When we look at the Middle East, what do we see? I think for a lot of Americans that answer would be one giant mass of countries that are all basically the same. I don't think there are many of us who really differentiate between the nations that make up the Middle East. We don't know that much about them. We think all Middle Easterners are strict Muslims, forced by their governments to practice everything according to the law. We see the women as being repressed by the men, forced to cover their heads with scarves. But what if this wasn't always the case? What if it was the opposite? What if women were forbidden to wear their scarves? This is the situation in Turkey, and until I read this article, I had absolutely no idea.
Turkey is a secular country. Religion has no influence over law there. Since the 1920s, Turkey has separated itself from the East and encouraged the incorporation of Western culture into its society. Unlike in most Muslim countries, women are banned from wearing head scarves in schools. There is now a religious revival occurring in Turkey, making many young people more religiously observant than their parents.
This story focused on the efforts of one young woman Havva Yilmaz to get a law passed that would allow women to wear head scarves in universities. I thought it was a very good idea to center the story around one individual. It made it much more personal. It showed how the issue affects actual women in Turkey. It also gave more insight into why women would actually want to wear scarves. For Western women, the idea of having to cover our heads seems cruel and old-fashioned. For Yilmaz, it's a way for her to practice her religion. She said it helped her discover who she was. This shows that the scarf can be just as much of a good thing as a bad thing. It depends on each individual person. By showing Yilmaz's side so thoroughly, her cause gains support because government should not have a right to say someone can or can't wear a head scarf.
I thought this article was well-written for the most part, but I felt there was a lot of editorializing. The writer uses a lot of adjectives and adverbs such as "lively," "eloquent," "staunchly," "funny", and "irreverent." She also said that certain Turks opposed broader freedoms for Islam because they did not trust one politician. She gives no foundation for this claim. There is no quote attributed to anyone that says this. However, she does present both sides of the story to a certain degree because she mentions what other women's complaints were against passing a law that would allow the scarves.
There was one specific part of the story that I found confusing. It involved a quote from Yilmaz. Yilmaz says something in the story about how when you wear a scarf, you're expected to act and think in a certain way, and you're stripped of your personality. Isn't that a bad thing about the scarf? I figured she meant you're expected to act that way, but it isn't true. However, nothing says that it isn't ture. The quote is just left as it is, with no further explanation. I think what she meant by that quote should have been made clearer in the article.
Also, there was one part that involved a comment by a journalist about Yilmaz's support for gays. I don't really see how this was relevant to the article. I guess it showed more about Yilmaz's beliefs. I also don't see how it was relevant for the journalist to bring that up with Yilmaz in the first place when she's fighting to wear head scarves. I can see that it brings up the issue of expression, but I just felt that the interview with the journalist and now this article lost a little bit of focus.
My final comment is just that as always, I learned a lot from the story. It was definitely interesting for me to see a very different side of the Middle East. I've never really thought of head scarves as a particularly good thing, but now I can see that wearing them is really important to some women. A government should not have the power to take that away from anyone.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/14/world/europe/14turkey.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
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3 comments:
I really liked this article. Yes, there were some parts that seemed out of place and that weren't fully explained, but I think the story was good overall.
It provided a look at religion that's not Christianity, not in the United States and not for older people. This story gave readers a look at young people's lives today that didn't include teenage pregnancy or drinking or drugs.
This article may have had some problems, but overall I think it was a very good article that provided an alternative view on "young people," Muslim religions and Middle Eastern countries.
This article was interesting, giving a side that we don't usually see of women in Islam.
I also like that it centers around one woman; I think it would be a profile.
The two sides weren't equally represented, but that was kind of expected since it centered around a woman who wanted to wear a head scarf. And it did at least talk about how some women don't want it.
The "stripped of your personality" comment I think was talking about how people should look past the scarves and see who they really are.
There is great use of direct quotes, such as, "'The pain that we've been through as university doors were harshly shut in our faces taught us one thing," she said, speaking to reporters. "Our real problem is with the mentality of prohibition that thinks it has the right to interfere with people's lives.'"
I would agree that whether or not to wear a head scarf should be a woman's choice.
Mary Beth,
The questions raised in this article are profound. What are the merits of cultural relativism? Is there a universal morality that transcends borders? This topic is obviously prickly. Certainly, it takes on a political dimension. Turkey's government, particularly in the late 1990s, was anxious to join the European Union. A profound commitment to secularism appeared to be an express lane. European leaders, particularly the French, are watching this situation play out as they gauge whether a predominately Muslim nation can function effectively within Europe's relatively nascent alliance. I am absolutely engrossed by this social experiment. I commend the reporter for complementing the robust dialog that is presently occurring.
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