Dutch-Turkish Novelist Depicts Her Journey to Secularism with No Inhibitions

The Dutch-Turkish writer Lale Gul at the office of her publisher in Amsterdam, in June. Credit...Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York Times
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Lale Gul’s autobiographical and sexually frank tale of a woman breaking with her conservative Muslim culture, and her strict parents, is a best seller in the Netherlands. “I’m done hiding,” she says.

AMSTERDAM — Perhaps naïvely, Lale Gul thought she could continue living with the same people on whom she had based her best-selling novel: her strict Turkish-Dutch migrant family.

But just weeks after the February publication of her book — the autobiographical tale of a young woman breaking with her conservative Muslim culture — “a war broke out” in the family’s tiny apartment in a migrant neighborhood in Amsterdam, said the author of “Ik Ga Leven,” or “I Will Live.”

As years of building frustration erupted into open conflict that March evening, Ms. Gul, 23, fled her house in the middle of the night and has not returned since.

Looking back, Ms. Gul admitted that after writing an unbridled book revealing her journey to secularism, the thought that her parents would simply not hear about it was maybe a little foolhardy.

They did hear about it, as has most of the country: The novel quickly became one of the most read in the Netherlands, and she was in demand for TV interviews.

The publicity made it impossible not to address the book with her family, but she wanted to stay with them.

“Even after the book came out, I was still trying to negotiate with my parents, I wanted to make it work, try to combine their lives and my own life,” she said on a recent afternoon in the 17th-century canal house where her publisher has an office. “Despite everything, they are my family.”

But in her family’s view, what Ms. Gul had done was beyond repair. » | Thomas Erdbrink | Friday, August 13, 2021

Can France Resolve Tensions with Muslim Community? - Inside Story

The French government is stepping up its crackdown on what it is calling religious separatism. 76 mosques face closure if they are found to be a security threat.

It is President Emmanuel Macron's latest response to recent attacks he has blamed on 'radical Islam'. His government denies it is deliberately targeting the Muslim community, but recent comments have triggered protests worldwide.

So how can this crisis be resolved?

Presenter: Imran Khan | Guests: Yasser Louati - Justice and Liberties For All Committee; Philippe Marliere - Professor of French and European Politics, University College of London; Nizar Messari - Associate Professor of International Studies, Al Akhawayn University

Anger Spreads in Islamic World after Macron's Backing for Muhammad Cartoons

THE GUARDIAN: Calls for boycott of French goods after president’s remarks at tribute to murdered teacher Samuel Paty

France has appealed for foreign governments to stamp out calls by what it calls a “radical minority” for a boycott of French products after Emmanuel Macron’s public backing of the Muhammad caricatures.

The appeal came as anger escalated across the Islamic world over the president’s remarks at a national tribute to the murdered high-school teacher Samuel Paty last week, with Turkish leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, calling on Monday for a complete boycott of French products in Turkey.

Paty, 47, was killed after he showed his class drawings of the prophet during a debate on free speech.

After Macron promised France would not “renounce the caricatures”, a furious riposte that emerged on Friday on social media under Arabic hashtags gained momentum over the weekend. » | Kim Willsher in Paris | Monday, October 26, 2020

Why There Is No Way Back for Religion in the West | David Voas | TEDx | UniversityofEssex

Religion is in decline across the Western world. Whether measured by belonging, believing, participation in services, or how important it is felt to be, religion is losing ground. Society is being transformed, and the momentum appears to be unstoppable.

You might be asking yourself two questions. Is it actually true? And even if religion is currently losing ground, could things change in the future?

David is a quantitative social scientist with a background in demography. He serves on the executive committee of the European Values Study and is co-director of British Religion in Numbers (www.brin.ac.uk), an online centre for British data on religion that has received recognition as a British Academy Research Project. He serves on the editorial boards of the British Journal of Sociology and the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. With Mike Brewer, David directs the ESRC Research Centre on Micro-Social Change (MiSoC). He is also Deputy Director of ISER.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.

A 'Catholic' President? French Conservative Fillon Breaks with Secularism

Is French Secularism Feeding Islamophobia? – UpFront

We discuss France's use of emergency powers, and debate if the country has a secular double standard on Islam.

