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If there is one thing that the Kemalists never lack, that is imagination. They can make up, and then believe in, all sorts of fantasy. Their pundits have recently created a vast range of conspiracy theories from the lunacy that “Islamist” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is in fact a crypto Jew who serves the Elders of Zion to the more popular nonsense that the U.S. government aims at establishing a “moderate Islamic republic” in Turkey.

I am used to seeing such bilge in the crude side of the Kemalist camp, but these days even their most sophisticated representatives seem to follow a similar line. My column neighbor, Yusuf Kanlı, a most articulate and respected writer, surprised me by doing so just two days ago. In his column titled “Muslim Democrats” he wrote, “‘Muslim democrats,’ some people on the payroll – or who were on the payroll – of some foreign intelligence agencies… are conducting psychological warfare against the patriot and Kemalist Turks through a disinformation campaign in the media outlets.”

Enemies United

I often don’t take such broad accusations personally, but Mr. Kanlı left me with no choice by explaining what these foreign-intelligence-agency-paid misinformers do: “In this psychological war, even Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was implicated with terrorism and some insolent penslingers have started using the ‘Kemalist terrorism’ terminology to describe people who resist the growing Islamofascist trends in this country.”

Well, it was me who wrote a piece titled “Turkey meets ‘Kemalist terror’” just two days before in order to explain the ideology of the controversial Ergenekon gang. “Therefore,” I said, “Mr. Kanlı must be talking about me.” So, let me say a few words.
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Yesterday I received an email from a Turkish high school student named Sümeyye. She, who seemed to be around 16 years old, was sad and bitter. She wrote:

“With the decision of the Constitutional Court, I feel like a dead person. Next year, I am scheduled to enter the university exams, which I had been so excited about. My biggest dream was to go to university, and I had already started to work hard for it. But now I feel so desperate. I am now forced to make a choice between my belief and my dreams. And I am full of anger at those people who forced me to do so. I used to speak about tolerance and understanding, and quote Rumi and Yunus Emre, but I really don’t feel that way anymore. There is simply no justice or democracy in this country.”

What this young lady was referring to was the recent verdict of the Turkish Constitutional Court, which annulled the constitutional amendments that would allow students like her to wear the Muslim headscarf on Turkish campuses. She, apparently, is a conservative Muslim and wants to get an education without abandoning what she sees as a requirement of her faith. And that is a right which is supported by 80 percent of the Turkish society, and 411 of the 550 parliamentarians in Ankara. But in Turkey, such numbers are not too important. The establishment in Ankara has little respect for anything besides its own ideology.

Upholding The Revolution

The Constitutional Court declared this implicitly yet quite bluntly the other day. Nine of the 11 judges have decided to annul last February’s constitutional amendment that 411 parliamentarians from three political parties (AKP, MHP, and DTP) had accepted. In other words, the judges have said, “It is us who decide how the Constitution should be written.” As many Turkish commentators note, this is absolutely illegitimate. Article 148 of the Turkish Constitution makes it clear that the Constitutional Court has the right to examine “both form and substance of laws.” But as for constitutional amendments, they “shall be examined and verified only with regard to their form.” (“Form” refers to technicalities such as the number of parliamentarians who were present during the voting.)

Yet, with this decision, the Constitutional Court has become a decider on the substance of the Constitution. It, in other words, it has usurped a power that solely belongs to the Turkish Parliament.

Well, not a big surprise. It was, after, all, a military junta who wrote our Constitution. And now a judiciary junta tells us that our democratically elected representatives cannot change its wording.

All this makes it very hard to say that the Turkish Republic is a democratic political entity. It is rather a revolutionary republic, which respects and upholds its “revolutionary principles” above everything. This has been openly declared by many prominent figures such as the former President Ahmet Necdet Sezer or the former Chief Prosecutor of the High Court of Appeals Vural Savaş. They have proudly and repeatedly said that the judiciary is not impartial when it comes to the “principles and revolutions of Atatürk.”

