I'm - almost - at a loss for words

Submitted by Ömer (Turkey), May 15, 2007 at 16:55

Such nonsense could never have been written by a Turk. You manage to pick one of Ataturk's reforms that *no-one* in Turkey has any intention of reversing.

It reminds me of just how such well-meaning nonsense helped us to abolish the Caliphate eighty-three years ago. Meddling by fellow muslims, however well-meaning, is as welcome to us as meddling by anyone else. Where were you, sir, or your fathers and mothers before you, while we were building a nation from the ashes that rule by The Shadow of God on Earth had ultimately reduced us to? Twiddling your thumbs, bemoaning your fate at the hand of the cruel world, or praying for oil to gush out of your barren lands?

Sick Man of Europe, you say? *If* that were true, I'd say - and so would everyone else in Turkey, atheist, believer or fundamentalist - better that than wallowing in the paranoia and oil-fueled wish fulfillment of most of the rest of the Islamic world. Nothing excites a Turk better than success - this was the main reason we became muslims in the first place - and Europe is infinitely preferable to the Middle East.

As for being top dog in Europe. Maybe. We shall certainly strive to be *one* of the top dogs. But this time round, we shall not try to do it as invaders, enslavers, lords or masters. We shall be traders, teachers, interlocutors, artists, thinkers and politicians. And if our legacy derives equally from the Greeks, Romans and French as it does from the Arabs, Persians or Chinese, at least logic - a factor sadly missing from most muslims' minds since about the 13th century - will permit us to offer up choices from our broader cultural experience.

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