Islam Blog

Taking the veil in Turkey

Secularists cannot simply impose a ban on head scarves just for the sake of secularism! That cannot be called a liberal approach because by banning head scarves, secularists can be trampling on the rights of women who consider it their religious right to wear the veil.

Definitely a step in the right direction. The kind of ’secularism’ practiced in Turkey isn’t even practiced in most, if not all, secular western countries from where Ataturk lapped up his ‘liberal’ ideas. As fervently as the Turkish Government may deny that it is has any Islamic agenda, I think they have more on their agenda than meets the eye. Who knows, we might look back to this day and think of it as the first step towards the return of Islam to Turkey. Allah knows best.

Here’s another one:

The AK government uses Islam to win over Kurdish support

“Uniting around our common Islamic identity is the only way to solve the Kurdish problem,” argues one AK leader. “Islam bound us in Ottoman times and during the war of independence, why not today?” Religion has become the mildly Islamist AK’s most potent weapon as it seeks to snatch control of Diyarbakir, the unofficial capital of Turkey’s estimated 14m Kurds, from the pro-Kurdish Democratic People’s Party (DTP) in next year’s local election.