I admit that for a long time, I was blind to what islam was all about. But given all that is happening today, don't even the blind wonder about a religion whose spiritual leaders have to be kept in check by the military to preserve Turkey's version of "democracy"?

Posted by: 3812Michelle at December 20, 2004 10:11 AM

"In Turkey there are higher powers that answer to Jewish and American controllers which do not allow the government to grant us these freedoms."

The article kindly informs us that in case we didn't know the government of Turkey is controlled by the Jews. Unfortunately I have to say that with this kind of reasoning they will fit into Europe nicely.

Posted by: gloria at December 20, 2004 1:50 PM

The theme is Ingratitude. The Western world is full of people who were left a legacy -- art, science, political and economic arrangements superior, in their justice, to what had obtained in the past. The peoples of Europe have shown themselves to be insufficiently grateful to those who made their scientific discoveries, who painted those pictures, who wrote those constitutions. They seem unable to relate all of that to certain beliefs -- and to the absence of certain other beliefs, by which I mean of course Islam. And by failing to show gratitude, in the first place by studying their own histories, clinging to their own languages and literatures, even analyzing those mental conditions or rather pathologies -- anti-Americanism and antisemitism -- which have been, and continue to be, so cleverly exploited by the propagandists of Islam, so as to make the French, for example, believe that they have more in common with the Muslims on the southern edge of the Mediterranean than they do with the Americans across the Atlantic. In truth they do not; it is not geographical proximity, but culture, that matters. Liberal Denmark, and liberal Czechoslovakia, were next door to the most illiberal Third Reich; they had little or nothing in common. Australia and Israel are far from the United States, but they have far more in common with the United States, and can be counted on more completely, than either neighbor to north or south.

Yet the naive or sinisiter "deux-rivistes" continue to promote a false history, both of France, where Abd el-Kader has an exhibition dedicated to him at the Musee de l"Histoire de France (26 fevrier-26 mai 2003) as "un heros de deux rives," and of Western civilization, where by government fiat, textbooks are being written and falsehoods are being taught about the significance of Islam in Western civilization,just as Muslims themselves are claiming that this or that figure, was in fact a Muslim. First Othello, clearly a Christian, was claimed to be a Muslim; at the Globe Theatre, during somethiing called Islam Awareness Week, one aged convert to Islam, Martin Lings, allowed as how Shakespeare's works fairly pulsated with Shi'a doctrines. The American State Department announces, and does not retract, the preposterous news that several of Columbus' crew-members were "Muslims." George Saliba, professor of "Islamic Science" at Columbia, pushes the idea that Copernicus' took his theory from the Muslims, and becomes furious when an historian of science, Toby Huff, raises the all-important Never-to-be-Discussed Question: why did Islamic Science suddenly come to an end. And yet the Europeans, pocketing their own past, without so much as a thank-you, squander their history, their culture, all in the name of -- what, exactly? The E.U.? France's desire to spread around the horror of the Muslim invasion, among all the countries of Europe? The crazy idea that more Mulsims, or some kind of "alliance" with the Muslims, will make Europe stronger in relation to the United States, instead of much weaker?

The same kind of ingratitude can be found in Turkey. It is found among all those who, having been protected or uplifted or even allowed to come into existence, through the Kemalist reforms that constrained Islam, nonetheless exhibit none of the vigilance that they should in order to protect that Kemalist secularism. Instead, they denounce the army for being too vigilant and too suspicious of the likes of Erdogan. But one cannot be too vigilant, and too suspicious, of the likes of Erdogan.

Istanbul may seem, to Turks, to be modern and secularist, and it certainly seems so to Westerners, who of course see almost nothing of peasant-village Turkey, but outside of Istanbul, beaches and the odd ruin from classical antiquity. In Istanbul, which in 1914 had a population that was 50% non-Muslim (it could not be more than 4-5% today), foreigners go to Galata, and to what used to be called Pera (where Andre Chenier was born, and Mickiewicz died). They stay in Taksim Square, and walk up and down the Istiglal Caddesi. They go to Topkapi. They go to the archeological museum, and the museum of antiquities, and the Hagia Sophia, and the Blue Mosque, and Sulaimaniye, and the Kariye Djami. Perhaps, if they have more money, the Hilton or the Kempinski. If they are Western government officials, they may go to the Ministry of Defense and other government offices in Ankara. What do they know of Turkey? They enjoy the palimpsest. They do not see, underneath, the tectonic shifts in belief.

