This talk will focus on an Istanbul-based Islamic foundation, called Daru’l-Hikme (home of wisdom), which functions as a cover institution for providing medrese education in contemporary Turkey. Configured as a medrese, which was indeed abolished in 1924, Daru’l-Hikme members claim to stand for a role of ulema in the Republican Turkey. By studying Daru’l-Hikme’s “medrese project”, I aim to understand what it involves to participate in a “tradition” of religious learning in modern Turkey when there are no official institutions (such as medrese) and actors (i.e. ulema) in the “traditional” sense to produce and sanction Islamic knowledge and discipline. With a focused research on written documents, audio and visual materials produced by Daru’l-Hikme circle, I plan to focus on issues of religious authority and knowledge, and the ways in which they have been configured in Daru’l-Hikme’s “medrese project”. I will begin by exploring fragmented and contested nature of religious authority in Turkey, with respect to genealogies of secularism and liberalism. Then, I will argue how Daru’l-Hikme’s engagement with secularism (and the secular) is more than an exhibition of their religious identity, and urges us to focus more on Muslims’ various engagements with secularism apart from being mere politics of recognition as opposed to secular state and its followers. In this respect, we will see how Daru’l-Hikme’s critiques of secularism (and liberalism) are essential for their medrese project, which, for them, requires Islamic methods of learning and constant ethical reflections, disciplinary reworking, and tradition-guided practices/modes (of) to form Muslim selves. As closing remarks, I will question how debates on religious education in Turkey may inform ongoing discussions in social sciences about politics and discourses of medreses. This question has long been neglected due to the subtle assumption of “Turkish Islamic exceptionalism” which comes to stand for the historical specificities of Turkish experience of Islam and strict secularism (and absence of “traditional” religious institutions or authority). I believe that insights provided from Daru’l-Hikme’s scholarly efforts might contribute to this lacuna in the literature.