The Radical Muslim will stab you today, the Moderate, Tommorow.

Submitted by Robert (United States), Apr 16, 2016 at 10:19

Dear Daniel Pipes,

I've just Murat Yetkin's article you've linked us to.
I find his succinct overview of western Muslim (Turkey-based) history excellent.
And I don't think you paid as careful attention to his loaded words
which I know you have the full capacity to understand.
Although he is obviously aligned with the secular tradition of Kemalism
and twice quotes that party's current head
as a Turk he is well-suited to give us a view from a historical Muslim perspective.

My interpretation of what he says
is that it is no use for us to look for Muslim moderates
because Islam is a fundamentally political Religion, unlike Christianity
- "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God what's God's."

Is a religiously inclined Muslim wishes to moderate his or her religious views
let that remain a private concern.

The distinction you make, regarding "agnosticism or atheism," is interesting,
but I not persuaded of its relevance. I know, for example, that to a Roman Catholic,
that a Jew, or Muslim, is a million times better than an Atheist.
But Secularism means, for a Kemalist, tolerating Atheists too.

It is ironic, though, that Ataturk's Turkey
has receded into an Erdoğan Islamist Republic.
Perhaps Murat Yetkin advocates a "Dialectical" return to Secularism for Turkey.
I know that you find this Hegelian and Marxist D word distasteful;
but think of English and French history;
after beheading their King, the British had their Glorious Revolution in 1688
with a return of a restoration of their Monarchy;
similar events happened in France after the fall of Napoleon
all the way up to the Fourth Republic and the leadership Charles de Gaulle.

So I give great weight to the Turkish view of Secularism.

However, each Arab country in the Middle East
has obviously no choice but to struggle through
its own "glorious" non-Turkish history.
Consider the Pharaoh of Egypt, The Persian Empire,
the Muslim Arab Empire centered in Bagdad (now Iraq), the Abbasid Caliphate and the Islamic Golden Age;and the Muslim Arab Empire centered in Damascus (now Syria), the Umayyad Caliphate.

As I recall, in one posting you, Daniel Pipes, include Nationalism among the disparaged "-isms" of Ideology. But in my view, the Modern State after the Industrial Revolution
is bound to create a patriotic mythology involving its own past
and the role of its subjects or citizens
in that glorious context.

It turns out that Nationalism hasn't been studied much in a scholarly fashion
until it was well on its way under the banners of fascism;
among the earliest text books is a 1937 imprint,
"Essays on Nationalism" by Carlton J. H. Hayes, Historian, Columbia University,
a book I happen to own. It is a book, however, that leads one to the question
of what is it to be Turkish ? And that brings up the issue of being Kurdish.
And through current events we know
that neither Moderate Islam nor Secularism
will solve that problem for Turkey.

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