenditures. 339 00:38:36,340 --> 00:38:42,280 So if we now examine state religious expenditures as a percentage of total state expenditures, 340 00:38:42,640 --> 00:38:51,910 we can see for Tunisia that since the late 19th century, they have been a lot smaller than they were in the 18th century. 341 00:38:52,120 --> 00:38:59,320 It seems that in the 19th century, they had decreased relative to other state expenditures to make room for them. 342 00:38:59,920 --> 00:39:11,620 On the other hand, in per capita real terms, that is adjusted for inflation, I display them here in purchasing power parity adjusted 1,990 USD. 343 00:39:12,070 --> 00:39:22,960 They have massively increased, and the majority of this increase occurred in the 20th and 21st century, especially after 1950. 344 00:39:23,800 --> 00:39:33,070 We therefore see a double trance story, a story of relative secularisation seen from the point of view of the state, 345 00:39:33,550 --> 00:39:40,300 combined with a story of absolute expansion of religion seen from the point of view of society, 346 00:39:40,750 --> 00:39:44,320 that is, the individuals receiving religious provisions. 347 00:39:44,740 --> 00:39:54,910 The fluctuations in state religious expenditures also show how fiscal and Islamic ranking using this metric would be, in per capita, real terms. 348 00:39:54,910 --> 00:39:58,840 In 1955, Turkey came last and Tunisia first. 349 00:39:58,840 --> 00:40:01,900 In 2020, this ranking was reversed. 350 00:40:02,530 --> 00:40:07,390 However, as remarkable as these fluctuations and reversals are, 351 00:40:07,780 --> 00:40:16,300 they are dwarfed by the massive increase of states religious expenditures in per capita real terms in the last century or so. 352 00:40:18,170 --> 00:40:24,350 So let us now try to understand why we may have this two pronged long term threat. 353 00:40:24,920 --> 00:40:25,639 To do this, 354 00:40:25,640 --> 00:40:35,870 let us turn to the evolution of the size of the economy measured by GDP and of the state measured by its total expenditures in the long duration. 355 00:40:36,680 --> 00:40:46,220 I have borrowed the expression and even centuries from Surfcat Pamuk, 2018 study of the Economic Performance of Turkey since 1820. 356 00:40:46,880 --> 00:40:56,630 We see two periods. First, the 19th century, during which the size of the state as a percentage of GDP started to expand significantly. 357 00:40:57,260 --> 00:41:04,820 I show it here for Tunisia, where it increased more than five fold from about 2% to 11% of GDP, 358 00:41:05,300 --> 00:41:11,840 but during which GDP per capita in real terms only increased slightly across the region. 359 00:41:12,410 --> 00:41:14,810 Second, the 20th century, 360 00:41:15,050 --> 00:41:25,100 when the size of the state as a percentage of GDP and GDP per capita in real terms both drastically increase across the region. 361 00:41:27,940 --> 00:41:33,190 Let us now see how our story of relative decrease and absolute expansion of state 362 00:41:33,190 --> 00:41:38,800 religious expenditures can be interpreted in relation to these two and even centuries. 363 00:41:39,490 --> 00:41:44,790 During the first period, the 19th century only displayed here for the case of Tunisia, 364 00:41:45,100 --> 00:41:51,280 state religious expenditures as a percentage of total state expenditures decreased due to 365 00:41:51,280 --> 00:41:55,900 the significant increase of the size of the state we have seen in the previous slide. 366 00:41:56,410 --> 00:42:03,790 But in per capita real terms, they essentially remained constant as it increased its fiscal capacity, 367 00:42:04,150 --> 00:42:08,890 the state continued to provide the same amount of religious provisions per capita, 368 00:42:09,100 --> 00:42:14,679 some sort of minimal threshold, and gave priority to its non religious expenditures. 369 00:42:14,680 --> 00:42:23,170 Given the economic challenges of the time, it is as if hard choices had to be made in the face of new needs of a secular nature. 