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Islamism Is Making Turkey Less Islamic

April 23 2018

Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamist AKP party came to power in Ankara with promises of reversing the state-sponsored secularization Turkey underwent in the 20th century. But a recent report suggests that religious faith is in decline, as Mustafa Akyol writes:

[The] document shared surprising observations about the very young people that Turkish society often expects to be the most religious: the students of the state-sponsored religious imam hatip schools. The report says that because archaic interpretations of Islam cannot persuade the new generation on issues such as the “problem of evil” (why God allows evil to take place), some imam hatip students have begun questioning the faith. Instead of adopting atheism, the report added, these post-Islamic youths embrace the milder alternative: “deism,” or the belief in God but without religion. . . .

[Indeed], the erosion of Islam among young people has been an oft-repeated theme in the Turkish public sphere. . . . For [some] Turkish commentators, however, the real reason for the loss of faith in Islam is not the West but Turkey itself: it is a reaction to all the corruption, arrogance, narrow-mindedness, bigotry, cruelty, and crudeness displayed in the name of Islam. . . .

[One such] commentator, Akif Beki, . . . pointed to a more specific problem: the unabashed exploitation of Islam for political ends. A recent example, according to Beki, was a propaganda speech by Ali Murat Alatepe, a member of the ruling AKP and the mayor of Esenyurt, an Istanbul municipality. “If we lose here,” Alatepe told a large audience, referring to his municipality, “then we will lose Jerusalem, we will lose Mecca.” So, accordingly, the dominance of the AKP is indispensable to Islam. Or, in other words, Islam is indispensable to the AKP’s dominance.

I agree with Akif Beki and other like-minded Turkish commentators about why so many young Turks are losing faith in Islam. It is precisely because Islamists are empowered, and, by their own behavior, are pushing people away from the faith they claim to uphold.

Read more at Al-Monitor

More about: Islam, Islamism, Politics & Current Affairs, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Religion, Turkey

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic