Turkey and Iran

Submitted by Rory (United States), Jun 30, 2010 at 02:51

Why does it come as a surprise to Westerners, that a democratically elected government, in a nation whose citiizens are overwhelmingly believers in Islam, should attempt to impose Sharia as the law of the land? Islam teaches that Shariah should govern public life because Islam has always been a political system as well as a religion. Generally speaking, Islamic history is replete with dictatorial regimes who drew their legitimacy as defenders and propagators of the faith. Any attempt at constitutional and democratic reform has had a rocky history in the whole of the Islamic world. It may very well be that we are witnessing a regression in Turkey to essentially a religious dictatorship based on Sharia. Religions do not compromise in regard to their basic tenets and because Islam is also a political system there will never be a Western style democracy in Islamic lands. Any attempt at reform, as in all religions, will be a movement to conform to the original beliefs and this dynamic will always oppose freedom outside Sharia in Islamic nations. The repurcussions of this is that Islamic nations are natural enemies of Western democratic nations.

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