Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April 1998, Pages 91, 124

Mahjabeen’s Musings: A Muslim Traveler Along the American Way

Trapped Between Islam and Ideology, At This Critical Juncture Turkey is Neither East nor West

By Mahjabeen Islam-Husain

I was rather young, just into my teens, when my diplomat father took us to live there, but I remember Turkey very well. It was such a jumble of contradictions. It has a 99 percent Muslim population, a much higher percentage than countries like Indonesia or Pakistan, and yet Islam was never overt.

In the early ’70s Turks greatly idolized Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who founded the modern republic of Turkey on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. Many a town square had his serious frown frozen on his larger- than-life statues.

It was a concept very foreign to a non-Turkish Muslim that an entire nation idolized a man who seemed to have brought it to the very brink of blasphemy. Turkish children were told graphic stories of the “Father of Modern Turkey” snatching the veils off women’s heads, and how wearing the hijab was declared unlawful. In the logic of this military hero, who won all the World War I battles he fought while all of his fellow generals were losing theirs, the external appearance of a nation’s citizens had a direct bearing on its progress. Secularism, which would make Turks dress like Europeans, was therefore the key to future Turkish achievement.

Turkey is situated on both sides of the Bosphorus, connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, making it, geographically speaking, both Asian and European. Perhaps this physical division explains the dichotomy of its politics.

In the 1970s, we had to remind ourselves that we were indeed in a Muslim country. Ataturk had decreed that the adhan, or call to prayer, must not be audible beyond the confines of the mosque in which it originated. Microphones and loudspeakers would be too disturbing to the people living around the mosque. This is a very difficult concept for other Muslims to fathom. Yet Turks did not question it.

In Turkey, secularism had become synonymous with Turkish patriotism. Similarly, secularism was not just a part of the constitution. It was the constitution.

It seemed to me that just as the people looked European and also acted European, they had come to believe the government line that Turkey was “progressive” only because it was secular! In the recesses of my fuzzy teen-aged mind, however, even I knew that there was no linear connection between material progress and either spirituality or the lack of it.

Turkey is blessed with superb natural scenery, and buxom, bikini-clad women enjoying the sandy beaches rounded out to perfection. Coming from the Islamic “Protectorate” of Pakistan, where even dresses were a no-no, the diameter of my eyes was only matched by the drop of my jaw. My sari-clad mother was unabashedly stared at and—of all shockers—was admonished by an elderly woman to cover up the little sliver of waist that peeked out of it.

We had to remind ourselves that we were indeed in a Muslim country.

My Turkish was too rudimentary for me to suggest that this elderly lady might better advise her rounder micro-mini attired countrywomen that miniskirts should respect some finite limits to their ascent. Instead I concluded that things kind of evened out. The Turks stared at my mother and our family stared at the young Turkish womenfolk.

December in this secular Muslim country was a month to remember. Our apartment building was on a hill and in December each balcony would be lit with a Christmas tree, except that in Turkey, as in the former Soviet Union, it was called a “new year’s tree.” The sight was indeed breathtaking, but I did not understand, particularly since the New Year it commemorated had nothing to do with the Islamic calendar.

My father had to spend some time in the beginning to find a mosque for Friday congregational prayer. Mosques were low profile so that secular sensibilities were not offended. But December festivities that looked suspiciously Christian to me seemingly offended no one.

Perhaps the population, at least in urban areas where I spent my time, was agreeable then, but it no longer seems willing to compromise its spiritual heritage for the sake of Ataturk’s legacy. When the Islamist Refah (Welfare) Party of Necmettin Erbakan won municipal elections a few years ago, that sent tingles down army spines, since Turkey’s generals have long been the self-appointed custodians of its secularity. Then Refah emerged from national elections as Turkey’s largest political party.

In the Name of Secularism

After a time at the helm of government in a coalition with a slightly smaller secular party, the Refah Party was banned under Turkey’s secular constitution. In addition, the military-backed secular party that replaced Refah is in the process of:

• banning Imam Hatip or Islamic schools
  
  
• banning building of new mosques (as they may be used for political purposes)
  
  
• strictly implementing a dress code to exclude the Islamic hijab head cover for women and the turban for men
  
  
• restricting teaching of the Qur’an in government schools
  
  
• imprisoning parents if they enforce religious training on their children
  
  
• censoring television to exclude religious programs
  
  
• closely monitoring neighboring Iran to ensure that the Islamist virus does not penetrate the border and proliferate in secular Turkey.

All this is being done in the name of secularism—when in actuality it violates the basic human rights of a free people.

That may be the problem. Are present- day Turks really free? How free are people when their government has to stoop to the absurd to eliminate the last vestiges of Islam from the hearts of its people?

Turks should in fact be free to discuss objectively the pros and cons of “Kemalism.” They must determine whether its secularity bought them any material or political advancement, and at what cost to spiritual values and self-respect.

Turkey begged at the door to enter the European Union, after banning the Refah Party to assuage European fears of the resurgence of Islam in neighboring Turkey.

The EU, in turn, became the intransigent defender of the flame of “democracy.” It told the Turkish government that it is not acceptable to quash the will of your people so that they will look and act like us. So no, you may not come in, because we know that many of them do not, in fact, really want to be like us.

In fact, in its parochial, prejudiced way, the EU was right. Removing the veils and muffling the calls to prayer did not expunge the Islamic faith from the hearts of Turkish men and women.

I have a great preoccupation with the Hereafter. According to the Qur’an, we are not just accountable for what we have done in this life, but also for the ramifications of our actions on future generations.

Ataturk may well have been a brave and resolute man, daring to substitute his own laws for those of God in hopes of changing things he did not like in his country and its people. But it did not work.

Now his countrymen must pray that he be forgiven. And yet, Turkey being so antithetical to Islam and the amalgam of contradictions that it is, it is likely that they no longer know how!