Turkish MP says 'no use in teaching maths to a child who doesn't know jihad'

'Jihad comes before prayer'

Students at one of Turkey's growing number of 'Imam Hatip' religious schools walk past a statue of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of secular Turkey, in Ankara (REUTERS/Umit Bektas/File Photo)

A member of the Turkish parliament's national education commission has said there is no use teaching maths to students who don't know jihad.

Ahmet Hamdi Camli, a member of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), praised the education ministry for including teaching the concept of jihad in the school curriculum.

Mr Camli said "jihad is Islam's most prior element," Turkish daily newspaper Haberturk reported.

“Jihad comes before prayer," he said. "When we look at Ottoman sultans, nearly all of them didn’t even go to hajj in order not to abandon jihad."

Turkey's new school curriculum dropped Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and added the concept of jihad as patriotic in spirit.

The theory of evolution is rejected by both Christian and Muslim creationists, who believe God created the world as described in the Bible and the Koran, making the universe and all living things in six days.

Mr Camli added: “Our ministry made a very on-point decision. If prayers are the pillars of the religion, jihad is the tent. Without the pillars the tent is useless.

"There’s no use in teaching mathematics to a child who doesn’t know jihad."

Jihad is often translated as "holy war" in the context of fighters waging war against enemies of Islam; but Muslim scholars stress that it also refers to a personal, spiritual struggle against sin.

The move has proven highly controversial, further fuelling fears President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is subverting the republic's secular foundations.

Mr Erdogan, accused by critics of crushing democratic freedoms with tens of thousands of arrests and a clampdown on media since a failed coup last July, has in the past spoken of raising a "pious generation".

The chairman of a teachers' union described the changes as a huge step in the wrong direction.

Mehhmet Balik, chairman of the Union of Education and Science Workers (Egitim-Is) said it was an attempt to avoid raising "generations who ask questions".