Things I have been silent about, Part 3

They lie about why they cannot come to class. The lies are so brazen, the doctors' notes so patently forged, the excuses so flimsy, that often I am stunned into silence. Every semester I remind myself to strictly enforce some kind of attendance policy, some system of reward and punishment, and every semester these policies have no positive effect. I begin with high aspirations -- fieldtrips, movie clubs, scavenger hunts, activities designed to challenge them to push their language speaking skills to a new level -- but find my enthusiasm for meeting my students outside of class waning by about week six.

If I venture beyond the classroom, either to my language class or to my home in Tophane, I am struck by the number of people in Mustafa's circles who do not work. Mustafa's friend Ozgur lived in Germany for at least five years, now is back in Turkey, but apparently has never once worked. Mustafa's closest friend Can was an anthropology student but apparently left the university over a dispute with a professor. He cobbles together his living by doing odd jobs, occasionally steals books, and lives a spartan hand-to-mouth existence. Neither of these men are young, Ozgur, 40, Can, 35, and yet they choose not to have families and not to work. Can's girlfriend Nilufer lives with her parents at 30+, and apparently studies anthropology, an endeavor that has already taken her well over eight years. Firat, a quite talented photography student, abruptly left her degree program in photography after eight years as a student and now works at a youth hostel down the street from us.

In American culture we attach great shame to not working. We consider it a moral failing, a sign that that individual has nothing to offer society, that there is something mentally, physically or spiritually wrong. People who don't work are suspicious and not to be trusted. A question that has been on my mind is how much of the shame of not working comes from the Protestant religion, from its effect on what we value and how we view our individual self-worth. Max Weber first posited the same question in his 1904 book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism when he wrote:

"Man is dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life. Economic acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as the means for the satisfaction of his material needs. This reversal of what we should call the natural relationship, so irrational from a naive point of view, is evidently as definitely a leading principle of capitalism as it is foreign to all people not living under capitalistic influence. At the same time it expresses a type of feeling which is closely connected with religious ideas."

What then is the attitude toward work in Islam? A quick Google search turned up one discussion thread on the topic "Muslim and Work Ethics". Manuel Kommenos opened the dicussion with the following comment:

"Looking at the immigrants where I live, having worked with plenty of them, I have discovered a clear distinction between the different ethnic group's attitudes towards labor and hard work, both in the field of academic work, and normal labor. Whereas Indians, Tamils, Chinese and Vietnamese work like heroes, the effort among Muslim immigrants is generally dismal, be it Pakistanis, Iraqis or Somalis. Apart from a few honorable exceptions, I find them generally worse than the clichéd Italians. They often neglect agreements, and have a rarely negative attitude towards being commanded. They take every opportunity to laze about, and don’t meet much resistance before they quit.

Looking at the economies in Muslim countries, either very poor, or largely fueled by raw materials and tourism, one doesn’t find a lot of examples of tough built creative businesses. Especially if we distinct between India and Pakistan, one might get the feeling that there is some fundamental stubbornness towards work in Muslim culture. Just see how India has risen above its neighbor Pakistan. Although, I realize this is a very long reaching generalization. I don’t mean that there necessarily is anything contradictory between Islam and hard work, but maybe that in those regions where Islam has prevailed they have a lazy culture, from old? What are your ideas on this?"

The German sociologist, Weber, considered religion one of the most important factors in determining a society's political outlook, in particular whether it developed a liberal tradition or not. Weber never finished his final work, The Sociology of Religion. However, in that book he did manage to develop some theories on Islam. For Weber Islam was not only antithetical to Puritanism in terms of its attitude to women, luxury and property, but the religion also pulled the culture in two separate directions. Warrior Islam gave the religion a militaristic ethos whereas Sufi Islam pulled Islam in the direction of mystical flight. Both political systems in general stressed the values of imitation and the rejection of innovation, and were therefore antithetical to the spirit of capitalism.