Hillary Clinton Criticizes Islamic Treatment of Women

In a series of remarks, Secretary of State Clinton has directed international attention to the treatment of women in several different Islamic countries. Despite the great hopes directed toward the 'Arab Spring' movement, it has become clear that the new regimes, which are replacing old dictators, may in some cases be no better, and even possibly worse, in their treatment of women. The organization known as 'The Muslim Brotherhood' - which has had direct influence on Egyptian policy, and indirect influence also, through its political arm known as 'The Freedom and Justice Party' - has stated that it "rejects the candidacy of women or Copts for Egypt's presidency" and other elected offices. But the Muslim Brotherhood is not content with merely removing women's opportunities for political involvement; it is intent on removing many civil rights. Secretary Clinton noted that

recent events in Egypt have been particularly shocking. Women are being beaten and humiliated in the same streets where they risked their lives for the revolution only a few short months ago. And this is part of a deeply troubling pattern. Egyptian women have been largely shut out of decision-making in the transition by both the military authorities and the major political parties. At the same time, they have been specifically targeted both by security forces and by extremists.

Clinton mentioned specific examples of women being harassed, beaten, and assaulted. She called upon the nations of the world to put pressure on Egypt and other Islamic states to give women full involvement in the political process:

Marchers celebrating International Women’s Day were harassed and abused. Women protesters have been rounded up and subjected to horrific abuse. Journalists have been sexually assaulted. And now, women are being attacked, stripped, and beaten in the streets. This systematic degradation of Egyptian women dishonors the revolution, disgraces the state and its uniform, and is not worthy of a great people. As some Egyptian politicians and commentators have themselves noted, a new democracy cannot be built on the persecution of women, nor can any stable society. Whether it’s ending conflict, managing a transition, or rebuilding a country, the world cannot afford to continue ignoring half the population.

Clinton notes that even inside Egypt, that groups like the Copts are voicing opposition to this poor treatment of women. There is perhaps a chance for building a coalition - the Copts in Egypt and the concerned nations of Western Civilization - to support women's rights in Egypt. If traction can be developed on this issue there, then it, like the Arab Spring, might spread to other Islamic nations. Specifically commenting on the enforcement of certain aspects of Islamic law, Clinton said that

Beating women is not cultural, it's criminal and it needs to be addressed and treated as such.

Clinton was speaking partly in regard to what international newspapers are now calling "the girl in the blue bra," an Egyptian woman who was brutally beaten and dragged through the streets by Muslim men. The U.S. government sends billions of dollars to Egypt every year; Clinton has proposed that Egypt must improve its treatment of women and Copts in order to receive further funding.

Rome: Good or Bad?

Although we would like to know if Romans are good guys or bad guys, the question is sadly too simplistic. The answer is 'yes' - they are both. The Romans who gleefully tortured, imprisoned, and murdered hundreds of thousands of Christians are the same Romans who developed participatory government well beyond anything the Greeks had instituted. The Romans who allowed insanely egotistical emperors to corrupt government beyond recognition were the same Romans who first clearly expressed the definitive notions of justice as Natural Law. They are the good guys, and they are the bad guys.

Beyond this, there are a number of distinctions to be made: there is the Roman Monarchy, the Roman Republic, and the Roman Empire. The empire is further divided into a western half and an eastern half. A different type of distinction can be made between the government and society of Rome proper, contrasted with the outlying territories, provinces, and colonies. A third set of distinctions would revolve around social, economic, and political classes. Generalization about Romans as 'good guys' or 'bad guys' are in danger of being oversimplified and hence wrong. Professor Anthony Esolen explains:

In some ways ancient Rome, especially during the centuries of the Republic, was as politically incorrect a place as you can imagine. Our feminists, who consistently uphold the demands of a minority of well-heeled women against the common good, the family, and every freedom recognized our Bill of Rights, would hate the patriarchy of ancient Rome, and not the least because that patriarchy worked. Nowadays, gripped in our great national passion of envy, we demand all sorts of equality: economic, social, and political. We'll destroy the family to attain this equality, and never mind the prisons that result. The Romans instead first sought the good of the family and the city. For the most part, they found that good not in leveling distinctions but in revering them.

