Turkey

Submitted by Yuval Brandstetter MD (Israel), Sep 13, 2010 at 05:34

My allies often fail to distinguish between Islam (a faith) and Islamism (a radical utopian ideology aiming to implement Islamic laws in their totality). This amounts not just to an intellectual error but a policy dead-end.

Proof positive that the separation between islam and Islamism is intellectually stimulating but factually wrong is in Turkey

Just yesterday the leader of the islamist party, and by Islamist I means placing the interests of Islamic ascendancy over concerns of prosperity, won approval for a slew of reforms which extend Islam even further, while curtailing the power of secular forces. The Turkish democratic upheaval shows that islam and islamism are the same, as much as the Muslims of Gaza and Hamas are the same. claiming otherwise is politically correct, but intrinsically wrong. Islam is not a faith as much as it is a regime that allows the believers to assume superiority above all others, and ordains an eternal struggle (IE imperialist license) to impose this superiority over the Unbeliever.

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