Tag: Ataturk

  • ARMENIAN ISSUE: Student group at Cal State Northridge boasts of ‘shutting down’ speech by award-winning scholar

    ARMENIAN ISSUE: Student group at Cal State Northridge boasts of ‘shutting down’ speech by award-winning scholar

    The Volokh Conspiracy opinion

    Student group at Cal State Northridge boasts of ‘shutting down’ speech by award-winning scholar

    By Eugene Volokh November 15 at 8:47 AM

    1. From the Armenian Youth Federation, with video (see Nov. 10 post):

    Armenian students at California State University Northridge (CSUN) shut down a planned lecture about Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, citing historical evidence Ataturk continued Turkey’s genocidal policies and the event’s purpose to distract from the crisis in Turkey today. The lecture is a part of a series of events around Southern California in celebration of “Ataturk Week” on November 9–13, 2016.

    Our presence at these events will send a clear message to the Turkish community that college and university campuses are not incubators for denialists. Treating college campuses as breeding grounds for Turkish nationalist ideology is offensive for the number of Armenian students who attend these colleges.

    The Cal State Northridge Sundial reports:

    Scholar George Gawrych got through no more than five sentences during his presentation on his book about Turkish army officer Mustafa Kemal Atatürk before students raised their voices in protest Thursday at the Aronstam Library in Manzanita Hall.

    Over 20 protesters stood up from their seats, turned their backs on Gawrych and repeatedly chanted “Turkey guilty of genocide” and “genocide denialist.”

    Gawrych waited briefly as other attendees voiced their opinions to let him speak, until he began walking up and down the aisle trying to get the protestors to face him.

    Two police officers who guarded the entrance escorted Gawrych, a Baylor University Boal Ewing chair of military history, out of the library to sounds of chanting protesters.

    CSUN professor Owen Doonan had “invited Gawrych to speak for the Middle Eastern Islamic Studies program.” Prof. George Gawrych’s book, “The Young Ataturk: From Ottoman Soldier to Statesman of Turkey,” won one of the Society for Military History 2014 Distinguished Book Awards. And yet it turns out that even a faculty-invited scholar with impressive credentials isn’t allowed to speak at CSUN. Naturally, no speaker should be shouted down this way, whether he wrote an award-winning book or not — but the stature of Gawrych’s work is just a reminder of how deeply the movement to suppress speech has spread at American universities. (Something similar, by the way, seems to have happened the next day at Chapman University.)

    Defenders of free speech often warn of the slippery slope: Once we allow suppression even of foolish, lightweight, uneducated speakers, this will lead to suppression of serious scholars as well. Such slippery slope concerns are often pooh-poohed as a paranoid “parade of horribles.” Well, here’s the latest float in that parade, come to a university near me. And you’re not paranoid if they really are out to get you.

    2. The school’s response:

    Last week, a talk by visiting Professor George Gawrych was cancelled in the interest of public safety when it was determined that the event could not go on due to the student protest you referenced. Specific information about the conduct giving rise to the need to cancel the event is being gathered, and the need for further action will be determined.

    CSUN is proud of its strong ties with the Armenian community, which has provided the university with the opportunity and resources to offer a distinguished and respected Armenian Studies program and serve the largest number of Armenian students at any university outside of Armenia. At the same time, and as a higher education institution committed to the values of scholarship, knowledge and the exchange of ideas, it is important for our university to be open to a wide range of visiting speakers and scholars, even those whose ideas we may disagree with.

    I asked whether any disciplinary measures were expected for students who shouted down the speaker, and caused the “public safety” danger; the response was, “At this time, information about student conduct is still being gathered.” If you look at the video, you’ll see that police officers were present. I would have expected that the university would have said at least something about how shouting down speakers is bad behavior — but nothing along those lines has come around yet.

