Authoritarianism Strikes Turkey

Some say it’s the Turkish Spring, others opine that it’s a protest by the increasingly sidelined secularists who feel that Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s government is not listening to their voice and turning progressively dictatorial.

Turkey has seen a remarkable rise in its fortunes under Tayyip Erdogan’s government. Exports have increased tenfold in the last ten years, credit rating upgrades by Moody’s, JCR and other agencies around the world, stellar GDP growth rates and a growing political influence in Africa and Middle East have all made Turkey, a major regional power.  But all of this came at price. At least this is how the apparently wronged secularists feel. Their major beef with Erdogan’s AKP led government is that under his rule, the country has started to lean towards Islamization thereby abandoning the secular principles on which Mustafa Kemal Pasha founded modern Turkey.

Tayyip Erdogan’s track record in listening to public opinion and media freedom has been less than stellar than his economic and foreign policy wizardry. These protests that are largely a grassroots movement are essentially a disapproval of the Turkish prime minister’s increasingly authoritarian style of government.

The protests started with the Turkish government’s plans to build a shopping mall on the Gezi Park on Turkey’s iconic Taksim Square. The protesters maintained that the park was one of the few remaining green spaces in Istanbul. However, the Turkish government seemed to be unimpressed by these views and pushed ahead with the development. At the start the protestors numbered in just hundreds, but due to the brutal response of Turkish authorities, the numbers ballooned to hundreds of thousands and protests have spread to 67 town and cities including Ankara, Izmir and Konya. Well over 3000 protestors have been injured and so far 2 deaths have been confirmed. The viciousness of the crackdown on protestors has drawn condemnation from both AKP members and international governments. Even the Turkish president Abdullah Gul and Deputy Prime minister Bulant Arinc have spoken against the police brutality on peaceful protestors and urged the authorities to show restraint. But the most important person in this episode, Tayyip Erdogan has bluntly said,

“"I am not going to seek the permission of [the opposition] or a handful of plunderers”. He further said, "If they call someone who has served the people a 'dictator', I have nothing to say”.

It is becoming apparent that Erdogan is succumbing to the disease of self-righteousness and authoritarianism that has plagued the heads of countries emerging out of Arab Spring. For example, according to human rights groups, Morsi led government in Egypt is proving worse than Mubarak’s dictatorship with curbs on media, judiciary and attacks on protestors. It’s a phenomenon that occurs every time leaders are swept into power by a huge public mandate. They begin to think that only they know how to solve the country’s issues since the people have trusted them and thus they bypass all the checks and balances that are kept on the heads of states, turning increasingly paranoid and see enemies everywhere-in short they become dictators.

The protests that started from saving a park have now become a demonstration against Erdogan’s style of government. Turkish media has been silenced on the protests, but it has been the social media that has risen to the occasion. No doubt perturbed by the success of social media in sharing the brutality of government crackdown, Erdogan has condemned it- especially twitter- saying,

 “Now we have a menace that is called Twitter. The best example of lies can be found there. To me, social media is the worst menace to society.”

He also declared social media as a ‘danger to society’. Parallels with Arab dictatorships can be safely drawn.

These protests have cracked open the divisions in the Turkish society, on one side are the rising Muslim conservatives that helped Erdogan secure 50% mandate and on the other hand are the Kemalist secularists that are getting disconcerted with what they term are ‘Islamist’ views on alcohol consumption, morality, women rights, abortion and of course,  intolerance of critical views. Also, they fear that Erdogan will pass laws by the time of 2014 elections that enable more power to be vested in the President and might to try to become President.

Well, these protests have surely dented Erdogan’s bid to become a powerful president- if he tries to become one- and might also effect his election campaign in 2014. How much damage has Erdogan’s AKP sustained? It seems that 2014’s ballot will decide. In the meanwhile, just a humble advise to the Turkish PM: Please listen to your people.

Combining Wahhabism and Capitalism to Destroy Islamic Heritage

The current controversy of the potential Saudi demolition of Riyad-Al-Jannah and the graves of Islamic Caliphs Abu Bakar and Omar is one in a long line of projects that the world’s biggest exporter of crude oil has undertaken to erase Islamic Heritage sites. The Saudi obsession with everything concrete and steel is a cause of concern for Muslims around the world. The construction of enormous towers and skyscrapers including the ghastly Mecca Clock Tower tell us something about the future plans of the Saudis.

A 2011 report by The Independent  paper titled “Mecca for the rich: Islam's holiest site 'turning into Vegas” written by Jerome Taylor (who wrote the recent story about the planned Saudi destruction of Riyad-Al-Jannah etc), says that the Saudis are planning to turn Mecca into a playground for the rich, by building sky scrapers and luxury hotels that cater for the rich Muslims coming from all over the world. The same newspaper reported back in April 2006 about the Saudi construction rampage in Islam’s holiest sites.

Systematic destruction of the holy sites and building hotels and resorts is being backed by the blessings of its religious clerics, who endorse the destruction of the holy sites because of their (baseless) fear that idolatry might creep into Muslim ranks.  Wahhabism, which is an extreme and strict form of Islam that denounces the reverence of any holy site, is the official religion in Saudi Arabia. It is worth noting that the same brand of Islam is practiced by the Taliban who have been involved in the destruction of Bamyan Buddhas and the attack on the legendary Sufi Rehman Baba’s shrine  in Peshawar. However, the Wahabbi Kingdom seems to be on something more than destroying shrines, graves and imposing its own brand of Islam.

