The Scarf's Scrap

By Mohammed Wajihuddin - The Times of India - India
Sunday, December 23, 2007

(...) After the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lifted the ban on headscarves in universities (a ban on wearing scarves in government offices continues), Istanbul’s secular elite sensed an impending danger: had Islamism entered their homes?

Last week, celebrated Turkish pianist and composer Fazil Say triggered a storm when, in an interview to the German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung, he admitted, “The Islamists have won. We are 30 per cent while they are about 70 per cent. I am thinking about moving elsewhere.”

As one of the ambassadors of the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue 2008, Fazil Say echoed the fears of secular friends when he lamented: “All the ministers’ wives wear the headscarf.”

Say may be exaggerating but the fact is that the wives of both President Abdullah Gül and AKP’s boss, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan wear headscarves.

The secularists have feared the return of this piece of cloth ever since Erdogan’s AKP was returned to power in the July election with a landslide victory. The main opposition, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), founded by Turkey’s great moderniser Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who abolished the Caliphate, won just 21 per cent of the vote.

(...)

But others in Istanbul dismiss these misgivings as unfounded.

“The headscarf is just about freedom of choice. The government is not pandering to the Islamists,” defends Erkam Tufan Aytav of the Journalists and Writers Foundation, a wing of the Movement of Volunteers.

The Movement, an initiative started in the 1960s by scholar Fethullah Gülen, has dozens of educational and cultural branches in over 120 countries.

To back their argument, Aytav and his friends in the Movement cite examples from institutions (academic, television, business) where both scarved and non-scarved women work side by side.

Yes, there are many scarves on the mosque-dotted streets of Istanbul but there are jeans and skirts and dreadlocks too. Just as the mellifluous azaans from the high minarets have not silenced the stirrings of the country’s secular temperament the sartorial changes too, say optimists, will meld into rather than swamp lifestyles.

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Mumbai’s Islamic scholar Zeenat Shuakat Ali, who was part of our delegation, was elated at the moderate Islam practised in Turkey.

“You must compare Turkey with Saudi Arabia. One glows in the benign influence of Sufism while the other staggers under the oppressive monarchy sanctioned by the clergy,” says Ali, who sobbed openly at Rumi’s decorated grave while saying her fateha (prayer in tribute).

Outside Istanbul’s most famous landmark, the massive 17th-century Blue Mosque built by Ottoman king Sultan Ahmet, a tiny cafe serves delicious kebab and Turkish chai (black tea in small glasses).

Two middle-aged men play chess at a corner table even as the young wife of the restaurateur takes the orders. Uninhibited by the stream of strangers, the jean-clad Muslim woman works hard, adding to the galloping economy of a country whose GDP has touched 7.6%.

It is on the legs of women such as this that Turkey will hopefully stride into the European Union.

[Picture from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultan_Ahmed_Mosque]

[Visit Fethullah Gülen's website http://en.fgulen.com/component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1/].