Recep Tayyip Erdogan - does he believe in Sharia Law?
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Obama in Turkey: Another Missed Opportunity? - or will he speak out for Secularism) - by Robert Spencer
President Obama’s coming trip to Turkey will not feature his first “major speech” in a Muslim nation. But, as Secretary of State Clinton explained, the trip was “a reflection of the value we place on our friendship with Turkey.” She spelled out the substantive reasons for that friendship: “We share a commitment to democracy, a secular constitution, respect for religious freedom and belief and in free market and a sense of global responsibility.” For Obama to stand for those things in the Islamic world would be good. But does Turkey?
According to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), while Mayor of Istanbul in the 1990s, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan denounced Turkish secularism: “If the people want it,” he declared, “of course secularism will go away. You cannot rule this people by force; you don’t have the power to do that. This [i.e. secularism] cannot work in spite of the people.” And the people, he suggested, wanted Islamic law: “But the fact is that 99% of the people of this country are Muslims. You cannot be both secular and a Muslim! You will either be a Muslim, or secular!...For them to exist together is not a possibility! Therefore, it is not possible for a person who says ‘I am a Muslim’ to go on and say ‘I am secular too.’ And why is that? Because Allah, the creator of the Muslim, has absolute power and rule!” Erdogan was imprisoned for four months in 1998 for his agitation for the restoration of Islamic law in Turkey: he had declared that “mosques are our barracks, domes our helmets, minarets our bayonets, believers our soldiers. This holy army guards my religion. Almighty our journey is our destiny, the end is martyrdom.”
Islam has historically always been a political and social system as well as an individual religious faith. Islamic law, Sharia, is a comprehensive system governing every aspect of individual behavior. It also contains laws for the governance of the state and the ordering of society. If it is imposed in Turkey, women and non-Muslims would be subjugated under a system of institutionalized discrimination; the freedom of conscience and of speech would be restricted; and the relatively Westernized aspects of Turkish society would wither away. In light of all this, and especially given Clinton’s statement, Obama in Turkey could deliver a ringing defense of secular government -- that is, of the First Amendment principle of non-establishment of religion as being the only workable basis for any genuinely pluralistic society.
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