370 00:42:23,560 --> 00:42:27,130 During the times we met in a context of low economic growth. 371 00:42:27,760 --> 00:42:29,739 This is a hypothesis, of course, 372 00:42:29,740 --> 00:42:37,930 and it would require more archival work to fully understand what happened in Tunisia and to generalise the study to other countries, 373 00:42:37,930 --> 00:42:43,990 given that they experienced a similar trajectory of expansion of their state's fiscal capacity. 374 00:42:44,740 --> 00:42:51,910 However, the second period, the 20th century, is one in which, for the four countries I studied states, 375 00:42:51,910 --> 00:42:58,389 religious expenditures fluctuated within a relatively small range as a percentage of total state 376 00:42:58,390 --> 00:43:05,380 religious expenditures and state religious expenditures greatly increased per capita real terms, 377 00:43:05,860 --> 00:43:11,620 especially after the 1950s, as if there was not enough economic growth, 378 00:43:11,620 --> 00:43:20,200 and a double whammy of expansion of GDP per capita and expansion of state fiscal capacity to invest in religious expenditures. 379 00:43:20,860 --> 00:43:27,370 As we will see, this massive expansion has been in great part related to the expansion of Islamic education, 380 00:43:27,700 --> 00:43:33,520 and it has often been seen by policymakers as contributing to human development. 381 00:43:34,540 --> 00:43:44,650 As you can see, in the beginning of the period I study states religious expenditures were mostly devoted to Islamic worship, close to two thirds. 382 00:43:45,280 --> 00:43:50,440 They are now mostly devoted to Islamic education, also close to two thirds. 383 00:43:51,570 --> 00:43:57,510 This is due to the massive increase in Muslim student enrolments per capita in our four countries, 384 00:43:57,780 --> 00:44:01,830 which all follow the same trend with some leading others. 385 00:44:03,030 --> 00:44:06,840 This massive expansion of school enrolments, 386 00:44:06,990 --> 00:44:15,090 coupled with the continuous presence of Islamic instruction in curricula except in Turkey, as you can see there in the 1940s, 387 00:44:15,480 --> 00:44:24,900 led to a massive increase in state expenditures on madrassas and Islamic education in modern schools in per capita terms, 388 00:44:25,050 --> 00:44:28,920 and as a fraction of state religious expenditures, which is displayed here. 389 00:44:29,400 --> 00:44:35,430 As we already saw, this fraction converge at the end of the period to about two thirds in our four countries, 390 00:44:35,430 --> 00:44:39,750 the rest being essentially devoted to worship, infrastructure and personnel. 391 00:44:41,070 --> 00:44:49,500 If we now unravel state expenditures in specialised Islamic tracks from those devoted to Islamic instruction in modern schools, 392 00:44:49,800 --> 00:44:54,450 this is where we are now. In some countries, such as Tunisia and Morocco, 393 00:44:54,450 --> 00:45:01,859 Islamic education expenditures are mostly devoted to Islamic instruction in modern schools, whereas in others, 394 00:45:01,860 --> 00:45:06,209 such as Egypt and Turkey they are mostly devoted to specialised Islamic tracks 395 00:45:06,210 --> 00:45:11,910 and as in Egypt and hadith schools in yet and Islamic institutes in Turkey. 396 00:45:12,660 --> 00:45:16,230 Since the establishment of modern schools in the 19th century, 397 00:45:16,590 --> 00:45:24,240 the extent of specialised Islamic tracks in terms of expenditures or enrolments has been an important object of debates. 398 00:45:24,720 --> 00:45:32,490 After independence in Tunisia, for instance, President Bourguiba and his allies, when radically shrinking the enrolments at the Zaytuna, 399 00:45:32,490 --> 00:45:40,320 argued that it was an archaic institution and that the French colonial authorities had been at fault in giving it too many resources. 