Children, phonecall and chocolates
Next year I will do everything right. At Ramazan Bayrami (end of Ramadan festival) I mean. What went wrong this year? Well, nothing serious, but still. I remember my first bayram in Turkey, which was, I think, three years ago. I knew nothing, really. Children in the street wished me a happy holiday, and I liked that so much. Then the …
When I check my mailbox, there are at least 278 offers in it to interview Mr. Adnan Oktar, a ‘prominent Muslim scholar’ who is mainly known as a Muslim creationist. Okay, I’m exaggerating a bit, there aren’t that many, but Adnan Oktar is exaggerating too: according to the information I got from his PR lady, he has written over 250 …
There’s this feeling of togetherness that I like about Ramadan. Even if, like me, you don’t join in the fasting, you feel the special atmosphere, especially around the time the fast is broken at sundown. Forget for a moment the grumpiness people display when they are hungry and thirsty, and just look around on the street at sunset.
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A headmaster who decides that the teachers’ canteen will not serve food during Ramadan. Children who don’t fast during Ramadan being bullied at school by children who do. Official functions where no drinks are served. During Ramadan Turkey becomes visibly more religious. Especially when things like this happen in schools, government or municipality buildings or other state …
I recently read that the amount of ‘Islamic hotels’ is increasing in Turkey. No alcohol is served there and there are separate swimming pools for men and women. I don’t really have an opinion about that. I think there’s apparently a market for this sort of hotel, and if there are people who want to enjoy their holidays …
This week, Fethullah Gülen was elected most important intellectual in the world in an internetpoll organized by the US magazine “Foreign Policy” together with the British magazine “Prospect”. Who? Fethullah Gülen. He’s a Turk, but he lives in the USA. He leads the Gülen Movement, an Islamic path that preaches a modern interpretation of Islam and …
A dead end street called Republic
It’s hilarious sometimes what strict secularists and pious Muslims can fight over. The first group is faithfully represented by daily newspaper Cumhuriyet, which excels in finding proof of how religious Muslims are slowly turning Turkey into a non-secular state. As its most recent evidence it reports how, in a neighbourhood where some religious people were in charge, …
When you interview a woman with a headscarf, as I noticed these last few days, make sure your translator uses the right Turkish word for ‘headscarf’. There are two, namely ‘başörtüsü’ and ‘turban’. The latter is not appreciated by headscarved women. It’s denigrating, has it’s origin in Arabic (and indeed, the word is not in my Turkish dictionary) and …
Grandmother tosses a piece of meat towards me. Plop! About one and a half kilos I suppose, with quite a lot of fat on one side. I put the knife on the meat at an angle. First I want to get rid of this fat. With an arching motion I throw it into a bucket. The rest of the meat I …
I passed Yeni Valide Cami today at prayer time. The mosque was full of people, the imam was giving his sermon. I heard what state religion can do – they don’t call it state religion here, but in fact the ministry for religious affairs trains all the imams and tells them every week what to focus on in their Friday
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