ShauryaT wrote:Johann,
Have no doubt on what you state, as the current state, in the various states mentioned are true.
It takes a long time to play these things out. The Ottaman empire had been moribund for centuries before the final burial. Attaturk came along to set a new vision for the modern state of Turkey at a time, when one way or the other the old structures had to go. It is touching almost 90 years now, since Attaturk brought these changes in Turkey in an attempt to reform society. The cause for worry is after 90 years, Islamic identity is again rearing its head. What shape it will take in the years and decades to come is anyone’s guess.
Shaurya,
Turkey whether under the Ottoman Empire, or under Attaturk and his successors was driven by its elites. From the 19th century onwards these elites were Turkish nationalists who sought to both modernise and Europeanise Turkey.
EU pressure among other things has forced Turkey to shift from a largely elite driven society to a democratically driven society.
Nothing I've seen suggests that the majority of the Turkish public want the wall between church and state to be breached.
They may have voted a party that is *relatively* conservative, but they are content with a party that by the measures of Islamists all over the world has totally embraced and committed itself to maintaining a godless system.
Cairo was known to be a liberal and thriving city, where secular thought dominated – not anymore. So was Karachi.
Cairo's slums and lower middle class were always religious. Its neighborhoods were the wealthiest and most powerful lived always dominated by people who always made it clear that they would never let religion get in the way of their lifestyle. Nothing has changed in that sense since the advent of full Egyptian independence.
In my lifetime I have seen the jihadi wave in Egypt peak and wane.
Even poor Egyptians sympathetic to the Islamist critiques of the ruling dictatorship were truly horrified when Islamic Group jihadis gunned down 57 tourists in Luxor in 1997. Not just because Egypt depends on tourism, but because they felt it was barbaric, and a terrible stain on what they saw as their tradition of hospitality. That attack was the real turning point in the jihadi campaign to seize power. Their public standing fell so drastically that most members signed a petition rejecting the use of violence. This is in many ways unique in the Sunni world. Usually in places like Iraq or Jordan its been barbarities against Sunni Muslims that turn majority opinions against Salafi jihadis, but in Egypt it was attacks on kaafirs.
In the last 10 years I have seen far more penetration of global pop culture and all that goes with it (first and foremost the idea of individual choice) among traditionally conservative, orthodox middle class Egyptians. The response of most young Egyptians of this generation has been to find a brand of Islam that allows them to accommodate their tastes, and that has fuelled the popularity of people like Amr Khaled, who is NOT of the Zakir Naik - i.e. telegenic intolerance. This shift from Islam as a total take it or leave it package, enforced by society to more of a salad bar approach where you take what seems right to you is good news.
As for Karachi - Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc are in a special category.
The pride of the people of Iran, at least I feel, is more rooted in political accomplishments of the nation than any real sense of pride in its pre-islamic heritage. I do not know, to what degree does this pre-islamic heritage of Iran govern the nations ethos. The Shah, in his own way tried to steer Iran towards a liberal nation but the nation rejected these moves (ofcourse there were other reasons).
The only way to know what Iran is really like is to spend as much time with Iranians as possible, and best of all to visit.
Iran regards itself as a civilisation-state, much like India, China and the EU. The way Iranians see it, they brought culture to Islam, not the other way around.
Iran's national epic was and is the Shahnameh, not the Quran. Its poetry, its traditions in the arts and sciences are all tremendous sources of Persian pride, but they are seen as part of its cultural continuity.
The Shah was committed to two things - Iranian greatness, and the greatness of the Pahlavi dynasty. His best years were between 1955 and 1973, when as you say he did champion education, land reform, industrialisation, etc.
Unfortunately the oil money following the Arab-Israeli war went to his head and he became convinced that he was all knowing and all-perfect. He turned Iran in to a 1-party state, pis$ing off the liberals who had supported him, while allowing inflation to run rampant pis$ing off ordinary people who saw economic improvements eroding away.
The Iranian revolution did NOT start as an Islamic revolution - it was a revolution against an increasingly out of touch and brutal absolute monarchy. It happened because liberals, leftists and Islamists came together. The Islamists on their own were never able to get rid of the Shah, even though theyd been trying since the early 1960s to destroy him.
That was much like the Russian revolution, which did not start as a communist revolution, but was successfully hijacked by a tiny Bolshevik party through a mixture of pure luck and pure ruthlesness.
Yet the mullahs were not able to hijack all aspects of the revolution. Khomeini created a 2-track system, where a democratic was overlaid by a theocratic system that held the ultimate levers of power. He could not create a unitary theocratic system simply because even he couldnt get away with that much as he wanted to. The Iranian parliament, the majlis is far more powerful than it was under the Shah. This is a long standing Iranian struggle, going back to the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-06
In Iran today the mullahs remain in charge as the CPSU did in the 1970s through a mix of inertia and coerscion, but their days are numbered. Just as the CPSU produced liberals who dismantled much of the system, the mullahs must contend with the revolutionaries who have turned in to reformers.
Indonesia has not officially adopted a sharia constitution yet, but can any visitor to Jakarta not see the difference in the people there from 20 years ago to today? Are they not more Islamized today, than they were 20-40 years back?
I would say based on my experiences that Indonesia is more polarised than it was 20 years ago. A minority are more Islamic than they were, while the majority are less Islamic in particular, and less religious in general than they were back then.
However perceptions in Java about heritage and identity have not changed - it is still a country where the Ramayana is accepted as the national epic, and where the national airlines name, Garuda isnt seen as strange or foreign at all.
This is in stark contrast to Malaysia, where Islamisation has progressed widely and deeply.
It is this continuing march towards steady Islamization that concerns me. There may be periods of lull. Economic growth, a liberal education and a focus on the individual are fine concepts but people – not just muslims – need a social and spiritual (religious) framework to organize around.
The only way out is for muslims to cease to be muslims, at least not in the sense of the Quran and the Hadiths. I know of only two proven models.
Sure, the majority of humans seek some system that offers comfort, value structures, identity, etc.
However there's a huge difference between Muslims submitting to the demands of a unitary Islam that *commands* every aspect of their life, harnessing it to a greater cause that puts little value on their individual life, and Muslims reducing Islam to a set of personal choices that work for them as individuals.
Regional cultural pride, economic mobility, consumerism, the freedom to make personal social, economic and political choices encourage Muslims to treat Islam as the latter instead of the former. Why do you think the mullahs and the jihadis hate all this stuff so much anyway?
And you also know perhaps that it will be very difficult to get such a government!