Islam Can Co-exist with French Values: Hollande

President François Hollande says that Islam could co-exist with secularism, warning in a key speech seen as preparing the ground for a re-election bid that the anti-terror fight should not undermine French values .

Inside Story - Can Islam Be Integrated With French Secularism?

Inside Story: French 'Burkini' Ban: Secularism or Security?

Tensions are high on the island of Corsica as more French towns issue bans on the so-called burkini. Presenter: Folly Bah Thibault

False Flags & the End of Secularism in Turkey

Islamism to Secular Liberalism : Maajid Nawaz [Debate]

Canada: Justin Trudeau: 'Islam Is Compatible with Secular West'

Read Arutz Sheva article here

Sweden’s Feminist Foreign Minister Has Dared to Tell the Truth about Saudi Arabia. What Happens Now Concerns Us All

THE SPECTATOR: Margot Wallström’s principled stand deserves wide support. Betrayal seems more likely

If the cries of ‘Je suis Charlie’ were sincere, the western world would be convulsed with worry and anger about the Wallström affair. It has all the ingredients for a clash-of-civilisations confrontation.

A few weeks ago Margot Wallström, the Swedish foreign minister, denounced the subjugation of women in Saudi Arabia. As the theocratic kingdom prevents women from travelling, conducting official business or marrying without the permission of male guardians, and as girls can be forced into child marriages where they are effectively raped by old men, she was telling no more than the truth. Wallström went on to condemn the Saudi courts for ordering that Raif Badawi receive ten years in prison and 1,000 lashes for setting up a website that championed secularism and free speech. These were ‘mediaeval methods’, she said, and a ‘cruel attempt to silence modern forms of expression’. And once again, who can argue with that?

The backlash followed the pattern set by Rushdie, the Danish cartoons and Hebdo. Saudi Arabia withdrew its ambassador and stopped issuing visas to Swedish businessmen. The United Arab Emirates joined it. The Organisation of Islamic Co-operation, which represents 56 Muslim-majority states, accused Sweden of failing to respect the world’s ‘rich and varied ethical standards’ — standards so rich and varied, apparently, they include the flogging of bloggers and encouragement of paedophiles. Meanwhile, the Gulf Co-operation Council condemned her ‘unaccept-able [?] interference in the internal affairs of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’, and I wouldn’t bet against anti-Swedish riots following soon.

Yet there is no ‘Wallström affair’. Outside Sweden, the western media has barely covered the story, and Sweden’s EU allies have shown no inclination whatsoever to support her. A small Scandinavian nation faces sanctions, accusations of Islamophobia and maybe worse to come, and everyone stays silent. As so often, the scandal is that there isn’t a scandal. » | Nick Cohen | Saturday, March 28, 2015

France's Le Pen: Ban Non-pork Meals in Schools

Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front National

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Leader of France's far-Right party says schools should not pander to Jewish and Muslim children by offering non-Pork alternatives for lunch

School canteens will no longer offer non-pork meal options in towns where France's anti-immigration far-right Front National (FN) party won local elections, its leader Marine Le Pen has said.

Mrs Le Pen reignited debate on a sensitive issue about the substitution meals targeting mainly Muslim and Jewish pupils for whom pork is taboo.

"We will accept no religious requirements in the school lunch menus," Mrs Le Pen told RTL radio. "There is no reason for religion to enter into the public sphere."

She defended the decision saying it was necessary to "save secularism". » | Saturday, April 05, 2014

THE INDEPENDENT: French National Front to stop Muslim and Jewish pupils having pork-free school dinners: 'We will not accept any religious demands in school menus,' the party's leader Marine Le Pen told a radio station » | Kashmira Gander | Saturday, April 05, 2014

LE POINT: Marine Le Pen veut imposer le porc dans les cantines : Marine Le Pen promet que ses nouveaux élus locaux "rétabliront les menus avec porc dans les cantines" s'il en a été supprimé. » | Source AFP | vendredi 04 avril 2014

Saudi Arabia Declares Atheists Terrorists under New Laws Targeting Citizens Who 'Call for Secular Thought in Any Form'

MAIL ONLINE: Saudi Arabia has officially identified atheists as terrorists in sweeping new laws that threaten up to 20 years in prison for almost any criticism of the government or Islam.

