Selected Books
Turkey in Europe & Europe in Turkey
Turgut Özal

Secularism and Religion

"The modern Turkish sense of Islamic History is of an unterminated process, with themselves as active participants."
Wilfred C. Smith

One of the fundamental indicators of Turkey's European character is that we have a secular society. Certain opponents of Turkey's membership of the EC claim that our secularism has recently suffered some reverses, so I must clarify the situation.

Those who allege that Turkey might be returning to the past in this matter have perhaps been struck by the revival in religious practices among Turkish workers in western Europe. These workers, who during the years 1960-70 seemed to have left their religion at home, showed a more marked allegiance to it during the eighties. But would it not be more appropriate to attribute this change to the environment in which they have been living? Their changed attitude to religion appears to me to be primarily a defence mechanism against the discriminatory pressures which they were experiencing.

In the past, we have been accused both by some Europeans and by Orthodox Muslims of rejecting Islam in the name of secularism or westernizing reforms. Count Carlo Sforza, former Italian Foreign Minister,1oo having praised in an article 'the marvelous native gifts of Kemal (Atatürk) as military leader' and 'his statesmanship in Turkish awakening', makes the criticism that `he has not only discarded, but ridiculed all the Islamic traditions from which his people had for centuries drawn the best of its strength'. Indeed, the indictment voiced by observers such as Toynbee in the West is that in the (reform) process they (the Turks) are losing their own soul.'o1 Was it not true that the Turks became great as Muslims, and that their greatness was dedicated to the cause of Islam, which they adopted with fervour and served with piety and skill?

On the other hand, there has recently been anxiety in the West over signs of religious revival in Turkey. An influential newspaper in France, which published a series of articles on Islam and Turkey, carried an article entitled `Twilight of Kemalism' which included a table containing a list of legislative acts in favour of 're-islamization' of the country.l03 We have been hearing these allegations more frequently following our application for EC membership. We suspect that the circles opposing Turkey's entry into the Community foster fanatical religious activities among Turks both in their own countries and in Turkey under the pretext of religious freedom, while at the same time criticizing Turkey for renouncing secularism.

Perhaps, more seriously, some in the West earnestly object to the membership of a country whose religion is Islam. Apparently the religious aspect of Turkish membership, which did not occur to them at the time of the signing of the Ankara Agreement in 1963, became a cause for concern when our entry seemed probable at the time of our application. Or it may be that religion is gaining ground in Europe not only for its own sake but also as the social cement of unity, while nationalism has been receding in the process of European integration. Consequently, secularism might seem to some to be inadequate to justify the Turkish quest for integration into Europe.

The present Western perception of Islam is negatively influenced by three facts. Firstly, no Muslim country is as materially developed as the West. The backwardness of Muslim countries is readily explained as due to the fanaticism of Islam. Secondly, the resort to terrorist activities by the disadvantaged side in the Israeli-Arab conflict in the Middle East is attributed to the militarism of Islam. Lastly, the politico-religious attempts to restore the original glory of Islam in contemporary conditions are considered as fundamentalism which is, in reality, an extreme form of fanaticism, incompatible with the modern values such as democracy and respect for human rights, let alone progress. Behind all this turbulance lies the phenomenon of underdevelopment, frustration, and weakness or feeling of inferiority, not Islam as religion but attempts to use Islam as a desperate ideology. The West perceived these facts of international life against the historical background of the religious struggle between Islam and Christianity. Moreover, the growing number of Muslim groups in her bosom which have manifest difficulties in integrating themselves into a Christian-dominated environment have exacerbated this perception.

The scope of this book cannot include an in-depth analysis of the inter-religious relationship and an exposé of the true tenets of Islam. Although a historical explanation of the present religious misunderstandings could not alleviate reciprocal misgivings and concerns, I deem it useful, however, to summarize my views of Islam, at least for the sake of attempting to rectify some gross misconceptions.

When I was asked by a foreign journalist whether I had any difficulty in envisaging Turkish membership in a Christian Community, I answered that all religions teach mankind to be good and to do good. In this respect all three of the great monotheistic religions are sisters. Because human nature is stamped with the fruitful diversity which is the hallmark of God's creative work, uniformity is not always possible in man's approach to the One True God. Higher religions are variations on a single theme.