    3. Before the talk was scheduled, three groups, including the CSUN Armenian Students Association, wrote a letter to the dean of students protesting the talk; in an e-mail responding to my query, the president of ASA said that “members of ASA did join alongside AYF” in the “protest” of the talk that I discussed at the start of this post:

    This letter is from the Presidents of the Armenian Students Association, Alpha Gamma Alpha (the Armenian Sorority), and Alpha Epsilon Omega (the Armenian Fraternity) at Cal State University, Northridge. We would like to express our deepest disappointment regarding The Association of Turkish Americans of Southern California (ATASC) scheduled event at CSUN this Thursday, November 10th, 2016. The event entails bringing in a guest speaker, Professor George G. Gawrych, to discuss and celebrate Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who served as a soldier in the Ottoman Empire and later Prime Minister and President of Turkey from 1920 until 1938. Upon initially hearing about this event and seeing the flyer, we were baffled. As executive members of our respective Armenian organizations, we were confused as to how it was deemed acceptable or appropriate.

    Please do not dismiss our concerns as hyperemotional. This issue is about intolerance — both the ATASC and, historically, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk are well-known deniers of the Armenian Genocide and misanthropes towards the Armenian community. If you were not aware, the Armenian Genocide was the systematic killings of 1915 ordered by the Ottoman Empire (present-day Republic of Turkey) towards the Armenian community for the purpose of ethnic cleansing. Men, women, children, and elderly were all either murdered, raped, tortured or starved to death to carry out these actions. Currently, the government of Turkey denies that such an order was ever established and continues to carry an agenda to falsely educate others regarding the historical occurrences during that time.

    It is quite bizarre that an event revolving around the ignorance and injustices against humanity is being allowed to take place on campus. This is for two reasons: 1) CSUN is a large proponent of the inclusion and respect of all individuals, regardless of gender, race, and ethnicity, with a zero tolerance policy regarding hatred and 2) Our campus is a well known supporter of the Armenian Community and its cause. It is reported that 10% of the CSUN student body and 125 members of full- and part- time faculty and staff are Armenian. Our university is currently in the process of establishing a study abroad program with the American University of Armenia. The president of CSUN’s Associated Students, Sevag Alexanian, is also Armenian. The Associated Students has passed a resolution to recognize the Armenian Genocide every year on April 24 by honoring the victims with a tradition of the rose ceremony and educating members of AS with the historical events during that time. Our campus also has an Armenian Studies department, where students can minor in Armenian Studies. Around this time last year, it was announced that the the Armenian Studies program was awarded a $250,000 grant from the TF Educational Foundation, the family foundation established by philanthropist Jerry Turpanjian. The funds will provide scholarships for students who have both enrolled in CSUN’s Integrated Teacher Education Program (ITEP) and declared a minor in Armenian Studies.

    We would like to add that we are in no way denying ATASC’s right to the freedom of speech. However, for CSUN to give a platform to an organization that glorifies a government killing its own people is not only an atrocious act within itself, but also degrading to this university’s reputation as a world-class public institution. For CSUN, with its large population of Armenian students, faculty members, and donors — not to mention its expanding Armenian Studies Department — this is an embarrassment.

    Our wish is that the situation is rectified and that this event is cancelled, to further prevent the spreading of false information and hatred toward our community. On behalf of the Armenian student body, we are deeply offended that an event such as this was over sought by the CSUN administration and we hope that it will never happen again.

    So let’s see: The university is supposed to exclude historians who want to speak positively about important historical leaders, based on students’ ideas about which views are not “acceptable or appropriate.” Indeed, the university is not supposed to “allow[]” such a talk “to take place on campus.” That’s not just true of talks that themselves disagree with the position that the Ottoman Empire engaged in genocide; as best I can tell, there was no indication that this was the purpose of Gawrych’s talk. It’s also true of a talk that praises a leader who disagreed with that position (and who did other bad things).

    Moreover, the theory goes, the university’s policy of “zero tolerance … regarding hatred” means that scholars who want to express favorable views about such leaders must be excluded. That’s the new suppression ideology in a nutshell.

    Thanks to Charles Chapman for the pointer.

     

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    Eugene Volokh teaches free speech law, religious freedom law, church-state relations law, a First Amendment Amicus Brief Clinic, and tort law, at UCLA School of Law, where he has also often taught copyright law, criminal law, and a seminar on firearms regulation policy.