This sounds a bit similar to the mission of the revolutionary tribunals established by the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution.The stated purpose of these arbitrary courts was “the struggle against counter-revolutionary forces and to defend the revolution, as well as to struggle against marauders and profiteers, sabotage, and other abuses of merchants, industrialists, clerks and others.” Another Soviet document noted that revolutionary tribunals “follow the interests of the revolution and are not bound by any form of legal proceedings.”
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If someone had handed out a questionnaire these days among Turkey’s Kemalists asking them, “Who do you hate the most,” I bet two names would top the list: Olli Rehn and Joost Lagendijk. These gentlemen are the most-known faces of the European Union in Turkey and they are among the most vocal supporters of Turkish democracy. And, in the eyes of the guardians and apparatchiks of our semi-autocratic regime, democracy is a “counter-revolution” that should be avoided at all costs.

The Kemalist wrath on the EU has been in the making for quite sometime. Actually in the distant past, EU membership was attractive for them. It implied visa-free trips to Europe and abundant French wine and cheese in Istanbul restaurants. But when the Kemalists realized that EU membership would actually bring terrible results such as freedom of thought and religion, civilian supremacy over the military, or the equality of all citizens, they freaked out. This was the obliteration of the very anti-democratic system they enacted in the 20s and 30s, and have protected for decades from “internal enemies.”

CHP’s ‘Anti-Imperialist Genes’

What made the matters much worse was the cooperation between the incumbent AKP (Justice and Development Party) and the EU. The “Islamists,” who represented the “internal enemies” of the Republic, were in power, and they were using the EU leverage to democratize Turkey. Now we know that this AKP-EU axis made some generals so upset as early as 2004, so that a few of them planned a military coup, which, obviously, did not realize. But there are 50 ways to not to leave your power. These days, as you know, it is the judiciary that is taking care of the problem.

But these annoying EU officials just don’t leave the Turkish autocrats alone! Along with Mr. Rehn and Mr. Lagendijk, many EU voices, including José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, noted or at least implied that the closure of the AKP is not in line with EU norms and, Turkey’s self-styled secularism, which is the mother of all craziness, needs to be liberalized. (In his yesterday’s column, fellow TDN columnist Mehmet Ali Birand was arguing that these European commentators “fail to really understand us.” I rather think they understand us very well.)

Just recently, both Mr. Rehn and Mr. Lagendijk drew Turkish autocrats further crazy by their right-to-the-point comments. In his speech at Oxford University on May 1, Mr. Rehn said that the political tension in Turkey is between “extreme rather than liberal secularists” and “Muslim democrats”. And Mr. Lagendijk, at a speech at İzmir’s 9 Eylül University, said that headscarves should be free in universities, and, as a “leftist,” that he feels “shame” about the illiberal stance of Turkey’s so-called-social-democrat-but-actually-Kemalist main opposition party, the CHP.

The response to Mr. Lagendijk came from Kemal Anadol, one of the top figures of the CHP. He was furious. “Lagendijk sounds like colony governor,” he said, “and if he continues to attack, we know how to teach him some manners.” He underlined that the answer the CHP will give to this “arrogant foreigner” would be “very bad.”

Moreover, Mr. Anadol thoughfully informed us about the ideology which lies beneath his stance. “They want the CHP to become a light social democratic party,” he unapprovingly said. But, he added, that’s not going to happen: “It is in the genes of the CHP to be anti-imperalist.”

This “anti-imperialist” rhetoric has actually become the main theme of the Kemalists in the recent years. They argue that Turkey is under a lethal threat. The “external enemies” (EU and the U.S.) and “internal ones” (conservative Muslims, Kurds, and liberals) are united, in their view, to destroy the Republic. That’s why they have stopped referring to the Westernizing reforms of Atatürk. They rather focus on his early period, the 1919-22 era, in which he led Turkey’s War of Liberation against the European powers. It is no accident that the posters of Atatürk they now use are often the ones in which he wears the “kalpak,” a fez-like but a bit inverted headgear that he wore in those war years. His later photos with bowler hats, which clearly imply Europeanness, just do not fit into the “anti-imperalist” zeitgeist.

