Turkey and Islam. Sheikh, rattle and roll

More incidents to challenge those who would modernise Islam

IN AN ancient madrassa in the hills near Bitlis, a septuagenarian sheikh consults Islamic scriptures as he speaks over the phone. Sheikh Nureddin, a spiritual leader in Turkey's Kurdish south-east, is negotiating over a young woman hiding in his home. Hatice Kaya's in-laws have wanted her dead since November, when she was kidnapped by her childhood sweetheart and then abandoned. Only her blood can cleanse the stain of dishonour, the family insists. "Nonsense," sniffs the sheikh. "Islam forgives, the Prophet forgives, and so will her husband."

The mufti of Turkey's most westernised city, Istanbul, took a less liberal stand last month when a group of men and uncovered women were photographed praying together at the small Subasi mosque. Mustafa Cagrici decreed that there could be only one form of worship, as ordered by the Prophet. Men and women must pray separately lest they be tempted by naughty thoughts, and women must always cover their heads. He sent people to the mosque to hand out headscarves, though in the event neither the errant flock nor the hordes of uncovered women whom secularists hoped to see turned up.

The contrast between the sheikh and the mufti illustrates many paradoxes of Islam in Turkey. Mr Cagrici is an employee of the government body that micro-manages religious life and tells preachers what to say. Its main job is to keep Turks on the strictly secular path laid out by the father of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk. That means excluding women who wear the headscarf (ie, the majority of Turkish women) from schools and universities.

Sheikh Nureddin's Nakshibendis, one of the largest Muslim brotherhoods, is technically illegal. It and other Islamic fraternities were banned by Ataturk for being reactionary influences. Yet, after decades underground, the brotherhoods have re-emerged as a potent force with a largely moderating influence on Islam in Turkey. That has not kept Turkey's hawkish generals from demonising some of these movements' leaders.

Reconciling these contradictions in a way that satisfies both secular and pious Turks is one of the biggest challenges facing Turkey as it seeks to join the European Union. Turks pride themselves on being the most modern and democratic nation in the Islamic world, one that can serve as a bridge between East and West and help avert the "clash of civilisations".

That claim was tested once again this week, when a teenager in Trabzon shouting "Allahu Akbar" shot dead an Italian Roman Catholic priest. The boy later told police he had been influenced by the cartoons denigrating Muhammad. The affair is likely to be exploited by those in Europe who oppose Turkey's membership, even though attacks against Christians on religious grounds are extremely rare in Turkey.

It might have been worse: the killer could have said he was acting under the influence of a government-inspired campaign against missionaries. In an officially issued sermon, imams in Turkey have been talking up the dangers posed by Christian missionaries, who "work as a part of a plan to cut the ties of our citizens to the [Islamic] faith." Christian missionaries, especially Protestants, complain that the authorities do little to protect them from vigilantes who stone their churches and send them death threats.

Such a combustible cocktail of zealotry and nationalism led to some speculation in the Islamist press that the worshippers at Subasi were part of an American plot to "christianise Muslims". Perhaps they were connected to a female troublemaker and former Wall Street Journal reporter, Asra Nomani, who organised a mixed congregation of Muslims in New York last year. Yet most secular Turks reacted the other way, hoping that the exposure of the Subasi congregation would spark a broader debate on reform in Islam. As Ahmet Hakan, a liberal commentator, notes, Islam is in urgent need of theologians "who will combat the mentality that seeks to keep Islam under the hegemony of men." As she awaits her fate in Bitlis, the young Hatice Kaya would surely agree.