“The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers.”
This was the Islamist poem quoted by the mayor of Istanbul, Turkey, in December 1997. Charged with using inflammatory speech, he was ejected from office and sentenced to jail by the Ankara High Court.
Today, that mayor, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is prime minister of Turkey. During a decade in office, he has slowly but inexorably pushed secular Turkey, a member of NATO, toward an unabashedly Islamist future.
As a Muslim, I refuse to give up Islam to the Islamists. So should others who believe in a deeply pluralistic Islam of the sort my Indian-born grandparents taught.
[A COMMENT] Moderate Muslims may be pushing for something their basic religion is intolerant towards. That is: the concept of respectful religious diversity. Throughout Muslim history those not Muslim in Muslim countries have had to endure a second-class existence called “Dhimmitude” which seems to many to be engrained in Islam from the Koran and Islamic Traditions. [USA Today] Read more