Baykal’s Liberation Army

Deniz Baykal, the leader of the CHP, has just added yet another dimension to this hype. (Unlike the Palestinians, he is famous for not missing any opportunities.) This week, on May 6, he spoke highly of “the three brave human beings, which we lost in this day, in 1972.” The three names he were referring to were Deniz Gezmiş, Hüseyin İnan and Yusuf Aslan, who had formed the Marxist-Leninist “People’s Liberation Army of Turkey,” (PLAT) and initiated an armed struggle to establish communism. In 1971, they robbed a bank, kidnapped four American soldiers in Ankara, and later were arrested following an armed stand-off with security forces. They were executed after a trial, and that’s of course too bad, but this does not change the fact that they were criminals, and, in today’s jargon, perhaps terrorists.

To date, these three musketeers of the PLAT, and especially Deniz Gezmiş, have been an icon of Turkish radical left, which believe in saving Turkey from “imperialism” by abandoning the whole Western alliance. And it is not meaningless that Mr. Baykal has decided to honor these iconic anti-imperialists this year – something he didn’t do before.

The fact is that Kemalism is becoming a more and more reactionary and isolationist force, which sees the EU membership as a threat to its existence. If Turkey’s becomes an EU member, Kemalism will inevitably cease to be the official ideology, and become just one of the many competing ideas in the public square. But for its devotees, apparently, this is just too big a risk to take.
Articles source : http://www.thewhitepath.com

One of the interesting and tell-tale controversies of the past week was the fuss over the recent remarks of Hakan Şükür, Turkey’s famous football star and a pious Muslim. In an interview with daily Zaman, he warned the supporters of his team, Galatasaray, and the other big one, Fenerbahçe, about the impending match between the two. In Turkey, football matches, especially such key derbies, often turn into orgies of violence. But that is very much against the morals of Islam, Şükür noted. And, he added, it would be especially bad to swear and attack fellow human beings during the “week of the holy birth,” that of Prophet Muhammad, in which this match will be played. He reportedly said:

“We are in the week of the holy birth, and we should be worthy of it. We should, in fact, raise our youth and children in the spirit of the tolerance of our Prophet… The fans (of Fenerbahçe and Galatasaray) should come to the stadium with not knives but roses.”

Hakan Şükür’s Blasphemy

Thus saith the football star, and all hell broke loose… Secularist media put his remarks in the headlines and presented it as “anti-secular propaganda.” Daily Vatan wrote critically about how Şükür “tries to insert religion into football.” In daily Milliyet, sports columnist Ercan Güven made the following comment:

“If this country faces much bigger troubles one day, if brothers become the enemy of brothers, if the regime tumbles and the nation falls, make sure that Hakan Şükür will have lots to do with all this.”

Like-minded people on Şükür’s team, Galatasaray, were also outraged. Former presidential candidate of the club, Adnan Öztürk wrote a letter to the current president, Adnan Polat, in order to denounce Şükür. “Our club has always been a symbol of secularism and modernity, and such remarks do not match with our values,” he wrote. He also asked for “the necessary measures to be taken,” which implied that Şükür should be punished or even expelled from the team. Fatih Altayl, another of prominence in the ultra-secular Galatasaray universe, asked for an “investigation” into Hakan Şükür.

