To Lina

Submitted by Irrelevant (United States), Apr 6, 2009 at 09:56

Lina,

Thank you for taking the time to respond and for sharing your experiences. So in regards to your questions about alcohol consumption and how serious people, like myself, take Islam in Turkey: Alcohol has had a place in Turkish/Ottoman culture for centuries. However, this does not mean that everyone approves of this.

Since Islam and alcohol contradict each other, the scales of tolerance have been fluxuating for as long as both have been around. I guess I should mention that the paganistic origins of the Turrks and Islam were contradictory to each other as well. In the past we've had sultans who banned the use of alcohol and others who couldn't get enough. The founder of modern day Turkey, Ataturk, died of cirosis. He had an affinity for cigarettes and raki, the national alcoholic beverage. Some government official of the AKP party proposed limiting alcohol sales a couple of years ago was met with people rallying in the streets with bottles of wine for a week straight.

Now some one out to get me will comment by saying "that was only the unruly youth that participated in those rallies". No. They were sweet old grannies with headscarves to protect there lovely perms from the rain holding up there wine glasses in protest as well as the unruly youth.

On the issue of Islam: Everyone goes through their phase of soul searching. I was encouraged to explore and develop my own independant opinion on faith. I read the kuran and the bible, looked into paganism and judaism and to this day I still continue to do research on faith. Not because I'm religious but because i find it intriguing to see what in the hell compells people to follow an intangible idea so blindly.

Anyway, I'm not religious. In middle school I chose not to attend to my theology classes due to it's biased nature towards Islam. That was right around the time I began my research. Although I respect Islam I did not care for the idea that "you have to be a muslim in order to achieve happiness in your life as well as in the afterlife". The same goes for christianity: "you must accept Jesus as your lord and savior". See now how can I go with one or the other when I have friends on both sides of the spectrum. Accepting one or the other would mean that I also accepted the fact that half of my friends would be facing eternal damnation. To hell with that I say:) So yeah, I guess I'm one of those Turks that believes that religion is the crutch of the weak.

So I began my rant saying that I was a muslim. Well I'm not. I may have been a muslim at one point until I made my own conscious decision to become non-religious. Screw it, that wasn't the point of this dissertation in the first place. The point was that I come from a country that respects the decisions of people like myself . Once again, I am not claiming that everyone approves of this but it does definitely mean that I can freely express my feelings on the matter.

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