    Follow @volokhc

  • How the Turkish Government Cancels The Passports of Critics

    How the Turkish Government Cancels The Passports of Critics

    Huff POST da Turkiye vatandaslarinin Pasaportlarini iptal ediyormus bu isi de Polis Isthibarat ile MIT yapiyormus diye kocaman bir makale yazmislar…3-4 kisi ye de misal olark kotmuslar Turk gazetelerinde hicbir haber yok
    Umit Bayulken
    Aydoğan Vatandaş
    Aydoğan Vatandaş Journalist, writer and politic

    Imagine that you have enough money and a passport to travel abroad. You may be a businessman to follow your meetings or just a tourist hoping to practice new things during your trip in another country.

    If you are a Turkish citizen, you should think twice.

    It is not a secret that after Erdogan consolidated his power, Turkey has already turned into a dictatorship.

    The sources now reveal that Turkish Government has started another unlawful activity against his citizens. The Turkish Government cancels the passports of some journalists, businessmen and NGO representatives through some fabricated applications.

    The first step of this conspiracy engineered by the Turkish Government is to fabricate ‘a loss notice’ in a newspaper on behalf of the targeted individual. Once the loss notice appears in a paper, the Government cancels the passport. The people find out this illegal cancelation only when they are about to go abroad at the airport venue. The police seize their passports and don’t let them go out. But it may also happen when you are out of Turkey. Many people who are already out of Turkey face similar difficulties during the security check at the Customs. They are told that their passports are seen ‘lost’ in their system and advised to visit their Embassies or Consulates to solve the problem. However, when the people go to their Embassies, their passports are being seized without any explanation.

    Some aggrieved has already started legal term by means of their counselors. Those who face this conspiracy while they are abroad apply to Interpol and inform that their passports are not lost.

    According to the claims, hundreds of Turkish businessmen, journalists, teachers, and bureaucrats were recorded by a team established by Police Intelligence Department and the National Intelligence Organization (MİT). Information about the names on the list prepared by these organizations are sent to the Passport Department. And the Passport units cancel the passports of the persons, whose names appear on the list.

    The illegal practice was revealed when S. A., a person involved in business in Ankara applied to Ankara Directorate of Security, in order to extend the validity of his passport. The businessman went to the Passport department last month. He stated that he wants to extend the validity of his visa, because he wants to go abroad. But the personnel at the passport department told him that his passport was cancelled through a ‘loss’ notice, and that he might find the detailed information at Police Passport Department. Thereupon the businessman went to the Passport Department’s campus in Ankara, he repeated again that he didn’t issue such any loss notice for his passport. The officials rejected to provide any detailed information.

    A teacher working abroad also faced a similar problem. The teacher who went to the airport to go back to the country he worked after his vacation in Turkey found out at that his passport was cancelled at the passage. Even though the teacher never issued such a loss notice for his passport, the justification was the same.

    The last aggrieved of the passport conspiracy was Mrs. Nevin İpek, the wife of Mr. Akın İpek, the President of Koza İpek Holding which was taken over by President Erdogan last year. İpek applied to Embassy of Turkey in London last week, to extend the validity of her passport. The Embassy officials seized İpek’s passport, stating that there is a ‘loss notice’ for her passport. İpek told them that she never issued any loss notice on a newspaper in or abroad. Yet, she could not persuade the Embassy officials.

    Mr. Nazif Apak, a columnist for Turkish Yeni Hayat Daily, who first drew attention on the passport conspiracy of the Turkish Government in his article titled ‘Who plays with the passport?’ on April 23, wrote that a businessman, whose family has done trade for three generations faced a similar incident, too. He wrote that, when the businessman reacted ‘How come! I came to your land with this passport and want to go to that country from here,’ then the officials said that his passport is seen ‘lost’ in their system. When the businessman carries the case to Interpol, the respond was this: ‘Unfortunately Turkey is forging on the documents and declares passports of many people lost,’ Apak wrote.

