Caliphate here we come!
This goes hand in hand with an excellent report by Dr.Andrew Bostom from 2010, on Uriel Heyd’s seminal analysis on the Islamization of Turkey 44 years ago! It’s a process folks, but the end result is always the same, whether it takes decades or centuries, subjugation of the individual for the sake of the collective ummah.
NOTE: Soon after Atatürk’s death, the dismantling of the Turkish secular state that he created, began in earnest.
What follows are a series of extracts from Uriel Heyd’s March 28, 1968 lecture, “Revival of Islam in Modern Turkey,” at the dedication ceremony for the Eliyahu Elath Chair of The History of the Muslim Peoples.
For six centuries the Ottomans devoted their main efforts to the jihad, the holy war against Christendom…
The Ottoman State was the last great Muslim empire in history; its ruler was recognized by Sunni Muslims as the caliph of all true believers. In no other Muslim state of importance was the Sharia, the holy law of Islam, so firmly established and were the men of religion, the ulema, given so influential a place in government and public administration…When from the late eighteenth century onwards the Ottoman sultans began introducing Westernizing reforms, most of the leading ulema for various reasons supported them, while the men of religion in the lower ranks by and large strongly and violently opposed their measures. The fight for and against modernization and secularization has been going on in the Turkish state and society ever since.
This Week, Turkey Went a Long Way Toward Becoming an Islamic Republic
By Barry Rubin
“My people are going to learn the principles of democracy the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will, every man can follow his own conscience provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him act against the liberty of his fellow men.” ― Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
Hardly surprising; deeply upsetting; and geo-strategically catastrophic, it’s official. Turkey has now passed over toward being an Islamist state. That turning point is marked by a tiny event of gigantic importance. Fazil Say is an internationally acclaimed Turkish classical pianist. He has performed with prestigious symphony orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, Berlin, Israel Philharmonic, France, and Tokyo as well as being a European Union cultural ambassador. The Turkish state is now going to put him on trial.
An Istanbul court has accepted the prosecutor’s charge, which amounts to heresy. Specifically, he is accused of insulting Islam because of tweets he sent. Say suggested that since the Koran says there are rivers of drinks in heaven that makes it sound like a pub, while the beautiful women available there make it sound like a brothel. A number of his tweets are quoted here. That’s his crime, writing a couple of sentences to describe his thoughts.
We are not talking of someone criticizing Say or disagreeing with him. We are talking about the power of the Turkish state being used to charge a man with a crime and send him to prison for exercising free speech. True, they are only asking for a sentence of eighteen months in prison but once the precedent is set their ambitions will expand.
There are already hundreds of political prisoners in Turkey today who have been in prison for over three years without any trial at all. Now if criticizing Islam in Turkey is a crime, Turkey is not a secular state. And with all of those innocent people already thrown in jail by the regime on trumped-up charges of treason and terrorism, Turkey is no longer a democratic state either. (For a study of the conspiracy charges, actually a wave of repression and intimidation seeking to quell opposition to Turkey’s fundamental transformation, see this detailed article by Gareth Jenkins. in MERIA Journal.)
