(This is Chapter 15 from Mr. Prabhakaranâ€™s book, An Indian Goes Around the World â€“ I: Capitalism Comes to Maoâ€™s Mausoleum, which we have been serializing in this space. Chapter 16, â€œMonuments in Mexico City that Pose Challenge to the U.S.,â€ will be published next week. Read the series every Monday. â€“ Editor)

I spent the last two weeks of November 2007, traveling around Turkey. I was part of a tour group from the United States. Apart from affording me an opportunity to learn a lot more about Turkey, the tour helped me reaffirm that a country can be Islamic without being Islamist and that Islam and democracy can function side by side, if only the leaders and the led have the will for it.

Calling Turkey Islamic may sound as odd as calling India Hindu, for this simple reason: Both countries are firm in their commitment to secularism and that commitment has been enshrined in their constitutions. I am calling Turkey Islamic partly because its population is overwhelmingly Muslim, most of them religious; and mainly to highlight how different it is from an Islamist country like Saudi Arabia.

Turkey is 98 percent Muslim. It is also 100 percent democratic.* Its adherence to the two basic tenets of democracy â€“ the separation of church and state; and equality before the law and equal protection of all by the law â€“ is as steadfast as in any democracy in the world. Ever since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey and its first president, decided to put the country on a democratic path, in 1923, it has been distancing itself even from symbols and symbolisms one associates with Islam. Its ban on women wearing scarves in government offices and state-run institutions is a case in point.

During the two weeks I spent in Turkey, I could count on my fingertips the number of women I saw wearing hijab or abaya. And the burqa, that stifling head-to-toe shroud the Taliban-type Islamist extremists force their women to wear? Not one. It only shows that, left to themselves, Muslim women would wear what they feel comfortable in. Most of the women that I saw wore Western-style dresses. That was the case with men, too. And men wearing the type of beard that has been touted by Islamist fundamentalists as a religious requirement were a rarity. When I mentioned to a Turkish friend in Istanbul that one could see more hijabs and abayas in India, where only 14 percent of the population is Muslim, this is what he said (I am paraphrasing it):

The Five Pillars of Islam

The Five Pillars of Islam â€“ Shahadah (belief in the oneness of God and in Muhammad as His Prophet; Salah (praying five times a day); Zakah (alms giving to the needy); Sawm (fasting during the month of Ramadan); and Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) â€“ adherence to which makes a person a true Muslim, say nothing about dresses and beards. Even of those five, absolute adherence is demanded only to the first one. The other four are flexible, with individual circumstances allowing considerable latitude. Rules and regulations on dress and physical appearance, and the systematic relegation of women to an inferior status, have their origins in the interpretation of the Koran, over centuries, by mullahs. The more fanatical, self-righteous and self-serving the interpreter, the more stringent the rules and regulations.

With a smile on his face, my friend concluded: â€œWe Turks are good Muslims. Most of us, at least. But we keep our faith strictly between us and Allah. We donâ€™t force it down peopleâ€™s throats as they do in Saudi Arabia and many other Arab countries.â€ Pointing to the famous Sultanahmet Mosque, he added, â€œGo inside on any Friday. You will see the place packed with religious Turks.â€

An otherwise unremarkable experience I had during my two-week tour of Turkey drove home to me the difference between the lifestyle of women in Turkey and of those in Saudi Arabia.

Lifestyle of Turkish Women

It was 7 a.m., November 27. We had arrived in Istanbul, the largest and most cosmopolitan city in Turkey, the previous evening. The conducted tour of the city was to begin at 9 a.m. I decided to spend the two hours I had at my disposal exploring the neighborhood on my own. There was another reason for me to get out of the hotel that early: I was anxious to make a phone call to my niece living in Pune, India, who had got married the day before. And I wanted to do it using a pre-paid phone card and a public telephone. Using the hotel phone would cost me a lot more. I had tried to call my niece the previous day, just before the wedding ceremony, but the call did not go through.

With the phone card in hand, I started walking, looking for a pay phone. The receptionist at the hotel had told me that it was â€œaround the corner.â€ Maybe I missed the corner he was referring to. I kept walking. But for the few sanitation workers and early office-goers, the street was empty. What a contrast! The same street had been packed with shoppers and window-shoppers the previous evening. Looking at the good-looking men and women, most of them in fashionable clothes, I had said to my friends in the tour group, â€œThis could as well be a busy street in any European city. Can you tell the difference?â€ To which Betty Lou, from Waite Park, Minnesota, had responded, â€œThatâ€™s exactly what I have been thinking, too.â€

Though anxious to make the phone call, I was thoroughly enjoying the walk. After five minutes or so, I approached a woman, maybe in her twenties, who was walking in the same direction. She was wearing an overcoat (the weather was around 40 degrees, Fahrenheit). Because it was unbuttoned, I could see that she had a skirt and a jacket on underneath. She greeted me with a broad smile and â€œGunaydin [Good Morning].â€ I returned the greeting in kind, which made her smile broader. (I had, by then, learned from our tour guide how to say a few words â€“ like hello, good morning, good evening and good night â€“ in Turkish.)

