To Ianus: Islamisation or Turkification?

Submitted by Plato (India), Mar 17, 2007 at 06:13

Ianus, I don't see Ataturk implementing any Islamic agenda. He may have used Islamic vocabulary and imagery to communitcate with the illiterate Anatolian peasantry to carry out his own agenda of Turkification which even by what you have been saying carried quite a lot of European content and reduced Islamic/Arabian content.

"...The fiction of caliphate (pro-Western until the very end) had to give way to the anti-Western genocidal dictatorship of Mustafa Kemal - the new "sultan" and the new "caliph" in a turban of "secularism" , if I may use a metaphor understandable to his Moslem soldiers ."

I do not have your detailed knowledge of Turkish history but the burden of all that you have said shows the anti-Western drive of Mustafa Kemal (despite his acceptance of Western learning, script, dress banning of the veil etc). His Islamic zeal, the really worrying stuff, is not visible.

"Local events" ? Man , what are you talking about? The treaty of Sèvres abolished Turkey practically as a state....."

Again Ianus, I defer to your superior knowledge of Turkish and European history. The defeat of Turkey was a cataclysmic world event but for the uneducated peasant population and army of Turkey the implications would have been immmediate and local. What kind of weltanschuung can you expect illiterate peasants to have( I concede madrassa education can give Muslims a kind of world view but not I think a vision for global Islamic domination.)

"You're so optimistic, Plato.

My impression is that the internet and modern communication - value-neutral as they are - can serve quite the opposite purpose. They provide a good ground for brain-washing opportunities for "endangered" Moslems on how to oppose and combat those corrosive ideas. If I am not wrong most Moslems prefer to watch live reports from Mecca to reading our dimmi-no-more's disclosures of Moslem lies and tricks."

These media are value-neutral? What about their content? Take answering-islam.org and answering-christianity.com at the opposites ends of the debate. The vlaues they espouse are obvious and the one doing it more honestly is also obvious. I picked just one topic 'Slavery' from the answering-christianity site. Unless you believe that merely being a Musliml voids one of all reason and logic, reading it, what comes through will be one of circumlocution, convoluted logic, sheer dishonesty. The value of these sites to me at least is obvious. I would also direct you to Memri, Faithfreedom.org. which have managed to at least give muslims food for thought.

"You have visibly forgotten the point of the original Greek myth. Sisyphus' stone is never worn to a pebble. It's an eternally useless toil. This particular punishment was invented for Sisyphus because of his hubris. He as a mortal believed that was cleverer than Zeus. If you change "Zeus" for "history" the same punsihment awaits those who believe they can outwit history. Moderate Islam is un-historical"

No I have not forgotten the point. As to that rock, we are talking of Islamic theology, not Zeus' frictionless' rock. Though Muslims would love to think their theology and the Koran are immutable the facts show that both have evolved over time. Your whole argument here rests on the premise that moderate Islam is un-historical. That is something I will have to agree to disagree with you, as our definition of moderate are very likely divergent.

"How do you mean ? What you say applies to the middle ages . In the 19th century we had many free-thinkers of whom we may be so proud. We're the only civilization with atheists and agnostics as a respectable class we owe much to."

Well in the nineteenth century even Darwin hesistated to call himself an atheist (and he wasn't one). I brought in the 19th century just to make a point. In the East, the Indians had atheists and agnostics contributing to their philosophy and religion almost from day one. The Charvakas, Samkhya, even Buddhism, and Jainism.

"And you pin so much hope to that ? Which verses did they mean ? Probably those already abrogated in the prophet's own time like "There is no compulsion in religion"."

This is the exchange to which you reply as above:

I wrote: They can be persuaded to interpret their religion differently.

Your reply: "Differently ? How do you mean that ? They will invent un-Islamic Islam like Islamo-democracy and Islamo-humanism or what ?"

I again wrote:

Of course if you assume that the moment anyone is born into a Muslim family he has an operating system that can accept only the software of the Koran then yes, Muslims are machines programmed to carry out the Koranic injunctions.

"Would it ? Wouldn't it rather give a new meaning to this schizophrenia with a new caliph in "secular" clothes , so to speak."

It looks as though only people from countries who have never been Islamic can be truly secular. Anyone from a Muslim country who speaks the secular language is a wolf in sheep's clothing?

This is what I wrote about 'entropy':

"Are you sure of your metaphor , Plato ? Entropy is a property of this universe that entails that order everywhere decreases and disorder in this universe increases over time. So you sentence sounds "The civilizational disorder of the world seems to increase" . Did you really mean that ?"

Yes I am sure. As long you remember that it is a metaphor. Ideologies, religions enforce order (communism, Islam, dictators, monarchs...). Democrcay and freedom can best be described as a kind of disorder. When the shackles of unnecessary order are removed we feel happier, when there is less government we feel happier, the reason why Marx wanted the state to wither away.

Civilisational content is not the same as civilisational disorder. The greater the freedom the less the regimentation of ideologies or religions. The freedom to be onself without order imposed from outside is the content that I am referring to.

The civilizationall content of the world seems to increase over time, somewhat like entropy. The order of ideologies, religions and cultures give way to the disorder of democracy (individualism over collectivism).One of the curious ideas I have noted on one blog is that some Muslims claim many of the Koran's directives were meant only for prophetic times i.e. for those directly addressed by the prophets and those not directly addressed are generally not subject to them.

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