But what about the secularist Turks themselves? Does Orhan Pamuk think that in any Iranian or Arab context his work could be published? Or he himself exist, much less be lionized? Instead of talking about "East" (i.e. the Islamic East) and "West," why not talk about Believer and Infidel, Islam and the non-Muslim world (not only the West), and why not try to relate all the good things that have happened in Turkey, to its political and economic and intellectual and social improvements over the past 80 years, and figure out just how many of those improvements are directly related to what Ataturk did. Answer: all of them. And then ask where Erdogan is going, and consider the possiblity that he will use the next few years to further tie down the Turkish Army (which, god knows, is not above criticism but is the only guarantor against -- well, against the Islamic Republic of Iran, for example, or any of the Arab states in their wretchedness and primitiveness).

The more freedoms allowed in the mosques, the more Ataturk's enofrced limit the subjects about which imams could speak (by, for example, having the government write the khutba or sermon that can be delivered, and to carefully monitor the mosques to ensure that only that sermon, with nothing omitted or added is, in fact delivered) is undone -- the worse it will be for all those Turkish beneficiaries of Islam who, not even believing themselves, fail to realize just how easy it is to take the majority of the population (about 3/4) and re-islamize them so that, for Orhan Pamuk and his fellows, the Turkey they take for granted will no longer exist.

In 1917 Kerensky was addressing the Duma. A controversial bill was being discussed. The Bolsheviks objected. "What," he said, looking over at the Bolsheviks, "are you going to do? Shoot us." In the records of the Duma the reaction is recorded: "Laughter from the right, silence from the left." A few months later, that is exactly what the Bolsheviks did. Kerensky and the Kadets just could not understand.

In Iran, Shahpour Bakhtiar and many others who were in the line of Mossadegh, and who thought they could use Khomeini to help bring down the Shah, whose government was undoubtedly corrupt, and whose regime was undoubtedly unfair. They collaborated with Khomeini; he distributed his cassettes from his exile in Neauphle-le-chateau; he returned (Edward Mortimer, now Kofi Annan's chief speechwriter, was in ecstasy over his return, "quite the most glorious morning in the history of mankind" was the phrase he borrowed from Charles James Fox, finding it most "apposite"). They were nothing -- Khomeini had them eventually exiled, or killed. As for the members of the Tudeh Party who were flown back to Iran by the Soviets on August 17 or so, 1979 -- they exited the plane, and within a few minutes all of them lay dead, murdered by Khomeini's men right on the tarmac.

That is what Islam will bring, is sure to bring, if Erdogan keeps working to make those "mosques his barracks" and those "minarets his bayonets" as he has long promised -- but now, as he does so, he can claim every step he takes to make Turkey more "free" (i.e. to undo Kemalism) is being taken reluctantly, at the behest of those Europeans.

And how will the E.U. admit to itself that Turkey without Kemalism is a terrible danger, and that there are things, for Infidels, worse than restrictions on khutbas, hijabs, beards, and the freedom of movement of the Turkish Army. And what is worse, for Infidels, and for all thinking Turks, is unchaining Islam in Turkey.

If you seek an example of what can happen when liberal, tolerant, kind people face another kind, scroll up to read about Kerensky's amazed "what are you going to do -- kill us?" and then, look again, at the example of the Iranian leftists who thought they could use Khomeini. But no one uses the Khomeinis of this world.

That must be understood, and not by having to live through a nightmare oneself -- but by studying, and profiting from, the experience of others. Begin with that of Shahpour Bakhtiar, or Ali Dashti, in Iran.

Posted by: Hugh at December 20, 2004 5:15 PM

Fantastic post Michelle.

What I suggest is, if Turkey is ever admitted, that all those who are against Turkey's admittance form a huge human barrier to physically prevent Turks coming in.

Posted by: Voltaire at December 20, 2004 5:39 PM

And fantastic post Hugh.

Posted by: Voltaire at December 21, 2004 3:18 AM