To be sure, Professor Esolen's presentation is a bit fiery, but let's focus on Rome instead of his passing comments about modern American society. On the one hand, Esolen makes a good point, namely that the social and governmental structures of the Republic worked: they endured nearly five hundred years, and managed to do so with a reasonable facsimile of justice. Rather than naively chasing after the idealistic notion of pure justice and total freedom, the Romans pragmatically realized that a society which is 'mostly' just is capable of surviving much longer than a utopian attempt to attain perfect equality. Sometimes is it necessary to take a chunk out of the individual's liberty in order to keep society as a whole, or social structures like the family, intact. Keeping society intact, in turn, is what prevents government from having an excuse to overpower society and thus taking a much bigger chunk out of individual liberty.

On the other hand, Professor Esolen's view of the Republican Romans might be just a bit too rosy. Were they so altruistic that they thought first of family and city? Maybe some were. Others were simply calculating their own best interests, and realized that the survival of family and city were the necessary preconditions for a chance at a reasonable amount of personal freedom.

What Brings a Nation Down?

There are many causes for the declines of empires, both ancient and modern. Some of these causes can be grouped together under the heading of "social matters" - how interpersonal relationships effect the economic, political, and military well-being of a nation.

It is not immediately obvious how people's private lives affect the prosperity and diplomatic existence of a nation. Yet the subtle and indirect influence of such social factors can strengthen a country - or bring it down.

Four central factors have weakened various societies from Rome to China: adultery, low birth rates, divorce, and illegitimacy. These four can devastate an otherwise strong land.

Adultery is - simply put - cheating: when married people are not faithful to each other. Low birth rates damage economies, robbing them of future workers, taxpayers, consumers, and leaving the elderly without adequate support. Divorce creates poverty, complicates inheritance and property law, leaves children with less sustenance, and creates an atmosphere of instability in general. Illegitimacy also complicates inheritance and property laws, and leaves young people with less support during their growing-up years.

Collectively, these four factors destabilize society, and leave people less trustful: a recipe for disaster.

The Roots of Their Rage

Author Joel Rosenberg tells us that the Middle East is the scene of a struggle between moderate Muslims and radical Muslims - between peaceful people who called themselves Muslims and violent warmongers who want to follow every word of the Qur'an - and we see that those aggressive radicals have taken political control of many Islamic nations, and are trying to gain control of the others.

Looking at this situation, two questions arise: first, why are the moderates nearly invisible, to the extent that many foreigners doubt that they even exist in these nations? Second, why are the orthodox Muslims so filled with anger?

The answer, at its core, lies in the deep-seated feeling of shame, humiliation, failure, and impotence in the modern world that many Muslims feel today.

Historically, Islamic nations were once very powerful, and generated respect, awe, and fear in other cultures. It is painful for modern residents of these Middle Eastern countries to realize how far they have fallen - from the greatness of their past to the current condition. When one considers the progress made in recent decades - the writing of new software, the filing of patents, biochemical discoveries - little of it has happened in these nations. They are still aware of their glorious past, when Islamic armies

penetrated deep into Africa in the south and far into Russia in the north. It was Muslims who controlled the great trading routes of gold and silver and silk and slaves from Asia to Europe.

Ironically, Islam's greatness would be the cause of its humiliation: its ability to control these geopolitical variables would encourage other cultures to find ways to avoid trade in, around, or through regions under Muslim control. What do these nations say about themselves?

Today, Islamic journalists, academics, and politicians themselves say that the Muslim world is best known for tyranny, abject poverty of all but the elite, rampant corruption, violence, and terrorism. Despite the discovery of oil and fantastic wealth in Islamic territories, despite the rise of nationalism and the creation of nation-states after the departure of colonial Britain and France from the Middle East and North Africa, despite the widespread introduction of elementary and secondary schools and at least a basic education for hundreds of millions of children, the Islamic world at the dawn of the twenty-first century is mired in hopelessness and despair. The Muslim powers are not winning wars. The Muslim peoples are not making medical breakthroughs. They are not creating dramatic new technologies. Indeed, many Muslims note that their governments are barely able to feed their people or to provide them with enough meaningful jobs.

How did these formerly great societies fall so far? And can they be rejuvenated? The engineering and mathematical creativity which brought Arab, Persian, Egyptian, Ethiopian, and Nubian cultures to world prominence began to fade after those societies were oppressed by the invasions of Islamic armies. The intellectual curiosity which fueled philosophy and algebra could not keep its momentum after these cultures were forced to shed their native identities and conform to Islamic doctrine. The "brain drain" ensued, as the educated classes lost the freedom to explore new academic disciplines, and lost their willingness to do so. Can these societies re-invent themselves, and return to their former stations of greatness in science, technology, and academia? We do not now know the answer to this question. Can they shake off the rigid oppression of Islam? Can Persia - now called Iran - return to the glory it had before armies of Muslims invaded it and snuffed out its native culture? Can Egypt recapture the intellectual status it had prior to being invaded by Islamic armies who obliterated its tradition of ingenuity? We must watch and wait to learn the answers to these questions.

