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

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.