Marife Turkish Journal of Religious Studies

Abstract

Each religion is based on a creed. Due to the importance of the subject, Islam places the principle of tawhid (the unity) at the core of the Islamic belief system. This key concept has been taught to Muslims in the history of Islam through a religious education model supported by Qur'anic and -Prophetic rational arguments which prioritize the essence and attributes of God. A series of intellectual and political conflicts after the death of the Messenger of Allah pave the way for for the emergence of sects and the formation of Islamic sciences, Kalam and Aqaid. As a result of the increasing conquest movements, the communication of Muslims with different religious-ethnic societies and the widespread interest in Greek philosophy, which entered the Islamic world through translations, also affected the formation of these branches of science. The akaid works written in this process aimed to teach the controversial theological issues that emerged immediately after the death of the Messenger of Allah to the children, young people, women, and old people in a simple way that they could understand. The function of the works which contributed to the spread of the notion that filtered from the development of Islamic sciences and which were pioneered by scholars in the Hanafi-Mâturîdî line, cannot be denied in terms of faith education. In this research, one of the creed texts written for the teaching of the principles of belief in Islamic history following the divine will in line with the narration and mental evidence was subjected to content analysis. Analyzes of the general structure of the text are followed by the analyzes based on a conceptual framework of the current religious education methodology. For this purpose, the work named "Akîdetü İbn Dakîkıl'îd" belonging to Ibn Dakîkul'îd (d.702/1302), which has not been researched and studied in our country yet, has been selected. Despite the exceptions, deep theological issues are discussed without going into details and including the names of the works in the concise creed texts such as Akîdetü İbn Dakîkı'lîd. The creed texts, on which the research focuses through an example, can be characterized as texts belonging to a period in which traditional religious education was conducted. The dominant element in all types and stages of education was Islam in that period. These texts have been an important part of the doctrinal religious education by being taught for centuries in madrasas, the centres of doctrinal (confessional) religious education throughout the Islamic geography. One of the main points of the research is that the texts were affected by the general political-sociological movements of that period although there are texts for a specific field such as the principles of Islamic belief, the belief in tawhid, the possibilities and limits of talking about Allah and His attributes, issues related to prophethood, situations related to the hereafter etc. These texts have been prepared with the aim of uniting the target audience around the basic religious doctrines in their content against the sectarian-centred divisions that took place after the debates about the Islamic belief principles in the historical process. In the first part of the study, the subject, the method and the limitations are defined and later the definition of the science of creed, its subject, and the life and works of the author Ibn Dakîkul'îd are conveyed through literature review. In the second part, there are analyzes of the general structure of the text in the context of religious education models of the current religious education methodology besides the translation of Akîdetü İbn Dakîkıl'îd. The research focuses on the analysis of the text in the context of religious education models tried to be developed in today's religious education methodology. The research tries to answer some questions: “What is the place of the creed works that have mediated the teaching of Islamic belief principles to large masses for centuries and the formation of religious attitudes and identities in this direction in today's world? Can it be claimed that there is no need for creed texts today that a series of conceptualizations such as globalization, pluralism, multiculturalism, differences and marginalization together with the abandoned traditional, doctrinal/confessional understanding of religious education affect the religious education processes in terms of targets, methods and techniques? The data obtained through the analyzes reveal the necessity of reflecting the several contemporary conceptualizations such as pluralism, multiculturalism, differences and marginalization, and global financial competition to the teaching programs in the context of faith education while planning the religious education-teaching processes, considering the negative effects on the individual and society.