Given the economy, you may not be planning any trips this summer or anytime soon. But who would not like to take a tour of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul? No problem, you can do it for free. Just go to this website (http://www.3dmekanlar.com/topkapi_palace.htm), download and start clicking away. And when you exhaust that, check out a number of major Islamic sites that are yours for digital pleasure.
President Obama speaking in Turkey, photograph by Charles Dharapak/AP
by Munir Jiwa, San Francisco Chronicle, Tuesday, April 7, 2009
President Obama has been roundly criticized for his approach thus far to the Muslim world, so it will be interesting to see how the Muslim world receives the words he delivered in Turkey on Monday.
Some critics see Obama’s promise to open a dialogue with the Muslim world as being soft on terrorism. Others wonder why the president would waste time on words, when, they say, now is the time for policies. Others (including Alaa Al Aswany, an Egyptian whose op-ed, “Why the Muslim World Can’t Hear Obama,” was published in February in the New York Times) point to the disappointment felt by Egyptians and others in the Muslim world that President Obama did not take a stand against Israel’s war on Gaza. The criticisms are variations on a theme: Actions speak louder than words.
Many are asking: Will his words matter? And, how might the world benefit now from his words to the Muslim world?
The operative word is “now.” Actions may speak louder than words, but proverbial wisdom also has it that you can’t get there from here. In this case, we can’t get to effective action without words. Continue reading Will Obama’s words matter to the Muslim world?
Cyberspace is increasingly crowded with videos, the virtual youtubization of the internet. This is especially the case for documentaries. Youtube has a wide range of videos on Islam, from professional films to homemade khutbas and television reruns. The diversity of Muslim practice is available, as is the worse Islamophobia, with just a click of the mouse and a wifi point. This ease of access is also convenient for professors, who can often find relevant video excerpts to power point into their lectures. Of the numerous videos out there, here is one well worth watching: Sufi Soul – The Mystic Music of Islam, a 50-minute film directed by Simon Broughton for Channel 4 in the U.K. To watch it, click here.
Here is a brief description of the film: Continue reading Sufi Soul
The sultan of the Ottoman Empire going to mosque the day after the constitution was announced.
Social Freedom for Turkish Women
by Mary Mills Patrick.
[The following excerpt is from “The Emancipation of Mohammedan Women,†published in the National Geographic Magazine, January 1909 (Volume XX, No. 1, p.p. 61-62).]
Their past experience has been slowly preparing the Turkish women for the larger opportunities that the constitution gives them. On the morning of the 24th of July all classes of the Turkish Empire entered into a new life, but the greatest change of all took place in the harems. Women everywhere threw off their veils. A prominent woman in Salonica openly assisted her husband in the political celebration.
One woman went so far as to have her picture published in a Paris paper. At this the members of the Reactionary party rose up in common protest and said, “If this be the result of freedom, that our women display their faces to the public with such brazen immodesty, we do not wish a constitution.â€
The turkish women are true patriots, and when they saw that the question of freedom for women appeared to have such deep significance to the nation, not only from a political and social, but also from a moral point of view, they said with one accord, “Of what consequence is so small a matter as the veil! We will continue to wear our veils, and will seek the larger opportunities that the new constitution gives us.†Turkish women everywhere have accordingly resumed their veils; but it is a very different thing to wear a veil voluntarily from being obliged to do so, and eventually they will probably appear in the streets without them.
The moral freedom that the revolution has brought the Turkish women is showing itself in many different lines. The freedom of the press has been offered to women. They are writing for the papers openly and without fear of censorship, and their voices are being heard in regard to the affairs of the nation.
Mary Mills Patrick was President of the American College for Girls at Constantinople.
