Dawkins' 'Delusion' Should Be Free

Richard Dawkins is probably the world's most famous atheist evangelist. In his numerous books, the Oxford zoologist argues that modern science, and in particular the Darwinian theory of evolution, has disproved God. He is a gifted writer, and his recent volume, The God Delusion, has become a global bestseller. Some call him “the Harry Potter of non-fiction.”More recently Dr. Dawkins made the news in Turkey, too, yet not by his arguments. As the Turkish Daily News reported on Nov. 29, following a complaint by a Turkish reader that some passages in the The God Delusion were an assault on "sacred values," an Istanbul prosecutor has opened an official investigation on the book's Turkish version. Its publisher, Erol Karaaslan, is said be “questioned” soon.Probably nothing will come out from that, and Dawkins' book will continue to show up on Turkish bookshelves. And I think it should be so. And here is why.Sleights of HandFollowers of this column might have easily guessed that I would not be among the greatest fans of Dr. Dawkins. Yes, I am not. And the reason is not his atheism, but the way he uses sleights of hand while promoting his views.Just look at the back cover of his book, which mentions, “the grievous harm religion has inflicted on society, from the Crusades to 9/11.” Ah, how impressive… Yet some other writer could also rant about, “the grievous harm atheism has inflicted on society, from Stalin to Pol Pot.” And that writer would be using the same trick with Dr. Dawkins: Cherry-picking the worst representatives of the worldview that you want to bash. It is a way of propaganda, not analysis.Further tricks are hidden in Dr. Dawkins' efforts to “disprove” the existence of God by referring to Darwin's theory of evolution. First of all, Darwinian theory has serious problems. Evolution, I think, is a solid fact, and Darwin has given us important insights on the mechanisms of this colossal process. But whether every step of this process can really be explained through random and purposeless mechanisms as Darwin had suggested is a hotly debated question. The scientists who defend the “Intelligent Design” (ID) theory, such as biochemist Michael Behe, point out to the extremely complex “machinery” that exists in the living cell, whose origins have not been adequately explained by the proponents of Darwinism.Most mainstream scientists disagree with ID and argue that naturalistic explanations for all natural phenomena will be found at some point. Fair enough. But that's a presumption, not a proven conclusion.Darwin ReconsideredYet let's go with mainstream science and accept that Darwinian theory is an adequate explanation of biological origins. But even then Dawkins' atheism is not vindicated. There are in fact many Darwinists who think that this theory is perfectly compatible with belief in God. Some of these scientists actually think that the whole drama of life points to a Creator, who gave nature built-in mechanisms (aka natural laws) that are designed to support the emergence of life. One of the world's prominent paleontologists (scientists who study fossils), Simon Conway Morris, is one such “theistic evolutionist.” I listened to several lectures of him where he teaches at, The University of Cambridge, and the philosophical conclusions he drew from evolution was just the opposite of Dawkins'.Another scientist who not only disagrees with Dawkins but also counters his arguments is Alister McGrath, both a theologian and a molecular biophysicist, who teaches at Oxford University. In The Dawkins Delusion?, the 2007 book he co-authored with his wife, Joanna Collicutt McGrath, he shows why Dawkins' inferences from science in favor of atheism are flawed. According to Publishers Weekly "The McGraths expeditiously plow into the flank of Dawkins's fundamentalist atheism... and run him from the battlefield.” The same comment adds, “The book works partly because they are so much more gracious to Dawkins than Dawkins is to believers.”A Great IdeaAnd I think that is the correct theistic attitude to take vis-à-vis Dawkins and other preachers of atheism. A faith's strength comes from not its fervor to silence critics, but its ability to refute them. If Muslim believers in Turkey are annoyed by Dawkins' book, then they should bring counter-arguments to his theses, instead of asking for censorship by prosecutors.It would be naïve for them to fear that theism would lose from such intellectual encounters with atheism – and especially of the kind promoted by Dr. Dawkins. That would be giving him too much credit.Ah, by the way, fellow TDN columnist Sylvia Tiryaki made a good suggestion on this topic in her piece last Monday. “What we should do at this stage,” she wrote, “is to invite Mr. Dawkins to Turkey to discuss his views here publicly.” Great idea. Let me know if you hear that he decides to come, and, perhaps, if he needs a challenger to debate with. It would be my pleasure to discuss with him who is really deluded about God — and who is not. Writer : Mustafa Akyol

Secular Apartheid at Work

"Injustice anywhere," said Martin Luther King, "is a threat to justice everywhere." Therefore the world should learn and care about the story of Tevhide Kütük, the 17-year-old Turkish schoolgirl who just became the latest victim of Turkey's self-styled apartheid.It all started several months ago in Kozan, a municipality in the southern city of Adana. The young and bright Tevhide, a student of the state-sponsored quasi-religious "Imam-Hatip" schools, heard about the essay contest that the Education Ministry launched to celebrate the annual Teacher's Day. She wrote a fine piece on the virtues of teaching, and submitted it to the organizing committee. Soon the jury decided that she was the best writer among all the other students in her hometown, and thus she deserved to win the award, which was a very modest present by all standards, but a very inspiring reward for a modest teenager.VIP apparatchiksOn Nov. 28, Teacher's day, Tehvide, along with other winners in poetry and painting, was invited to a ceremony at the town hall. She, of course, accepted the invitation and showed up on that day with all her enthusiasm. After some boring speeches by the usual dignitaries, the winners of the contests were called to the stage. With joyful music playing in the background, Tevhide cheerfully climbed the steps and exuberantly lined up with other kids in order to be congratulated and applauded.Yet things were not destined to go right. In the VIP seats, there were a bunch of sinister men whose loyalty to tyrannical state principles exceeded their respect and care for human beings. The moment they saw Tevhide, they were shocked and abhorred. Because the little girl was wearing the Islamic headscarf! In official Turkey, that symbol only belongs to the untouchables, those who pollute the sacred soil of the secular republic with their offensive religious presence. Especially army commander, Major Hüseyin Çopur, and local governor, Aydın Tetikoğlu, were deeply affronted by this little girl who dared to break the rules of the caste system. The outlaw had to be punished, and law and order had to be restored.So, after less than a minute that little Tevhide took stage, these two men – one in uniform, the other in unimind – took a quick measure to save the secular republic from her. "Take her down," they told their aides. And a man in a black suit approached Tevhide to whisper into her ear that she had to leave the stage immediately. She was shocked for a few seconds, and then rapidly moved away while bursting into tears.Local TV cameras were shooting the whole event. Somewhere at the back, Tevhide cried for minutes and minutes, while her parents and friends tried to calm her down. But she neither calmed down nor decided to give up. She walked again toward the front seats, in order to speak to the VIP men. She stood right in front of the national education director. "Why don't you give me my award, my teacher," she asked. "This is a great injustice."The "teacher" – a man with a thick mustache and apparently a thin conscience – just looked at her with a humiliating face. “No,” he ordered, “just get back to your seat!” There was nothing he could do, actually. As a loyal apparatchik, he was only following orders.Tevhide, who was still crying, left the hall along with her family and many other people who reacted against this official injustice. Days have passed since that episode and the family says that the young girl is still very sad and they fear that she might get into depression. Even if she doesn't, she will probably remember this trauma for the rest of her life. And not just her, but millions of others in this country who cover their heads because their beliefs will continue to feel insulted and humiliated.Shame, not happinessThe weekly humor magazine “Leman” has a great cover this week, with the title “The tears of a young girl” and a cartoon that shows the poor Tevhide being kicked by a huge army boot. (Leman is a secular magazine, by the way. It is just non-fascist.) I think this caricature is a very accurate depiction of not just Tevhide's drama, but also the whole apartheid regime in this country, which is, despite all our democratic achievements, still intact.This has to end. Now is the time for freedom for all Turkish citizens, whatever their creed, langue and way of life may be. The unelected and self-appointed VIP's of Turkey have to accept a “freedom chart” similar to the one that their ilk in South Africa had to concede in the ‘90s. Enough is enough.If they insist on preserving this system of organized injustice, then they will be undermining the very foundation of this country: The consent of the citizens. I have to admit that I am already shaky in that regard. I love Turkey with all its history, people, and culture, but I can't find a way to sympathize with its authoritarian state. It really doesn't help much to reiterate Atatürk's motto, “How happy is the one who says I am a Turk.” I do say that I am a Turk, but that hardly gives me happiness. In fact, when I see all the cruelties done in this country to its people by its sovereigns, it even gives me shame.

Turkey's Veiled Democracy [A Must-Read Article]

This article, published in the November/December issue of The American Interest magazine, is available here online (but in full only for subcribers), and here in full as a PDF file

