|
Ayaan Hirsi Ali Reflects on
Secularism and Islam in Turkey
 WATERTOWN, Mass. (A.W.)—In the Summer 2007 issue (Vol. 24,
No. 3) of the New Perspectives Quarterly (www.digitalnpq.org),
Somali immigrant, feminist and former Dutch legislator Ayaan
Hirsi Ali has an article titled “Don’t Disarm Secularism,”
analyzing the current clash between secularism and Islam in
Turkey.
Hirsi Ali, who recently published her memoir Infidel,
criticizes the leaders of the AK Party in Turkey for wanting
“to run state affairs on Islamic principles.” She notes,
“The proponents of Islam in government such as Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, Abdullah Gul and their Justice and Development
Party have been remarkably successful. They have understood
and exploited the fact that you can use democratic means to
erode democracy.”
According to Hirsi Ali, the Islamists will benefit if Turkey
joins the European Union, as the military will no longer be
able to interfere in the country’s political affairs. “[T]he
army and the court in Turkey—besides defending the country
and the constitution—are also, and maybe even more
importantly, designed to protect Turkish democracy from
Islam,” she says.
In her concluding paragraphs, Hirsi Ali presents her concept
of “true secularism” in Turkey: “Bringing back true
secularism to Turkey does not mean just any secularism. It
means secularism that protects individual freedoms and
rights, not the ultra-nationalist kind that breeds an
environment in which Hitler’s Mein Kampf is a
bestseller, the Armenian genocide is denied and minorities
are persecuted. Hrant Dink, the Armenian editor, was
murdered by such a nationalist.”
Benhabib Responds
Asked about Hirsi Ali’s article, Seyla Benhabib, professor
of political science and philosophy at Yale University, told
Daniele Castellani Perelli (“Mosque and State,” Dissent
Magazine, Fall 2007) that “Miss Hirsi Ali’s language is a
language of confrontation that basically presents a
homogeneous, orthodox Islam as closed to reform and
transformation. And it is a language that presents a
unified, uncritical and un-reflectively positive view of
liberal democracies—as if they didn’t have their own
problems and reasons to be criticized.”
Benhabib says the AK party is “carrying out an incredible
experiment and it is unusual for some one who is a
democratic socialist like myself to be supporting, and
watching very carefully, a party like them. But we are all
watching carefully because they also represent a kind of
pluralism in civil society, which is absolutely essential
for Turkey.”
Talking about the Turkish military, Benhabib charged, “The
Turkish army has been involved in Turkish politics for the
last half century and anybody who considers themselves a
liberal democrat and who wants the return of the army to
power cannot know the history of repression caused by the
army in Turkey.”
|
|
 |