The regulations place secular citizens who commit thought crimes in the same category as violent terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda's Yemen branch and Saudi Hezbollah.

Under the new decree by King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia will jail for up to 20 years anyone who fights in conflicts abroad - an apparent move to deter Saudis from joining rebels in Syria.

But the law also applies to any Saudi citizen or a foreigner residing in the kingdom that 'calls for atheist thought in any form or calls into question the fundamentals of the Islamic religion on which this country is based.'

The laws have been denounced by human rights groups for making no distinction between religious expression and violent extremism.

'Saudi authorities have never tolerated criticism of their policies, but these recent laws and regulations turn almost any critical expression or independent association into crimes of terrorism,' said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. » | Simon Tomlinson | Tuesday, April 01, 2014

How Tunisia is Turning Into a Salafist Battleground
THE ATLANTIC: An interview with a professor who was attacked for standing up for secularism.

After a trial lasting more than a year, on May 2 Habib Kazdaghli, dean of the faculty of letters, arts, and humanities at the University of Manouba, outside Tunis, was acquitted of charges that he slapped a veiled female student. He had faced a five-year jail term. Instead, the court found guilty the two women who had invaded Kazdaghli's office and thrown his books and papers on the floor. The women claimed to be protesting their suspension from the university for refusing to remove their full-face coverings, known as niqabs, during class lectures and exams.

The court sentenced the women to suspended four-month and two-month jail sentences for damaging property and interfering with a public servant carrying out his duties. Their lawyer said the women would appeal, and Tunisia's minister of higher education -- overruling Kazdaghli and setting him up for another round of conflict -- announced that veiled students would be allowed to take their final exams.

The Kazdaghli affair, a cause célèbre with more than 230,000 Google results, is part of a larger struggle for power in post-revolutionary Tunisia. After the uprising that toppled dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011 -- sparking the onset of the Arab Spring -- the University of Manouba became a battleground between fundamentalist Muslims intent on turning Tunisia into an Islamic state and secular forces trying to maintain the country's existing constitutional rights and legal system.

Closed for almost two months in the spring of 2012, the University was rocked by strikes and pitched battles between progressive students and the ultra-conservative Sunni Muslims known as salafists. The lobby in Kazdaghli's building was turned into a prayer room. Protesters camped in front of his door for a month. "This was meant to intimidate me, but also to catch me in a kind of trap," says Kazdaghli. "You are not supposed to walk through a room where someone is praying." So every time he entered or left his office, Kazdaghli was demonstrating his lack of faith. » | Thomas A. Bass | Thursday, June 20, 2013

Turkey Protests: Dangerous Waters with No Sign of Compromise
BBC: It began just after dawn on Tuesday: the thud of tear gas fired across Taksim Square in the biggest police operation here for over a week.

Arcs of water cannon were spewed towards protesters, some of whom responded with petrol bombs and bricks.

For 12 days, the central square in Turkey's biggest city had been under the authority of a growing protest movement. This was the moment that the government decided to retake it.

All through the day, the game of cat and mouse continued.

Once the police retreated, the protesters regrouped. They took refuge in the adjoining Gezi Park, where the unrest was first sparked in response to government plans to redevelop it.

I watched as telecoms trucks were set ablaze, black smoke fusing with the white plumes of tear gas into an acrid mix.

Not listening

What began as a demonstration by environmentalists has mushroomed into something far bigger: a fight by disparate groups for greater freedom in Turkey and a preservation of the country's secular order.

They see a government with an authoritarian, neo-Islamist agenda: the highest number of journalists in the world in prison, restrictions on alcohol sales, massive construction projects prioritised over human rights.

"This is not an Arab spring", one protester, Melis Behlil, told me.

"We have free elections here. But the problem is that the person elected doesn't listen to us." » | Mark Lowen | BBC News, Istanbul | Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Turkey's Protesters Proclaimed as True Heirs of Nation's Founding Father

THE OBSERVER: Ataturk, the secular reformer, has become the symbol for young Turks defying what they see as Erdogan's reactionary reversion to the Ottoman past

Among the tents, snoozing youth and pleasant shady trees of Istanbul's Gezi Park there are portraits of one man in a European suit. Wherever you look Mustafa Kemal Ataturk – founder of the Turkish Republic – gazes sternly at you. Photos of the first president hang from branches, have been affixed to tea stalls, and even encircle a giant banner showing Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, dressed as Hitler.