The Scandal of The Kemalist Mind

I, unluckily, made a lot of people upset with my piece in last weekend's edition of the Turkish Daily News, “The gospel according to Atatürk.” A few dozen readers sent fuming emails, which rebuked me for daring to criticize the level of veneration shown in Turkey to its founder.If you have been reading the “Letters to the editor” section, you might have come across two of these reactions, which came from two Turkish readers living in the United States. The one from New Jersey noted that he was “shocked” by my piece, and added, “someone should tell Akyol that he is dead wrong.” The other one, a lady, expressed “anguish” at me and my “very naive look.” I, she also argued, “cannot be a Turk.”In response, I am sincerely thankful to such critics, because they present nice case studies of what I have been talking about. I said that there is a popular “cult of Atatürk” in Turkey, whose followers have a “strict mental blueprint” that leads them to “detachment from reality.” And that's precisely what you can find in these annoyed comments.Cognitive dissonanceLet me show you one example. The first reader, besides bashing me, argued that “dialogue among all people in Turkey should be improved so that no one should be afraid of saying ‘I am proud to be a Turk.'” It is really hard to understand how “dialogue among all people in Turkey” will make everybody proud of being a Turk, but that's the minor issue. The real gem is the presumption that some people in Turkey are afraid of saying, “I am proud to be a Turk.” In fact, in this country, it has never been a problem to say that, and it is in fact an officially sanctioned mantra. The real problem has always been to say that you are proud of being something other than a Turk — such as a Kurd, an Armenian, a Christian, and even a supranational Muslim. (For the record, in 1982, politician Şerafettin Elçi was imprisoned for simply saying, “I am a Kurd and there are Kurds in Turkey.”)So it is really mind-boggling that our Kemalist reader thinks that “Turkishness” is suppressed in Turkey, while the fact is that Turkishness is the only identity which is not suppressed at all.If you would like to see more detachment-from-reality in action then take a look at the second reader. She criticized me for criticizing the “I am watching you” motto put on some Atatürk flags. But she got it totally wrong by writing: “It simply means for anyone that understands English language ‘We are following your steps.'” Because the motto I criticized did not mean that Turks follow Atatürk. It rather meant Atatürk watches over the Turks. It was plain clear for anyone who has a grasp of either the English or the Turkish language.Neither publish nor perishI won't point out every case of cognitive dissonance in the writings of Kemalist readers. For most unbiased observers, it should be obvious that Kemalism has turned into a dogmatic ideology and its adherents present a pitiable intellectual poverty. The latter phenomenon is visible almost in every field. In the Turkish media, for example, die-hard Kemalist commentators are among the least sophisticated ones. Their columns are full of either dry clichés or angry polemics. In the academia, scholars or faculties who are famed to be devout Kemalists hardly produce anything that would get into international academic literature. (Alas, they neither publish nor perish!) Actually the handful of globally acclaimed Turkish scholars are detested by their Kemalist colleagues at home. Şerif Mardin, who is probably the most prominent Turkish sociologist ever, was boycotted by the all-Kemalist Turkish Sciences Academy (TÜBA), simply for that he is too lenient on religion. Actually in the field of social sciences, Turkey seems to be divided among the fruitful and articulate academics, and the rest, which includes almost all Kemalists. In literature, the situation is no different: Turkey's globally successful novelists, such as the recent Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk or Elif Şafak, are the ones who have the ability to think outside of the Kemalist box. No wonder they are abhorred by the Kemalists, who explain their achievements by conspiracy theories. They think Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize, for example, because the “imperialists” decided to promote him for “insulting Turkishness.”For quite some time, I have been pondering what makes the Kemalist mind so shallow. This cannot be related to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk himself, because he was a smart, well-educated and cultured statesman who vigorously promoted science and learning. I believe the problem is in the way he is perceived by his devotees. Since they see him and his period as the source all the wisdom they need, they don't have an urge to understand the world. They think the Supreme Leader already understood it perfectly and all we Turks need to is walk on his righteous path.The evangelical mindThis line of thinking creates intellectual poverty within any paradigm. Religious fundamentalism is the most obvious example. Indeed religion can be a driving force for intellectual enterprise if it is interpreted in a dynamic way — and that's what gave rise to towering figures such as Averroes (Ibn Rushd) or Newton. But religion would be a mind stopper if its believers think that all they need to study is the life of a holy man and the scripture he brought.In his famous book "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind," American historian Mark Noll suggests that most evangelical Christians in his country suffer from that misconception. He shows that evangelicals have failed to engage in "the whole spectrum of modern learning, including economics and political science, literary criticism and imaginative writing, historical inquiry and philosophical studies, linguistics and the history of science, social theory and the arts." “The scandal of the evangelical mind,” he concludes, "is that there is not much of an evangelical mind."I am not an expert on American Christianity, and can't tell whether Noll is right or wrong. But I do know about Kemalism, and this ideology suffers from the same problem he points out. Yes, Kemalism has a “scandal” of its own, too, and it is that that there is not much of a Kemalist mind. Writer : Mustafa Akyol

European Muslims and the Cult of Jihadism

Since Sept. 11, 2001 European Muslims have been seen as a potential base for a radical, anti-Western ideology founded on a crude misinterpretation of Islam that delights in killing innocents under the banner of "Jihad." The attack in London on July 7 was just one episode in the chain of violence perpetrated by this death cult.Of course, the overwhelming majority of the 13 million or more Muslims living in Europe are law-abiding citizens who abhor this barbarism in the name of their faith. Yet, there is a considerable minority that sympathizes with terrorism. In a previous poll taken in the UK, supporters of bin Laden among Muslims numbered 13 percent. I was personally shocked, two years ago at a seminar I gave in London, to meet two modern-looking Muslim youngsters who saw bin Laden as the "Mahdi" — the awaited redeemer of Islam. What is the problem here? Some in the West think the problem is Islam itself. They are mistaken. The truth is that the radicalization of young European Muslims is the outcome of many social, political and historical factors that have led to the misinterpretation of Islam.Strangers in a strange landUnlike Muslims in the United States, who largely belong to the middle class, most European Muslims are economically disadvantaged, poorly integrated and tend to cluster in closed communities. They are predominantly post-World War II immigrants who arrived as manual laborers. They migrated from poor countries and were among the poorest even in their native societies. Turkish workers in Germany, for example, came from the least-developed areas of Turkey and experienced an enormous cultural shock when faced with a highly modernized, secular German society. The resulting deep cultural isolation is even stronger among many Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in the United Kingdom, North Africans in France and Spain, and Muslims from the Middle East throughout Europe. This cultural and linguistic isolation is further deepened by racial differences.Many immigrants tend to accept this separation. Older people try to maintain their traditional lifestyles in a foreign land. Many of their children adopt Western ways, but even they live with a peculiar sense of double alienation: neither the lands of their fathers nor the new countries of residence seem a true home to them. They are, as the French political scientist Oliver Roy says, "culturally uprooted."Lack of modern interpretation of IslamAnother reason for this sense of homelessness is that these young European Muslims lack an interpretation of Islam that would be compatible with modern life. Many of them find a middle ground between Islamic traditions and Western lifestyles, but since those attempts do not have a doctrinal basis, they create a sense of guilt in people living at cultural crossroads. This guilt leads some of them to embrace the most radical interpretations — or rather, misinterpretations — of Islam peddled by itinerant imams from Saudi-funded madrassas. Most of the 9/11 conspirators in Europe were such born-again "neo-fundamentalists," to use a term introduced by Roy. Similarly, the terrorists who attacked London on 7/7 turned out to be such "modern youngsters."Roy emphasizes the difference between neo-fundamentalism and what is usually called "traditional" Islam. He points out that neo-fundamentalism (or Jihadism) is based on political slogans, not theological arguments, and defies many established Islamic laws. Traditional Islam, for example, is very outspoken on the need to assure the safety of non-combatants in warfare. Acts of terror against civilians are a clear violation of this principle.Other scholars have also noted the discrepancy between Jihadism and traditional Islam. Daniel Pipes, an expert on the issue, says: "Traditional Islam seeks to teach human beings how to live in accord with God's will; militant Islam aspires to create a new order."The root causes of radicalismWhy the sudden appeal of Islamic neo-fundamentalism to some young Muslims? Three general answers are usually offered. The first one points to the widespread poverty and desolation of Muslims living in Europe and the Islamic world in general. That claim, however, requires some explanation because it has also been noted that most radicals and terrorists do not come from among the ignorant poor but from educated and prosperous classes. Yet the plight of the Islamic masses is an important factor in the ideological makeup of militant Islamism. Just as leftist intellectuals, who often came from bourgeois families, fought capitalism in the name of the "proletariat," well-off and educated Islamist militants believe they sacrifice themselves for the sake of the impoverished, oppressed umma, the worldwide Muslim community.It should be noted that the creators of modern Jihadism — people like Sayyid Qutb, Ali Shariati and Mawdudi — were very much influenced by Marxism-Leninism. Like the communists, who believe in a global conspiracy of capitalist imperialists aided by native compradors, Jihadists think that the Islamic world's poverty and weakness are the result of a great conspiracy of the West and their local agents. According to this line of reasoning, to redeem the Islamic world one needs to strike at "the oppressors" rather than work to raise education levels, productivity or health standards in Muslim societies.This quasi-Marxist worldview of the Jihadists might explain why their ideology appeals to die-hard communists like Carlos the Jackal.A second source of Islamic radicalism is old and recent political mistakes made by the West. The most obvious root causes of anti-Western feelings are the English and French colonial past and the American backing of Middle Eastern dictatorships during the Cold War. The Palestinian tragedy is another major issue that will not be resolved unless there is a workable two-state solution.The third explanation of the origins of Islamic militancy has to do with the cultural gap between traditionalist Islam and the modern world. The pre-modern lifestyle practiced by many Islamist traditionalists — and often seen by them as the essence of their faith — creates a perception of an inherent clash between Islam and modernity. The traditionalists themselves may be free of pro-terrorist sentiments, but Jihadists use this alleged incompatibility to fashion themselves as the vanguard in the Islamic struggle.What is to be done?The above suggests three important tasks for Muslim leaders and intellectuals in the immediate future:First, de-legitimize the political ideology of militant Islamism by exposing its departures from the true teachings of Islam; refute its underlying conspiracy theories, its quasi-Marxist blueprint, and its misuse of traditional Islamic sources.Second, help the Western powers formulate better policies to overcome centuries of distrust and antagonism.Third, construct a new interpretation of Islam that will help Muslims break free from medieval traditions and develop modern attitudes compatible with the Islamic faith and morality.This is necessary because some traditional Islamic concepts do not correspond to modern realities. Take, for example, the much-disputed concept of the division of the world into the "House of Islam" and the "House of War" formulated by Muslim jurists in the early centuries of Islam. At that time the world was ruled by empires that imposed their own faith on all subjects. A Muslim could not safely practice and proselytize Islam in foreign lands.Yet times have changed. Today Muslims are free to practice and proselytize their faith throughout the world — especially in liberal Western democracies. They should embrace such open societies and present their faith by their own good example, by living Islam in the modern world and in peace with other creeds.This is what reason demands. Moreover, it is what the Koran demands: The differences between people, says the Koran, were not created for conflict but for letting them know each other. (49:13)Writer : Mustafa Akyol