The question is whether the EC and its Christian member countries, which are so proud of recognizing pluralism in the domains of a secular nature, could extend it to the religious realm by admitting a Muslim country as member. Otherwise their pluralism would be bound to remain restricted.0nce a limitation is introduced into a concept, which by definition is related to freedom, logically there could be nothing in the way of other limitations.

The correct reading of history could point to the fact that Islam is not totally alien to the West.

I dwelt earlier on the contribution of Islam to the Renaissance in the West. It is not right to attribute the

beginning of rationalism in Europe to those who fled from Constantinople after our conquest. Islam played a decisive role in this respect. However, Islam cannot be reduced to the level of a relay station through which the West received Greek rational thinking. In fact, Islam has greatly developed what it had borrowed from the Greek civilization and created the brilliantly original civilization of its own. The main superiority of Islamic civilization over the Anatolia physiologoi was experimental science. Humboldt writes that the Arabs must be considered the true founders of the experimental physical sciences in the sense in which we understand the term today. The triumphs they (the Arabs) achieved, Draper writes, in philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, and medicine were far more

glorious, far more lasting . . . than their military successes. Le Bon states that experiment and observation were the basis of their method.107 The application of science to navigation, industry, and agriculture, to which Muslim scholars gave importance, proved of enormous benefit to Europeans. Columbus profited from the experiences of the Arab navigators, and when he sought out the route across the Atlantic which led to his discovery of America his pilots were in possession of the same Arab nautical charts as were also to be used by da Gama in his expedition in 1497. Anatomy and autopsy, still forbidden by the Church in the eighteenth century, were practised in Baghdad in the tenth. 'Les arabes,' writes Michelet, 'firent cette chose intrépide, ce sacrilège sublime, d'ouvrir la mort pour lire la vie.' Renan acknowledges that for five hundred years. . . one might even go so far as to say that. . . the Muslim world was superior to Christendom in its intellectual culture. Erase the Arabs from the pages of history, writes Comte Libri, and the European Renaissance would be postponed for several centuries.

Such diverse things as poetry, music, architecture, sugar, silk, the dyeing of textiles, furniture, paper, numerals, social manners, public hygiene and so on have all been borrowed by the West from the Muslims. Let us not forget that crusaders lived in the Middle East throughout the last two centuries of the Islamic Renaissance.

In view of the above, one really appreciates the independence of thought in the following passages of Le Bon:

The inherited prejudices that we feel against Islam and its disciples have accumulated over too many centuries for them not to form an integral part of our mental make-up.

If we add to our hereditary prejudices against the Muhammedans that other inherited prejudice, intensified in each successive generation by a detestable classical education that insists that all the science and literature of the past was inspired solely by the Greeks and Latins, we shall easily understand why the immense influence exerted by the Arabs in the history of European civilization is generally so undervalued. To a certain type of mind it seems humiliating to have to confess that it was due to these infidels that Christian Europe emerged from barbarism. . .

This is why I insist in many chapters of this book on the `unity of human civilization' which, if it is taken into account on its merits, should lead to the addition of the Islamic elements so as to convert the formula to Graeco-Romano-Islamic as the basis of Western or contemporary civilization.

The recognition that such a formulation is historically objective would not only greatly facilitate modernizing efforts in Muslim countries and introduce profound understanding into international relations, but also enable us to inquire into some important civilization issues.

In this context I think we should pose some interrelated questions without searching for immediate answers. How was it that Muslims created, roughly two centuries after the founding of Islam, a Renaissance of such magnitude, whereas in the West it took at least twelve centuries from the beginning of Christianity until the Italian Renaissance? How was it possible for Arabs to reconcile faith and reason, whereas the rational upsurge has been achieved in the West at the expense of faith and in conflict with the Church? Why was Islamic experimental science relatively short-lived and less profound in scope and effect, whereas Western science is still going strong?

Leaving aside Islam's historical contribution to civilization, I shall now focus on its possible contribution to the contemporary world.

We can. . . discern certain principles of Islam which, if brought to bear on the social life. . . might have important salutary effects. The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding moral achievements of Islam, and in the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue. (T)his consciousness is felt-and felt strongly-by the very peoples which, in the competition of the last four centuries between several Western powers, have won. . . the lion's share of the inheritance of the Earth. As things are now, the exponents of racial intolerance are in the ascendant and, if their attitude towards `the race question' prevails, it may eventually provoke a general catastrophe. Yet the forces of racial toleration. . . in a spiritual struggle of immense importance to mankind, might still regain the upper hand. . . It is conceivable that the spirit of Islam might be the timely reinforcement which would decide this issue in favour of tolerance and peace.

