Secular and islamic - the big lie

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Apr 8, 2009 at 10:30

Hi, Licinia !

You wrote :

> Secular Turkey--how often the west is deceived by this phrase- a belief that the west desperately seeks to hold onto in its search for co existence with the islamic world which is by the way crumbling under its own weight of horror. Secular Turkey? What a crock. <

I fully agree with you. What 'secularisme à la turque' really signifies is well illustrated by the below observations :

" Today, Turkey has over 85,000 active mosques, one for every 350 citizens—compared to one hospital for every 60,000 citizens—the highest number per capita in the world and, with 90,000 imams, more imams than doctors or teachers. It has thousands of madrasa-like Imam-Hatip schools and about four thousand more official state-run Qur'an courses, not counting the unofficial Qur'an schools, which may expand the total number tenfold. Spending by the governmental Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet Işleri Başkanlığı) has grown five fold, from 553 trillion Turkish lira in 2002 (approximately US$325 million) to 2.7 quadrillion lira during the first four-and-a-half years of the AKP government; it has a larger budget than eight other ministries combined. The Friday prayer attendance rate in Turkey's mosques exceeds that of Iran's, and religion classes teaching Sunni Islam are compulsory in public schools despite rulings against the practice by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and the Turkish high court (Danıştay). Both Prime Minister Erdoğan and the Diyanet head Ali Bardakoğlu criticized the rulings for failing to consult Islamic scholars."

http://www.meforum.org/2045/fethullah-gulens-grand-ambition

Turkish "secularism" seems to be more and more an article of faith. If you believe in it , you have a chance to see it. If you don't , you'll be held for a heretic. After all Kemal has said Turkish secularism exists, hasn't he ?

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