[Originally published in Contending Modernities]
Philip Jenkins’ September 2011 piece, “9/11: Did the Qur’an really make them do it?,” was an eye-opener on the touchy issue of religion and violence. For me it was also a reminder of an anti-Semitic piece of propaganda I found in an Istanbul bookstore years ago.
[Originally published in Public Discourse]
Predicting history is always a tough, if not risky, business. Hence to a big question such as “How do you think the Middle East will be a decade from now?”, my answer would normally be, “Well, we will see.” And yet I am tempted to agree with Michael Novak’s “not-so-bold prediction” that we will see a much freer and more democratic Muslim Middle East by the year 2020. Let me explain why.
Watch the talk at the TED website. For more, read Akyol on Change within Islam.
[Original published in Hurriyet Daily News, with readers' comments]
MECCA – The Kaabah, the holiest shrine of Islam, is a breathtaking place – even through secular eyes. Millions of Muslims flock here every year to venerate this ancient building, which they believe to be the world’s first monotheist temple built by Abraham and his son Ishmael.
The Kaabah is most crowded during the Hajj, with millions of pilgrims, but it is filled with thousands of worshippers at any given moment.
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
Two interesting controversies have swamped the Turkish media in the past few days, and both have tested the tolerance of the conservative camp.
The first one was about a new TV series named “The Magnificent Century.” It is a drama about the inner life of Süleyman the Magnificent, who ruled the Ottoman Empire during the 16th century, the zenith of its power. The drama’s trailer included scenes showing the sultan drinking wine and having intimate moments with his significant other, the all-attractive Hürrem. (Some even took a hint of a homosexual relationship, which did not turn out to be the case.)
[Originally published in Hürriyet Daily News]
A controversial film is coming to Turkish movie theaters this weekend: “Hür Adam,” or The Free Man. It is a biographical drama of Said Nursi (1878-1960), a significant character whose life captures some of the most interesting themes of Turkish Islam – and its resistance to Turkey’s self-styled, authoritarian secularism.
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
Among the hundreds of comments these pages receive everyday, categorically anti-religious comments are quite abundant. Religion, for those commentators, is the source almost all evil in the world.
Faith in God, they say, led to religious wars and inquisitions in the Middle Ages and it leads to terrorism, male-domination or communal bigotry today. Accordingly, unless humanity trashes out all religions – first Islam, but ultimately all of them – we will not be able find peace of mind.
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
My column neighbor Burak Bekdil had an interesting piece yesterday titled, “Would Mr. Erdoğan kindly care for this Muslim woman?” While Mr. Erdoğan probably needs no introduction, “this woman” was Sakineh Mohammedie Ashtiani, an Iranian citizen who reportedly faced a threat of being executed by stoning. Mr. Bekdil was wondering — rhetorically, I guess — if the Turkish prime minister could use his prestige in Tehran to save the poor lady from such an unfortunate end. Besides that, he was also making tongue-in-cheek references to the Quran to imply how upholding that book can lead Muslims to “barbaric” acts such as stoning.
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
This week, an interesting debate on an interesting topic took place in Turkey.
First, Selma Aliye Kavaf, the minister who is responsible for “women’s and family affairs,” said something pretty tough about gays. “Homosexuality,” she argued, “is a biological disorder and a disease that needs treatment.”
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
Yet another horrible honor killing took place in the southeast, the least developed part of Turkey. A 16-year-old girl was buried alive by her relatives simply for befriending boys. Forensic experts found soil in her lungs and stomach, indicating that the poor kid was conscious while being buried into the ground.
May God have mercy on her soul. And may her killers face punishment in this world and the next. What they did was cruel, monstrous and evil.
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
One of the popular themes in our popular culture is that peculiar feeing called love, and the way it sometimes torments people. Love stories with unhappy endings are quite common, and the heartbreaks they cause are quite bitter. No wonder so much music has been devoted to this trouble. “Love hurts,” a famous song warns, “love scars.”
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
Political Islam, as you probably have noticed before, is a dirty term. It often refers to angry men who impose veils on women and ban anything that is fun. It even reminds us of the horrific reign of the Taliban, whose heaven on Earth in Afghanistan looked rather like hell for most of us.
There is a good reason for this notoriety of political Islam. Its main proponents, such as the Pakistani thinker Abul A’ala Mawdudi (1903-1979), defined it as the effort to create an “Islamic state,” whose main mission would be the imposition of shariah, or Islamic law, within its most rigid and medieval interpretation.
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
Alas, it happened again. An extremist Muslim attacked a Westerner to punish him for “mocking Islam.” This time, the victim was the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, whose controversial caricature of the Prophet Mohammed had sparked a worldwide storm five years ago. A 28-year-old man of Somali origin broke into the cartoonist’s home last Friday, wielding an axe and a knife. “We will get our revenge,” he reportedly yelled, before being shot by the police and taken under custody.
Yet another belated post: My book review of Islam and The Secular State by Prof. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im. It was published in the December 2008 issue of First Things, a monthly theology magazine.
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew recently said on American TV that he feels “crucified” in Turkey. And many Turks got upset with him.
His All Holiness is right, though, to complain about the Turkish Republic. The latter has kept the Halki Seminary, the only institution to train Orthodox priests in the country, closed since 1971. Even the title “ecumenical” is lashed out at by some Turkish authorities and their nationalist supporters. Every year, international reports on religious freedom point to such pressures on the Ecumenical Patriarchate with concern, and they are right to do so.
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
A few weeks ago I had the chance to visit Antakya, the southern Turkish city whose name derives from the ancient city of Antioch. The latter, as New Testament readers would know, was a chief center of early Christianity. Evangelized by both Peter and Paul, the two main founding fathers of the new faith, Antioch was actually the place where the very word “Christian” was born.
[Originally published in Hürriyet Daily News]
After my latest piece in these pages, titled “Inherit The Turkish Wind,” I received quite a few emails from readers who seemed to passionately disagree with what I said. What I said, in summary, was that evolution can be interpreted in both theistic and atheistic ways, and that Turkey’s official science institution, TÜBİTAK, and its publications, should be open to both. “Are you seriously proposing,” a reader was asking me in the face of that suggestion, “that Creationism be presented in the pages of a magazine devoted to science?”
[Originally published in Hürriyet Daily News]
Turkey has just been drawn to yet another controversy with the officially supported science magazine, “Bilim ve Teknik,” refraining from publishing a 16-page cover story that highlighted Darwin’s ideas. As also reported in these pages yesterday, the story prepared by the magazine’s chief editor, Dr. Çiğdem Atakuman, was removed at the last minute by Professor Ömer Cebeci, the vice president of TÜBİTAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council), which sponsors the publication.
[Originally published in Hürriyet Daily News]
Every year, toward the end of December, warnings come from some of the conservative Islamic voices in Turkey. They advise their co-religionists to avoid indulging in New Year’s Eve celebrations, which they see as a “Christian tradition.” Some of them, especially the most orthodox, even go as far as saying that Muslims will be betraying their faith if they sympathize with Santa Claus or Christmas trees.
[Originally published in Hürriyet Daily News]
My column neighbor Burak Bekdil, with whom I often disagree, had an interesting piece last month titled “I give up… No Panama hats or alcohol!” By using sharp examples and witty stories, he was basically questioning the level of acceptance that religious-freedom-seeking Turks are ready to grant to those who seek freedom from religion.
“I am not an atheist, but I am very curious…,” he was asking, “…would the Istanbul Municipality agree to run ads on its buses that would read, ‘There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy life’?”
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