In this book I have frequently touched upon the question of racism within the broader framework of ethnocentrism. I have done so deliberately, for I believe that this is not an incidental symptom which can be contained in a corner of our psyche. On the contrary, it may infest the soul. I agree that race-consciousness has been in varying degrees a characteristic of `almost all' otherwise highly successful civilizations. My concern about the issue in this book stems neither from the present practices of some extreme groupings against the Turkish workers in Europe-which is a legitimate concern anyway

-nor from the fear of discrimination against my country. We are destined by geography to live together with and in Europe, whether or not we enter the Community. I feel that prejudices of any sort against Turkey draw on the same source which has poisoned our relations in the past, and might do so now or in the future.

In Islam there is no struggle against race-consciousness or in favour of toleration, for there is no need for either. Certain circumstances have created this virtue in Islamic culture beyond human will and wish.

Surely the religious tolerance prescribed by Prophet Muhammad towards Jews and Christians played a part in this situation. In a broader sense, moreover, Muslims believed that from polytheism their faith had retrieved the pure religion of Abraham based on the One True God. Islam was a reaffirmation of the unity of God against the apparent weakening of this truth in the world of that time. . . (R)e-encroachment of polytheism evoked (this) whole-hearted reassertion of monotheism in Islam.ll3 And the reinforced belief in one God turned the Muslims into brothers in the Umma which transcended all racial, linguistic, and cultural differences.

Did not Prophet Muhammad say: `Bear no malice against one another, do not envy each other, nor turn the cold shoulder to your fellow men. Vassals of God, be brothers'? The universal humanism of Turkish sufism has strengthened and expanded this aspect of Islam. The following lines of the two proponents of Turkish sufism, namely Yunus and Rumi, amply demonstrate what I mean:

The world is my true ration

Its people are my nation

Mystic is what they call me,

Hate is my only enemy:

I harbour a grudge against none.

To me the whole wide world is one.

Come, come, whoever you be, come!

Unbeliever, fire-worshipper, idolater, still come!

This our abode is not the seat of the hopeless;

Though you have oft repented and oft fallen again, vet come!

I contend that Muslims need take only one step to rise once and for all from the brotherhood of the Umma to true universal humanism, and that step is secularism. In other words, the secularist Muslim is capable of loving all human beings equally, no matter what their religion or race, while preserving the close solidarity of the Umma.

Another factor which may have indirectly helped prevent the emergence in Islam of race-consciousness, one of the various prejudices of mankind, is its lack of an organized church and clergy. Schisms and wars between sects have occurred in Islam too. Nevertheless, Islam has been much better off in respect of the frequency and intensity of these struggles and the use of force in religion. We did not have the Inquisition and the auto-da fé, individual or group persecution by the Church, proselytizing massacres like those of the Albigensians, and St. Bartholomew's Eve. It is quite possible that the lack of toleration towards everything considered heretical by the Church affected adversely the overall attitudes of the masses towards racial, linguistic, and cultural differences, and gradually turned them into prejudices.

In this context, it may be easier to understand why the Renaissance in the West flourished at the cost of the omnipotence of the Church and faith. The Enlightenment has gradually moved away from the religious premises, and through agnosticism and even atheism has ended up in deism. Similarly, secularism in the West aimed at disentangling State and religion at a time of rationalist resurgence. This is where the main difference lies between the Turkish and Western secular movements. As I said earlier, the fact that rationalism was reconciled with Islamic faith in the Abbasid period did not necessitate secularism. Nevertheless, the westernizing reforms of the Ottoman Empire, which encountered stiff resistance from a religious establishment growing increasingly defensive in the overall process of disintegration, brought about the need to separate and contain the religious sphere in society. In other words, secularism was a phenomenon caused by the rationalistic spur in the growth phase of the West, whereas it was a movement which aimed to arrest and reverse the decline in the Ottoman Empire. Secularism in Turkey has therefore been much more condensed in time, and radical in nature and scope.