I think this whole episode nicely presents a fundamental problem in Turkey. Quite many people in this country, especially those who consider themselves to be the elite, suffer from a sort of neurosis that can aptly be called thephobia. That term refers to the irrational fear from, and disgust towards, anything that relates to God and religion. It is, as American writer Tony Snow puts it, “the absolute, frenetic, run-away-from-Godzilla panic that afflicts some people when they hear the ‘G’ word.” For them any reference to, or symbol of, religion is simply horrifying.
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Since Sept. 11, 2001 European Muslims have been seen as a potential base for a radical, anti-Western ideology founded on a crude misinterpretation of Islam that delights in killing innocents under the banner of “Jihad.” The attack in London on July 7 was just one episode in the chain of violence perpetrated by this death cult.

Of course, the overwhelming majority of the 13 million or more Muslims living in Europe are law-abiding citizens who abhor this barbarism in the name of their faith. Yet, there is a considerable minority that sympathizes with terrorism. In a previous poll taken in the UK, supporters of bin Laden among Muslims numbered 13 percent. I was personally shocked, two years ago at a seminar I gave in London, to meet two modern-looking Muslim youngsters who saw bin Laden as the “Mahdi” — the awaited redeemer of Islam.

What is the problem here?

Some in the West think the problem is Islam itself. They are mistaken. The truth is that the radicalization of young European Muslims is the outcome of many social, political and historical factors that have led to the misinterpretation of Islam.

Strangers in a strange land

Unlike Muslims in the United States, who largely belong to the middle class, most European Muslims are economically disadvantaged, poorly integrated and tend to cluster in closed communities. They are predominantly post-World War II immigrants who arrived as manual laborers. They migrated from poor countries and were among the poorest even in their native societies. Turkish workers in Germany, for example, came from the least-developed areas of Turkey and experienced an enormous cultural shock when faced with a highly modernized, secular German society. The resulting deep cultural isolation is even stronger among many Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in the United Kingdom, North Africans in France and Spain, and Muslims from the Middle East throughout Europe. This cultural and linguistic isolation is further deepened by racial differences.

Many immigrants tend to accept this separation. Older people try to maintain their traditional lifestyles in a foreign land. Many of their children adopt Western ways, but even they live with a peculiar sense of double alienation: neither the lands of their fathers nor the new countries of residence seem a true home to them. They are, as the French political scientist Oliver Roy says, “culturally uprooted.”

Lack of modern interpretation of Islam

Another reason for this sense of homelessness is that these young European Muslims lack an interpretation of Islam that would be compatible with modern life. Many of them find a middle ground between Islamic traditions and Western lifestyles, but since those attempts do not have a doctrinal basis, they create a sense of guilt in people living at cultural crossroads. This guilt leads some of them to embrace the most radical interpretations — or rather, misinterpretations — of Islam peddled by itinerant imams from Saudi-funded madrassas. Most of the 9/11 conspirators in Europe were such born-again “neo-fundamentalists,” to use a term introduced by Roy. Similarly, the terrorists who attacked London on 7/7 turned out to be such “modern youngsters.”

Roy emphasizes the difference between neo-fundamentalism and what is usually called “traditional” Islam. He points out that neo-fundamentalism (or Jihadism) is based on political slogans, not theological arguments, and defies many established Islamic laws. Traditional Islam, for example, is very outspoken on the need to assure the safety of non-combatants in warfare. Acts of terror against civilians are a clear violation of this principle.

Other scholars have also noted the discrepancy between Jihadism and traditional Islam. Daniel Pipes, an expert on the issue, says: “Traditional Islam seeks to teach human beings how to live in accord with God’s will; militant Islam aspires to create a new order.”

The root causes of radicalism

Why the sudden appeal of Islamic neo-fundamentalism to some young Muslims? Three general answers are usually offered. The first one points to the widespread poverty and desolation of Muslims living in Europe and the Islamic world in general. That claim, however, requires some explanation because it has also been noted that most radicals and terrorists do not come from among the ignorant poor but from educated and prosperous classes. Yet the plight of the Islamic masses is an important factor in the ideological makeup of militant Islamism. Just as leftist intellectuals, who often came from bourgeois families, fought capitalism in the name of the “proletariat,” well-off and educated Islamist militants believe they sacrifice themselves for the sake of the impoverished, oppressed umma, the worldwide Muslim community.