Bolshevism in a Headdress

Islamic fundamentalism has more to do with the hatred of the West than with faith [Originally published in The American Enterprise magazine, also available in PDF]In October of 2002 I spoke to a crowded Muslim audience in the British city of Birmingham on the topic, "The Evidence for God." My lecture focused on the modern scientific discoveries that support the idea of a designed, "fine-tuned" universe. The audience consisted mostly of Muslim students, and they were very interested in the presentation.Yet there was a small dissatisfied group in the hall. During the question-and-answer session, one who seemed to be a spokesman for the group rose and, in a passionate voice, objected to the whole idea of the conference. "Why are we wasting time with all this useless philosophical and scientific sophistry?" he demanded. "Shouldn't we concentrate on establishing the worldwide Islamic state that will save us from all evils?I explained that the Koran asks every Muslim to examine the natural world and witness God's signs in it, but there is no verse ordering an "Islamic state." The essence of Islam, I said, does not concern such political objectives, but rather faith in God and morality. If he wanted to exalt Islam he should focus on science, philosophy, or art, I suggested, because these are the underpinnings of a civilization.The young man was furious. In my speech I had mentioned the fall of Marxism as a materialistic theory that claimed to be a true explanation of human societies. He questioned me for speaking only against Marxism, not against capitalism. I responded, "Well, if we were in a communist country, we could not have a seminar titled 'The Evidence for God.' We can have it freely in this capitalist country. Isn't this a reason enough to opt for the latter?"Later, I learned that this angry young man was a member of the radical group Hizb-ut Tahrir, firmly dedicated to establishing a global Islamic state. I am sure he and his comrades saw themselves as pious Muslims. Yet there was something terribly wrong with their faith, a defect that left them much more interested in the case against "capitalism" than in the case for God.Muslim Failure Breeds Radicalism Most scholars who study radical Islam agree it is something peculiar to the twentieth century. For Muslims, the most important aspect of the last century can be captured in one word: Failure. Muslim nations became the poorest of the world, they were colonized by imperial powers, they lagged behind the West in all earthly standards, they were tyrannized by their own rulers.In the early decades of Islam, Muslims had grown accustomed to triumph. They created a vast empire and gained military and political ascendancy over other civilizations for centuries. As Daniel Pipes, a scholar of Islam, notes: "To be a Muslim meant to belong to a winning civilization." Muslim cities like Baghdad or Cordoba were "ornaments of the world" as well as centers of science and philosophy. Historian Martin Kramer opines, "Had there been Nobel prizes in the year 1000, they would have gone almost exclusively to Muslims."The might and sophistication of the Islamic world was severely shaken in the middle of the thirteenth century with the Mongol invasion. The "Mongol catastrophe," as it came to be known, resulted in the destruction of Muslim cities and the eclipse of the Arab civilization—which would never recover again. The Mongols slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Muslim inhabitants when they invaded Baghdad in 1258. Arab historian Ibn-i Kasir wrote that "such a tragedy has never been witnessed since God created the world."The Mongol catastrophe devastated the Arabs, but Islam continued to shine under the Ottomans further north. Eventually, though, the Turks declined in relation to the modernizing West, and in World War I their empire was finally destroyed. Muslim nations of North Africa and the Middle East, previously subjects of the Muslim Ottomans, were colonized by European powers. Upcoming decades ushered in worse failures: socio-cultural backwardness, military defeats at the hands of Israel, the collapse of both socialism and Arab nationalism. There was trauma in the Muslim world, which triggered Islamic radicalism.Europe has turned out to be a perfect petri dish for growing Islamic radicalism. Muslim communities there consist mostly of poor immigrants living in closed communities. Such a social situation is fertile ground for radicalism, and disenchanted European Muslims have easily been recruited by radical groups. Antoine Sfeir, a French scholar studying Islamic radicalism in Europe, characterizes it as "a kind of combat against the rich and powerful by the poor men of the planet." Oliver Roy, another French expert on Islamic movements, notes, "To convert to Islam today is a way for a European rebel to find a cause; it has little to do with theology." Not surprisingly, Lionel Dumont, an Algerian-born French national suspected of links to al-Qaeda, said that he joined Islam because "the Muslims are the only ones to fight the system."This fight against "the system" links Islamic radicalism to the Marxist-Leninist radicalism that preceded it. Marxism had a considerable influence on Islamic radicals like Sayyid Qutb, Sayyid Mawdudi, and Ali Shariati—architect of the Iranian Revolution. Shariati thought that Islam presented a better ideology and system than Marxism-Leninism for Muslims to topple the "imperialists."It is thus not surprising to see ex-Marxists join the ranks of Islamic radicals. A compelling example is the recent "conversion" to Islam of Carlos the Jackal, the notorious Marxist terrorist now imprisoned in France. From his prison cell he has penned a book titled Revolutionary Islam. This brand of Islam, he argues, "attacks the ruling classes in order to achieve a more equitable redistribution of wealth" and is the only "transnational force capable of standing up to the enslavement of nations."Hatred and the WestIt is imperative to note how radicals deviate from Islam proper. Radicalism uses Islam as a force to divide "us" from "them," to lead "enslaved" nations against "ruling" ones. The Koran, however, presents Islam as a way to lead all humans to the right path. From a purely Koranic point of view, Westerners are potential brothers to whom Islam should be presented "with wisdom and fair admonition...in the kindest way." From the radical point of view, Westerners are dehumanized enemies to be insulted, attacked, and murdered.The starting point of Islam is faith in God, whereas the starting point of radicalism is hatred against the West. When people begin from such markedly different premises, even if they refer to the same texts, they arrive at very different conclusions. Islam has produced a magnificent civilization, beautiful mosques, tolerant Sufis, and law-abiding citizens; Islamic radicalism produces suicide bombers and cold-blooded killers.The anti-Western hatred at the heart of Islamic radicalism is an import from alien sources. In fact, it is an ideology all of its own. Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, professors at Bard College and Hebrew University respectively, call this ideology "Occidentalism," and argue it was born in the West itself.The first radicals to attack liberal democracies (especially the U.S.) as "rootless, cosmopolitan, superficial, trivial, materialistic, racially mixed, fashion addicted civilizations" were nineteenth-century European revolutionaries of both the left and right. Marxists and proto-fascists such as Martin Heidegger—a sworn enemy of America—constructed the basic criticisms. Others followed, like the fascist Japanese intellectuals of the early 1940s who defined the West as "a poisonous materialist civilization," or the communist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia who slaughtered the Westernized "enemies of the people"—identified as anyone with "soft hands," or who wore glasses.The creators of Islamic radicalism borrow heavily from these predecessors. They also draw extensively from fiercely anti-American intellectuals in Europe, and other 1960s radicals. And they have incorporated much of the Marxist-Leninist literature into their political discourse.The most influential Muslim Occidentalist was Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian ideologue regarded as the mastermind of Islamic radicalism and militancy. Qutb became a hater of the West after spending time in the U.S. between 1948 and 1950. Based on what he observed in New York City and Greeley, Colorado, he was persuaded that America was a soulless, decadent, corrupt civilization. He even hated the religiosity of Americans, calling it completely insincere. He regarded American Christians and Jews not as "the People of the Book"—a term of respect used in the Koran to describe Bible-believing monotheists—but as jahiliye, a society of ignorance and barbarism.Qutb misjudged the U.S. Most Americans are deeply and passionately religious. Besides all the revealing polls and statistics, I have personally observed this during many visits to churches and religious communities in the U.S. I have met American Christians who left their comfortable houses and went to the poorest areas of Africa or Indochina as missionaries, solely for the sake of God. That is sincerity indeed.Jews, Islam, and NazisAnother import of Islamic radicalism is anti-Semitism. Many Koranic verses harshly criticize Jews for not being submissive to God and His prophets, including Moses, John the Baptist, and Jesus Christ; but this is far from anti-Semitism. These verses criticize only Jews who disobey God. Other verses demand respect for the Jews as "People of the Book." In one chapter, after describing the sins committed by some Jews, the devout ones are praised:They are not all alike; of the People of the Book there is an upright party; they recite God's communications in the nighttime and they adore (Him). They believe in God and the last day, and they enjoin what is right and forbid the wrong and they strive with one another in hastening to good deeds, and those are among the good.So the Koran considers whether Jews are loyal to God in judging them. This is not much different from the view of the Old Testament, which includes some very harsh passages about Israelites gone astray.Islamic radicals, however, hate all Jews. I have personally witnessed that they even suspect Jewish converts to Islam. They demonstrate a racial hatred of Jews, which is a characteristic of modern anti-Semitism. That hatred is often nurtured by the belief in a global Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world, a belief that has its foundation not in the Koran but in modern anti-Semitic literature such as the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion.Some Islamic radicals even feel sympathy for the Nazis, contending that they gave the Jews "what they deserved." Ex-friends of Mohammed Atta, the 9/11 mastermind, inform us that he had a kind of "Nazi weltanschauung." Such pro-Nazi Islamists are so far removed from a religious perspective they fail to remember that Muslims are also Semites ("children of Abraham"), and that the neo-pagan Nazi ideology was inherently hostile to all Semitic monotheisms.An Islam Without AnimosityIslamic radicals do use many religious arguments, and those arguments are cited by some Western analysts as evidence that Islam itself is the real source of their militancy. But while there truly are some militant teachings within the Islamic tradition that radicals use to justify their positions, the pathological hatred of the West, the obsession with politics, and the indiscriminate murderousness of these radicals is something without precedent in mainstream Islam. It is a worldview much closer to Bolshevism than to any kind of theism.As for the militant teachings within the Islamic tradition, they can be ameliorated by a critical evaluation of traditional Islamic sources and a modern exegesis of the Koran. This takes us to the greatest doctrinal problem within the contemporary Islamic world: The majority of Muslims rely uncritically on religious schools that date back to the Middle Ages. The founders of those schools were pious Muslims, but they lived in a medieval world and interpreted the Koran within that milieu. There was no modernity or democracy at that time, and their political doctrine assumed a perpetual conflict between "us" and "them"—"house of Islam" and "house of war."Yet times have changed. We Muslims don't ride camels anymore; we drive cars. Similarly, we can't apply a medieval political doctrine to the twenty-first century. There is a modern phenomenon called the open society, in which all Muslims are free to practice and evangelize their faith. We should embrace it and question those traditional teachings that would forbid our doing so. We should build a "Muslim conservatism" through which we will stand for our values in a modern democratic society. This will not be a departure from our faith—it will be a great service to it.Islam needs a doctrinal renewal. As a first step, we should rid ourselves of animosity toward the West, because it perverts the very essence of Islam. We Muslims must understand that Islam is not about avenging our failures, justifying our hatreds, and establishing repressive political systems. Yes, Islam has principles that will guide the political sphere, but our religion does not start there. It starts with faith in God and the moral values He has decreed.I wish that the young militant in Birmingham, along with the radical group he represented, could realize this.Writer : Mustafa Akyol

