Laicism vs the fanatics

IT’s hard to understand how a government in the XXI century is not based in laicism (a strict separation between matters of State and religion) and wants to impose morals to the masses.
But this is happening, to a bigger or lesser degree, in countries like Turkey, Egypt or Indonesia. Not by coincidence, in all the mentioned countries the prevalent religion is Islam.
It was Aldous Huxley who postulated that “defined in psychological terms, a fanatic is a man who consciously over-compensates a secret doubt.” In many case, the zealots couldn’t be the least bit concerned about religious righteousness. They use religion as a pretext to keep obsolete power structures that rule the governance of the country and especially of the family. In their retrograde perspective, to downgrade women’s condition (sometimes by enslaving them) is very convenient. Consequently they teach misogyny, xenophobia and ignorance (Can you teach ignorance? Yes you can) to their sons, with destructive – here I could use ‘bombastic’ - effects.
What’s happening in Turkey illustrates the process mentioned above. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government is trying to rework the constitution in order to strengthen the powers of the presidency, allowing him to shift into that role after elections in August 2014. His Islamic-rooted party’s government passed new restrictions on alcohol and tried to limit women’s access to abortion. He uses an authoritarian and meddlesome style and is wiling to leave a mark similar to that of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. Many would say that he has delusions of grandeur.
What started the protests three weeks ago was the public’s opposition to plans to develop Istanbul’s Gezi Park. The brutal crackdown on peaceful environmental activists opened the way to a wider protest. Istanbul is a cosmopolitan city and many educated Turks simply claim the right to maintain the freedoms they currently enjoy. “I don’t want to be told what time I should go to bed,” one of the protesters told an international TV channel. These claims were met with water cannons and the police turned to force to disperse thousands gathered in Taksim Square. Four people were killed during the anti-government protests and Erdogan dubbed demonstrators as “terrorists and bums.”

After weeks of confrontation with police, Turkish protesters showed immense dignity (comparable to Beijing’s ‘Tank Man’) by using a new form of resistance: they are standing silently in passive defiance against Erdogan’s authority.
It is yet to be seen where this standoff will lead, but the fact is that politicians like the Turkish Prime Minister could destabilize huge countries.
In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is gaining ground and may be fueling an explosive situation. Closer to us, the immense Indonesian archipelago, where all the major religions in the world coexisted peacefully - despite the fact that 86.1 percent of the 251 million Indonesians are Muslim - is now showing signs of turning to Muslim orthodoxy. In Burma, the Buddhist majority is slaughtering Muslims and both the government and Aung San Suu Kyi turn a blind eye.
And who better than Salman Rushdie, sentenced to death by the Ayatollah Khomeini for his thoughts, to explain what is underlying and breeding in all these countries? “Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought havoc among mere mixed-up human beings,” he wrote.
(By PB, in MDT)