Determined Conquest
Softly, softly, all can be accomplished with patience. Stealth and patience. Cunning and patience. Stifle belligerence and rhetoric, demonstrate the capacity to produce needed results. Gain trust. Inveigle one's way into official recognition. Take the opportunity to demystify one's presence, smother enquiry. Suspicion must be lulled. In its place must come trust born of need.Did not, after all, Hezbollah succeed in gaining the trust of those downtrodden whom they claim to represent by such tactics, after all? Ignored and despised by both government and citizenry, offered a mean and inadequate existence with insufficient structure and aid, and they are ready and ripe to react to social-action resulting in solid assistance. Build medical centres, schools, social/religious centres, and they will trust.
Did not Hamas, after all, offer to the ill-served Palestinian people milked dry by the PLO the very civic infrastructure that Fatah's greed denied them? These organizations know very well how to succeed at their task. Divide duties and functions; one portion to be devoted to furthering and furnishing the practical and social needs of the people, the other functioning as a well-trained and well-armed militia with an identified cause-and-direction.
And so we come to Turkey, the only Muslim country with a modern tradition of secular rule, carefully guarded and treasured. The only Muslim country that is an member of NATO, an ally and friend of the West, and given to democratic ideals. The (Islamist) Justice and Development Party (AKP) has just demonstrated through a democratic vote that it has gained the trust of a large proportion of Turkey's voters.
It has disarmed the wary by governing responsibly, by demonstrating its commitment to business, to advancing the Turkish economy and offering enhanced economic opportunities to its people. The AKP has succeeded spectacularly in a quest that Hezbollah and Hamas are still experimenting with. Determined conquest, bridled to Allah's wish, to once again launch Islamic rule.
Is Islam compatible with democracy? Traditionally, historically, Islam demonstrated its business acumen, its creativity, its brilliant vision, and treated with non-Muslims in what was then seen to be a fair manner, but no longer would be, as society no longer feels Dhimmi status, subjugation and uneven taxation, allied with denial of equality and citizenship to be acceptable in the modern world.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his party have much to celebrate. They have disarmed the suspicion of sufficient numbers of Turkish citizens to ensure themselves a majority victory; they may be capable now of installing the president of their choice, headscarf debacle or no; the laws prohibiting them will be seen to be outmoded, and altered.
The military now may hesitate at this late stage to counteract a democratic result, however unpalatable.
Mr. Erdogan is described as a "charismatic populist"; an unfortunate descriptive, for were not Hitler, Stalin, Ahmadinejad, Castro, Arafat and Chavez just such personalities? The defences have been breached, the second round stands ready to be unleashed. The country looks for stability; there will be a detente between the government and the military, for the people wish it so.
And the moderate Turks? Those many who wait with bated breath to see moderate Islam that they so value slowly metamorphose into fundamentalism? "The AKP has done some good things for Turkey. But I know that they are Islamists and at the end of the day they will do something for Islam," claim its detractors.
"Those who are afraid of the AKP believe it will impose Sharia, but this will not happen", claim those who voted for the AKP, who appreciate its governing successes, who bask in the satisfaction of prolonging the country's good economic fortune under the government that brought it into reality.
Softly, softly, steady as she goes.
Labels: Political Realities, Religion
posted by Pieface @ Monday, July 23, 2007
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