European Muslims and the Quest for the Soul of Islam

There are about thirteen million Muslims living in Europe, nearly all of them law-abiding citizens. Since September 11, 2001, however, European Muslims have been seen as a potential base for a radical, anti-Western ideology founded on a crude misinterpretation of Islam that has nothing to do with true Islamic faith and is rejected by the majority of Muslims worldwide. The contest between these two views of Islam may define the course of the 21st century.Unlike Muslims in the United States, who belong largely to the middle class, most European Muslims are economically disadvantaged, poorly integrated and tend to cluster in closed communities. They are predominantly post-World War II immigrants who arrived as manual workers. They migrated from poor countries and were among the poorest even in their native societies. Turkish workers in Germany, for example, came from the least-developed areas of Turkey, and they experienced an enormous cultural shock when faced with a highly modernized, secular German society. (They would have experienced a similar shock had they migrated to Istanbul instead of Berlin, Cologne or Hamburg.) When I was in Germany several years ago, I was surprised to learn that some of the immigrants that came there during the late '50s or early '60s are still unable to speak German. This underscores their deep cultural isolation, which is even stronger among many Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in the United Kingdom, North Africans in France and Spain, and Muslims from the Middle East throughout Europe. This cultural and linguistic isolation is further deepened by racial differences. Many immigrants tend to accept this separation. Older people try to maintain their traditional lifestyles in a foreign land. Many of their children adopt Western ways, but even they live with a peculiar sense of double alienation: neither the lands of their fathers nor the new countries of residence seem a true home to them. They are, as the French political scientist Oliver Roy says, "culturally uprooted". Another reason for this sense of homelessness is that these young European Muslims lack an interpretation of Islam that would be compatible with modern life. Many of them find a middle ground between Islamic traditions and Western lifestyles, but since those attempts do not have a doctrinal basis, they create a sense of guilt in people living at cultural crossroads. This guilt leads some of them to embrace the most radical interpretations — or rather misinterpretations — of Islam peddled by itinerant imams from Saudi-funded madrassas. Most of the 9/11 conspirators in Europe were just such born-again "neo-fundamentalists," to use the term introduced by Oliver Roy. Roy emphasizes the difference between neo-fundamentalism and what is usually called "traditional" Islam. He points out that neo-fundamentalism (or Jihadism) is based on political slogans, not theological arguments, and defies many established Islamic laws. Traditional Islam, for example, is very outspoken on the need to assure the safety of non-combatants in warfare. Acts of terror against civilians are a clear violation of this principle. Bernard Lewis, one of the most prominent Western experts on Islam, says that the attacks of September 11 have "no justification in Islamic doctrine or law and no precedent in Islamic history." Other scholars have also noted the discrepancy between Jihadism and traditional Islam. Daniel Pipes, one of the foremost experts on the issue, says: "Traditional Islam seeks to teach human beings how to live in accord with God's will; militant Islam aspires to create a new order." Why the sudden appeal of Islamic neo-fundamentalism to some young Muslims? Three general answers are usually provided. The first one points to the widespread poverty and desolation of the Muslims living in Europe and the Islamic world in general. That claim, however, requires some explanation, because it has also been noted that most radicals and terrorists do not come from among the ignorant poor but from educated and prosperous classes. Daniel Pipes concludes, correctly, "poverty doesn't create terrorists." But he further notes that the plight of the Islamic masses is an important factor in the ideological make-up of militant Islamism. Just as leftist intellectuals, who often came from bourgeois families, fought capitalism in the name of "the proletariat," so well-off and -educated Islamist militants believe they sacrifice themselves for the sake of the impoverished, oppressed umma, the worldwide Muslim community. It should be noted that the creators of modern Jihadism — people like Sayyid Qutb, Ali Shariati or Mawdudi — were very much influenced by Marxism-Leninism. Like the communists, who believe in a global conspiracy of capitalist imperialists aided by native compradors, Jihadists think that the Islamic world's poverty and weakness are the result of a great conspiracy of the West and their local agents. According to this line of reasoning, to redeem the Islamic world one needs to strike at "the oppressors" rather than work to raise education levels, productivity or health standards in Muslim societies. A second source for Islamic radicalism are old and recent political mistakes made by the West. Bernard Lewis acknowledges that, "[t]here is some justice" to the charge that the United States and the West in general "apply different and lower standards" to Middle Easterners. The most obvious root causes of anti-Western feelings are the English and French colonial past and the American backing of Middle Eastern dictatorships during the Cold War. Perceived American support for the Israeli occupation is another major issue, which will not be resolved unless there is a workable two-state solution. The third explanation of the origins of Islamic militancy has to do with the cultural gap between traditionalist Islam and the modern world. The pre-modern lifestyle practiced by many Islamist traditionalists — and often seen by them as the essence of their faith — creates a perception of an inherent clash between Islam and modernity. The traditionalists themselves may be free of pro-terrorist sentiments, but Jihadists use this alleged incompatibility to fashion themselves as the vanguard in the Islamic struggle. The above suggests three important tasks for Muslim leaders and intellectuals in the immediate future: First, de-legitimize the political ideology of militant Islamism by exposing its departures from true teachings of Islam; refute its underlying conspiracy theories, its quasi-Marxist blueprint, and its misuse of traditional Islamic sources. Second, help the Western powers formulate better policies to overcome centuries of distrust and misunderstanding. Third, construct a new interpretation of Islam that will help Muslims break free from medieval traditions and develop modern attitudes compatible with the Islamic faith and morality. Luckily, there exist several Muslim voices trying to accomplish these tasks, especially the third and most important one. Since the 19th century enlightened Muslims have argued that a new reading of Islam is urgently needed. It was often noted, for example, that most tenets of traditionalist Islam do not have a Qur'anic basis. The Qur'an gives very few detailed rules and teaches mostly general ethical principles. The question of how those principles should be applied in daily life was answered by Muslim jurists in the early centuries of Islam, and their rulings were gradually transformed into unquestioned, sacrosanct laws. The legal code known as the shariah is mostly the product of this process. A great many of shariah laws — like those which refer to the killing of apostates, the stoning of adulterers, the seclusion of women, compulsory prayer, required dress code, punishments for drinking or even possessing alcohol — have simply no basis in the Qur'an. The shariah, according to Bassam Tibi, a Syrian-born scholar at the University of Göttingen, is "a post-Qur'anic construction". As soon as we start questioning it, we will see that many requirements of traditionalist Islam that put Muslims in conflict with the modern world can simply be abandoned. Take, for example, the much-disputed concept of the division of the world into the "House of Islam" and the "House of War". It was formulated by Muslim jurists in the early centuries of Islam. At that time the world was ruled by empires that imposed their own faith on all subjects. A Muslim could not safely practice and proselytise Islam in foreign lands. Thus, military conquest was seen as a pre-condition to "opening" a country, i.e. giving its inhabitants a chance to know Islam. After the "opening" there would be no forced conversions and non-Muslims would be allowed practice their faith, but the land would be made "safe" for Islam. Similarly, Ottomans justified their conquests on the principle of ila-yi kelimetullah, spreading the word of God, though they allowed free practice of Christianity and Judaism in conquered territories. But times have changed. Today we already live in an "open" world, and Muslims are free to practice and proselytise their faith throughout the world — especially in Western liberal democracies. Because of that, Tariq Ramadan, one of the most prominent voices on behalf an Islamic reformation, argues that Europe is no longer the "House of War" but the "House of Witness" where Muslims have the duty to propagate their creed by their own good example — by living Islam in the modern world and in peace with other creeds. Apart from the complex task of reforming our understanding of Islam, there are also other, more practical things that Muslims and Westerners can do together to prevent a "clash of civilizations." First of all, we should destroy the myth of a monolithic "materialist West". The radical Islamist discourse tends to picture the whole Western civilization as a licentious, selfish, hedonistic world — a new Pompeii waiting to be buried under the ashes. This is a great distortion of the truth. Let us remember that the Judeo-Christian values of the Western civilization and the values of Islam share the same Abrahamic sources. Let us present to Muslim societies "the West of faith and morality," which they would find more appealing than the alleged "aggressive market materialism and intolerant secularism" of the "MacWorld" discussed by Benjamin Barber. Further, we must help Muslim communities in Europe to better interact with and integrate into the societies among which they live. Help them see Europe as a true house of liberty. The French decision to ban Muslim girls' headscarves in public schools certainly does not help. It forces the veiled ones back into their cultural ghetto and instills in them aversion towards the French system. As Zaki Badawi, the dean of the Muslim College in London suggests, we also need to help moderate Muslim institutions educate moderate imams. Extremism, which is being imported to Europe from the Middle East, can only be defeated by a legitimate Islamic model of tolerance. For such a tolerant view we need keep in mind the Turkish example. Turkey has an Islamic heritage free of anti-Westernism and anti-Semitism and quite favorable to open society. Said Nursi, probably the most influential 20th century Turkish Muslim thinker, is known for his appeals for an alliance between Islam and Christianity against communism. Nursi's most prominent follower, Turkish Muslim scholar Fethullah Gulen, leads today a moderate Islamic movement known for its global advocacy of modern education and inter-faith dialogue. The West should certainly support Turkey's entry into the European Union. This would blur the "civilizational" boundaries and create a model for other Muslim nations. Note that Turkey's efforts to join the EU — and to implement the required democratic reforms — are supported by most Islamic circles in the country and are being spearheaded by the ruling conservative Justice and Development Party, whose members are mostly devout Muslims. Help them succeed so that they could be a positive example to other Muslim countries. Let us support inter-faith dialogue that will help both Muslims and Westerners see their common qualities. Joint charity programs and religious studies can be organized. A British Anglican priest, Rev. Donald Reeves, is working to re-build the Bosnian mosque of Farhadija destroyed by Serbian militias in 1993. Symbolic gestures like that can be most effective as a refutation of the "Islam vs. the West" scenario. We need also to overcome Islamophobia in the West by explaining that the contemporary problems of the Islamic world stem not from the faith but from social and historical conditions. Let us present the splendor of the medieval Islamic civilization, help moderate Muslim voices reach Western audiences and let the Westerners see Muslims other than those burning American flags after their Friday prayers. Most of these goals will require a great deal of effort, but we simply can't afford to fail.

