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December 31, 2009
Why Muslim Culture Needs More Fun
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
It happens toward every year's end. The more Westernized part of Turkish society warms up for New Year's Eve. Decorations are put up, parties are organized, and restaurants advertise eat-and-dance-all-night-long programs. Santa Clauses and pine trees show up in upscale malls. The Turks who embrace these Christmas symbols often have no idea about Christ. They just like the lifestyle of the wealthy, happy and joyful people they see in Hollywood movies.
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 2:32 PM | Comments (0)
December 25, 2009
From the Archives: The Year of Darwin
Well, it took me some time to post this on this blog -- who said I have a good sense of time -- but down below is comment from me in the "Year of Darwin" special file of the Nature magazine, dated Nov 2008. (Read here, or download the PDF right here.) The cartoon above, meanwhile, is Nature's nice piece of artwork that supplemented the file, and the funny fellow at the left end seems to be me.
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 9:06 PM | Comments (0)
From the Archives: A Governing Sharia
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.
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 9:04 PM | Comments (0)
Why The Turkish Caesar Crucified The Ecumenical Patriarch
[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.
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 7:12 PM | Comments (0)
December 23, 2009
Why Is It So Easy To Insult Atatürk?
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
If you want to see something truly amazing about Turkey these days, take a look at the recent "insulting Atatürk" case opened against Can Dündar.
Mr. Dündar is a renowned public intellectual. He writes a column for the daily Milliyet, an established center-left paper, and hosts a TV show on NTV, a centrist news channel. He is a secular democrat and is certainly among the admirers of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the godfather of Turkey's secularism.
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 12:48 AM | Comments (4)
December 21, 2009
Appreciating Christmas As a Non-Christian
[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.
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 12:06 PM | Comments (4)
December 19, 2009
The Fundamental Design Flaw of The Turkish Republic
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
On May 1, 1920, Mustafa Kemal, who would soon be the founder of the Turkish Republic, delivered an important speech at the Parliament in Ankara.
"The people who have formed this supreme assembly are not just Turks," he said. "They are also Circassians, Kurds or Laz. They are all different components of Islam. They all respect each other, and each other's ethnic, social and geographic rights."
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 12:16 PM | Comments (3)
December 14, 2009
Will Turkey's Caste System Survive?
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's Nobel laureate in literature, has an interesting passage in his cherished book, "Istanbul." He recalls his childhood days in the '50s, and tells how the urban upper class he grew up within looked down upon their practicing co-religionists. "The nation-state," he writes, "belonged more to us than to the religious poor."
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 8:53 PM | Comments (15)
December 9, 2009
AKP Is Not Islamist, But Somewhat Muslimist
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan visited President Obama in the White House the other day. It was, apparently, a good meeting. Obama praised Turkey's efforts at home and abroad, and even said Ankara could be an "important partner" in resolving the growing crisis with Iran's nuclear program.
Yet we all know that Turkey's stance on Iran is actually a concern for many people in Washington. Erdoğan recently irritated them by declaring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as his "friend," and seeming to almost avocate Iran's nuclear ambitions.
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 11:30 AM | Comments (8)
December 8, 2009
Are Minarets 'Our Bayonets?'
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
The recent Swiss ban on minarets has the bad potential of being a watershed event in terms of Western-Muslim relations. Therefore, there is a lot to say about it.
First, the ban is clearly a violation of religious freedom. It would be a violation of religious freedom, too, if crosses were banned from church roofs or Magen Davids from those of synagogues. That's why the whole affair is simply a "disgrace," as a recent New York Times editorial aptly defined it.
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 11:58 AM | Comments (6)
December 2, 2009
Aryan Supremacy Reigns Supreme in Switzerland
[Originally published in Hurriyet Daily News]
You must have heard that the open-minded people of Switzerland took to the polls last weekend to ban minarets - in a country where there are only four of them. These days, the global news is full of stories and commentaries about this apparently democratic, yet shockingly illiberal decision. But if you really want to understand the undercurrents that led the majority of the Swiss society to this unbelievable point, I would suggest watching a 1940 film, "Der Ewige Jude."
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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 10:30 AM | Comments (12)
