I have long noted that democracy in the Islamic world will always be under pressure, including violent pressure, from adherents of Sharia. “Attack on judges targets Turkey’s secular system: president,” from TurkishPress.com, with thanks to Planet Poe:
ANKARA – Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer said Wednesday that a deadly attack on judges at Turkey’s top adminsitrative court aimed at undermining this Muslim-majority country’s secular regime.
“When you look at the attack, you see that it is not caused by personal animosity but … targets the Republic and particularly its unchangeable principles of democracy and secularism,” said Sezer, a staunch secularist and a former senior judge.
“It is impossible to reverse the advances of the Republic,” he told reporters in a rare public remark. “All our institutions will forever defend the principles of the Republic. No one should doubt that.”…
A senior judge was killed and four others wounded when a man shouting “I am a soldier of Allah” stormed into the court and sprayed bullets on judges who were in the middle of a legal session, officials said.
Court members described the attack as retaliation for rulings confirming a ban on Islamic headscarves in public insititutions and universities in Turkey.
The attack raised tensions as the Islamist-rooted government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which is critical of the headscarf ban and court rulings upholding it, faced accusations of failing to defend the republic’s secular principles.