It should be noted that the creators of modern Jihadism — people like Sayyid Qutb, Ali Shariati and Mawdudi — were very much influenced by Marxism-Leninism. Like the communists, who believe in a global conspiracy of capitalist imperialists aided by native compradors, Jihadists think that the Islamic world’s poverty and weakness are the result of a great conspiracy of the West and their local agents. According to this line of reasoning, to redeem the Islamic world one needs to strike at “the oppressors” rather than work to raise education levels, productivity or health standards in Muslim societies.

This quasi-Marxist worldview of the Jihadists might explain why their ideology appeals to die-hard communists like Carlos the Jackal.

A second source of Islamic radicalism is old and recent political mistakes made by the West. The most obvious root causes of anti-Western feelings are the English and French colonial past and the American backing of Middle Eastern dictatorships during the Cold War. The Palestinian tragedy is another major issue that will not be resolved unless there is a workable two-state solution.

The third explanation of the origins of Islamic militancy has to do with the cultural gap between traditionalist Islam and the modern world. The pre-modern lifestyle practiced by many Islamist traditionalists — and often seen by them as the essence of their faith — creates a perception of an inherent clash between Islam and modernity. The traditionalists themselves may be free of pro-terrorist sentiments, but Jihadists use this alleged incompatibility to fashion themselves as the vanguard in the Islamic struggle.

What is to be done?

The above suggests three important tasks for Muslim leaders and intellectuals in the immediate future:

First, de-legitimize the political ideology of militant Islamism by exposing its departures from the true teachings of Islam; refute its underlying conspiracy theories, its quasi-Marxist blueprint, and its misuse of traditional Islamic sources.

Second, help the Western powers formulate better policies to overcome centuries of distrust and antagonism.

Third, construct a new interpretation of Islam that will help Muslims break free from medieval traditions and develop modern attitudes compatible with the Islamic faith and morality.

This is necessary because some traditional Islamic concepts do not correspond to modern realities. Take, for example, the much-disputed concept of the division of the world into the “House of Islam” and the “House of War” formulated by Muslim jurists in the early centuries of Islam. At that time the world was ruled by empires that imposed their own faith on all subjects. A Muslim could not safely practice and proselytize Islam in foreign lands.

Yet times have changed. Today Muslims are free to practice and proselytize their faith throughout the world — especially in liberal Western democracies. They should embrace such open societies and present their faith by their own good example, by living Islam in the modern world and in peace with other creeds.

This is what reason demands. Moreover, it is what the Koran demands: The differences between people, says the Koran, were not created for conflict but for letting them know each other.(49:13)
Article source : http://www.thewhitepath.com

In a recent article on Frontpage, titled “Spare Us Another “Golden Age?”, Bat Ye’or responded to my earlier rejoinder to her colleague, Andrew Bostom. Both Ms. Ye’or and Mr. Bostom believe that terrorists such as al-Qaeda spring from and represent the supposedly inherent violence of Islam. I argue, on the other hand, that the current “Islamic terrorism” we face stems from a distortion of the true Islamic faith.

In order to defend my case, let me shortly answer the questions, counter the criticisms and unveil the misjudgments of Ms. Ye’or.

The first issue is about the traditional, post-Koranic Islamic sources. Ms. Ye’or welcomes my critical approach to the hadith and sira traditions but criticizes me for failing to “explain on what authority a selection of hadith and events of the sira will be made.” (Hadiths are sayings attributed to Prophet Muhammad and sira are his biographies.) I feel free to question these traditional sources, because they are very late constructs. The earliest sira was written about 150 years after the Prophet. Hadiths were compiled even later. And it is already known that these sources include many fake, irrational stories. I just argue that the inauthenticity is wider than commonly acknowledged.

