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Totalitarians in Religious Clothing
How would you respond to radical Muslim clerics in northwest Pakistan -- now under Islamic law -- who are calling for expansion of Islamic law across the entire federal republic of Pakistan. Should any nation be governed by religious rules.
No nation should be governed by religious rules or authorities, because when religious law is in, both civil and religious diversity are out. A national religious law makes true democracy impossible. Totalitarianism is the inevitable result.
Thomas Jefferson warned that when you combine the "power of the priest and the power of the prince" it's just too much power. Like night follows day, political totalitarianism follows the establishment of religious law in society.
In some ways, it is not even about religion. Religion is manipulated to garner its power and use it for the sake of political gain. The radical Muslim clerics in Pakistan are using the power of the Islamic religion to gain political power. They are dangerous, they are violent and when they signed a "peace agreement", they did so as a cynical step on the way to their ultimate goal of dominating Pakistan.
The Taliban are an example of the "hard power" approach of religious extremists. I have spent the last week in Turkey and encountered religio-political extremism in its "soft power" disguise.
In 2002, riding a wave of national dissatisfaction with economic stagnation and political corruption, the Islamist party, the AKP, came into power with only about a third of the vote; they received two-thirds of the seats in Parliament, however, as the numerous other parties failed to gain the required 10%. The Prime Minister became Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who moderated his Islamic views during the election. He now pursues what appears to be a long-term strategy to eliminate secular opposition and establish religious law in Turkey.
Erdogan's administration has severely undermined the independence of the media, of the judiciary, of the banking system and has abolished long-standing rules prohibiting religious dress on university campuses. It is now moving on to re-write school textbooks to revise the country's secular history. It was my observation that far more Turkish women were wearing headscarves and religious dress than when I had visited Turkey more than a decade ago. As one Turkish businessman observed to me about his university-age daughter, "They want to put a headscarf on her mind." He is thinking about sending his daughter to the United States to complete her education.
Currently in Turkey there is a sweeping "investigation" taking place called "Ergenekon", a name taken from the mythology of the origin of the Turkish people. Ergenekon is now the name given to an alleged plot to overthrow the current government. Opponents of the current administration to whom I spoke while in Turkey believe this so-called investigation is really simply a cover for eliminating political rivals of the Islamic party.
Last Monday, 39 influential Turkish intellectuals and academics were detained in Istanbul, and 8 were subsequently arrested including Professor Mehmet Haberal, an internationally recognized transplant surgeon, who is the founder and the Rector of Baskent University. Also detained and questioned was Professor Turkan Saylan, who created and leads a scholarship organization for girls from impoverished families. While Professor Saylan was being detained, her home and the offices of her organization, which is credited with bringing education to tens of thousands of girls, were raided by police. The arrest of Professor Haberal and the questioning of Professor Saylan provoked a huge outcry in the country. On Saturday, up to as many as 11,000 people demonstrated against these current arrests and detentions at the mausoleum of the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
When Professor Saylan, who is also a cancer patient, was being taken for questioning, she exclaimed "No Sharia, no coup!" Sharia refers to Islamic religious law. That slogan and the wearing of small buttons with a picture of Ataturk signal a growing clarity about the threat to Turkey's secular democracy from the current Islamist administration.
Professor Haberal developed a cardiac problem after his arrest and he has been hospitalized. The timing of his arrest prevented his participation and delivery of a major address to an international meeting on pediatric transplantation in Istanbul attended by many transplant specialists from the US and over 60 other countries. Professor Haberal is a leading scientist and educator in Turkey who has previously declined to run for President of Turkey.
The "soft power" approach to overthrowing Turkey's secular republic has recently experienced a small setback; the AKP party lost seats in the recent local elections. There will be national elections in two years. Will the recent round of detentions and arrests of prominent intellectuals intimidate the political opposition, or strengthen it? In a recent public opinion poll in Turkey, only 30% of respondents said they would vote for the AKP if elections were held today.
Those who want Islamic law in Pakistan are violent and extreme. They are very visible. Those who want Islamic law in Turkey are more subtle in their tactics. That does not make them less dangerous. In fact, the "stealth" approach can be more dangerous in the long-run.