Yes, Muslims are Indeed 'Christians'

In yesterday's Turkish Daily News, there was a photo of a group of Turkish demonstrators who gathered in Istanbul's Taksim Square and held a banner that read, “"We are all Christians!”" They were protesting against the attacks on Christian communities – and especially the savage slaughter of three missionaries in Malatya seven months ago by a gang of ultra-nationalist brutes.Fellow TDN columnist Orhan Kemal Cengiz, who is also a lawyer and the president of the Human Rights Agenda Association, made me recall, once more, how much Turkey needs that stance against our homegrown fascism. In his Nov. 22 piece, "“What is going on in the Malatya massacre case?”," Mr. Cengiz shows how prejudiced the Turkish legal mind can be against Christians. These people, although they are our fellow citizens, are seen by some prosecutors as dangerous aliens, and their religious missions are looked upon with suspicion and distaste. When such a phobia about “internal enemies” becomes a norm within a state, it is only natural that some maniacs in society take violent action to “teach them a lesson.” Every level of that bigotry is a shame on our country.The Carpenter of NazarethThe only real way out seems to be accepting the basic foundations of democracy – that every different creed and identity should have a place under the sun. Every democrat, of course, should stand by that principle and by those who are persecuted due to the lack of it. And I am sure that's what the Taksim protestors had in mind when they cried, “We are all Christians.”Yet I want to go further and sign up for that motto in a not just a figurative but also a literal sense. As a Muslim, I think all my co-religionists and I are indeed “Christians.”That might sound odd, so let me explain. The whole Christian creed goes back, of course, to Jesus of Nazareth. He was, for many people, just an eccentric Jew who created some trouble for the Jewish orthodoxy and the Roman authority. For other people, though, Jesus was absolutely extraordinary. First of all, he was born of a virgin. Moreover, he performed miracles: He healed the sick and raised the dead. And he did all this because he was “the "Word of God."”This view of Jesus is commonly known as the core of the Christian faith, but it is also a part of the Islamic one. The Koran teaches all of the above and praises not just Jesus, but also his mother Mary and his apostles, in a very profound way. At the end of sura (chapter) 61, the Koran even commands Muslims to take the apostles as their role models.To be sure, the Koran differs greatly from mainstream Christianity on the issue of the nature of Christ. The Muslim scripture denounces the Doctrine of the Trinity, which defines Jesus as a part of a triune God. But, interestingly, that issue has always been very controversial among Christians, too. In fact, one of the early Christian views on this matter, the one argued by Arius of Alexandria (d. 336), was compatible with the Koranic picture. The “"heretical"” Arian doctrine was that Jesus was not God; rather he was created by God.The big dispute over the Trinity will remain, of course, but this neither changes nor overshadows the striking fact that Christians and Muslims are the only two communities on earth who revere Jesus Christ. If the Old Testament is enough of a bond to speak of a Judeo-Christian theology, Jesus should be enough to search for a Christo-Muslim one, too.Perhaps that's why the Koran defines Christians as the best friends of Muslims. “"Nearest among men in love to the believers,”" verse 5:82 says, “"you will find those who say, ‘'we are Christians'." It also praises the morals of Christians, saying, “"amongst them are men devoted to learning and men who have renounced the world, and they are not arrogant."”That's why the earliest Muslims, led by the Prophet Mohammed, regarded Christians as their friends and allies in a world damned by idolaters. Yet soon political conflicts overshadowed theological affinities. As Islam unfolded in history, many military and cultural conflicts arose with the Christians. Yet the common bond of belief – in God and in Jesus – remained a potential source of reconciliation.Theology versus politicsThat source is still alive today and that's why the theologically driven Muslim attitude in Turkey is generally cordial toward Christians. The best examples would be the “Nur” movement and its up-to-date version, the one led by Fethullah Gülen, which have always been in favor of dialogue and understanding between Muslims and Christians.On the other hand, there is the politically driven Christophobia. It is based on garbage such as secret plots by missionaries to tear Turkey apart or the heinous effort to reclaim Istanbul as the capital of a "“new Byzantium."” To combat that mania –which appeals to many secular minds as well as the religious – we need modern values of democracy and liberalism, to be sure. But theology has something to offer, too.A NOTE: Kemalism RevisitedIn yesterday's TDN, fellow columnist Burak Bekdil quoted extensively from a reader who criticized my argument that in Turkey Atatürk has been turned into a demigod and Kemalism a religion. “"Kemalism is NOT a religion,"” the critic claimed, “"it is not a guide on how to live our lives.”"Well, I am not sure. Kemalism actually has clear commandments on dress code. (“"Thou shall not put a scarf or fez on your head."”) But of course it is not a traditional religion with details such as dietary laws. It is rather a "“political religion"” as defined by theorists such as Eric Voegelin.Mr. Bekdil's favorite critic also points to the similarity between “"the general reading the Nutuk"” and a devout Muslim reading the Risale-i Nur, a Koranic commentary. He is totally right and that is precisely my point. Since Kemalism is a creed like many others, it definitely should have a place in the pantheon of democracy. But it should not be enacted as the official ideology. When you do that, what you get is just another sort of theocracy.Writer : Mustafa Akyol

The Opium of the Atheists

KRYNICA-ZDROJ — This little Polish town not only has a name hard to pronounce, but it is also quite difficult to reach. In order to arrive at this nice spa resort, you need to first fly to Warsaw, then take another plane to Krakow, and then drive for more than 200 kilometers. Yet this long and winding – and nowadays heavily raining – road apparently does not prevent thousands of people to meet here every September for what they call “the Davos of Central-Eastern Europe:” The Krynica Economic Forum, which brings together top-level politicians including heads of state, and businessmen from Central Europe, the former Soviet Union and many other places.This year I was in the “Turkish team,” assembled by TESEV, Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation, and my job, to be frank, was to convince the Europeans that Turkey's accession to the EU would be beneficial, not harmful, to the already packed union. Thanks to the presentations of other Turkish speakers, and to the careful and receptive listeners, I guess the message reached its audience.Yet the most interesting exchange of views I have had in this ex-communist (but seemingly not-yet-capitalist) land was the chat I had with two lawyers– one from Poland, the other from Britain – in a cozy bar. Besides their success in their profession, and their obvious smartness, they shared a philosophical bent: Both of them were atheists, and they believed that religion has been an evil force throughout history. “People have killed each other in the name of God for centuries,” one of them passionately argued, “religion only brought us carnage.”Killing for GodI hear that argument quite often from radical secularists. It bears, to be sure, some truth. Yes, we humans have killed each other throughout history during holy wars of all sorts. But, alas, in modern times, as we stopped confronting each other for God, we quickly found other reasons to battle for. Irreligious ideologies such as nationalism, fascism and communism have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of millions of innocents throughout the past two centuries. Actually the modern secular cruelty has reached such incredible heights that no major religion ever imagined. Hitler's gas chambers and Pol Pot's killing fields were unprecedented evils in human history.Therefore it is obvious that men can kill each without appealing to God. Perhaps there is something in human nature to fight and, if necessary, to kill for whatever it deems valuable. That might be religion, but also ideology, tribe, nation, and, of course, simply wealth and power.The other point that anti-religious evangelists fail to see is the contribution of the great faiths to humanity. The official rhetoric of radical Enlightenment tells about nothing but the “darkness” of the faith-driven middle ages – as its Turkish version keeps on bashing the Ottoman times – but the truth is much more complex. As historian Rodney Stark unveils in his tell-tale-titled book, “For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery,” the Judeo-Christian heritage has contributed to not just some nasty episodes but also many significant advances in the history of Western civilization.The same is true for Islamdom, too: It was thanks to the message of Prophet Mohammed that tribal Arabs created a world empire under which arts and sciences flourished. Under Islam's golden age, between the seventh and 12th centuries, the Middle East became the world's center of sophistication, and created or preserved much of the classical knowledge that the West would later embrace. Islam also enlightened nomadic nations such as the Turks, who had little, if any, trace of science, philosophy, literature or architecture in their pre-Islamic times. The majesty of the Ottoman Empire would definitely not come into being had the Turks remained as pagan hordes.One does not need to be a believer to see these great contributions of religions to mankind, or to appreciate the relief given by religious charities to millions of poor and needy people around the world. One just needs to objective. Yet that is just what the radical atheists lack. Take Richard Dawkins for example, the world's most famous atheist evangelist who notoriously calls religion a "virus" and faith-based education "child abuse." The title of his documentary aired on the UK's Channel 4 summarizes how he sees religion: "Root of All Evil?" The question mark is apparently an editorial touch, and the content only reflects Dawkins's zealotry.Beyond ReasonHere is the third crucial point that most atheists fail to see: Although they claim to follow nothing but “science and reason,” theirs is also a belief that one needs to take a leap of faith to accept. Agnosticism can well be a position based on pure reason, but when one becomes an atheist, he asserts that there is no God without any empirical evidence that he can refer to. As philosophers Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek explain in their book, “I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist,” one needs a lot of faith to “believe” in the non-existence of the divine. And it is the atheist's opium, to borrow a term from Marx, to regard this unsubstantiated faith as an established fact.This should help us realize that atheism and secular philosophies based on it need be considered as faith systems, too. Moreover, like traditional religions, they can have their moderate and radical versions, and can be interpreted in peaceful and violent ways. Like religious fundamentalisms, there can well be secular ones.This philosophical conclusion has an important political outcome. It shows that secular democracies should be neutral not only between traditional religions, but also between modern ones with atheistic foundations. Their secularity should not imply taking sides with anti-theistic philosophies.In other words, they should be secular but not secularist regimes – a distinction that we desperately need to make in many countries, and, especially, in Turkey. Writer : Mustafa Akyol

