Yesterday we were the guests of a wealthy man by the name of Mehmet Ö., real estate agent and head of the local employer’s organization. We asked him and his friend Hamit Y., a civil engineer, about a lot of things and then came to the question whether a devout follower of faith can be a good democrat. The picture below shows men praying in the big mosque situated near what is though to be Job's cave here in Șanlıurfa.
I have written part of the following already in Germany because it is very much on my mind and I knew that there would be only little time to write here. Can he, the Muslim but also the pious Christian wholeheartedly support an open modern society despite of all its shortcomings in the fields of moral values? Can he see the freedom of the press turned against the sacredness of his God, the minority rights of gays turned against the holiness of marriage, the freedom of a woman to decide about her pregnancy against the eternal promise that every life is given by God alone?
Yes! Say Catholics in Spain, Methodists in the United States, and Pentecostals in Brazil. No! Says a growing number of organized Atheist and Agnostics who run busses with “There is probably no God” on them around the world and believe that peace on earth will only then come when all religious fervor is finally done with.
Yes! Is my vote, too, and I am on my way to tie this Yes to those Yeses that are expressed in the Muslim world.
Our Yes has to be defended, mutually defended. It has to be defended first of all within our own community of believers against those who think that only a strict and pious and lawfully organized society can gain the grace of God and secure its own survival. That of course would mean that religious principles have to be imposed on that part of the population that does not follow them voluntarily.
It has secondly to be defended against those that expect democratic abilities only in people who are in the inner circle of one’s own faith. These prejudices turn Protestants against Catholics, Liberals against Orthodox, Christians against Muslims. Only in the third place it has to be defended against those who do not believe at all.
My expectation in Turkey is to find people who say Yes to a very special kind of self-government: Green Democracy. This Muslim form of what the founding fathers of the American constitution (as those who found the most common expressions for the freedom of mankind) were convinced of should be based on Islam. From there it might then develop new forms of a government of the people, by the people, for the people that are still unknown to us today.
Every nation and every faith has its own way to let people come together and decide about the fate of one’s own community. The Swedish form of social democracy obviously has some deep tribal roots going back to some old Thing-rites of read-bearded Scandinavians. Why shouldn’t a Pashtun Clan in Afghanistan similarly bring in its own tribal rules into democratic procedures?
The people I talked to yesterday know about a lot of Islamic rules that make sure people will not be governed without being asked for their consent. They are obviously sure that a strict obedience to Muslim laws does not exclude anybody from living in a western style democracy. They agree to live peacefully among people with different ethnical and religious backgrounds. They would accept what most of the people in the big capitals of the world have already accepted since many years: that their neighbor next door is not a member of their kinship.
I discussed with them last night, what the New York Times reported about recent developments in Lebanon. They were a little hesitant to concede what a prominent Beirut journalist was quoted saying there: “Bush had a simple idea, that the Arabs could be democratic” and that he opened a door for that idea in the whole region. I will go on to advertise that Bush at least had the nucleus of a good idea and that many people should follow.
Mosque near the cave of Job / Eyyup.
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