By
Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite
|
April 23, 2009; 8:03 AM ET
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Posted by: 771979 | April 28, 2009 6:12 PM
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i believe individuals who happen to be muslim share the innate desires for peace, love and harmony, but,
HELP!!!!
i've been asking this question over and over (apologies to those who've seen it) on various threads, but still no answer:
are there verses you can quote from the koran (that were not later superseded by the ugly medina verses) and hadith that promote tolerance, fairness, equality, freedom of religion, self-determination etc...?
please, i would really like to know.
Posted by: walter-in-fallschurch | April 27, 2009 10:04 AM
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Alas, Islam shares a problem with many faiths who believe in a God outside of space and time and the world as we see it. That kind of faith is a handy tool for totalitarians. It wasn't so long ago in the West that princes justified their rule by claiming to be closer to God. Authority outside of nature cedes reason to rule and Islam has many, many rules.
It is the legalistic nature of that faith, with anachronistic rules for everyday life, that hobbles Muslim majority societies intellectually and economically and makes those societies lag in the world because it is so hard to compete carrying all that seventh century baggage. Radical Islam is a reaction to an inferiority complex brought on by that third rate status.
However, Islam's strengths from keeping women in inferior status is hard to ignore because depriving them of decisions concerning reproductive choice insures that Muslim populations vastly outstrip our own in numbers. The challenge for the West is how, in the long run, they can balance compassion for the poverty brought on by their own actions in the Muslim world with immigration and democracy. It won't be easy.
Posted by: edbyronadams | April 26, 2009 8:47 AM
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I always thought it was The Dawn that follows the Night. "Let there be Light".
Young society's full of corruption often need those on the Left to draw fire in order for those on the Right too achieve objectives. Whether it's religion,government or business.
Usually those on the Left are lower educated and poor, fighting for their beliefs and their people. Knowing their purpose, they achieve as much as they can.
They don't expect to win.
James David Whitall II
Posted by: James210 | April 25, 2009 7:35 AM
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SUSAN BROOKS THISTLETHWAITE
You wrote, "Those who want Islamic law in Pakistan are violent and extreme. They are very visible. Those who want Islamic law in Turkey are more subtle in their tactics. That does not make them less dangerous. In fact, the "stealth" approach can be more dangerous in the long-run."
Isn't this exactly what islam is all about?
Total domination of every aspect of a person's life imposed from the outside on a world wide scale.
Take care, be ready.
Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.
Posted by: ThomasBaum | April 24, 2009 3:02 PM
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The Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other groups of violence believe that without changing themselves and adhering to the tenets of Islam, they can change the world but they are misinformed. Jihad in Islam does not mean war (Qital) every time your raise your hand, arm, open your mouth and stand on your feet or walk on your two legs but Qital is the last and ultimate stage of 'Jihad’ when all other peaceful means of implementing the and conveying true message of Islam have failed and the enemy is or has been harming Islam by violent means.
The 'true Jihad' is to improve inner self, struggle and fight against your 'nafs' worldly evil temptations, materialism, secularism, Darwinism, fornication, lewdness, illegitimate births, illicit sex, pornography, drugs, stealing, robbing, cheating, lying, back-biting, deceiving, rape, incest, harming others etc etc. No where in Islam, it is allowed to forbid girls and women receiving education and attending schools. In fact one the greatest Islamic theology, jurisprudence and Hadiz has been Hazrat Ayesha (one of the wives of Prophet Mohammed(SAW)) who ran madras’s to teach Muslim women and often many sahabs consulted her on many matters relating to Sharia and Hadiz in which she was authority.
In the Islamic teachings, men and women are born equal with equal human rights; she is not inferior in intelligence but can surpass men but Allah has created her with the purpose of procreation and propagation of human society and "she is the mother of civilization", and therefore she has physical, biological and physiological limitation but that does not mean in any respect, she is inferior to man: only the roles of men and women are different. Taliban must respect Islamic rights of women and equality as preached in Islam or they are disobeying Islam and distorting Islam and liable for punishment in the life here after.