It was actually the early successes of the Muslims that planted the seeds of their own decline. When Islam was powerful and dominated the epicenter of the earth, travel through Muslim territories was treacherous and thus enormously costly for European traders. So the Europeans became determined to find a way to circumvent the Islamic world altogether. Hoping to find a way around the Horn of Africa and on to India and East Asia, they began exploring sea routes that could take them south from England, France, Spain, and Portugal along the African coastlines.

Such long and arduous naval voyages required more of the Europeans - more education, more technology, more risk-taking. They required building better ships, creating more accurate maps, and developing navigational skills. They required crafting more precise weather instruments and developing a deeper understanding of meteorology. To protect their men and ships from pirates, bandits, and competing colonialists, the Europeans had to develop better weapons and war-fighting techniques and technologies as well.

Islam's greatness and control inspired other cultures to become clever, in order to avoid falling under that control - by analogy, in the same way that Napoleon's greatness inspired the other nations to find ways to outwit him. Responding to the power of Islam, Europeans

developed an educational and technological infrastructure at home that enabled them to master the perilous seas and find their way east by sailing south. Eventually, Eastern wealth, spices, and other treasures returned to European nations via increasingly advanced shipping companies and navies.

As the Europeans kept finding safe routes to Eastern Asia, and finding ways to avoid the danger of traveling through Islamic lands,

the more knowledge and experience was gained. They learned about gunpowder and explosives from the Chinese. They discovered medicines and herbal remedies throughout the Orient. They came back with new ideas and a thirst for further insights.

Success bred success. Innovation led to more innovation, and this spirit of exploration blazed across Europe, leading men like Christopher Columbus to sail west to get to the East. In time, wooden ships gave way to steel. Wind power gave way to steam. Steam propulsion gave way to engines using fossil fuels. The Wright brothers discovered flight. Then came jumbo jets and fighter jets. Oil- and gas-powered engines gave way to nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers. Then came space travel. The Russians put a man in orbit. The American put a man on the moon.

By the dawn of the third millennium, global travel was possible in a way never before known in human history. Knowledge was increasing exponentially.

All of this dizzying progress began as a response to Islamic geo-political control. The fact that Islam had controlled trade created an incentive for the other nations to develop technologies to bypass and surpass Islam.

The Islamic world was being left behind. Yet, for the better of three hundred years, Muslims had no idea. They perceived themselves as the masters of the universe and Europeans as infidels and barbarians. They had little interest in noticing, examining, or caring about the tremendous advances in science and engineering that Western Christians were making. But eventually the invention and rapid spread of radio and television and global communications made it increasingly clear even to the uneducated masses within the Muslim world how enormous the gaps were between their world and the West.

This, then, is source of the rage and anger which Islam directs against the other nations. Is there a chance for moderate Muslims to direct this emotion into a constructive direction, and encourage their people to work to reawaken their scientific and intellectual powers, and again become a source of creativity in the world? Or will the radical Muslims cling to the notion of vengeance against other nations? Peaceful Muslims are trying to focus their nations on making progress; warlike Muslims simply cling to the directives requiring hostility toward the rest of the world. Which side will win? Whether the coming century is one of war or peace between the Middle East and the rest of world depends on this.

Defying Killers

When confronted by murderous regimes, a nation needs a gifted leader - a man or woman with wisdom and courage. America had exactly that when one of the world's most bloodthirsty governments initiated an unprovoked attack. Professor John Greene at Cazenovia College explains:

At 3:10 AM on Monday, May 12, 1975, the Cambodian Khmer Rouge government fired upon the American merchant ship Mayaguez, then sailing in the Gulf of Siam; Cambodian sailors boarded the ship and took its crew prisoner. When captured, the Mayaguez was headed from Hong Kong to U.S. bases in Sattahip, Thailand, and was carrying a load of commercial Department of Defense cargo, including spare parts and supplies but not arms. Nevertheless, Cambodia defended the action, claiming that the Mayaguez had strayed outside international waters and had, in fact, trespassed on Cambodian territory. At the time of her capture, the Mayaguez was about seven miles from Poulo Wai, an island claimed both by South Vietnam and Cambodia; however, as a matter of policy, the United States recognized an international limit of only three miles.