Tidings of Comfort, Joy and Ramadan

Today you might have made your breakfast before taking a copy of the Turkish Daily News, and might even be sipping coffee while reading this story. For hundreds of millions of Muslims all around the world, though, that would be out of question. Today is the first day of the holy month of Ramadan, and all observant Muslims are expected to refrain from eating and drinking until sunset. It is a religious duty which has been kept unbroken since the 7th century.In the beginningRamadan existed before Islam as one of the twelve months of the Arabic lunar calendar. Thus there have been endless Ramadans in the Arab desert for centuries, but the one in 610 AD would be a unique and fateful one. In this month, Muhammad of Mecca, who had been only a decent merchant until then, received his first message from God. According the Muslim tradition, angel Gabriel approached him in a cave during a time of meditation. “Recite,” the angel commanded, “In the Name of your Lord who created man.” And not just the life Muhammad but also the whole human history changed forever.Although Muslims believe that their faith is not a novelty in history but just the latest form of Abrahamic monotheism, that first revelation became the genesis of Islam as an independent religion. Those who belived that Muhammad was really the messenger of God slowly grew in numbers and started to challenge Mecca’s idolatrous cults by proclaiming the core of their faith: “There is no god but The God.” (The Muslim term for God, “Allah,” comes from the root “Al Ilah” and literally means “The God.”) The revelations continued for twenty-three years, during which the Muslim community grew from a few fragile individuals into a powerful state which dominated the whole Arabian peninsula. And the revelations turned into a book called the Koran.In its verse 2:185, the Koran signifies the Ramadan. “The month of Ramadan is the one in which the Koran was sent down as guidance for mankind,” it reminds, “with Clear Signs containing guidance and discrimination.” And then it orders Muslims to honor the holy month by fasting:“Any of you who are resident for the month should fast it. But any of you who are ill or on a journey should fast a number of other days. Allah desires ease for you; He does not desire difficulty for you. You should complete the number of days and proclaim Allah’s greatness for the guidance He has given you so that hopefully you will be thankful.” That’s why Muslims abstain from drinking, eating, smoking and sex during the thirty days of the holy month. It might be quite a challenge, especially in summer, when the days are long and the thirst is strong. (Since the lunar calendar is eleven days shorter than the solar one, Ramadan rotates slowly across the seasons.) Those who are not able to stand the hunger or thirst are supposed to buy food for the poor. The duty to God has to be honored this way or another. After all, for a devout Muslim, religion is not only about finding easy comforts for the all-demanding self. It also implies a deeper relief to be found in the sacrifices made for God. A Social SettingOf course Ramadan is not only about religious observance. There is also a very colorful culture built around it. For centuries the holy month has been the most joyful and celebrated time of the year in Muslim societies. In the Ottoman Empire a tradition of evening-time “Ramadan recreations” developed, which included circus-type shows and theatrical comedies. Today these traditions are still alive among the more devout and conservative segment of the Turkish society. And, besides all, there are also rich “iftar” suppers, in which hungry fasters rush to enjoy God’s blessings. Ramadan also helps organizing charitable works. In fact in the whole idea of fasting, according to one interpretation, there lies not only a spiritual but also a social purpose: Each Muslim experiences hunger for a month, which will make him more empathizing for those who are less fortunate. No wonder that Ramadan is also the time to give alms. The “zakat” and “fitre,” the two types of charity that Muslims are obliged to give to the poor, is generally given during the Ramadan. One rule is that they should not be given to family members and close relatives. The believers need to reach out to society. In cities big “iftar tents” are organized by individuals, foundations or companies, under which free dinner is served for all those who fast – and, perhaps, not fast. Families and friends invite each other for iftars and especially the needy are supported by gifts and alms.Turkish RamadansEminent Turkish sociologists Şerif Mardin speaks of “two nations” in Turkey — one defined by secularism, the other by Islam. Although there are many shades and grades, which Prof. Mardin also notes, this is basically true, and the way that these two “nations” regard the Ramadan is most significant. For Turkey’s observant Muslims, Ramadan is really the most precious time of the year in which religious emotions reach to new heights. For the secularists, it really doesn’t mean so much, and they even get frustrated to see restaurants that stop serving lunch or alcohol during the holy month. In the recent years, a distinction also evolved in the way these two “nations” refer to the three-day feast that takes place at the end of the Ramadan. For the Islamic-minded, it is simply “the Ramadan feast.” The other group prefers to call it “the feast of sweets.” And for them, it doesn’t signify anything more than three days of vacation, and perhaps a trip to Europe and discount wines from duty-frees. But there are also many Turks who fall in somewhere between these two “nations.” They stop drinking during Ramadan and fast as much as they can, but at the end of the holy month, they rush to back to rakı and meze. During this Ramadan, we will see all sorts of such Muslims and the various ways they greet, or not greet, their Ramadan. And we will how verses of a 7th century book, the Koran, still deeply influence the hearts of millions of believers, and give meaning to their lives. With all these complex senses and messages, Ramadan is indeed a stimulating time. It perhaps really is, as the Turkish saying goes, “the Sultan of the eleven months.” Writer : Mustafa Akyol

The Koran and Non-Muslims—Facts Versus Myths

Many years ago, I came across a book, which claimed to explain “Israeli terrorism” in the light of the Hebrew Scriptures. It was full of photos showing Israeli soldiers attacking and harassing Palestinians, and presented huge captions that included verses from the Old Testament, and especially the Book of Joshua. If the Israelis were breaking the bones of a Palestinian youngster — a globally notorious scene from the ‘80s — then the caption would include a verse with something like “Thou shall break their bones.” The book's argument was blunt and simple: The Israelis were torturing a nation because that was what their religion ordered them to do.The more I learned about the Old Testament and the politics of the Middle East, the more I realized that what the book presented was not analysis but anti-Semitic propaganda. It is true that Israel's 40-year-long occupation is a pretty brutal one, and that the Old Testament included some belligerent passages, but the reality was much more complex. I noticed that Jewish religious sources also include many words of wisdom and compassion, and that there are so many Jews who are willing to have peace with their Arab neighbors. Indeed the militants who advocate and even practice violence in the name of Judaism — as CNN's Christian Amanpour recently exposed in her superb documentary, “God's Warriors” — are pretty marginal. Moreover, the source of their hatred is actually not the confrontational passages of the Torah, but the political and social situation that they are in.In other words, they go angry and violent not because they read their religious texts, but because they focus on the harsher parts of those texts since they are already angry and violent for a myriad of reasons.The Sloganization of ScriptureIn recent years, I often recall my experience with that anti-Semitic book and the way it misread the Hebrew Scriptures, because I see that more and more people are doing the same thing with the Koran. When Islamic terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda bomb innocents, or when some fringe imam in a radical mosque preaches hatred toward non-Muslims, these greenhorn “Islam experts” find some passages in the Koran, which apparently justify such extremists. No wonder that these extremists themselves refer to similar passages in the Koran or other Islamic sources. The situation is very similar to the strange agreement between the anti-Semites and the Jewish terrorists on the wrong notion that Judaism justifies carnage.One common problem in all such misreading of the scriptures is the “sloganization” of certain verses or passages. This is done by taking a part of the holy text out of its textual and historical context, and turning into a slogan that will justify a mundane political agenda. For example, some Islamic revolutionaries, especially the ones who are inspired by the Iranian Revolution of 1979, used to find a political message in this verse: “Those who do wrong will come to know by what a great reverse they will be overturned!” (26:227) But in fact the verse speaks about the punishment that God will hand down to unbelievers on judgment day.The crucial mistake here is to overlook Islam's scholarly tradition called “tafseer,” which is the study of the meaning of the Koran. Tafseer has a basic rule: A single verse or passage can't be understood in itself; it has to be evaluated according to the other parts of the Koran, the general goals and principles of the holy text, and the way it was implemented by the prophet. Yet most radicals — whether they be Islamist or anti-Islamist — don't have the time to waste with tafseer. They rather copy-paste the divine words to make powerful slogans.Enter non-MuslimsAll of these came to my mind when I read the latest piece by fellow columnist Burak Bekdil. He was expressing his suspicions about the AKP government, and Turkey's “intellectual Muslims,” and the way that they have become friends with the West. This was weird, and perhaps “a tactical cooperation with the condemned,” according to Mr. Bekdil, because he was pretty sure that the Koran condemned non-Muslims. He confidently quoted some verses such as the one, which read, “O (Muslim) believers! Don't make friends with the Jews or Christians.” (5:51)Interestingly some marginal anti-EU Islamic groups in Turkey — such as the one led by “Professor” Haydar Baş — use the same verses to make the case for an anti-Western Muslim agenda. Yet, like Mr. Bekdil, they overlook the traditional tools of tafseer, and especially other passages of the Koran, such as this crucial one:“(Muslims!) God does not forbid you from being good to those who have not fought you in religion or driven you from your homes, or from being just towards them. God loves those who are just. God merely forbids you from taking as friends those who have fought you in religion and driven you from your homes and who supported your expulsion. Any who take them as friends are wrongdoers.” (60:8-9) One should also note the Koranic verse which tells that “all who have faith in God and the Last Day and act rightly” including “those who are Jews, and the Christians” will be rewarded by God in afterlife. (2:62) In other words, the Koran does not denounce Jewish and Christians an “unbelievers,” as it is often thought. It actually says that the existence of different religions on earth is in accordance with the divine will: “Had God willed,” the Koran reminds, “He could have made you one community.” (5:48) That's why Mr. Bekdil doesn't need to suspect the authenticity of the friendship between Turkey's Muslims and non-Muslims including the Christians. Although the EU process and the westward-looking policy of the AKP is mostly an issue of political, social and economic realities, it does not bear the theological inconsistency he presumes.Nor the religious militants have the theological justification they presume that they have. But to expose that, we need to go beyond slogans and try to understand what God has really said — whether His words be in Hebrew, Greek or Arabic.Writer : Mustafa Akyol

