Mr. Havas Comment seems to support my arguments.

Submitted by Michel C. Zala (Switzerland), Dec 10, 2010 at 10:42

Quite matter of factly you seem to support my notion that Sharia Law would not find a home in Turkey in diammetral opposition to what is happening in most other muslim countries.

And right away follows the typical emotional outburst, a symptom of the 1000 year old inferiority complex, where you call us western imperialists who consider the only good muslim to be a dead one, utterly neglicting the fact that for many decades now it has been the West, which was under attack by muslims, and not the other way around.

One can debate this forever, as you would be hard pressed to name just one example of Christianity based terrorism, albeit I would be much more interested to learn, how we can overcome the emotionality in the debate.

Here are my questions to you:

From a Turkish perspective, what would you expect from Europe and/or America to change in their dealings with Turkey in order to overcome islamophobia on the one side and the slanted perception of western imperialsm on the other?

As Christianity has undergone a period of reform or enlightenment, where an archaic and at times almost brutal book (Old Testament) which was prone to misinterpretation and justification of immeasurable atrocities was re-written and an entire Religion somewhat adapted to modernity, do you not believe that also the Quran, Islam in itself is being mis-abused nowadays?

Should not the notion of Djihaad for instance be tighter (non-violently) defined in order to avoid for example any "Bin Ladens" of the world to call for a violent holy war in justification of immeasurable misery from India to Iraq?

Can you appreciate, that only during the last decade, more than 100000 innocent people were murdered in islamistic terror attacks in the name of Allah, whereas no such thing even remotely exists for Buddhism, Hinduism or Christianity? Would this not warrant some form of reform from within Islam?

Is it not time to let go of celebrating the heroism of Salahaddin, still celebrated and heralded in cafees in Anatolia and the conflict of the crusades and overcome emotions in lieu of pragmatism?

I am more than willing to learn from your (Turkish) point of view and hope you will perceive these questions as respectful. As an outspoken friend of Turkey and its people, who acknowledges the many contributions and positive developments of your nation domestically and abroad, I very much would like to know, if we can not engage in an unemotional, pragmatic discussion without havig to resort to emotionally laden arguments, which are counter-productive.

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