With the lives of American sailors hanging in the balance, President Gerald Ford knew that he must be tough with the Cambodian government, which had demonstrated its ruthlessness by murdering millions of its own citizens. They would not hesitate to kill a handful of foreigners. Ford ordered the Marines to land on a Cambodian island, a few miles off the coast, and ordered the Air Force to immediately start bombing operations over Cambodia. Within a few hours, the Cambodians surrendered the American boat and its crew. President Ford both rescued the lives of the sailors and prevented any further such attacks by demonstrating forcefully his commitment to a simple, old, and powerful principle: the first task of a government is to protect the lives of its citizens. With decisive and forceful action, President Ford showed that the United States would not tolerate the abuse and disrespect of the genocidal thugs who had illegitimately taken control of Cambodia's government.

Some Are, Some Are Not

In the study of history, ancient or modern, we must be careful to avoid oversimplifications. In the modern mind, there is a linkage between the words 'Arab' and 'Muslim' - but this glosses over complexities.

For example, in Michigan, more than half of the state's Arabs are not Muslims, and more than half of the state's Muslims are not Arabs. This statistic requires some digesting.

This principle applies outside of Michigan, around the world. Millions of Arabs in the Middle East are, in fact, not Muslims. This can be understood by reviewing a definition: the word 'Arab' refers not only to people in Saudi Arabia, but to large groups living in areas like Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and other countries. Note, however, that most people in Iran are not Arabs; they are Persians.

Prior to the year 640 A.D., most Arabs were Christians, some were Jews, a few belonged to other religions. It may seem shocking from a modern perspective, but if you had traveled through Iraq, Iran, Egypt, or Syria in the year 600 A.D., you would have seen dozens of churches and no mosques. Higher education had been introduced, and seminaries in these countries trained scholars.

All of that changed suddenly when Islamic armies roared through the region in the late 600's and early 700's A.D., destroying the physical structures of other religions - churches and synagogues - and outlawing expressions of any faith outside of Islam. Small communities of Jews and Christians clung to their faith, under harsh oppression, in hidden ways.

In the Middle East today, after a thousand years of underground existence, these communities still make their presence felt, even when public expression of their belief is illegal. But rather than merely continuing to exist, these communities are now attracting other Arabs. Joel Rosenberg, from Syracuse University, explains:

For many Muslims, despair and despondency at what they see as the utter failure of Islamic governments and societies to improve their lives and give them peace, security, and a sense of purpose and meaning in life are causing them to leave Islam.

Many of these Arabs, perhaps without realizing it, are returning to their roots, to the heritage from the time when Arabia, Persia, and Babylonia (Iraq) were home to millions of Christians - who were allowed to practice their faith freely, and who allowed others to practice their faiths. Could the Arab world be shaking off the oppression which has blanketed it for the last one thousand years, and returning to a time of individual liberty?

For other Muslims, it is not depression but rage that is driving them away from the Qur'an and the mosque. They are seeing far too many Muslim leaders and governments and preachers both advocating and acting out cruelty toward women and children and violence even against fellow Muslims.

We cannot think of the Middle East simply as 'the Muslim world': it is a complex region, home to several different religious groups; it has changed, and will continue changing, in ways we might not be able to predict.

Haran

The city of Haran is located near, but not on, the northwestern end of the Euphrates River. It was a flourishing trade center in the 19th and 18th centuries B.C.; it was on the main route between Nineveh and other major cities. On Abraham’s trip from Ur to the Jordan River area, he stopped at Haran.

Sumer

The great empire of Babylonia was formed by merging two smaller, but important, empires: Akkad and Sumer.

The name of the earliest inhabitants of Mesopotamia of whom there are historical records is ‘Sumerians’ — their cultural contributions to later Mesopotamian civilizations were great and original. Archaeologists have recovered tens of thousands of Sumerian tablets and revealed extensive remains of cities and temples. The Sumerian language can now be read by scholars and the history of Sumer from the beginning of written records reconstructed and dated with some assurance. This is a remarkable achievement; as recently as 1915 leading scholars denied that the Sumerians ever existed!

The Sumerians were not a Semitic people; their language is related to Turkish, Finnish, and Hungarian. They probably entered Mesopotamia via the Persian Gulf about 3000 B.C.; they were not the aboriginal inhabitants of the country. The geographical name ‘Sumer’ in ancient times designated lower Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf.

Prior to 2800 B.C., the Sumerians appear organized in cities which are temple communities. The god is the king of the city and the temple is the owner of the land; the people are the servants and tenants of the temple. Writing and art are known and monumental temples are built. Commerce and the crafts and the division of labor permit fuller realization of natural resources.

