gone through multiple transformations. Throughout the course of the twentieth
century, several reforms and decisions transformed Al-Azhar from a pre-
modern institution of learning into a modern university. Today, while there
are courses in comparative religions and basic introductions to a few religions,
primarily Abrahamic, the program remains focused on Islamic studies, parallel
to what can be found in many seminaries and theology departments in
universities of majority Christian countries. The same is true of the Ezzitouna
University in Tunis with its Center for Islamic Studies in Kairouan, Tunisia.
Universities with roots in missionary institutions
The European Catholic promotion of educational institutions in the majority
Muslim countries of NAWA goes back many centuries, especially in the case
of Mount Lebanon. But few contemporary universities trace their history that
far. In the second half of the nineteenth century, various Protestant missions
began to establish general Liberal Arts institutions. These institutions were often
doing much more than training their respective future religious leaders. Some
of them were nationalized upon independence, others remained private or semi-
private. In all cases, they benefited greatly from international ties and funding,
making them often decades later the strongest universities in their areas. Yet
their respective histories regarding the study of religions points to important
dynamics and sensitivities possibly unique to NAWA, as exemplified in the
following three cases in Turkey, Lebanon, and Egypt.
In Turkey, American Protestants founded Robert College in Istanbul in 1863.
Initially they shied away from politics. But over time much of the intellectual
elite of Turkey was trained at Robert College, especially prior to and during
the early years of the Republic of Turkey. Given the increasing alliance with
the United States after World War II, fluency in English only accentuated the
value of a Robert College education. In 1971, however, the Turkish government
took over the college at the invitation of its last independent Board of Trustees
and renamed it Bog ̆Çziçi Üniversitesi (Bogazici University). By then, with the
increased secularization of Turkish political and intellectual life in the early
years of the modern republic, the initial missionary vocation of the school had
long disappeared. Still today the university has no department for the study
of religions, nor any for the closely related field of anthropology.
In Lebanon, a parallel history unfolded in the case of the American University
of Beirut, founded in 1866 as the Syrian Protestant College and developed on
the model of an American Liberal Arts institution. It claimed to welcome ‘all
conditions and classes of men without regard to color, nationality, race or
religion’ but also promised to inform its students about ‘what we believe to be
the truth and our reasons for that belief’. After the name was changed to the
American University of Beirut in 1920, several factors transformed this early
ethos, including the influence of positivism in scientific discourse, especially
1111
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1011
1
2
3111
4 5 6 7 8 9
20111
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
30111
1
2
3
4
35
6
7
8
9
40111
42222
3
411
NORTH AFRICA AND WEST ASIA
91