The outcome of these two movements was nevertheless much the same, namely the creation of nation-states. Inroads made by reason into the faith inevitably brought about the weakening of the latter. This has been compensated for by a shift of spiritual allegiance to the nation as a group. National sovereignty represented the highest echelon in the hierarchy of spiritual values. The individual also acquired his share, idolizing himself. A pagan worship of sovereign national states has `largely superseded Christianity as the religion of the Western world'. This `worship of Leviathan-the self-worship of the tribe-is a religion to which all of us pay some measure of allegiance'.

This self-idolization has, certainly exacerbated historical prejudices against other races, cultures, and religions.

If the truth is more important than anything else, we then have to cherish it above and beyond national allegiance. If universal humanism which transcends differences of any kind is the only salvation, we then have to become again the children of the same God. Such an attitude would not necessarily preclude allegiance to one's nation and one's country.

The question here is whether or not the new emphasis on religion in the West as a social cement of integration, and the return to religion in Turkey should cast further doubt on Turkey's belonging to Europe. Given the historic hostility between the two religions, the answer seems obviously to be positive at first sight. But if the religious reinvigoration in question is faithful to the One True God, I do not understand how and why it should exclude Turkey from Europe.

In the light of the above, I shall now try to assess the Turkish experience with religion and secularism.

We belong to the Sunni sect of Islam, and the Hanafite school of law. Hanafite juridical-religious practice accords paramount importance to the principle of consensus in the making of legal decisions; it is therefore quite flexible and tolerant. It is worthy of note that since the tenth century all Turkish states have been Hanafite. This has given Turkish society a different outlook from that of other Islamic societies. As a result of its cosmopolitan foundations, moreover, the Ottoman State was open to other cultural influences.

This spirit of tolerance even survived the period of decline, as was witnessed by the English Ambassador to Istanbul, Henry Grenville, among others. In a report of 1766 to his Government, he wrote: `In matters of religion the Turks are indeed the most tolerant people there could be.'

As is well known, there is no priesthood in the Western sense in the Sunni sect of Islam, so that no one comes between God and the believer. This essential principle of the Protestant Reformation was part of our faith from the beginning. In the Ottoman Empire the Sultan represented civil authority and, on account of his power to dismiss him, was above the Sheykh al-Islam (the religious head), who represented religious authority. Furthermore, although the Muslim religious code (the Shari'a) included sacred and immutable rules concerning every aspect of the law, the Sultans were nevertheless able to introduce and enforce their own secular laws. That is why Suleyman I was called `the Legislator', and I have already mentioned the Conqueror's Code of Civil Law (Kanunname). Muslim religious law, the Shari'a, only stated general principles, while the civil law (kanun) defined all the detailed rules. The Shari'a, however, ruled personal affairs and the life of the Sunni Muslim community. In theory the Ulema had the right to invalidate all kanun law which they considered was in conflict with the Shari'a, though in practice they very rarely had occasion to do so. This being the case, it would be wrong to describe the Ottoman Empire as a theocratic state.

The intention of the westernizing reforms undertaken from the end of the eighteenth century was to limit the scope of the religious laws; to place the judicial system outside the influence of religious law and of the Ulema; to create secular teaching establishments distinct from those providing a religious education; and to transform the hierarchy of the Ulema into a State organization by limiting their autonomy and their sources of revenue. All the reforms went in this same direction, whether introduced by `conservatives' or occidentalists.

Secularism reached its peak with the reforms of Atatürk. The Caliphate, the Sultanate, and the Ulema all disappeared. The holy men lost their rights, even of supervision, over justice, law, and education.

Secularizing reforms were not undertaken because the West desired them, nor had the West attempted to exert any influence in this direction. Reformists of the pro-Western faction regarded religion as the most serious obstacle to the process of modernization, seeing in it a conservative and reactionary force which had been responsible for the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Indeed, resistance to economic, commercial, political, and social reforms took on a religious aspect. But in fact the decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire did not really have anything to do with religion. It was simply that, being part of a whole that was in decline, religious institutions could not avoid declining too. It was an effect rather than a cause, but the persuasiveness of religion in society made its decline more apparent.

Certainly it would have been more sensible to have shown understanding and patience towards an institution that had difficulties in adapting to reforms, keeping in mind that it had had no difficulty in adapting and even contributing to the growth phase of the society. Unhappily neither internal nor external conditions permitted this. Before the Republic was proclaimed, partisans of religion took up arms side by side with reformists to defend their country. The last chance for reconciliation between the two, however, was lost during the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II.