    Issuing a loss notice is under the authority of only the bearers of passports and ID cards. Even should a loss notice be issued, when the passport is found later, it is legally valid and the police officials are not appointed or authorized to follow the loss notices.

    As long as there exists no ban to travel abroad forwarded to a person by the Court, one may travel to anywhere. This is a universal right and under the protection of freedom of travel. The passports of persons may not become invalid due to loss notices, and detention of people from going abroad by such means is a Government fraud and only happens in a dictatorship.

    al analyst

     

  • Invitation to Remembrance Ceremony to Honor Atatürk…America Ataturk Society

    Invitation to Remembrance Ceremony to Honor Atatürk…America Ataturk Society

    Invitation to Remembrance Ceremony to Honor Atatürk

    IN REMEMBRANCE OF ATATÜRK
    On the 77th anniversary of the death of the greatest Turk of them all, we mourn Atatürk’s death, as well as the assault on his creation, the secular Republic of Turkey by the present government. Losing sight of his prescient vision for Turkey represents a lost opportunity for his Nation and the rest of the world.

    Reason over Dogma
    Peace over War
    Enlightenment over Ignorance

    Remembering Atatürk…
    Sunday, November 15th, 2015,  1:00 pm

    Welcome Message 

    Statement by Atatürk Society of America (ASA)
    by Burak Şahin, Board Member of ASA

    Lecture on “Gallipoli, Command Under Fire
    by Professor Ed Erickson, Guest Speaker

    Documentary Film: “The Name of the Sun, Kemal Atatürk”

    Atatürk’s Address to the Youth

    *******
    Location of the Event:
    American University
    School of International Service
    3401 Nebraska Avenue, NW
    Washington, DC 20016
    (At the intersection of New Mexico and Nebraska Ave.)

    Complimentary parking under the building
    Shuttle bus service between Tenley Town Metro Station and University

    Followed by Refreshments
    Open to the Public

    Founded 1995 in Washington DC, the Atatürk Society of America (ASA) is a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization, dedicated to promoting the ideals of Atatürk.
    Celebrating 20th Year Anniversary!4731 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington DC 20016
    Phone: (202) 285-2979  info@ataturksociety.org

     

    Ataturk Society of America · 4731 Massachusetts Ave NW · Washington, DC 20016 · USA
    profile mask2
    Atatürk Society of America 10:55 PM (14 minutes ago)

    cleardot
    IN REMEMBRANCE OF ATATÜRK On the 77th anniversary of the death of the greates…
  • The 12 people who ruined Turkey

    The 12 people who ruined Turkey

    The Dirty Dozen

    The 12 people who ruined Turkey

    From a 15th-century sultan to a 21st-century autocrat.

    At first glance, Turkey’s election results suggested a triumph of democracy over the stifling dirigisme of one-party AKP rule. But with the country combusting from terror attacks, those cheers have turned out to be premature. Even before a government could be formed — and the dubious benefits of coalition rule could accrue — the social contract began to fall apart. In the interregnum, the regional and national pressures bearing on Turkey have been distinctly aggravated by President Erdoğan’s ruthless drive to retain power. Unquestionably, he inherited instabilities deeply rooted in the country’s history. But just as certainly, it was Erdoğan who revived Turkey’s recurrent political vices, and since he still sits in the preposterous presidential palace he built to direct his party in Parliament, there’s a real danger that the downward trajectory will continue.

    Sultan Selim the Stern

    Though remembered as one of the Ottoman Empire’s most vigorous and effective leaders, Selim I made a fateful strategic choice 500 years ago that haunts Turkey to this day. He opted to conquer Arab lands all the way to North Africa and bring the Caliphate to Istanbul. From then on, with the Sultan-Caliphs acting as official protectors of Islam’s holy places, the Turks got irrevocably embroiled in the Middle East’s endless tribal and sectarian feuds. For some decades in the 20th century the Kemalist doctrine kept Turkey aligned on a Western axis. But under Erdoğan, a swampy yearning for Empire has resurfaced, bringing back notions of religious identity and Turkish hegemony that threaten to undo a century of relative stability in the “Turkosphere.”

