ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how Ma'ayan schools in Israel and Imam Hatip schools in Turkey have become vehicles for political mobilization for religious parties. It focuses on state-funded religious schools, and provides leverage to illustrate the interaction between political opportunity structures, meaning-making and networks, as schools constitute institutions where micro-practices of identity formation and macro political forces interact. The religious entrepreneurs formulated strategic frames within and around the alternative educational institutions. These frames depicted religious schools as victims of a secular state, as safe havens from the corruptive effects of the modern world, as the source of societal transformation and of cultural pride. Educational institutions constitute arenas where competition for hegemony takes place between different social, political and religious actors. Social networks formed around the Imam Hatip schools were essential to disseminate these frames to the larger society and translate meaning making into social and political power.
