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Turkish PM Erdogan in 1990s: Turkey’s Constitution “a huge lie”; “One cannot be a Muslim and secular”

May 23, 2007 4:10 am By Robert Spencer

Ataturk.jpg

No wonder the supporters of Turkish secularism are worried.

“Turkish PM Erdogan in Speech During Term As Istanbul Mayor Attacks Turkey”s Constitution, Describing it As “˜A Huge Lie”: ‘Sovereignty Belongs Unconditionally and Always To Allah’; ‘One Cannot Be a Muslim, and Secular,'” from MEMRI, with thanks to all who sent this in:

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan whose political origins are with the Milli Gorus -the radical and political Islamist movement founded by the former Islamist PM Erbakan – often attacked Turkey”s secular regime and its Constitution.

A video clip of one of PM Erdogan’s speeches delivered during his term as Istanbul’s Mayor, (1994-1998) can be watched at youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg3hkWCnA8c

The following is the translated transcript of the speech:

PM Erdogan on Secularism:

“If the people want it, of course secularism will go away. You cannot rule this people by force; you don’t have the power to do that. This [i.e. secularism] cannot work in spite of the people.

“And anyway, for the love of Allah, what is this secularism? You ask them to define it. They can’t. They say that it varies from place to place. So what sort of a strange thing is this [secularism]?

“Today, for every concept there is a definition in the dictionary. Every concept must have a definition [“¦] The interior minister comes and says that the state can interfere with religion. What about the rest? Why don’t you say the rest? No! He does not say that the religion can interfere with the state.

“Yesterday I was at the Bosphorus University; and some of the – probably impressionable – young people there asked me, ‘Mr. Mayor, what do you think about secularism? There are concerns that secularism is disappearing. What will happen?’

“This is what I said to those young friends: ‘In the West they say, Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s. But this country’s interior minister says that Caesar has rights but God does not!’

“But the fact is that 99% of the people of this country are Muslims. You cannot be both secular and a Muslim! You will either be a Muslim, or secular! When both are together, they create reverse magnetism [i.e. they repel one another]. For them to exist together is not a possibility! Therefore, it is not possible for a person who says ‘I am a Muslim’ to go on and say ‘I am secular too.’ And why is that? Because Allah, the creator of the Muslim, has absolute power and rule!”

Read it all.

Related to this is the Jihad Watch videoblog discussion of Turkish secularism and Islamic moderation at Hot Air, with a fuller essay here.

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