Conference: “Democracy, Islam, and Secularism: Turkey in Comparative
Perspective”
Date: March 6-7, 2009
Location: International Affairs Building 1501, Columbia University
Turkey, as a Muslim-majority country, is the only member of NATO and only
candidate member of the European Union. Assertive secularism, multiparty
democracy, and military interventions are other puzzling aspects of Turkish
politics. With its rising activism in the Middle East, Caucasus, and Central
Asia, Turkey has also become an influential actor in world politics. This
conference aims to present an integrated picture of Turkey by bringing
together comparative perspectives on its past, present, and future, and
delving into such issues as the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, secularism,
religion, democracy, civil-military relations, and the European Union
membership. Continue reading Democracy, Islam, and Secularism: Turkey
Nazende al (Flattering Red) from ‘The Book of Tulips’ ca 1725
by Anna Pavord
But as in any love affair, after the initial coup de foudre you want to learn more about the object of your passion. The tulip does not disappoint. Its background is full of more mysteries, dramas, dilemmas, disasters and triumphs than any besotted aficionado could reasonably expected. In the wild, it is an Eastern flower, growing along a corridor which stretches either side of the line of latitude 40 degrees north. The line extends from Ankara in Turkey eastwards through Jerevan and Baku to Turkmenistan, then on past Bukhara, Samarkand and Tashkent to the mountains of the Pamir-Alai, which, with neighbouring Tien Shan is the hotbed of the tulip family.
As far as western Europe is concerned, the tulip’s story began in Turkey, from where in the mid-sixteenth century, European travellers brought back news of the brilliant and until then unknown lils rouges, so prized by the Turks. In fact they were not lilies at all but tulips. In April 1559, the Zürich physician and botanist Conrad Gesner saw the tulip flowering for the first time in the splendid garden made by Johannis Heinrich Herwart of Augsburg, Bavaria. He described its gleaming red petals and its sensuous scent in a book published two years later, the first known report of the flower growing in western Europe. The tulip, wrote Gesner, had ‘sprung from a seed which had come from Constantinople or as others say from Cappadocia.’ From that flower and from its wild cousins, gathered over the next 300 years from the steppes of Siberia, from Afghanistan, Chitral, Beirut and the Marmaris peninsula, from Isfahan, the Crimea and the Caucasus, came the cultivars which have been grown in gardens ever since. More than 5,500 different tulips are listed in the International Register published regularly since 1929 by the Royal General Bulbgrowers’ Association of the Netherlands. Continue reading The flower that made men mad
“Mustafa,†a documentary about Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey’s founder, is filmed in Istanbul.
Turkey’s Hero, Behind the Bronze Veneer
By SABRINA TAVERNISE, Istanbul Journal, The New York Times, November 13, 2008
ISTANBUL — After nearly a century of looking serious, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, has started to smile.
Ataturk — a war-hero-turned-statesman who defended Turkey during the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire — is the subject of what is perhaps the world’s longest personality cult.
His portrait hangs in every tea shop, government office and classroom. Insulting his memory is a crime under Turkish law. And every Nov. 10, Turkey observes a moment of silence to commemorate his death in 1938.
But the ironclad official version might be softening. Last month a documentary on Ataturk was released that looks at his human side. That might not sound like much, but in a country where official history is kept under lock and key, the film, “Mustafa,†was a brave endeavor. Continue reading Turkey’s Hero, Behind the Bronze Veneer
Fatwa Gives Women the Right to Hit Husbands
Riyadh, Asharq Al-Awsat – A fatwa originating from Turkey has given women the right to strike their husbands in cases of self-defense.
Sheikh Mohsen al Obeikan, an adviser to the Saudi Ministry of Justice and a member of the Saudi Shura Council agreed with some Islamic scholars in Turkey and Egypt in this regard. “This [issue] is acknowledged by Islamic jurists and it has roots in Islamic Shariah, the Quran and the Hadith [Prophetic traditions],†said the Sheikh. He referred to the following excerpts of the Quran: ‘The recompense for an injury is an injury equal thereto (in degree),’ [Surat Ashoura: 40] and ‘…whoever then acts aggressively against you, inflict injury on him according to the injury he has inflicted on you…’ [Surat al Baqara: 194] Continue reading A Fatwa that Hits Back