    Enver Pasha

    Very few mourned when the Young Turks ousted the paranoid and ineffectual Sultan Abdulhamid ll in 1909. Enver Pasha led the new administration, one that promised to reverse two centuries of decline. Instead, Enver took the Empire into World War I in alliance with the Kaiser. He also intensified the purging of religious minorities initiated by Abdulhamid, notably the entire Armenian population of the strategic borderlands threatened by Russia. That legacy remains a thorn in Turkey’s side a century later, not just because of the genocide question, but because the Kurds (who did much of the purging) now largely populate those eastern provinces en bloc and grow more restive by the day.

    Süleyman Demirel

    Presiding over what was, arguably, the longest extended low point of the post-war era, Demirel served as prime minister five times between 1965 and 1993. His garrulously incompetent sway over numberless coalitions was interrupted by two coups in which the army had to re-cohere a country falling apart at the seams. Those interminable Demirel years demonstrated amply that he excelled at internal politicking and nothing else, while thousands died in the cities from leftist-rightist violence and double-digit inflation became the norm. Recurrent power blackouts, demonstrations, shuttered schools and colleges, fuel shortages and “no-go areas” in many towns spread a sense of doom across the country. It was chiefly because of Demirel’s paralyzing endurance that the public began to view the military as less corrupt, more efficient and, yes, more democratic than elected politicians.

    General Kenan Evren

    As the army general in charge of the 1980 military coup, Kenan Evren was a popular figure at first, even a kind of savior. The Turkish military, after all, had a reputation for restoring the country to democracy fairly quickly and in better shape than the politicians left it. So it was with Evren’s junta, which inherited a country on the brink of civil war. The ensuing draconian measures seemed fitting and necessary: a new Constitution, a National Security Council dominating government, curfews, mass arrests, news blackouts and the muzzling of free expression. Evren’s popularity soared. Even after the coup ended in 1983, Evren served as elected president for seven years. But the nation’s mood changed as details of his rule leaked out years later: 650,000 people (mostly leftists) arrested, 49 executed, hit squads committing extrajudicial killings, and routine torture in prisons. Under Erdoğan, he was subsequently tried and convicted for the coup but died of old age. Ironically, it was his Constitution that gave Erdoğan the legal instruments with which to persecute his political foes.

    Bedrettin Dalan

    As the first elected mayor in 1984 of Greater Istanbul, a newly delineated municipal authority, Dalan oversaw a number of highly popular urban rehabilitation projects, not least the clean-up of the Golden Horn. He built parks and sewage systems. But soon enough his unilateral approach to urban planning produced a series of unwanted and irreversible transformations of Istanbul’s ancient fabric. He built the coastal north-south road along the European Bosphorus that trapped rows of historic wooden “yalis” inside roaring traffic. The road led to a juggernaut of residential construction for which forests going back thousands of years had to be decimated. He grew so rich during his tenure that he endowed colleges and charitable foundations like a mafia don. He remains a fugitive from justice, in exile in Germany.

    Tansu Çiller

    Turkey’s first female Prime Minister took office in 1993, but Çiller did more to ruin the country in a short spell than anyone since the Ottoman era. For a former professor of economics she was singularly inept at her métier, presiding over the near-collapse of the lira and foreign reserves. All the while she amassed a personal fortune for which she was prosecuted for corruption by Parliament. She avoided punishment through political deal-making and technicalities. Worst of all, she directed a secret “dirty war,” mostly in the Kurdish areas, using far-right nationalist gangsters and paramilitaries while doing nothing politically to alleviate the situation. She did manage to get the PKK listed as a terrorist organization abroad. She never paid any heed to women’s issues.