The radicalism and urgency of the reforms had at times been destructive for the essence of religion, or had at least appeared to be so, especially at the beginning. This inevitably increased resistance to reforms.

A quite unexpected result of the radical secularization was the `deification' of the State by attributing to it certain divine characteristics. It became the `Etat providence', continual distributor of benefits. The individual henceforth expected the State to provide everything, and ceased to assume his proper responsibilities. Indeed, he was less concerned with exercising his political rights than with becoming instead a perpetual supplicant. Such attitudes led to an inward-looking economy based on import substitution, price controls, subsidies, and planning.

In the communist countries, which represented more extreme examples of this syndrome, secularism was replaced by atheism, with the State somehow seeing itself as endowed with all the divine attributes. The outcome of totalitarianism and the centrally-planned economy was that citizens enjoyed no political and economic freedoms. The cost of replacement of God by State, and religion by ideology, which had been seen as a historic progress of reason against `superstition', was catastrophic. In such a State there is no room for individuality or even for personality.

What was not foreseen in Turkey was that the ultimate effect of limiting the powers of the religious institutions in the areas of law and justice would be gradually but steadily to reinforce faith in God. Similarly, the separation of science as an exclusive domain of reason rendered faith purer and deeper. Secularization of law shifted emphasis to personal and public morals which are based on the Ten Commandments; according to the Koran, `ultimate principles of man's rights and duties as related to the very structure of the universe'. When religion was spread thinly in society it was like a simple external veneer. Now it became internalized, concentrated in the souls of the faithful, and expressed through prayer. Turks became as pious and devout in their personal lives as they were secular in their public lives. It is a phenomenon that some Westerners see as a return to religion.

Even in the late 1940s, there was some criticism in the West of Turkey's deviation from the principle of secularism.ll9 In fact, what was taking place at that time was a mere normalization after a revolutionary secularism.

A series of interviews conducted by a respectable Western scholar in 1948 with members of the revolutionary élite or intelligentsia revealed that `they denied, and even ridiculed the notion that, singly or nationally, they had renounced Islam'. One interviewed person is quoted as having said something which may serve as a summary of their attitude to Islam:

Turkey simply took today the necessary, salutary, reforming step of making religion what it should be, an individual, personal matter, a thing of the conscience, a matter of private faith. The religious feeling is much too strongly imbedded in the human soul for religion to be abolished. We have simply freed it. What they have got rid of, they unaffectedly feel, is not Islam, but on the contrary, the distortions of Islam. . . the outgrown formal expressions of the religion's true spirit.

Their view of Islam seemed to allow for

a true renaissance for Islam (which) would consist in a renewal not of the particular judgments and institutions of early Muslims, but of their sense of the moral imperative, of their overwhelming reverence before the `oughtness' of things.

Therefore it is understandable that the so-called `return to religion' started at a time of their Government. At the end of 1946, the then Government allowed public discussion of Islamic matters, which for many years has been prohibited. It decided to reintroduce Islamic instruction in the public schools. In 1948 schools to train religious functionaries were opened, and the following year a Faculty of Theology was established. A number of periodicals of a religious nature began to appear. People were given permission to go on the pilgrimage to Mecca. Religious programmes on the State radio were instituted, and so forth.

Reasons for these developments are various. Firstly, there is a wide philosophic trend away from secular positivism, a trend evident throughout Western culture since the First and, more strikingly, since the Second World War. It was well understood that science was incapable of dealing with values. The more it advances, the more stark is the realization that it is helpless before that side of life. Secondly, the new regime introduced by the revolution, and established by a quarter-century of active reconstruction, was by then so firmly entrenched that the danger of effective reaction, previously led by the traditional religious authorities and fed by the traditional religious ideology, was over. As I said in my speech on education at a meeting held on 19 September 1990 at TUSIAD (an influential business association), the underlying reason above all was that the country was then moving towards democracy where the voice of the people began to make itself heard. The revival of religious feeling may paradoxically signify the growing maturity of the revolution.