Even a cursory search reveals that the Saudis are embarking on a real estate and renewable energy projects as they plan for the future post 2030 when it is feared that the supply of oil, which generates 86% of the kingdom’s revenue, might start to dwindle thus forcing the Saudis to import additional oil from other countries. The Economist states that the rapid increase in demand for oil inside Saudi Arabia has increased by 37% and 65% of its electricity is generated by the oil that it produces. For now, increase in oil price has caused the wealth of Saudis to soar, quite literally, and their construction of the Kingdom Tower is a testament to the money flooding in.

But the increase in oil consumption, the increasing American reliance on Shale Gas , the expectation that Canada and Mexico might become the new middle east  and the awareness of  the fact that oil reserves would not last forever has led Saudi Arabia to consider alternate forms of revenue generation which include real estate, Hajj ( obviously),banking sector and other renewable forms of energy. Khalid Al Falih, the President and CEO of Saudi Aramco, reflects the future strategy of the Saudis when he says that Saudi Aramco wants to transform from an oil& gas company to a ‘global energy and chemicals enterprise’. Apart from energy sources, the real estate sector is booming thanks to the swelling population and the increase in tours by the increasingly affluent middle-class of the Muslim world.

So how does the new course of Saudi economy relate to destruction of Islam’s holy sites? In this regard, my hypothesis is that the Saudis under the valid pretext of real state expansion are destroying the holy sites by invoking the tenets of Wahhabism but on the other hand, in order to clear the way for capitalist expansion projects and to keep up with the rest of the world they are back tracking on the Wahabi doctrine which vehemently opposes all forms of modernization.  The real estate development and other modernization projects can be undertaken anywhere in the kingdom but it seems that the Wahabbi clerics are capitalizing on this opportunity to erase the early history of Islam and increase their hold on the religion. Few countries have dared to raise voice against this heinous crime of the destruction of Islamic holy sites, fearing diplomatic repercussions that might arise. Yet we Pakistanis Muslims scream over the depiction of the Prophet (PBHUH) in the western media, burn buildings, kill people and block websites in protests but do not raise a single voice when the house of Hazrat Khadija (R.A) is turned into a public toilet block and when the Saudi Islamic affairs ministry declares that “the green dome (of Masjid Nabwi) shall be demolished and the three graves flattened in the Prophet's Masjid".

The time to raise voice against this crime of titanic proportions is now!

Does 'Innocence of Muslims' really deserve our attention?

So here we are again, after blasphemous cartoons, burning Qurans now we have an insulting film.  Many have been injured, some killed, buildings, restaurants, tires, motor cycles and buses have been burned, websites have been blocked, and still the issue is hot.

Up until now, I was reluctant to see the trailer of the movie because frankly I was not interested. I have much bigger issues in life then to waste my time watching trailers of third class movies, which also happen to insult some other religions. But then after seeing and reading about all the violence I decided to give it a go and saw it on YouTube.

My fellow readers, if I believe that Sam Bacile (the producer of Innocence of the Muslims, whose real name is alleged to be Nakoula Basseley Nakoula) says that he financed the project with 5 million dollars then I would also believe that King Kong really did climb the Empire State building. The trailer showed that this movie is a hideous and revolting insult to the art of movie making. Not only that one can clearly see that at some parts it is horrendously dubbed, especially where the name Muhammad comes in. The acting is other worldly bad and the dialogues are offensive. Remember, this movie is supposed to be satirical, but if this was satire then one might as well call Nazi propaganda movies like The Eternal Jew as thoughtful and considerate works of art. This is a crude movie that does not even require big financing, even I can finance this movie with my $10 per hour part time cash in hand job. But if it is, so crude, so childish and so amateurish, then why is it responsible for worldwide violence.

One might blame the attitude of the Muslims; some are calling the Muslims as immature and contend that that this movie is not enough to have sparked worldwide outrage and violent protests. For hardliners in USA and Israel it is a dream reaction, they can now confidently say that, look this is why we are against Islam, it’s a violent religion.

Its critics point out that there is a thin line between good-natured satire and malicious satire, others say that movies like this should be banned because freedom of expression doesn’t meaning hurting the religious beliefs of others. Hardliners from the Muslim camp, point to a sinister conspiracy by the Jews and Americans.

I find some valid points from both the arguments, I believe that killing people and burning cars and buildings in response to a sub-mental dialogued movie is absolutely nonsensical and this movie should have been ignored and I also believe that there should be line drawn when it comes to satire because this movie was not what you would call satire. When somebody knows that this sort of movie will hurt the feelings of Muslims in the same way, a satire about concentration camps will hurt Jews then why do it?

Turns out that the consultant for the movie, Steve Klein did know about the outcome of this whole enterprise. His life mission it seems is to protect his family, especially his granddaughter from ’these monsters’ (referring to Muslims).

So we have a bunch of Islamophobes out there that made a crude anti-Islam movie, but then there are lots of websites, books, documentaries, even seminars, that purport to be anti-Islamic, but should we do violent protests every day just because they insult our religion?  Surely, there can be another, more mature way to register a protest. Why hasn’t any American Muslim sued Nakoula or Steve Klein for being indirectly responsible for the deaths of American citizens in Libya? Or doesn’t anybody from the cast sue the filmmakers for duping them?  Surely, there are ways if one is willing to look.

In my view the only the entities who would benefit from such a situation (and they have always benefited from such situations) are the hardliners from both parties. Its them hardliners who are having a field day and hyping up the issue, which is not worth even a penny.  The public property that we end up burning happens to be our property not Nakoula or Klein’s.  With such actions, we only favor the cause of the extremists and nothing else.

It’s high time that we show some maturity. If one is offended by the movie then don’t watch it (hardly 10 people watched it in USA but which, thanks to the Egyptian cleric, has now been watched by millions), ignore it and the agitators would eventually fade away. Such violence only reveals insecurities of own beliefs rather than being an expression of our strong belief and the love of the Prophet (PBUH).