    Necmettin Erbakan

    The godfather of the kind of fundamentalist tendency that now pretzelizes Turkish politics, Erbakan can be blamed for inventing, during the troubled 1970s, the blend of Islamic demagogy and fiscal corruption served up daily by Erdoğan’s party. Indeed, Erbakan was a political mentor of Erdoğan in the 1990s. Banned from politics repeatedly, he returned time and time again to set up parties under different names until he was ultimately forced out of power in 1997 by the military for infusing national affairs with religious bias. He and his fellow party members were successfully prosecuted for embezzling a million dollars after they lost parliamentary immunity. Erbakan introduced the formula of cronyism and political corruption as a form of Islamic governance in which welfarism laced with piety substituted for such “Western” principles of transparency and non-sectarian impartiality.

    Abdullah Öcalan

    A dinosaur from the left-wing guerrilla phase of liberation movements, “Apo” Öcalan now sits moldering in a Turkish prison, sometimes still directing negotiations and policies for parts of the Kurdish movement. There’s no question that the Turkish state has repeatedly missed opportunities to forge political solutions to the Kurdish question, but Öcalan’s PKK and its early horrific acts gave cover for a purely military response by the Turkish state. The PKK’s rape and murder of female teachers assigned to Kurdish areas, the videotaped torture and execution of kidnapped state employees — such horrors preceded ISIS by decades and made reconciliation infinitely harder. To get a real sense of how far the Kurdish mainstream has come since “Apo,” one only has to hear the civilized idealism of Selahattin Demirtas who led the Kurdish HDP party to such success in the recent election. Conversely, to measure how quickly it can all relapse to Öcalan-era brutality, one only has to peruse the headlines today.

    The EU

    The European Union missed numerous opportunities to solve a host of problems by accepting Turkey’s membership early on. Once part of the EU, Turkey and Erdoğan could scarcely have acted with such impunity as a conduit for ISIL recruits who return to threaten their European communities. Turkey itself would have benefited from further Westernization these last two decades while furnishing the EU’s Muslim population with a model for a more secular and democratized Islam. Instead, Turkey’s civic freedoms, unanchored to higher EU standards, have sharply deteriorated under Erdoğan; and its brand of Islam has moved closer to the Gulf’s, an impending disaster for Europe.

    Melih Gökçek

    The mayor of the capital, Ankara, and a leading AK Party stalwart, Melih Gökçek sports the full array of toxic Erdoğanista flaws. Elected first in 1994 and re-elected five times, he never shies from twisting the democratic process to retain power. In the 2014 elections, which he apparently won by 1 percent of the vote, opposition districts suffered extended power cuts, lost ballot boxes, wrongly re-assigned votes and much else. His Ankara police brutalize protestors at every encounter, sometimes garnering an official EU rebuke. His love of construction over nature and community, especially opposition communities, creates follies at massive taxpayer expense such as the “Rainbow” leisure complex, which proved unreachable due to surrounding highways. His incompetent urban planning has repeatedly led to water shortages in Ankara. The solution: draw water from the polluted Kizilirmak river. He levied a fine on the university that detected the pollutants. He regularly intimidates critics in the media, naming and shaming them specifically. He is suing one for calling him an Armenian.

    Ahmet Davutoğlu

    Responsible for grandiose notions of neo-Ottomanist foreign policy when he was foreign minister, Davutoğlu became a place-holding Prime Minister subservient to Erdoğan’s machinations as President. The election took away his party’s majority and mandate to rule. He proved clueless in his former job, successfully alienating every single country in the region as he pursued his delusional “no problems with neighbors” policy. He was clueless, also, in his role as Medvedev to Erdoğan’s Putin. That role depended on the AKP’s popularity and the continuance of constitutional government. He now has neither — and none of the leverage to undo all the damage he did to Turkey’s place in the world.

    Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

    Until Erdoğan came along, military coup leaders were authoritarian and politicians were corrupt. Erdoğan succeeded in forging a combination of both vices. He has censored and corrupted the press. He has politicized law enforcement and the judiciary. He has created a whole new class of political prisoners. He has made it a norm for his police force to brutalize public protesters. He has funneled “black” money through the economy in unprecedented amounts to facilitate his policies. He has established a system of oligarchic patronage through favored pro-AKP businessmen. He has instituted a surveillance state with the help of his one-time allies, the Gulenists, whom he now persecutes for (absurdly) demanding democratic standards from him. He has deployed religion as a dangerously divisive instrument and stoked sectarian violence in Iraq and Syria by clandestinely supporting extreme Islamists. He has played every divisive card available, not least by reigniting the Kurdish tinderbox. He has neutralized the military at a time when he has made them more necessary than ever. He hasn’t just corrupted the state, he has corrupted large swaths of the population by making them complicit in his abuse of power. All this he has done knowing that he can’t afford to be replaced by a half-way clean administration. Hence his willingness to take the country to the brink. And this time the army is too cowed to act as anything but his instrument.

    Melik Kaylan is a columnist for Forbes and a regular commentator on arts and culture for The Wall Street Journal. He is the co-author of “The Russia-China Axis: The New Cold War and America’s Crisis of Leadership.”

    Authors:
    Melik Kaylan 
  • She’s an imam in LA and doesn’t have patience for a strict interpretation of Islam

    She’s an imam in LA and doesn’t have patience for a strict interpretation of Islam

    Ani Zonneveld is an imam, and yes, also a woman. She qualifies that she is “an imam with a small “i” — though her reluctance to go with a capital “I” says more about her democratic approach to worship than any deference to Islamic tradition, one that has been and still is very male-dominated. She has no patience for that Islam.

    Listen to the Story.

    Instead she founded a Muslim community — Muslims for Progressive Values — that embraces gender equality, gay rights and interfaith marriage. And although it is based in Los Angeles, it has spread — often quietly — across the world.

    Zonneveld was meant to be a diplomat. That at least was her father’s plan for her. He was an ambassador and she was raised in several countries, including Germany, Egypt and India. But she found her way to Los Angeles and became instead a singer and Grammy award-winning songwriter. (She wrote songs for Keb’ Mo’.)

    Then, after the events of 9/11, she looked at the religion she was raised in and decided to study it and to “surrender” to the process. She ultimately re-embraced Islam, and made it her mission to fight back against Saudi-exported Wahhabism, the strict interpretation of the faith that she holds responsible for inspiring extremist groups from al-Qaeda to ISIS.

    Earlier this year she wrote an open letter to the king of Saudi Arabia to chastise him, and to call on him to do more to combat the rise in global extremism. She has called on other governments to divest from Saudi Arabia, citing Sweden as a good example.

    Zonneveld is not shy of challenging the rules of her religion, most of which she insists are cultural accretions. She happily takes turns with others in her L.A.-based community to lead Friday prayers. She also sings during worship — anathema to the traditionalists — and she created Muslims for Progressive Values as an alternative model of community.

    “It was a way for us to bring together Muslims of like minds that is gender parity, human rights for everyone, freedom of expression, freedom of and from religion, separation of religion and state, all (those) good values that have been side-lined and instead have been replaced by blind ritual and orthodoxy that is very stiff and very harsh in its interpretation,” she says.

    Her group has spread beyond America, and counts more than 10,000 members, though many have joined or sympathize in secret. Her open embrace of LGBTQ rights, now so culturally acceptable in America, is radical in Islamic terms.

    “It is radically going back to tradition,” she insists, “because Prophet Muhammad didn’t prosecute anyone for being a homosexual, there is no punishment in the Quran for being a homosexual, period.”

    There is certainly punishment in much of the Muslim world today, including hanging in Iran. So, the interpretation of Islamic law — or Sharia — in many countries is in Zonneveld’s sights.

    She has created a campaign called #ImamsForShe to educate imams about cultural practices such as child marriage, which she insists is un-Islamic. And she has started a program at the United Nations.

    She is giving diplomats lessons in the Quran hoping that it will embolden them to challenge countries like Iran on their interpretation of Islamic Law. The daughter who was meant to be a diplomat is now training them instead.

  • Richard Dawkins on Ataturk and Adnan Oktar

    Richard Dawkins on Ataturk and Adnan Oktar

    Richard Dawkins Atatürk ve Adnan Oktar Hakkında