A Critical Comparison Between the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Di̇yanet İşleri̇ Başkanliği) and the Office of Shaykh Al-Islâm

After the 19 th century, a great number of religious institutions that manage religious affairs were established in many Muslim countries. These religious institutions bear official identity since they were established by states. Some academics, authors and intellectuals liken these institutions to the offices of Shaykh al-Islm that existed between 11 th and 18 th centuries and evaluate modern religious institutions as if the follow-up these religious offices. This results in some misunderstandings. The article compares the Presidency of Religious affairs in Turkey to the office of Shaykh al-Islm in the Ottoman Empire with the intent of obviating these misunderstandings. Before comparing these two religious institutions, the article presents brief explanations of their history, establishment and functions in their times, and then these two institutions are comparatively evaluated from two different perspectives. In the first instance, it is drawn a parallel between two in terms of their jurisdiction. In the second instance, the functions and roles of fatws issued by the two are evaluated in their respective environments. The comparison and evaluation of the two institutions from these angles considerably help to scatter the misconceptions to which are led by those academics, authors and critics who establish strong similarities between past and modern religious institutions.