In Defense of Mary the Virgin

In their recent books entitled Mary: The Mother of Jesus and Mary: A Dogmatic Journey, two "Catholic" writers, the journalist Jacques Duquesne and the theologian Dominique Cerbelaud, display an overt disbelief in the virginity of Mary the mother of Jesus Christ. Mr. Duquesne argues that it is a belief that is "not compatible with science." Mr. Cerbelaud asserts that the faith in the virgin birth came about "for reasons that spring from collective psychology."I believe both arguments to be inconsistent and based on a flawed understanding of science. Before explaining these, however, let me elaborate on why the virgin birth matters for me — since some non-Muslims might wonder why a Muslim cares about this controversy at all.The Virgin Birth According to the Qur'anAs a Muslim, I am a passionate defender of the virgin birth of Christ, and all Muslims should be so. Why? Because this is one of the very important themes in the Qur'an.The Qur'an tells a great deal about the birth, works, and miracles of Jesus (`Isa in Arabic). His story starts with the angels' call to Mary (Maryam in Arabic) by which they declare the miracle of God — a son without a father. Mary is surprised:She said, "My Lord! How can I have a son when no man has ever touched me?" He said, "It will be so. God creates whatever He wills. When He decides on something, He just says to it, 'Be!' and it is." (Aal `Imran 3:47)There are many passages in the Qur'an in which Mary is highly praised. We read that angels said to her, "Maryam, God has chosen you and purified you. He has chosen you over all other women" (Aal `Imran 3:42).In another surah, An-Nisaa' 4:156, those who propose "a monstrous slander against Maryam" are cursed. Actually, there is quite a long surah in the Muslim Scripture titled "Maryam" (Mary) in which the nobility of Mary and the virgin birth is told in detail. In another surah, we read,"Maryam, the daughter of `Imran, who guarded her chastity — We breathed Our Spirit into her and she confirmed the Words of her Lord and His Book and was one of the devout." (At-Tahrim 66:12)These verses make clear that Mary — along with Jesus himself — is a sacred figure for all Muslims. Thus, any disrespect, insult, or attack on Mary or Jesus Christ is directed also toward Islam. We can add Moses, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Job, and many other Old Testament figures to the list — they are all praised in the Qur'an.I suspect this will be news to some non-Muslims. But what is stranger still is that it will be news to some Muslims, too. Unfortunately, we see a lack of passion in the Islamic world when it comes to the defense of prophets other than Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him). He is, of course, the Prophet of Islam and very dear to us Muslims, but the Qur'an in Surat An-Nisaa' 4:152, orders that Muslims should not "differentiate between any of [God' Messengers]."We Muslims should rediscover that Qur'anic principle. We should also realize that defense of faith is not done by slandering or assaulting its critics in barbarity, but by refuting their arguments in civility. Let me now concentrate on the latter.Are Miracles "Unscientific"?I have said that the arguments put forward by Jacques Duquesne and Dominique Cerbelaud about the virgin birth are inconsistent. The reason is that the earliest sources that tell us about the virgin birth — the Gospels — are also the earliest sources from which we learn that a woman named Mary actually lived. Mary is the devout Jewish woman who gave birth to Jesus Christ without a biological father, according to the Gospels — and from a Muslim point of view, according to the Qur'an.One can reject the Gospels, of course, but how can one then be rightfully called a Christian? If one proclaims to be a Christian — as Duquesne and Cerbelaud apparently do — then how can one question the virgin birth? British writer A. N. Wilson, in his book Jesus, which is "written with a profound skepticism about Christianity," points out that, "there is no logical justification for dividing the infancy narratives of the New Testament from the rest."Not surprisingly, in fact, the doubts and denials about the virgin birth come not from any internal evidence in the Gospels — or any historical account, for that matter — but from an incredulity that derives from its supposed clash with "science." This would seem most probably to be the real prime mover of Duquesne and Cerbelaud. The virgin birth is obviously a miracle, and they take it for granted that a belief in miracles is "unscientific." In fact, this is a common trait among modern thinkers when faith in any miracle is expressed.Yet, that is also exactly where they are wrong. In fact, science doesn't tell us that miracles can't happen. It only tells us that miracles don't happen now. It shows that the natural world around us is operating within constant laws of physics and chemistry. Thanks to these laws, fire always burns, the dead never arise, and nobody walks on water. However, science can't tell us that this was always the case in history nor that this necessarily will always be so in every instance in the future.The belief that this was always the case in history does not come from "science," but from a philosophy called naturalism. Naturalism holds that nature is all there is and there are no supernatural entities, such as God, to have influence over nature. This philosophic view is a belief, not a testable, observable fact. Therefore, when people object to the virgin birth or other miracles told in the Qur'an, they are doing so not because of science, but because of their faith in naturalism.The Demise of NaturalismHowever, there would seem to be some very bad news emerging for the naturalists. Science, which they used to see as their main instrument and ally, has turned against them in recent decades. The more we learn about the natural world, the more we come to realize that what might be legitimately termed "miracles" really happened in the past.One big nail in the coffin of naturalism has been the Big Bang theory, which showed that the universe had a beginning. The discovery of a genesis of the natural world was a major blow to atheists such as Carl Sagan, who used to reiterate the naturalist dogma, "The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be," as if it were a scientific fact, in his TV series Cosmos, which was nothing more than atheist indoctrination.A second big nail has been the Anthropic Principle, as scientists call it. This means that virtually all the constants of the physical world, including the structure of our galaxy or the Solar System, are constructed in the best possible way to accommodate human life. This "fine-tuning" of the universe speaks for a supernatural design and intervention in the natural world — a more technical definition of what we call a "miracle."Yet a third big nail in naturalism' coffin has been the discovery of greater and deeper complexities of life. These complexities refute the widespread myth that Darwinism is an adequate explanation of the origin and diversity of life on earth. That' why the late Francis Crick, an atheist and co-discoverer of DNA, had to use the "M-word" when he declared, "the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going."The more we learn about the natural world, the more naturalism looks incredible and miracles look factual. The most recent and spectacular testimony to this fact has been the conversion of arch-atheist Anthony Flew to theism. At age 81, after decades of fierce atheism, Anthony Flew has concluded, "some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe." He added, "A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature."Christians, Be Christians!In a world where dedicated atheists come to realize the existence of "a super-intelligence" that shaped the natural world, it is surprising to see "Christians" who deny that the "super-intelligence" in question has intervened in history.Here, then, we have mainly a theological problem, but also a practical one. As a Muslim, I see Christianity as my ally in the effort to redeem this misguided world — misguided by many forms of materialism, hedonism, lust, and arrogance. But I want to see my allies firm in their faith. And, of course, many of them are. But for those who are not, may I point out what the Qur'an says about Christians:"The people of the Gospel should judge by what God sent down in it. Those who do not judge by what God has sent down, such people are deviators." (Al-Ma'idah 5:47)The denial of the virgin birth and other miracles is such a deviation. We Muslims have to — and definitely will — stand against it.Writer : Mustafa Akyol

The Parliament of The World's Religions and The Axis of Theism

On July 7-13, 2004, in the beautiful city of Barcelona, there was an extraordinary international meeting that gathered some seven thousand people from all over the world. The meeting was for The Parliament of the World's Religions and the attendees were believers from all different kind of traditions. From many denominations of Christians, Jews and Muslims to Buddhist, Sikhs, Hindus or even self-proclaimed pagans, it was truly a global coverage of the world's faiths. During the seven days of the Parliament, hundreds of lectures, workshops, panels, concerts, prayers and rituals were performed.You could see Sikhs chanting with their orange tunics and curved swords in one auditorium, and then watch the whirling dervishes of Sufi Islam in another and then rush to catch the interactive workshops with titles like "The Methods of Interfaith Dialogue" or "Which Islam?"The proceedings of the Parliament will definitely be a valuable source for many years to come. Yet, even the very existence of such an event is a remarkable phenomenon, since it implicitly manifests the fall of the modernist vision. That vision, which was basically the product of 18th century Enlightenment and 19th century positivism, defined religion as a superstition that would die out with the progress of science and human knowledge. Based on the philosophies of atheist thinkers like Nietzsche, Comte, Feuerbach, Marx or Engels, and supported by the theories of Darwin, Spencer or Freud, the modernist vision foresaw a totally secular world. However, in the last quarter of the 20th century, religion surprisingly emerged as a very powerful force in human lives and world affairs. The causes of this world-changing phenomenon —? like the inadequacy of modern life to satisfy the human soul or the unexpected scientific discoveries that supported the theistic cosmology —? is being studied by many scholars. The bitter fact for the modernists is that we are living in a "de-secularizing" world as social scientist Peter Berger —? formerly a strong supporter of the "secularization theory" —? calls it. The Parliament for the World' Religions, which gathered so many "modern" yet religious scholars and intellectuals, has been a picturesque demonstration of this de-secularizing globe.However, the return of "religion" per se does not necessarily mean a return to God. I have sensed this strongly at the Parliament of the World' Religions. There was a big hall reserved for publishers and exhibitors and at least half of the booths presented a "spiritual" worldview in which there was little, if any, room for God. From Unitarians to Scientologists, or from pagans to Hare Krishna folks, there were many cults that disagreed with the shallowness of materialism but tried to fill it with exotic faiths in vague deities. I felt something similar to what St. Paul felt in the Areopagus of Athens. Like the "Unknown God" of those ancient Greeks, most of these post-modern spiritualists believe in a mere "universal energy". Of course, "energies" don't give us moral codes or listen to our prayers. Yet God does and He is real. This is why theists have to reach out to the spiritualists and help them to realize "The God that made the world and all things therein" (Acts, 17:24), or "He Who has created the heavens and the earth with truth" (Koran, 6:73)In fact, the distinction at this point can be interpreted as the difference between humanism and theism. According to the former, religion has to be a set of beliefs and practices that we produce or at least modify to give us comfort in our lives. According to the latter, religion is a set of beliefs and practices that God has ordained to lead us to the truth. They may not be "comforting" at all times, they even ask for a lot of self-sacrifice, but they give us a deeper comfort by knowing that we are gratifying our Creator and Lord by following them.The problem with humanism is not only that it ignores the truth, but also that it does not keep its promise to make us happy. As C. S. Lewis once well explained, "if you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: If you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth—?only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair."Non-theistic spiritualism, like materialism, is a way that promises comfort but leads to despair. Theists have to deal with them both.Another message that I inferred from Parliament of the World' Religions is the inadequacy of the famous —? or notorious —? thesis of "the Clash of Civilizations" put forward by Samuel Huntington a decade ago and has been shaping many minds since then. The most provoking part of Huntington' thesis was the presumed conflict between the so-called Western and Islamic civilizations. As noted by many critiques, the diversity of both of the "civilizations" in question negates this clear-cut scenario. Another fact that further negates Huntington is the existence of different axes which cut across his civilizational borders. The axis of theism, as one might call, is the most notable one. Faithful Christians, Jews and Muslims have so much in common that they could in fact present a common global culture against the materialism and hedonism of modernity.In one of the workshops at the Parliament, I noted the possibility of such an axis and gave a figurative example: Years ago, the most popular TV series in Turkey among the conservative families was "The Little House on The Prairie." Every religious person I knew was a fan of this American story of a devout family with strong moral values. Nowadays, the same people zap "Sex and The City" with disgust, as many conservative people in the US would do. Doesn't this symbolize an "intercivilizational" common ethic among theists, whether they be Christian, Muslim or Jewish? Why would we have a clash between us, while we all worship the same God, the God of Abraham? We, if anything, should be on the same axis against unbelief.(For the unbelievers, there is good news too: We don't seek a clash with them either; we wish to help them. For they know not what they do.)I am sure this idea of an "axis of theism" will raise questions: Is this a Machiavellian proposal? Moreover, does it imply concessions from our faiths for the sake of co-countering a powerful enemy? My answer is a bold "no." The reason is that the very doctrines of our faiths include the notion of recognizing the righteous in other communities. For Christians, the tale of the Good Samaritan is always there and Jesus Christ is also on the record for declaring, "He that is not against us is for us" (9:40). We Muslims, on the other hand, are reminded in the Koran about the godly Jews and Christians (Koran, 3:113) and ordered to call them to an "equitable proposition" of worshipping only God (3:64).Worshipping and loving God is such a blessing that deserves respect regardless of creed.If we gain this consciousness —? unfortunately lacked by many contemporary Muslims —? then we will assess and judge the world not only in terms of our specific creed, church, nation or civilization, but also in the broad vision of theism.This vision will have many implications. For example in February 2003, officials in Brussels have omitted the word God from the European Union' future constitution, along with a reference to Christian values. Turkish officials welcomed this, since they thought that a fully secular Europe would be more lenient to accept the Muslim Turkey. As a Turkish Muslim, and a global theist, I would prefer my government to support the mentioning of God and Christianity and to pursue a rapprochement between the latter and Islam. Turkey' entry into EU will be significant only when it serves that greater good.Indeed, I would prefer to enter an EU which proclaims itself to be "under God" —? as the US gallantly does.Thus, maybe the next great theistic mission will be to help European societies to recognize and praise the Lord that their leaders neglected. At the Parliament of the World' Religions in Barcelona, I saw many Europeans in search of that Lord. Hence, I felt, for them and for Europe, there is still hope.Writer : Mustafa Akyol