After 2600 B.C., independent city-states have a tendency to league themselves under one king as an overlord.

From 2500 B.C. until 2350 B.C., Ur was the dominant power among the Sumerian cities. Its wealth and artistic progress are evident from royal tombs. Its kings have left numerous inscriptions and records.

A family of kings from Akkad ruled from 2350 to 2150 B.C.; such a royal family is called a ‘dynasty’ — in this dynasty, two important kings were Sargon and Naram-Sin. The empire expanded into most of Mesopotamia and even a bit beyond; it is not clear whether to call it the ‘Sumerian Empire’ or the ‘Akkadian Empire’ at this stage, because Sumer and Akkad would eventually merge to become Babylonia.

The most important Sumerian invention was the cuneiform script. This was first used for records and accounts. Although their writing system would grow to be complex and sophisticated, the Sumerians remained a largely pre-religious culture: they were dominated by myth, magic, and attempts to manipulate nature (which characterize the pre-religious phase), rather than a relational connection with the personality of the deity (involving acceptance and appreciation rather than manipulation) which characterizes a religious or even post-religious phase. Given this pre-religious state, archaeologists have found conclusive evidence of human sacrifice as a ritual practice among the early Sumerians.

Akkad

On the Euphrates River in northern Babylonia lies the city of Akkad. The city, which existed as independent city-state before merging with Sumer to form Babylonia, was influential and the area around it is also called Akkad. The Babylonian empire, before it was called ‘the Babylonian empire’, was originally called simply ‘Sumer and Akkad’. Prior to the merger with Sumer, Akkad dominated the region from approximately 2355 B.C. to 2165 B.C., and the two greatest rulers of Akkad were Sargon the Great (not to be confused with Sargon I and Sargon II of Assyria) and Naram-Sin. The empire of Akkad included all of Mesopotamia, and at times expanded to include even Syria. The dynasty of Akkad saw great advances in culture and the arts, and was long remembered in saga, despite its brevity. The dynasty of Akkad represents the successful irruption of Semitic peoples into Mesopotamia.

Agrippa

The name ‘Agrippa’ can be used for either Marcus Julius Agrippa (known as Agrippa II), or his father, Herod Agrippa (known as Agrippa I). When the father died in 44 A.D., the son was regarded by Roman emperor Claudius as too young to succeed, and the rule was entrusted to his uncle, Herod, brother of Agrippa I. The uncle died in 48 A.D., and the kingdom was granted to Agrippa II in 50 A.D.; later he would also govern some portions of Galilee. Like his father, Agrippa II was careful to win the goodwill of the Jews by deference to Jewish law and custom; at the same time he was a patron of the Hellenistic culture and religion. He contributed to the building of the temple in Jerusalem, but a dispute arose when he constructed a terrace on his palace from which he could observe the temple area. Agrippa II was present when the new procurator, Festus, found Paul (Rabbi Saul) in prison, and Agrippa II asked that Paul might be permitted to speak to him. Bernice, the widow of his uncle Herod, was also his sister, and the two had an openly incestuous relationship. It became clear to the Jews that Agrippa II was not really on their side, and when the Jewish revolt broke out in 66 A.D., Agrippa II and Bernice did all they could to prevent the revolt in Palestine from going any further. When they were unsuccessful, they remained stoutly loyal to Rome throughout the war, confirming the suspicions of the Jews. After the war, he received additional territories from Rome, presumably as a reward for his loyalty. The date of his death is not certain, but he seems to have reigned until around 100 A.D.

Sennacherib

From 705 B.C. to 681 B.C., Sennacherib, the son of Sargon II, was the king of Assyria. At his accession he was greeted by a general rebellion through much of the Assyrian empire, with its two principal centers at Babylon and in Syria and Palestine. The rebellion in Syria and Palestine was led by King Hezekiah of Judah with the assistance of Egypt. In 701 B.C., Sennacherib moved against the revolts in Syria and Palestine. Judah and the cities of the Philistines offered the only effective resistance; the Egyptian forces were defeated. Jerusalem was eventually forced to capitulate. Sennacherib made Nineveh a central city in his empire; he was assassinated by his sons.

Trying to Re-Design Europe

In February 1945, the three winning military powers of World War Two met in the city of Yalta: the USSR, the USA, and England. Personified by Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill, they wanted to plan how they would structure Europe once the war was over. It was clear that Germany would lose, so this was the time to organize the post-war world.

