Only a very thinly-veiled military dictatorship keeps Turkey from becoming the Sunni Islamic Republic that the world most dreads (similar things apply in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt), yet Turkey is welcomed as a member of NATO and talked of as a future member of the EU. Contrast this with the treatment of Iran, an emerging democracy with an almost European culture, where the mullahs are in any case on the way out as a political force, a status they rarely enjoy in Shi'ism, in marked contrast to Sunnism.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand...
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David,
ReplyDeleteSunnis don't have a priestly class, you dolt. And you need to learn a great deal more about Turkey.
You're so full of it.
No love,
Kim.
I don't see what your first point has to do with anything that I wrote. As to your second, the Army is ultimately in charge in Turkey, and only the threat of a full-blown coup keeps that country from becoming a full-scale Islamic Republic, with shrouded women, limb amputations, the lot.
ReplyDeleteFor, of course, the Caliphate is a Sunni, not a Shi'ite, concept. On account of their very different historical experience, Sh'ites ordinarily have a highly sceptical view of the Islamic capablities of the State. The situation now coming to an end in Iran, and the emerging situation in Iraq, are aberrations caused, in both cases, by clunking Anglo-American interference.
Those who fear the Caliphate's revival should look to the last country ever to have it (unless you count the Taliban - also Sunni, of course), rather than to a branch of Islam with no concept of it.
Oh, and can you or anyone else tell me when there has ever been a Persian army at the gates of Vienna? Or just how long it is since the Greeks were last expelled either from Iran or from the Persian Empire? Or which EU member-state (and Commonwealth country) Iran wishes to partition with a view to annexing the part of it where it already maintains an illegal rebel regime?
It is no surprise that the supporters of the Wahhabi (Sunni, of course) interest in Yugoslavia have welcomed Turkey into NATO, and would welcome Turkey into the EU. If there must be either a NATO or an EU, then Turkey has no proper part in either of them.