Historically speaking, all rational upsurges have seemingly at first kept their distance from religious premises which they have tried to reduce and encroach on. However, a return to religion has taken place in the following phase during which the respective realms of religion and reason have been delineated and an equilibrium established. To the Cosmos of Ionia, which was essentially irreligious, the Athenian ethos developed a metaphysical and moral response. Hellenizing, naturalist, and materialist theologians and philosophers in the Abbasid Renaissance of Islam were followed by al-Ghazâlî who upheld the faith and drew the line between head and heart. The rationalism of the Renaissance was succeeded by the reaffirmation of faith at the Reformation. The return that we have been experiencing following the secular and positivist rationalism of the late nineteenth century and especially of the inter-war period fits this historical pattern.

This process in Turkey has important implications both for our external relations and for the internal development of the country.

We started promoting our bilateral relations with neighboring Islamic countries in the 1960s. We became a member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in the 1970s and assumed a leading role in industrial and commercial relations among Islamic countries within the framework of COMSEC in the 1980s. Thus Turkey, while preserving its secular republican principles, managed to foster very close, mutually beneficial ties with Islamic countries half a century after the Revolution.

The return of individuals to the faith ended the deification of the State. The omnipotent State gave way to the functional State. In resuming their responsibilities the citizens regained their individuality and the spirit of enterprise appeared. The rebirth of an ardent religious faith within a secular environment re-established in society a just scale of values which assured its progress in a balanced manner. All religious faith encourages an organic indigenous development, with a minimum of simple but essential principles and rules; it lessens the need to plan because it gives confidence in the future, it reduces the role of the State while inculcating a sense of freedom and responsibility in the ordinary people, because it does not attribute divine powers to the State. Above all, in a society in the throes of industrial revolution, the moral support provided by religion is badly needed by the mass of country people migrating to the towns in order to help them confront the culture shock.

Modern Turks have been accused of. . . imitating the outward ways and appropriating the thoughts of an essentially disparate culture. Yet here there is no mere imitation, no superficial copying of results. These Turks have actually shared in what is perhaps the fundamental experience of modern Western civilization: the experience of remaking one's environment. Man's heritage is found to be in flux, and man is found able to influence or control that flux. Within limits, no doubt. Yet the development of society is in the hands of society. Modern Turks, like modern occidentals, have through brilliant hard work and well-applied intelligence come to feel themselves masters of their destiny.

As one member of the intelligentsia put it in the late 1940s: `The religion is developing. We earnestly hope that it will continue to develop. But we have no need of a reformer: the life of society will take care of its reformation.' 12s Indeed, `the Turkish intelligentsia is less conscious of the degree of reform already accomplished than is an outside observer'.

I have, I hope, demonstrated that Turkey has never abandoned secularism. In this context one can refer to Ghazâlî's distinction between faith and reason. The Turk is aware that faith, in itself, does not affect secularism, nor does it prevent him from being rational, provided that their respective realms are not encroached. In life today there is no difference in this respect between the Christian European and the Muslim Turk.

Thus a synthesis has been achieved between the West and Islam, a synthesis which has put an end to the identity crisis of the Turk. I am a believer and because of that I can afford to be open to all changes. Having no problem of identity I do not feel the need to defend my own culture in a sectarian manner nor to attach myself to any ideology or an extreme nationalism. It is remarkable that this evolution should have been the unexpected consequence of the long struggle for secularism.

Another way of looking at Turkish secularism, both legitimate and important, is in terms of the history of civilizations. The question essentially is this: can a non-Christian nation be a member of Western civilization?

The question has profundities. In them the Turks find themselves involved. The question has world-wide implications, but only in Turkey is it being seriously thought out. . . As Ziya Gökalp put it, French and Germans have separate cultures, but both constitute Western civilization, so would Turks while stressing and vitalizing their Turkish nationalism. And if for a time in seeking membership they seem to keep quiet about their religion, or even in some Western eyes to relinquish it, now they are quite explicitly Muslim . . . If it is also a question whether Islam can adjust itself to Western civilization, it is also a question whether Western civilization is able to develop so as to include Islam. How the process will evolve we do not venture to predict. Our only insistence is, once more, that the process is significant.

As far as our adjustment to Western civilization is concerned, the universal humanism created by secularized Islam, together with the concept of the brotherhood of mankind, a product of Turkish sufism, seems to be taken as weakness by some in the West which up to now has retained its exclusiveness with regard to our application to the EC and maintained its historic prejudices and exaggerated allegations in the matter of human rights.

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