Sadly, it soon became clear that Stalin would agree to anything, but would never keep his word. Soviet Communism had a clear goal of dominating eastern European nations, and would never allow them the civil rights and personal freedoms which the Yalta plan envisioned. For people in places like Poland and Czechoslovakia, the end of the war simply meant exchanging the inhumane oppression of the Nazis for the inhumane oppression of Soviet Communism.

Roosevelt desperately wanted the conference to succeed, and spent a great deal of effort to organize it, and to travel thousands of miles, even when his own personal health was very shaky.

So why did Roosevelt risk his life by traveling halfway around the world? His chief goals were twofold: to persuade Stalin to enter the Pacific war, which he hoped would avert the bloodshed of an invasion of the Japanese home islands and to persuade Stalin to join the United Nations.

These two goals, as reported by The Washington Times, motivated Roosevelt. On paper, he would succeed; but in reality, Stalin would not be of much help in the Pacific, and he would join the United Nations only to subvert it, not to promote it.

To achieve the first goal, Roosevelt blithely granted Stalin control of wide swaths of territory that by rights should have gone to his “ally,” Chiang Kai-shek of China. As for the Poles, FDR agreed to huge slices being taken off both its east and western borders.

Although Roosevelt had noble intentions, his desire clouded his judgment. He gave away too much, and got only false promises in return. Harvard’s Professor Plokhy writes that Churchill and Roosevelt both agreed

to redraw international borders and forcibly resettle millions of people without consulting the governments and nations involved.

Perhaps Roosevelt and Churchill couldn’t really believe that Soviet Communism was as savage as it actually was. For example, a Soviet soldier captured by the enemy was treated by the Soviets as a deserter, not a prisoner of war: and the punishment for deserting was death. The Washington Times continues:

One of the more cynical - and bloody - concessions to Stalin was the forcible return to the USSR of Red Army soldiers taken captive by the Germans, and hordes of displaced civilians. To Stalin, capture was akin to treason, and soldiers knew they faced imprisonment or death when returned; Hundreds chose suicide rather than return.

Although a historic moment, the Yalta conference was ultimately a failure: it created no safety and no freedom for the people in the post-war world. But it taught us an important lesson: free societies cannot enter into good-faith negotiations with totalitarian dictatorships.

Turkey - Then and Now

The modern nation of Turkey has a rich and ancient heritage. One of the the earliest ethnicities of Turkey was a group known as the Hittites. They developed a sophisticated literacy and left behind expansive libraries of complex clay tablets. Their intellectual heritage, however, was trampled beneath the boots of invading armies - the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans, all of whom subjugated the territory long before the pacifistic teachings of Jesus. Eventually confined under the rule of the Ottoman Emperors, Turkey was not to taste cultural independence until the early 1920s. Although it seemed that Turkey was finally emerging into the societal sunshine, recent events have raised the hypothesis, according to the Washington Times,

that the semi-secular state founded by Ataturk in 1923 was merely a quaint experiment of the 20th century, and that the new millennium may witness a return of the Islamist orientation that defined the preceding Ottoman Empire for 600 years.

Would Turkey really step back from the hints toward civil rights, human rights, and democracy which it enjoyed for approximately eighty years?

This is hardly a foregone conclusion because Turkish politics teeter-totters through cycles of moderation and radicalism, but Turkey’s oft-neglected history is relevant no matter which direction the republic turns.

So there may yet be hope for the people of Turkey. But why would the leaders or the people of Turkey toy with the notion of returning to the darkness of the brutal medieval regime which so harshly crushed any flickering spark of the cultural glory that once was the original nation of Turkey? Why would there be even the possibility of anyone accepting this gigantic step backward into gloom which overshadowed the nation for centuries? Perhaps because it offers the lure of expansionist glory: the citizens might be content to surrender their chances at personal liberty and individual freedom for a chance to conquer neighboring territories. The Turks remember

the long and bloody history of Turkish conquest in Europe, which culminated in the siege of Vienna in 1683. The cautionary tale is that Islamic jihadist armies made it that far into the heart of Europe and nearly prevailed. Many fear a new invasion is in the works. And indeed, in the Islamic world, the expansionist vision is not a relic of the past. Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, declared that, “Islam will return to Rome conquering and victorious.” Religion is thus still central to this old conflict.

Will Turkey continue to nudge itself toward a social structure which values peace and human life? Or will it trade that option for a chance to dominate parts of eastern Europe? At this time, nobody knows.