My latest op-ed for Turkish Daily News has seemingly pissed off a tremendous lot of people, most of whom are supporters of the anti-secularism AK Parti. In only a few hours time, I have received several e-mails, most of which not all too friendly (luckily I did receive quite some friendly e-mails as well). I will publish one of the e-mails I received in this post, in order to show what kind of people I am talking about, and in order to show what their reasoning is. Of course, I will not publish the name of the person who wrote the e-mail, nor the city where he lives.

Here is the e-mail I have decided to publish at this blog:

Trying to be more Catholic than the pope Michael?

Your anti-religious, antIslamic, anti-democratic generalizations to show that the 5% of European progressives who support the rule of law,democracy and a reasonable secularism are irrelevant to the Turkish model of what is an authoritarian and undemocratice secular state that can have a consitutional court that acts in violation of the very constitution it is supposed to preserve and protect.

You and your ilk may equate the right to freedom and to be a secular ideologue to be equal to a license for any and all practices that may go counter to democracy,Turkish culture or religous values. Your anti-democratic advice for Turks to ignore reasonable objective minds that seek to bring Turkey into the 21st century and into the EU as the correct stance smaks of a fascist mentality.

You repeat the claim that AKP is trying to nibble away at the secular state to establish an Islamic state that will eventually stop people from drinking themselves to death and the destruction of innocents or sodomizing one another only repeats the canard of secular fundamentalists without any proof.

Regards…

Several things should be noted:

1. The use of the word fascist. Like liberals in the United States, Islamists in Turkey have learned how to use the word ‘fascism’ to their advantage. They use it constantly in order to vilify their political opponents. Disagreeing with the horrendous idea that the masses should not be allowed to decide about all things, and that the majority should not be allowed to oppress the minority automatically makes one a fascist. It is interesting to note that this means that just about every single great political thinker of the last four centuries is a fascist than as well. Why do I say that? Because in every single Western system, its founders have tried to make sure that minorities would be respected, and tolerated. Everybody – especially the founding fathers of the United States – understood that the masses / majority will become a stronger and more brutal and oppressive dictator than any one man can become, if the majority is allowed to do so. This is why there are so many checks on the government, and so many means to protect minorities in Western countries.

2. Alcohol. The idea is, of course, not to prevent people from drinking themselves to death, it’s to prevent people from drinking at all. These individuals oppose alcohol and believe that selling alcohol should be outlawed. Not because people may drink themselves to death (lets be honest, outlawing alcohol because some people drink themselves to death is the equivalent of burning down a house in order to kill a fly living in it), but because Islam – well, according to these individuals that is – outlaws all consumption of alcohol.

3. ‘and the destruction of innocents or sodomizing one another.’ This is an incredibly important sentence because it shows us what these people really think about homosexuals. This person is not talking about not allowing gay marriage, this person is talking about making it illegal for people to ’sodomize’ each other. This man does not want to outlaw gay marriage, he wants to outlaw gays altogether.

Sometimes, fundamentalists accidentally give away what their hidden agenda is. Too bad for them. Perfect for us.