Turkish Christians are close to losing an unconventional but important ally. The Constitutional Court in Ankara is threatening to close the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) in the name of secularism. Many consider the party Islamist, but the party leaders claim to advocate for religious liberty, offering political protection to minority groups such as Christians, Armenians, and Syriac Orthodox Church.

The AK Party, which gained power in 2002 on a progressive, pro-market, pro-EU platform, is accused of violating Turkey’s longstanding tradition of separating the secular state from Islamic policy. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan, whose wife covers her head as a sign of Muslim piety, has been indicted along with other AK Party officials. They could be banned from politics if the Constitutional Court rules against them and shuts the party down.

Secularist leaders in the government and Constitutional Court, mostly appointed by a previous secularist President, are concerned about the AK Party leading an Islamic Revolution similar to Iran’s in 1979. Boğaziçi University politics student Uğurcan Aksoy told WoW, “They are not working for the whole people anymore.” He believes the AK Party has a hidden agenda and is corrupt: “They have managed to suppress the army (with their Parliamentary majority), which is a very effective institution in Turkey.”

Aksoy is not alone in his beliefs. But the AK Party argues that it is trying to lift restrictions on religious practice and give people freedom to follow Islam, not subtly force conversion. They said the recent headscarf debate at Turkish universities was about allowing Muslim women to practice personal piety, not forcing them to wear headscarves.

On legal grounds, Gazi University Professor Mümtaz’er Türköne said Wednesday, “the indictment completely destroys the system of checks and balances between legislation, enforcement and the judiciary.” The AK Party will seek a constitutional amendment in Parliament to make it more difficult to close a political party. This amendment is the AK Party’s best chance to stay in power.

Religious liberty and secularism are at tension in Turkey, but many argue Turkey’s secularist worldview is a safety net. The Turkish state is safe from rising Islamism because the country has a vibrant new middle class that benefits from capitalism, democracy and globalization.

Bestselling author Richard Miniter comments on the phenomenon of supposed “rationalists” who claim to reject “religious superstition”, only to revert to all kinds of pantheistic mumbo-jumbo to account for transcendence in the universe.

G.K. Chesterton once observed-and yes, I am quoting from memory-that those who do not believe in God believe in everything else. Why is it that the very people who invoke “science” to silence their critics indulge in so many goofy superstitions?

Chesterton wrote: “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing — they believe in anything.” Here are two other favorites:

There is a sceptic far more terrible than he who believes that everything is matter. It is possible to meet the sceptic who believes that everything began in himself. He doubts not the existence of angels or devils, but the existence of men and cows. For him his own friends are a mythology made up by himself. He created his own father and his own mother. This horrible fancy has in it something decidedly attractive to the somewhat mystical egoism of our day. (Orthodoxy, Chapter 2)

Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within. Any one who knows any body knows how it would work; any one who knows any one from the Higher Thought Centre knows how it does work. That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones. (ibid., Chapter 5)

Pepperdine’s Joseph Loconte writes in the most recent Weekly Standard on the secular fundamentalist axis of liberal elites, educrats, bureaucrats and the media (”The New Fundamentalists“), and their coordinated attempts to silence cultural conservatives in the public square. Ironically, the tactics they resort to are strikingly similiar to the “McCarthyism” they indignantly claim to reject. The whole article is worth reading, but Laconte concludes:

The saturation of presidential politics with religion has surely heightened sensitivities on all sides. Politicians and activists have a constitutional right to bring their religious values into the public square–and can’t cry foul when they’re questioned about it. But when education and media elites use their position as a kind of Star Chamber to blacklist groups they don’t like, then we’ve taken a step backward, a step away from pluralism.

And there’s nothing enlightened or progressive or tolerant about it.

As a rule, College costs too much.  This is true.  And it’s a complicated issue.  But it does.  It costs too much.  The thing is, it’s everybody’s fault.  It’s not the fault of people who set the prices.  They’re just trying to make ends meet, and there are a lot of ends, and there’s a lot of meeting to do.  But really, why does it cost so much?

(more…)

For those who believe secular higher education is as Godless as we make it out to be at WMB, you might enjoy reading Finding God at Harvard, a series of essays from “contributors all have, of course, some connection to Harvard: students, alumni, professors, and guest speakers.”  The title is utterly pedestrian: anything with a gerund, these days, sounds like a book that was an editor’s idea, rather than a writer’s - and that’s never a good sign.  But get past the title and you might enjoy it.  All writers included in the book “view their callings - from student to astrophysicist to senator - as channels for praise and service.”