She took off her ear-piece â€“ she was listening to music from an iPod â€“ and said something in Turkish, which I took to mean, â€œWhat can I do for you?â€

The response I gave, in English, might not have made any sense to her. But with the phone card I had in one hand and the signs I made with both hands, there was no mistaking what I was looking for. She gestured to me to accompany her.

We walked side by side, close to each other, like two friends. During the 10 minutes we were together, I tried to have a conversation with her. I would say something in English and she would respond in Turkish. I cursed myself for not having learned a few more Turkish words before I started the tour. Though she spoke only a few words of English, she was able to convey to me what she did for a living and at what time she had to be at work. She said â€œoffice secretaryâ€ and â€œeight oâ€™ clockâ€ in English.

When we reached a small building, with a row of pay phones in front, I told her, â€œThank you.â€ No, she was not ready to leave me as yet. She took the phone card from me, contacted the operator at the telephone exchange and said something, with the word â€œinternationalâ€ in it. Then she took from me the phone number in India I wanted to call and pressed all the numbers herself. I realized why my call the previous day did not go through. Once she got through to India, she handed me the phone, shook hands with me and said â€œgoodbye.â€

The words that came out of my mouth did not adequately express the depth of my gratitude for her. For two reasons: my niece had already started speaking at the other end of the phone; and I was too overwhelmed by this total strangerâ€™s hospitality and enthusiasm to help.

The first thought that came to mind during my walk back to the hotel was: â€œWhat punishment would she have received from the authorities, if we were in Saudi Arabia and she was found walking with an â€˜infidelâ€™ like me?â€

There was a reason why I thought about Saudi Arabia in particular. The sickening way the Saudi legal system treated a 19-year-old rape victim had been very much in the news at that time. She was gang-raped by seven men. As though the pain, indignity, humiliation, and condemnation by Islamist extremists, which the woman suffered as a result of being gang-raped, were not enough, the highest legal entity in Saudi Arabia sentenced her to 200 lashes and six months in prison. What was her crime? She was found alone with a man who was not related to her.

The Saudi justice ministry issued a statement, on November 24, justifying the sentence. The statement, as reported by Reuters, said: â€œWe reiterate that judicial rulings in this virtuous country â€¦ are based on Godâ€™s book (the Koran) and the traditions of his Prophet (Mohammad) and that no ruling is issued without being based on evidenceâ€¦.â€

Whoever said that only the Saudi interpretation of the Koran and of the traditions of the Prophet is correct? Even going by the literal meaning of what is said in the Koran, only â€œThe woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornicationâ€ are to be punished, and that too only â€œwith 100 stripes.â€ The clerics on the Supreme Judicial Council, which is the highest legal entity in Saudi Arabia, decided to outsmart the Prophet by increasing the punishment to 200 stripes and six months in prison. What are we to conclude from this? That a man and a woman can be together only to commit adultery or engage in fornication? That women are menâ€™s property? That they are incapable of taking care of themselves?

Civilized people around the world were outraged by the news. The fact that the Saudi king, in the wake of the outrage, pardoned the rape victim does not make the Saudi legal system less disgusting. The victim would be living with the stigma of this Saudi-manufactured scandal for the rest of her life. Press reports said that she had already gone into hiding, fearing punishment from her own relatives. The punishment would be death. They call it â€œhonor killingâ€ and they find justification for that also in their twisted interpretation of the Koran.

Abominable Saudi Practices

I can think of three reasons why the Saudi ruling clique is able to get away with their abominable practices. One, it can afford to ignore world criticism as long as Saudi Arabia is the worldâ€™s largest producer of oil and the world hasnâ€™t yet found alternative sources of energy to replace oil. Two, being the custodian of Islamâ€™s two holiest places, its interpretation of the Koran gets accepted as authentic by the gullible among Muslim believers. Three, the leader of the free world, the U.S., which never tires of preaching the importance of freedom and democracy to the rest of the world, has always been buddy-buddy with Saudi Arabia, in spite of its being one of the most authoritarian and undemocratic countries in the world. The buddy-buddy relationship will continue as long as big business in America needs Saudi oil to survive.