Dawkins' 'Delusion' Should Be Free

Richard Dawkins is probably the world's most famous atheist evangelist. In his numerous books, the Oxford zoologist argues that modern science, and in particular the Darwinian theory of evolution, has disproved God. He is a gifted writer, and his recent volume, The God Delusion, has become a global bestseller. Some call him “the Harry Potter of non-fiction.”More recently Dr. Dawkins made the news in Turkey, too, yet not by his arguments. As the Turkish Daily News reported on Nov. 29, following a complaint by a Turkish reader that some passages in the The God Delusion were an assault on "sacred values," an Istanbul prosecutor has opened an official investigation on the book's Turkish version. Its publisher, Erol Karaaslan, is said be “questioned” soon.Probably nothing will come out from that, and Dawkins' book will continue to show up on Turkish bookshelves. And I think it should be so. And here is why.Sleights of HandFollowers of this column might have easily guessed that I would not be among the greatest fans of Dr. Dawkins. Yes, I am not. And the reason is not his atheism, but the way he uses sleights of hand while promoting his views.Just look at the back cover of his book, which mentions, “the grievous harm religion has inflicted on society, from the Crusades to 9/11.” Ah, how impressive… Yet some other writer could also rant about, “the grievous harm atheism has inflicted on society, from Stalin to Pol Pot.” And that writer would be using the same trick with Dr. Dawkins: Cherry-picking the worst representatives of the worldview that you want to bash. It is a way of propaganda, not analysis.Further tricks are hidden in Dr. Dawkins' efforts to “disprove” the existence of God by referring to Darwin's theory of evolution. First of all, Darwinian theory has serious problems. Evolution, I think, is a solid fact, and Darwin has given us important insights on the mechanisms of this colossal process. But whether every step of this process can really be explained through random and purposeless mechanisms as Darwin had suggested is a hotly debated question. The scientists who defend the “Intelligent Design” (ID) theory, such as biochemist Michael Behe, point out to the extremely complex “machinery” that exists in the living cell, whose origins have not been adequately explained by the proponents of Darwinism.Most mainstream scientists disagree with ID and argue that naturalistic explanations for all natural phenomena will be found at some point. Fair enough. But that's a presumption, not a proven conclusion.Darwin ReconsideredYet let's go with mainstream science and accept that Darwinian theory is an adequate explanation of biological origins. But even then Dawkins' atheism is not vindicated. There are in fact many Darwinists who think that this theory is perfectly compatible with belief in God. Some of these scientists actually think that the whole drama of life points to a Creator, who gave nature built-in mechanisms (aka natural laws) that are designed to support the emergence of life. One of the world's prominent paleontologists (scientists who study fossils), Simon Conway Morris, is one such “theistic evolutionist.” I listened to several lectures of him where he teaches at, The University of Cambridge, and the philosophical conclusions he drew from evolution was just the opposite of Dawkins'.Another scientist who not only disagrees with Dawkins but also counters his arguments is Alister McGrath, both a theologian and a molecular biophysicist, who teaches at Oxford University. In The Dawkins Delusion?, the 2007 book he co-authored with his wife, Joanna Collicutt McGrath, he shows why Dawkins' inferences from science in favor of atheism are flawed. According to Publishers Weekly "The McGraths expeditiously plow into the flank of Dawkins's fundamentalist atheism... and run him from the battlefield.” The same comment adds, “The book works partly because they are so much more gracious to Dawkins than Dawkins is to believers.”A Great IdeaAnd I think that is the correct theistic attitude to take vis-à-vis Dawkins and other preachers of atheism. A faith's strength comes from not its fervor to silence critics, but its ability to refute them. If Muslim believers in Turkey are annoyed by Dawkins' book, then they should bring counter-arguments to his theses, instead of asking for censorship by prosecutors.It would be naïve for them to fear that theism would lose from such intellectual encounters with atheism – and especially of the kind promoted by Dr. Dawkins. That would be giving him too much credit.Ah, by the way, fellow TDN columnist Sylvia Tiryaki made a good suggestion on this topic in her piece last Monday. “What we should do at this stage,” she wrote, “is to invite Mr. Dawkins to Turkey to discuss his views here publicly.” Great idea. Let me know if you hear that he decides to come, and, perhaps, if he needs a challenger to debate with. It would be my pleasure to discuss with him who is really deluded about God — and who is not. Writer : Mustafa Akyol

A Farewell to Homo habilis, a Modern Icon

All of us moderns are familiar with the popular from-ape-to-man drawings, which show a series of bipeds starting with an ape and gradually turning into cavemen, and finally into a fine gentleman. You can see these graphs almost everywhere, and advertisers in particular love them. It has become cliché to put a satisfied customer of this or that product at the very end of the evolutionary line. Read the French daily Libération, for example, an ad implies, and become the most sophisticated chap in the from-ape-to-man saga.Of Apes and MenThe gradually evolving “hominids” in these series have names that scientists attributed to them. Usually, the short and hairy ape in the very beginning is Australopithecus, which was not much different from the common chimpanzee in many ways, but which is supposed to have the ability to walk more upright than its relatives. The second hero on the line is Homo habilis, or “handy man,” which is a larger ape, but which, according to some inferences, had the ability to use tools. The third guy is Homo erectus, “the erect man,” which is identical to us modern humans in terms of its body, but only has some unique (and “archaic”) features in its skull. After Homo erectus, generally comes Homo sapiens, in other words, us.These various categories of “human ancestors” look quite convincing and appealing when “reconstructed” and put into a gradual sequence, but when scientific details are examined, it is really not easy to explain how one evolved into the other. One big problem that some paleoanthropologists have noted is the big gap between Homo habilis, which is very much like a big ape, and Homo erectus, which can be considered as a unique, but yet still genuine, human.A 1999 paper published in the academic journal Science by two leaders in the field, Bernard Wood and Mark Collard, actually argued, “Homo habilis should not even be considered a member of Homo, but is rather an australopithecine due to its ape-like skeletal structure.” On the other hand, a 2005 paper in the journal Nature by Robin Dennell and Wil Roebroeks, noted that Homo erectus marks “a radical departure from previous forms… such as Homo habilis.” Homo erectus, these experts said, seems to appear “without an ancestor, without a clear past.”Grandmom and Great-GrandmomNow, the reason why I am telling you all about this is an important discovery made two weeks ago in Kenya by Meave Leakey, the veteran paleontologist. The bones that Mrs. Leakey and her colleagues have found really shakes the standard evolution story, because they prove that Homo habilis and Homo erectus, which are supposed to be two different phases of human evolution, actually coexisted for at least half a million years.“It's the equivalent of finding that your grandmother and great-grandmother were sisters rather than mother-daughter,” said paleontologist Fred Spoor, according to an Associated Press report. The AP news story added that this surprising finding “makes it unlikely that Homo erectus evolved from Homo habilis.” Moreover, it “discredits that iconic illustration of human evolution that begins with a knuckle-dragging ape and ends with a briefcase-carrying man.”In the face of the fall of this “iconic illustration of human evolution,” it would only be fair to recall biologist Jonathan Wells, a critic of Darwinism, and his 2000 book, The Icons of Evolution: Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution Is Wrong. In that much-debated work, Dr. Wells unveiled that most of the standard “evidence” for Darwinian evolution is in fact based on misinterpreted, misrepresented or even faked data. (If you think that Darwinism is demonstrated by the peppered moths of industrial Britain, for example, or that you had fish-like gill slits when you were an embryo, you should read Wells to see how wrong you are.)In his chapter “From Ape to Human: The Ultimate Icon,” Wells also criticized the from-ape-to-man drawings, and revealed that they had very little, if any, factual basis. The recent farewell to Homo habilis, which makes human origins even much more bleak from a Darwinian point of view, vindicates Wells' iconoclasm.Icons Down!Other scientists criticize Darwinism for its failure to explain the origin of the amazingly complex machinery of life. Biochemist Michael Behe's famous book, Darwin's Black Box, for example, tells about the remarkably sophisticated and information-rich structures in the living cell, and shows that the purposeless mechanisms of Darwinian evolution fails to explain their origin. It is like trying to explain the origin of a computer only by referring to the “forces of nature.”But what does that all mean? That there is no evolution? No, I think evolution is a solid fact, established by the fossil record. The nature of 500 million years ago is bewilderingly different from what we have today, and it is pretty clear that there has been an immense change over time. But the idea that this evolution happened only via Darwinian mechanisms – and, especially, in a completely random way – seems to be a philosophical presupposition, not an empirically established fact. There might well be more to the origin of life and man than our modern icons – and their committed preachers – tell us.Writer : Mustafa Akyol