400 00:45:40,740 --> 00:45:47,190 Similarly, debates about the fraction of the curriculum Islamic instruction should constitute in modern schools, 401 00:45:47,490 --> 00:45:50,940 and hence the extent of state expenditures it entails, 402 00:45:51,240 --> 00:45:58,230 have been the object of vigorous debates in all four countries before, during and after foreign occupation where it occurred. 403 00:45:59,600 --> 00:46:07,880 Now, if we look at the history of enrolments in specialised Islamic tracts as a percentage of all enrolments for Muslim students, 404 00:46:08,210 --> 00:46:11,360 we can see that until the end of the 19th century, 405 00:46:11,630 --> 00:46:16,250 madrassas provided the bulk of state and state subsidised education, 406 00:46:16,550 --> 00:46:23,650 with Egypt being much more advanced in the mid-19th century and its development of modern schools than Tunisia, 407 00:46:23,660 --> 00:46:27,080 in part because it repurposed specialised Islamic tracts. 408 00:46:27,560 --> 00:46:34,460 Also, we can see that the share of enrolments in specialised Islamic tracts decreased since then, 409 00:46:34,490 --> 00:46:39,680 with the development of modern schooling to become insignificant in all four countries. 410 00:46:39,950 --> 00:46:48,110 In the 1970s, however, starting in the 1970s, we see that in Turkey and especially Egypt, 411 00:46:48,320 --> 00:46:53,510 they increased to reach almost 10% of total school enrolments in 2020. 412 00:46:54,080 --> 00:47:03,590 In sum, it is clear that by the early 20th century there are those who teach in the specialised Islamic tracts had lost the battle of education, 413 00:47:03,920 --> 00:47:09,739 although after the 70s they have been given more space in the education system in Egypt, 414 00:47:09,740 --> 00:47:15,950 which I studied for my PhD dissertation and my first book, and somewhat in Turkey, in fits and starts. 415 00:47:17,420 --> 00:47:24,649 As a result, in the 20th century, most of the Islamic education hours dispensed annually, 416 00:47:24,650 --> 00:47:29,750 and virtually all of them in today's Tunisia and Morocco have been dispensed in modern schools. 417 00:47:30,050 --> 00:47:39,620 As you can see in this chart, which is a mirror image of the previous one, and as a result of the massive expansion in school enrolments, 418 00:47:39,620 --> 00:47:46,880 the annual hours of Islamic instruction dispensed per capita has massively increased across the board, 419 00:47:47,150 --> 00:47:51,890 despite significant fluctuations and country to country differences. 420 00:47:53,300 --> 00:47:57,500 It is remarkable that this massive expansion has occurred. 421 00:47:57,500 --> 00:48:06,620 While the percentage of school hours of Islamic instruction dispensed in modern schools and specialised Islamic tracks combined has decreased. 422 00:48:06,830 --> 00:48:13,340 As you see here, this decrease is due to the fact that the education as a whole has secularised. 423 00:48:13,730 --> 00:48:19,280 We have less Islamic education hours in modern schools as a fraction of their curriculum. 424 00:48:19,310 --> 00:48:22,580 I have not displayed that chart. Only the combined fraction. 425 00:48:22,970 --> 00:48:28,160 And we have fewer enrolments in specialised Islamic tracks relative to modern schools. 426 00:48:28,370 --> 00:48:33,979 As a result, note that the first data point displayed on this graph for Turkey comes after 427 00:48:33,980 --> 00:48:38,000 a drastic reduction in the share of Islamic instruction in modern schools, 428 00:48:38,270 --> 00:48:42,139 and after the closure of the metric system before the Republic. 429 00:48:42,140 --> 00:48:48,410 It would look more similar to the other countries. But this is a project I have to, uh, carry out. 430 00:48:48,620 --> 00:48:54,110 Um, after, um, in the coming years, hopefully. 431 00:48:54,650 --> 00:49:01,760 So the secularisation of education did not go without debates even before the introduction of modern schools. 432 00:49:02,100 --> 00:49:11,030 I did say to Allah in 1871, as we saw in the previous slide, only about 30% of the lessons were on religious topics. 