No wonder the Bush administration reacted to the Saudi verdict in the rape case (before the woman was pardoned) the way it did. â€œThis is a part of a judicial procedure overseas in the court of a sovereign country,â€ State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, on November 19, 2007. â€œThat said, most would find this relatively astonishing that something like this happens.â€ Mark it: The U.S. State Department found the verdict only â€œrelatively astonishing.â€

President Bush outdid the State Department when he said at his press conference, on December 4: â€œMy first thoughts were these. What happens if this happened to my daughter? How would I react? And I would have been â€“ I would have been â€“ Iâ€™d had â€“ I would have been very emotional, of course. Iâ€™d have been angry at those who committed the crime. And I would be angry at the state that didnâ€™t support the victim.â€

Bah! What a profound observation! Rape victims around the world are going to find the U.S. presidentâ€™s words very soothing.

Here is what well-wishers, like me, of Saudi Arabia have to say to the progressive-minded among the Saudis: Donâ€™t expect the leader of the free world to start a campaign to bring democracy to your country. The leader has learned from the killing fields of Iraq what high school children learn in their classrooms â€“ that democracy cannot be imposed on a society from outside; it has to be built from within. The first step toward building it, in your case, is keeping the clerics in check; telling them to stop playing God. After all, Arabic is your mother tongue. Which means that you have access to the original version of the Koran. You donâ€™t need the interpretation of a medieval-minded mullah to understand it.

The model for your country should be Turkey. You should do for your country what the Young Turks did for theirs in the 1920s. Who knows, one of you may emerge as the Kemal Ataturk of Saudi Arabia.

________

*Unfortunately, Islamic fundamentalism has been making steady inroads on Turkish politics, lately, undermining the countryâ€™s democratic tradition.

Photo 1:

The Sultan Ahmet Mosque, named after the Ottoman emperor who built it between 1609 and 1616, in Istanbul, Turkey. It is better known as the Blue Mosque, for the blue tiles that adorn its interior walls. The mosque is one of the main tourist attractions in Istanbul.

The author, in front of a wooden replica of the legendary Trojan Horse, which Homer described in his masterpiece the Odyssey. This 30-foot-tall modern-day Trojan Horse, created by Turkish artisan Izzet Senemoglu, is in the historical city of Troy, in the Canakkale region of Turkey. Several decades ago, a team of Turkish archaeologists, excavating in the area, uncovered a large structure made of wooden planks, presumed to be the remains of the legendary Trojan Horse. In 1996, the Turkish government declared the area a national historical park. The UNESCO has since included the park in its World Heritage Sites List. The park is now a big tourist draw.

(To be continued)

(M.P. Prabhakaran can be reached by email at prabha@eastwestinquirer.com)

14) Garbage dumps and traffic jams in the Silicon Valley of India

(M.P. Prabhakaran can be reached by email at prabha@eastwestinquirer.com)

12
A morning walk by the Mekong; A restaurant named after my niece

Chapter: 11:
A jacket and a bride for the price of one: Shopping on Nanjing Road (Travel with MP Prabhakaran)

10:
How a Shanghai neighborhood got an Indian name

9:
Capitalist celebrations in Communist China â€“ on May Day (Travel with MP Prabhakaran

8) Capitalism Comes to Maoâ€™s Mausoleum â€“ But in Its Crude Form

7) Picture of a cow on Beijing billboard confuses a Hindu (Travel with MP Prabhakaran)

6) Yoga on Copacabana, conducted by a Brazilian beauty (Travel with MP Prabhakaran)

5
Hunchback and sugar loaf: Two tourist attractions in Rio de Janeiro

4)
How Portugal failed to colonize Calicut: Chat with a Brazilian

3) Brahma and Laxmi reincarnate in Brazil? (Travel with M.P. Prabhakaran)

2) Eva Peronâ€™s tomb is too small for her ego (Travel with M.P. Prabhakaran)

1) My Two Embarrassing Moments in Buenos Aires (Capitalism Comes to Maoâ€™s Mausoleum-1: M. P. Prabhakaran)
http://dlatimes.com/article.php?id=40709

(about the author) An Indian Goes Around the World â€“ I (Capitalism Comes to Maoâ€™s Mausoleum)http://dlatimes.com/article.php?id=40126

What makes Islamic Turkey different from Islamist Saudi Arabia (Travel wth MP Prabhakaran)