But how will we judge these sources, as Ms. Ye’or rightly asks. Robert Spencer raised the same question, too. My answer is the Koran. The Koran must be the sole infallible Islamic criterion and hadiths should be compared with its verses and the overall message. There are some modern scholars who reach this conclusion. Professor Hayri Kirbasoglu, a theologian in Ankara University and an expert on hadiths, argues that a new method is necessary to evaluate the hadith collection and compatibility with the Koran — a criterion much neglected before — should be its basis. The same holds for sira as well.

With this reasoning, I see the sira and hadith accounts about the massacre of the men of Bani Qurazya as incompatible with the Koran. Thus I reject it.

Ms. Ye’or welcomes my rejection of this story, but finds another reason to accuse me:
But Mr. Akyol again contradicts himself by implying that the Qurayza’ punishment was justified, because they acted treacherously while of course there are no objective proofs for such accusations, which rest merely on the demonization of the victims.

There is a logical inconsistency here. Ms. Ye’or says that there “are no objective proofs” showing that Bani Qurazya was treacherous, but there is no objective proof for the rest of the story as well. We can either take the story at face value or doubt or reject it completely. By taking the killing as granted but by doubting its accepted reason, Ms. Ye’or stealthy walks away from fairness.

Ms. Ye’or also questions my effort to redefine jihad as an intellectual stance against atheism, and its philosophical underpinning, i.e. materialism. First of all, she asks what this is. Put simply, materialism is the idea that matter is all there is, God is imaginary and we humans are the products of a blind process of evolution.
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After my article on Frontpage, titled Still Standing For Islam – And Against Terrorism, Robert Spencer, the editor of the Jihad Watch website posted a rebuttal. He argued that Islam is indeed the legitimate source of terrorists such as al-Qaeda, and my arguments can’t persuade those militants to stop their violence.

I wonder how the arguments of Mr. Spencer can help the same cause, but that is trivial for now. Let me explain what I really say and what I really want to do.

In a nutshell, what I am trying to do is to show that the current terrorism under the name of Islam is not legitimate from an Islamic point of view. By doing so, I want to refute two diametrically opposing camps: Islamist terrorists and some of the harsh critics of Islam. Interestingly, both camps agree that Islam is a cult of violence, whereas for me, and for hundreds of millions of Muslims around the globe, Islam is a path to God. We just wish to cleanse that path from the distortions of the politically oriented radicals and intolerant bigots.

When I say terrorism (or authoritarianism) is not legitimate from an Islamic point of view, I mean the Islamic ideal that I believe in, and which is based on the Koran, besides everything else. Of course, there are Muslims who think that evils such as attacks against American or Israeli civilians, kidnappings, bombings, repressive regimes or anti-Semitism are legitimate. They are obviously out there, as we all know. I am trying to de-legitimize their doctrine. I am not trying to ‘cover up’ militant Islamists, as I have been accused of doing on Jihad Watch.

Mr. Spencer also quoted the “Muslim Q&A” website, which promotes compulsion in religion. Well, I am horrified by such views, which I believe to be totally contradictory to the spirit of the Koran and I am ready to stand against them.

Yet Mr. Spencer insists that such efforts won’t persuade the militants to have a farewell to arms or the fanatics to accept freedom of worship. He is right. I don’t expect al-Qaeda militants to weep and repent when they read what I, or what many other moderate Muslims — most of them much more qualified then myself — write. But we can, Lord willing, persuade the Muslim masses that are confused about what to believe; confused whether al-Qaeda and its ilk are brave heroes of Islam or a bunch of bigoted zealots.

Moreover, while we moderates can’t probably convert militants into peaceniks, it is very probable that portraying Islam as a cult of violence will help converting non-violent Muslims into militants. The majority of the world’s Muslims, who believe that their religion demands peace, will be horrified to see what they will perceive as anti-Islamic propaganda and will be prone anti-Western sentiments. Please let’s be careful about this.
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