Turkey might not be the best example

Submitted by Clyde Spicer (United States), Aug 13, 2002 at 15:45

Turkey is different from other Muslim societies by the fact that it is a secular society. Kemal Ataturk forcibly dragged the Turks into the 20th Century. Most of the other Muslim countries are still about ten centuries behind and perfectly content to remain that way.

Turkey is also trying to join the European Union. This means that they are doing things like abolishing the death penalty, as well as other little acts to modernization to show that they want to be "good Europeans." The religious changes and declarations of equality between the sexes that you mentioned would fit in with such an agenda.

My concern about Islam is that it's not "just a few extremists" spewing messages of hate and incitement to violence. All one has to do is read the text of the Friday prayers being uttered at the mosques in Egypt, Oman, Saudi Arabia, etc., to understand that this is a systemic problem, not an isolated one.

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