433 00:49:11,450 --> 00:49:17,990 This is an excerpt from an official report on the Satan that published in the Official Gazette of Tunisia in 1871, 434 00:49:18,410 --> 00:49:26,330 that complains that there is too much grammar. 666 lessons out of 148 148. 435 00:49:26,630 --> 00:49:30,740 Whereas there are only 38 lessons of Islamic law and one lesson in the hadith. 436 00:49:31,490 --> 00:49:36,320 So the debates, you know, uh, was there and has continued over the years. 437 00:49:36,440 --> 00:49:45,050 So in a nutshell, the history of Islamic education in state and state subsidised schools followed that of state religious expenditures. 438 00:49:45,350 --> 00:49:48,319 We see a secularisation of the education system. 439 00:49:48,320 --> 00:49:55,850 The share of Islamic instruction has decreased relative to other subjects, and the bulk of Islamic instruction is dispensed in modern schools, 440 00:49:56,270 --> 00:50:01,730 while the per capita exposure to Islamic instruction has massively increased. 441 00:50:03,450 --> 00:50:08,250 What can we conclude from all of this from the material point of view? 442 00:50:08,640 --> 00:50:15,600 The state custodianship of Islam is well entrenched, contrary to those who claim that Islamic institutions have been ameliorated. 443 00:50:16,110 --> 00:50:20,610 It is also vigorously discussed as to its extent and content, 444 00:50:21,120 --> 00:50:28,590 often polarising further the cleavage on Islam in governance that I described more fully in the first part of this presentation. 445 00:50:29,160 --> 00:50:34,680 In fact, the state custodianship of Islam has massively expense expended, sorry, 446 00:50:34,920 --> 00:50:44,010 in per capita state religious expenditures and per capita hours of Islamic instruction thanks to the expansion of education. 447 00:50:44,580 --> 00:50:50,760 However, this absolute expansion has taken place despite a relative secularisation, 448 00:50:50,760 --> 00:50:57,480 with the decrease of the percentage of state religious expenditures and of the percentage of Islamic construction in the education system, 449 00:50:57,840 --> 00:51:02,010 since, the state has increased its secular endeavours as well. 450 00:51:02,700 --> 00:51:08,130 To be sure, the form of delivery of public religious provisions has changed. 451 00:51:08,580 --> 00:51:14,040 Works are much less prevalent today, and there are more modern schools and madrasas. 452 00:51:14,040 --> 00:51:22,950 And there might be nostalgia about this, but we should not confuse this transformation with the secularisation of the state and society. 453 00:51:23,760 --> 00:51:30,480 One important aspect of the story I told you today is that choices have been made. 454 00:51:30,840 --> 00:51:34,739 Islamic instruction must be preserved in the public school system, 455 00:51:34,740 --> 00:51:39,390 and worship infrastructure and personnel must be financially supported by the state. 456 00:51:39,930 --> 00:51:46,889 These choices have kept the state custodianship of Islam alive, and mechanistic effects, 457 00:51:46,890 --> 00:51:56,070 such as those resulting from the unprecedented expansion in its magnitude of the size of the state and from mass education, 458 00:51:56,370 --> 00:52:00,570 have in fact solidified it and has given it a new scale. 459 00:52:00,960 --> 00:52:11,100 And we see rich and vigorous debates around the long historical cleavage on the state, custodianship of Islam's thickness, strength and munificence. 460 00:52:11,430 --> 00:52:18,780 With mass politics given, giving to the debate a new scale starting in the 1920s 1930s. 461 00:52:19,260 --> 00:52:24,780 We should study, I think, and historic sites, these debates and cleavages, if possible, 462 00:52:24,790 --> 00:52:31,930 by studying all sides in actual loci of deliberation in terms of policy implications. 463 00:52:31,950 --> 00:52:37,890 I would say that it is important to keep the debate alive, preferably under democratic conditions, 464 00:52:38,160 --> 00:52:42,720 and not predict that either side will moderate its stances or fade away. 465 00:52:43,020 --> 00:52:43,500 Thank you.