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Even the Muslims are afraid of Islam

In breaking news today, the Turkish Constitutional Court has annulled a parliamentary reform to lax the ban on wearing headscarves for female students attending university, on the basis that the reformation was against the nature of the secular state. Turkey is 98% Muslim, yet the observance of the religion, or the lack of it, doesn’t bring justice to the enormous Islamic heritage which the former capital of the Ottoman Empire upheld for hundreds of years.

Modern Turkey was built on the fundamental principle of the secular state, like other modern democracies such as the UK, US and Singapore. However, the separation of church and state, or in this case, of mosque and state, is taken so seriously in Turkey, that the freedom to practise the religion is suppressed in every part of Turkish life. It seems counterintuitive even, for a modern European democracy to act almost communistic to the very religion its history is so proud of possessing.

Since the creation of modern Turkey, Islam has taken a back seat, to usher Secularism and the rule of Civil law over the Shariah; the former being inspired by the latter. The de-Islamisation of Turks is so successful, that the very mention of the word Islam, could either provoke or discomfort the common Turk. Yet, when it comes to identifying themselves as a citizen of the global Muslim Jemaah (Community), nearly every Turk would display his identification card with Islam as his declared religion, the religion that they were born into, but never raised into.

If today’s Turkish Muslims are so detached from the religion that treated them as sinless at birth, it is a wonder why the majority of them still choose to remain Muslim, albeit in name, emblazoned across a federal card. When discussing this “headscarf” issue to the common Muslim Turkish woman, the idea of covering themselves up with the cloth seemed so outrageous and harmful, that they must subject other women who may choose to observe the religion of their birth, to scrutiny and worse, deprivation of their freedom to observe their faith.

I’ve wondered why does the rest of the world seem so scared of Islam. Perhaps it might be due to the skewed Western media attempts at portraying Islam as a villainous faith with terrorists, beheadings, and violence. Or maybe it might be due to uptight Arab/Muslim sensitivities. Or you know what? Maybe it’s because that they’ve never seen a Muslim.

But when a Muslim is xenophobic of his own faith, honestly, even I can’t fathom the answer to that paradox.

1. Picture by Kerim Okten/EPA, Time website.