"We really love Ataturk. He changed our state. He made it into a modern republic," explained Murat Bakirdoven, a 24-year-old biology student who has been camping in the park for a week. Someone had stuck another photo of Ataturk – this time in a lounge suit, sitting on a leather chair, cigarette in hand – on a nearby tree. Bakirdoven added: "Erdogan wants us to forget him. Instead we are trying to create an Ataturk renaissance."

For the protesters who have taken part in Turkey's anti-government demonstrations, Ataturk is a hero. Dead for 75 years, he has become the reborn symbol of this student-driven anti-Erdogan movement. (The other motif is a penguin – a reference to the state media, which failed to report on the uprising for several days; one channel, CNN Turk, instead screened a nature documentary on Antarctica).

The symbolism goes to the heart of what this unprecedented uprising is about: Turkey's modern identity. At issue is whether Turkey should be the progressive, secular European nation-state that Ataturk originally envisaged and shaped from the ruins of the Ottoman empire, or a more explicitly religious country, a sort of Muslim version of Christian democracy. The protesters want the former; Erdogan, and his ruling Islamist-rooted Justice and Development party (AKP), it appears, the latter. » | Luke Harding Istanbul | Saturday, June 08, 2013

Is Turkey's Secular System in Danger?

BBC: Those who founded the Republic in 1923 might well be turning in their graves: their vision of Turkey as a strictly secularist and nationalist state - not just a separation of state and religion, but also the removal of religion from all aspects of public life - is being questioned.

In the lead-up to the 89th anniversary of the Turkish Republic on 29 October, political values have never been more openly debated, thanks to a public consultation process, initiated by Turkey's parliament, for a new constitution.

Generally, society has welcomed the initiative, viewing it as a new political framework, to replace the one that was put in place after the 1980 military coup.

But the process has opened old wounds, with heated debate on the role of religion in politics and the increasingly conservative nature of public life.

Secularism is hard to define in Turkey, according to Fadi Hakura of London-based think tank Chatham House. Turkey is constitutionally a secular state, but secularism seems to have taken a unique shape, because of "historical and geographical circumstances in the country".

For example, while there are clear examples of the symbolic application of secularism in daily life, such as the ban on headscarves in public institutions, there are other aspects of the Turkish state that do not sit with secularism. » | Arash Dabestani, Pinar Sevinclidir and Ertugrul Erol | BBC Monitoring | Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Minorities Fear End of Secularism in Egypt

SPIEGEL ONLINE INYERNATIONAL: When he took office as Egypt's new president in June, Mohammed Morsi pledged to follow a pluralist policy that respected the rights of women and non-Muslim minorities. But everything he has done since then indicates that he intends to replace the secularist dictatorship of his predecessor with an Islamist one.

Egypt's president sat cross-legged on a green rug with his eyes closed and hands raised in prayer. His lips moved as Futouh Abd al-Nabi Mansour, an influential Egyptian cleric, intoned: "Oh Allah, absolve us of our sins, strengthen us and grant us victory over the infidels. Oh Allah, destroy the Jews and their supporters. Oh Allah, disperse them, rend them asunder."

This was a Friday prayer service held in the western Egyptian port city of Marsa Matrouh on October 19. The words of this closing prayer, taken from a collection of sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, seemed quite familiar to Mohammed Morsi, Egypt's new president. A video clip obtained by the US-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) shows Morsi murmuring the word "amen" as this pious request for the dispersal of the Jews is uttered.

The Muslim Brotherhood, which backs Morsi, has since removed a note concerning the president's visit to Marsa Matrouh from its website, and the daily newspaper al-Ahram has reported that the president must have been "very embarrassed" over the matter. Are such statements enough to dispel the incident? » | Daniel Steinvorth and Volkhard Windfuhr | Translated from the German by Ella Ornstein | Wednesday, October 31, 2012